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Author: Anne Cassidy

A Birthday

A Birthday

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Through the years, birthdays become attached to the people who hold them. Today will always be Nancy’s day, even though Nancy is gone. 

It was on this day, long ago, that I landed in Europe for the first time. The date wasn’t accidental. It was Nancy’s 20th birthday, and I was meeting her in Luxembourg. We had planned to be chamber maids in a Swiss hotel, but our employment fell through at the last minute. Instead, we traveled through Europe for two months on what I will politely call a lean budget. 

We trudged through London in rain so heavy I thought my shoes would never dry out. We explored what seemed like every Viennese hovel in which Beethoven had ever lived (and there were a lot of them). We toured Paris, Venice, Florence, Rome and Pisa. We scrambled to find places to sleep, and sometimes they were train compartments. 

The trip cemented our friendship, brought it through the decades. I think of our travels now with great wonder and gladness. They bring Nancy closer, which is where I want her to be. 

(Nancy and I spent many hours in train stations, though not this one, which is in Edinburgh.) 

Knowing the Way

Knowing the Way

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It’s not something I think about often, but it struck me this morning, as I returned from a walk that took me down neighborhood streets and back home through the woods, that I know the way, that I have this. 

I know the path begins beyond the short guardrails in the cul-de-sac, that it winds down to the creek through ferns and knotweed. 

I know that you can cross the creek easily there, because it’s low and there are rocks to help you. 

And I know that if I turn left at the end of that trail, I’ll find the main path, which takes me back to the street.

It’s a skill older than language: knowing the way home.

Bluuuue Sky

Bluuuue Sky

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It’s not cerulean or azure or aquamarine. To describe the sky I saw on yesterday’s walk, we need a new word. I propose bluuuue. Not blue, or even bluuue. This is bluuuue (four ‘u’s) at its purest and most intense. The hue of a cloudless sky.

I have a reason for describing this on Father’s Day.  Dad was the king of blue skies. He didn’t seem to notice the clouds, or if he did, he chose to ignore them.

So in honor of him, and fathers everywhere, the bluest bluuuue sky photo I can find.
50 Stars

50 Stars

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It’s Flag Day, a holiday you don’t hear much about but which I usually remember. I looked it up and learned that it commemorates the day when the Continental Congress approved the design of a flag for the United States — June 14, 1777. At that point, the flag had 13 stars and 13 stripes. 

Until 1912, flags weren’t as proscribed as they are now. Much was left in the hands of individual flag-makers.  At one point, there were 15 stripes and 15 stars — honoring Vermont and my home state of Kentucky, in addition to the original 13 colonies. 

But adding a star and a stripe for every new state became cumbersome, and by the early 19th century, new states earned a star but not a stripe.

Now our flag has 50 stars, of course. I wonder if there will ever be more. 

Munch, Munch

Munch, Munch

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Yes, they have to eat, too. But does it have to be my day lilies? Or hosta? Or, based on the nibbled stalks I’ve spied in a neighbor’s yard, the cone flowers, too?

I snapped a shot of this little fellow munching some vine or weed in the woods. To him it’s all the same: impatiens or Virginia creeper. He can leap most fences and surmount most barriers. Stick with the wild stuff, I tell him as I pass on a walk. I don’t think he was listening, though.

A cashier in a garden shop told me about a customer who came in three times to replace the plants deer had snatched from her flower pots. Eventually she gave up and stuck plastic flags in those pots. The deer ate those, too. 

“Open Door Policy”

“Open Door Policy”

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The term sounds vaguely familiar, like something I learned long ago, and a quick search tells me that it was a system of equal trade and investment in China in the first half of the 20th century. 

I chose the title with another thought in mind: the way it feels to leave the front door open on a perfect June afternoon. An open door policy made possible by a screen instead of glass, and perhaps only good for another day or two. 

So far, we’ve been able to get by without air conditioning in the house: opening and closing windows at strategic moments, gathering in the morning coolness like an arm full of crisp line-dried laundry.

They’re calling for much higher temps by week’s end, so we may have to give in and close up the house. But it’s been lovely to leave doors and windows open, to breathe in and out with the day.

Circle of Life

Circle of Life

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Yesterday felt more like a weekend with a daughter and two granddaughters here. At a visit to a nearby farm park, I found myself on the merry-go-round with Bernadette (pictured here with her mama a year and a half ago).

Yesterday I was the one holding way too tightly to the rider, too tightly being a relative term, I suppose. Bernadette will be 4 in October, but hold tight I did. And as we made endless rotations to patriotic favorites like “Stars and Stripes forever,” I thought about how many times I took Bernadette’s mother on carousel rides, and how particular she was about her mounts — her favorite being the rainbow pony at the National Mall carousel.

Now Suzanne was standing on the sidelines with her newborn, and I was back on duty. The circle of carousels. The circle of life. 

They Grow Up So Fast

They Grow Up So Fast

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Children do, of course. But so do goslings! I’ve been watching this year’s Lake Anne spring babies toddle into semi-maturity for the last few weeks. A few weeks ago, this pair struggled to follow their mom and dad down to the water, slipping and sliding much of the way.  No helicopter parents these.

By now, the spring babies have grown into gangly teenagers who would rather die than acknowledge their ‘rents. Notice the nonchalant way they graze and lag behind. You can almost imagine them grumbling, “Mom, puhleeeeeze! Don’t you have something else to do?”

Such is life. And such is parenthood … throughout the animal kingdom.

(Top photo: Sally Carter)
Mountain Laurel

Mountain Laurel

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The mountain laurel was blooming, and I had to see it. I remember stumbling on it during the pandemic during a one-day getaway that was the most time I’d spent away from home in months.

Yesterday, well clear of lockdowns and one week further into June, the blossoms were heavy on their glossy green stems. Flowering shrubs lined one section of trail, making a passageway of poesies. 

Walking through it, I felt like those blossoms were blessing me, which I guess, in their own way, they were. 

Protecting Place

Protecting Place

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As I’m drawn further into the life of a town where I don’t officially live, I think about what I owe Reston. Though I can’t swim in its pools or kayak on its lakes, I do walk its trails and enjoy its ambiance without paying its fees.

There’s nothing illegal or immoral about this, but the film I just watched discusses those who enjoy Reston’s amenities without buying into its program. We live less than a mile from Reston but aren’t within its strict property boundaries. Still, I worship at a Reston church, donate staples to a Reston food pantry, and pay the higher, nonresident fee for a Reston yoga class. I’d like to do more. 

As I figure out how to do this, I think about what people owe place, the responsibilities that come with residency. It’s a topic I ponder often, this idea of stewardship, of protecting what is priceless. What can be more precious than hearth, home and habitat? And what can be more natural than wanting to protect them?