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Author: Anne Cassidy

Parentitis

Parentitis

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The condition of senioritis is well documented. Symptoms include poor attendance at school, lack of attention to homework and a marked increase in silliness of all types.

What is far less known or understood is parentitis. This condition afflicts the parents of high school seniors, especially parents of high school seniors who are also youngest children. Mothers and fathers in this predicament find themselves policing the home, chasing kids back to school and enjoying gallows humor of all types.

They would like to enjoy themselves like their high school seniors, but alas they cannot. They are too busy making sure that final projects are completed.

But though time seems to stand still, it actually does not. Graduation day will arrive, and they pray their child will be among those marching in to “Pomp and Circumstance.” And when the tassels have been moved and the diplomas awarded, then their fun will really begin.

Picture Perfect

Picture Perfect

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In honor of today’s weather — blue skies, low humidity, green leaves, red roses (I could go on…) — a picture of outside.

A window frame, a window gone (this was during last summer’s new siding, roof and window project) and another perfect early summer day.

Preserved then so we can celebrate now.

Saturday Night Fever

Saturday Night Fever

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On Saturday night we rolled up the carpet, cranked up the stereo and
lured some aging boomers (and even younger folk) out on the dance
floor.

Blaring from the new sound system were the Supremes, the Beatles and disco classics like “I Will Survive.” At one point there were probably 20 people jumping and jiving.

The ersatz dance floor is so nice I’m letting it stay a while, meaning that the couch and wing chairs are  crammed into half of the living room with extra stuff piled in the garage. The open floor is  begging for an encore of “YMCA.”

Saturday Night Fever? Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe this should happen every night of the week.

It occurred to me Saturday (as it has often recently), that
people would be much happier if only they could spend part of every day
dancing.

 (Photo: Theatrical Release Poster from Wikipedia.)

Directions

Directions

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Yesterday on a shuttle bus back to a parking garage outside of Baltimore, I was fiddling with my phone looking for directions to my next destination. As usual, I was a little flummoxed by the gadget. So at some point I put it down and asked the man next to me, who was wearing a blue Hawaiian-print shirt that said “Aloha” on the back, if he knew the way.

“Sure do,” he said, not skipping a beat. “You go to the corner and turn left, and when you hit the traffic circle you take Dulaney Valley Road.”

It sounded simple enough. I took his directions and stuck with them — even though the cars were crawling and I kept wondering if I’d heard him correctly.

But eventually the traffic circle appeared and so did Dulaney Valley Road, and before long I was where I needed to be.

A little story about trusting people instead of machines? Yes, but more than that. Later that day at a luncheon almost an hour away, I saw the man from the bus again. He was sitting at the very next table. His back was to us, but I knew it was him. I could see the “Aloha” on his shirt.

Resolutions

Resolutions

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I’ll take any excuse to make them. New Year’s, first day of school, birthday.

Sometimes they are formal, list-like affairs. Other times just fleeting inclinations: “Don’t worry so much.” “Take life as it comes.”

Today’s is like that. “Be grateful for what you have.”

If a “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” (Emerson), then what are resolutions? A refuge for the list-maker? A canard for the overly optimistic?

Or a way to stay fluid as the years conspire to harden us?

I’ll go with that last one!

Morning Run

Morning Run

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Early to the city, sun still low in the sky. The Capitol there in the foreground, white, imposing, lit from the east. The air is still cool, but there’s a promise of heat in the breeze.

I’m early enough that I slip into running shorts, t-shirt and tennis shoes, grab my iPod and head to the Mall. 

I didn’t mean to jog the whole way to the Washington Monument, but “Flashdance” was pulsing in my ears and the whole world seemed to be running. The slow moving with bandaged knees and the speedsters with no shirts. Groups of colleagues pacing each other, the worn down and revved up. All of them alive, gloriously alive, this May morning.

Before I knew it I was turning left down 14th Street for the return trip. I felt like I was floating on air.

A Bar of Light

A Bar of Light

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Walked downstairs Saturday morning to see a bar of light across the wall, and, only a few feet away, another one across the carpet. Not just an ordinary spot of brightness but a dotted bar of louvered light cast by the shutters at the front windows.

Maybe it was just because I wasn’t fully awake, but when I saw this I had to grab the camera and snap a shot. It seemed such a randomly beautiful way to start the day.

And today, when it’s cloudy and there is no sunshine to pour through the little top window of the front door and the half-shuttered windows of the living room, it’s randomly beautiful all over again.

Memorial Day + 1

Memorial Day + 1

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I didn’t put the flag up yesterday. I thought of it at some point but as one errand led to another, I forgot entirely.

It’s not the first time a holiday has become just another Saturday, with home chores and yard chores and no time to celebrate why we have the day off in the first place.

The short time we lived in Groton, Massachusetts, we took part in a Memorial Day observation that ended at the cemetery. Groton is a New England village with big white houses on a hill. The scale of the place, with its graveyard so integral a part of the town, made it difficult to do anything else.

Another argument for small towns. And another argument for flying flags, one small way I could have (but did not!) make Memorial Day matter.

Finally Summer

Finally Summer

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It’s finally warm enough for a morning on the deck, writing, reading the paper, watching Copper in his earnest but futile campaign to catch the sleek crows that wing their way across the yard.

In the distance the sound of a small engine in the sky.

Its putter takes me right to the beach, a hot noon and a low-flying plane with an “All-You-Can-Eat Buffet” or “Free Jazz on the Pier” banner streaming behind it. 

It’s Memorial Day. It’s warmer than 42 degrees. It’s finally summer.

Forty-Two

Forty-Two

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It’s cold this morning, but not as cold as in my dream. It was 10 degrees there, and I was running around telling people that there would be a 70-degree temperature differential the next day — from 10 to 80!

You know the weather is crazy when you start having dreams like that.

It’s t-shirts one day and sweatshirts the next. Jeans in the morning, shorts at noon. The air conditioner, then the furnace.

Soon the needle will settle on summer and I’ll be longing for a forty-degree start to the day. I’ll just keep telling myself that!