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Author: Anne Cassidy

A Mother, Driving

A Mother, Driving

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A woman who can have breakfast with her mother and dinner with her children is lucky indeed. But for me to pull this off required a 525-mile drive.

It’s not as odd as it seems to spend Mother’s Day driving. In fact, I’ve done much of my mothering from behind the wheel. I’ve soothed tempers, given pep talks, supervised fights, hammered out college choices and discussed everything from God to boys to algebra (though not necessarily in that order).

Like talking and walking, talking and driving offers great freedom of conversation. You are both looking forward, not at each other (at least for the child riding shotgun), and that frees people to say what’s really on their minds.

I was recalling some of those conversations yesterday — not just the ones where I was the mother, but the ones where I was the daughter, too. My mother and I have solved most of the world’s problems on long drives. And in the recollection of all those words flying lies great peace and strength.

So on Mother’s Day I celebrated not just the bonds between generations, the mother I have and the mother I hope I am, but I also honored that unsung vehicle of mothering, the vehicle itself.

One Thousand

One Thousand

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If it was a year it would be medieval. If it was a jackpot it would be negligible. If it was a score it would be … well, high. (Can’t seem to find a sport where 1,000 is even possible, let alone perfection.)

This morning, one thousand (1,000 in the Associated Press style to which I am accustomed but which I don’t always follow here) is the number of blog posts I’ve written since February 7, 2010. 

Not perfection, not even close, but a tidy sum — about 900 more than I thought I would write.  Because I seldom write on Sunday, it will be an even one thousand for two days running.

So today I’m savoring a number: One thousand, or even better, one thousand and counting.


(There are many more than one thousand grains of sand on this beach.)

The Resort

The Resort

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I can make it in eight hours pedal-to-the-metal. Eight hours from my house to my parents’ two states away. Eight hours from one role to another, eight hours from one set of duties to another. Eight hours of driving, thinking, listening to music, fiddling with the radio, eating pretzels, chewing gum and sipping tea (those last three to stay awake).

Yesterday I pulled off at one of my favorite rest stops, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and took a trail I’d never noticed before. It circled back behind the visitor’s center, up a little rise, along a path of soft, springy pine needles. At the end of the trail there was a panoramic view of the Greenbrier Resort, one of those fabled old-time places known for discrete luxury.

I looked at the white building and manicured lawn and wondered what I would do if I was there. Read? Swim? Bike? Have a massage or manicure? Pamper myself? Eat too much rich food?

I’m sure it would be nice, but not high on my list. On the other hand, I was delighted to have found this trail, to stretch my legs and take this tiny hike. So I stood for a while and savored the view. The drive is my Greenbrier, I said to myself, my one-day respite. During the eight hours I’m neither mother, nor wife, nor daughter. I am just me, out for a spin, exploring the person I used to be.

Earlier Kind of Morning

Earlier Kind of Morning

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As mornings dawn earlier and earlier, these last few cloudy days bring a brief pause, a few days that start as slowly as earlier, more wintry ones.

I love how summer mornings dawn bright and strong, with bird song and sunshine before 6. But I also appreciate the dim, still kind of morning.

The kind that gives you a chance to wake up slowly. The kind we have today.

Tweaking the Commute

Tweaking the Commute

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The general idea is to shorten the commute, find the cut-through, the shortcut, the (quicker) road not taken.

Lately, I’ve done the opposite, adding a longer walk in the afternoon and sometimes (today, for instance) in the morning, too; strolling to a Metro stop farther from my office, savoring the time I spend in the places in between.

En route I think of my great commutes in New York City, walking to and from midtown Manhattan from the Upper West Side and, later on, the Village.

The goal is to exercise, decompress, let the day begin (or end) on a vigorous, active, mind-toggling note. The reality is even better.

Steps of Revision

Steps of Revision

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Yesterday I spent some time revising an essay. It’s been a while since I’ve written one I wanted to revise, so I was a bit rusty.

It’s a halting process, full of stops and starts. If it was a walk it would be an interrupted one. Halfway down the block, I stop to tie my shoe. At the corner, I run into a neighbor, admire her lettuce, chat about our kids. 

At the next stop sign, I change playlists on the iPod, turning my back on the sun so I can see the tiny screen. A block later it’s the same thing. Another playlist, another pause. As I warm up I take off my jacket, tie it around my waist. Only 15 minutes in do I start to move freely, do I limber up enough to flow.

The steps of revision. I’d forgotten how painfully slow they can be.

On the Line

On the Line

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It’s retractable, and when you extend it as far as it will go and latch it to the closest sapling it barely holds a light kitchen towel. But it’s there, our clothesline, something I’ve always wanted, albeit a crazy anachronistic desire.

Maybe it’s harkening back to my childhood, to hanging sheets on the line, seeing them billow in the breeze, bringing them back in the house, inhaling their perfume of sunshine and fresh air.

Or maybe it goes even farther back in time, to some ancestral past, pounding clothes with a rock in the stream, drying them on grass or shrubbery.

Mostly it’s just a foolish romantic notion. I appreciate modern conveniences as much as the next person. But on a hot July afternoon, when laundry dries more quickly outside than in, surely there is something to love about a clothesline.

Life and Death in the Forest

Life and Death in the Forest

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I look out the window and see the leaves flashing green and
think of walks I’ve taken recently, how I march now through a tunnel of
treetops bending. This is the settled Folkstone, this shining place, with a
forest encroaching on the road and the road obliging. 
Step off the road, follow
the path, and you will enter a place of gathering sunshine. As the road is
greening, the woods are clearing. The big trees are falling, dying, living out
their natural lives. They are tumbling down in fierce rains and big winds. They
are falling there, even if they’re not heard, and we, the walkers, are the only
ones who notice.
A May Day

A May Day

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I’m two days late on this one, but the story still needs telling. What we have here is perfection.

The azaleas are out and the dogwood still in bloom. The clematis winds its way around the lamppost. Tulips nod valiantly by the door. Forget-me-nots spread a blue cloud in the garden.

The front door is open and light pours in. May is like that. Early in the month it’s pure spring. But it opens the door to summer.

Not May Day. But a May day.

How to Dress

How to Dress

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These are days that try the wardrobe. Low 40s at 6 a.m.; mid 70s at 4 p.m. Does one dress for the morning … or the afternoon?

Furthermore, is this a “glass half full or glass half empty” question? Does the optimist dress for the future and the pessimist for the present? Or does the decision have nothing to do with outlook, but only with body temperature? Do cold-natured folks dress for morning and warm-natured for afternoon?

These are questions without answers, so I decide to split the difference: A leather jacket yesterday (comfortable on the way to work, boiling on the way home) but only a suit jacket today (running to the office I was so cold).

As problems go, not a major one. Soon it will be cooler inside than out. And then there will be a different set of wardrobe decisions.