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Author: Anne Cassidy

Rush Plus

Rush Plus

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As one who relies on the subway to carry me to and from the city, I’m often amused at Metro’s public relations efforts. It must be a losing game, trying to put a positive spin on an aging, overcrowded, mismanaged transportation system. 

The most recent example is what Metro folks are calling “Rush Plus,” which aims to ease overcrowding on the Orange line (the so-called “Orange Crush”) by providing less frequent service on the Blue line.

You have to admire the spunk — since one man’s “Rush Plus” is  another man’s “Rush Minus” — even if the program is deemed a failure in a few months. I like it because it reminds me of other attempts to make do with less. The brave comb-over of the balding man. The tasty dish that emerges from an empty pantry. The worn out, discouraged person who keeps on going (because, really, what else is there to do?) — but who does it with a jaunty step, a clear eye and a naive belief that today, somehow, will be different.

(Making do with less is the beachcomber’s way.)

No Buffer

No Buffer

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The rain was unexpected. It drenched our seat cushions, fell through my open car window. The last few days were such perfection I had almost forgotten there could be clouds and showers. But they were in the wings all along, waiting to come again.

This weekend we celebrated Father’s Day and had a “bon voyage” dinner for Suzanne. With these events behind us there is nothing to buffer us from the departure itself. Our next big family gathering is more than two years away.

But these are rainy day thoughts. In general, I try not to think like this. I tell myself that our family is becoming international and virtual. It’s expanding, not contracting. Most of all, I remind myself that this is what happens, what I always told our children they should do: grow up and make their own way in the world.

Perhaps I didn’t mean for them to take the “world” part so literally. But there you have it.

Last Day, First Day

Last Day, First Day

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Last day of school, first day of summer. The weight of the world would slip from my shoulders. Time stood still, and days were warm and without purpose. There would be cool shady mornings and long lighted evenings. There would be watermelon and iced tea and potato salad;  filmy cotton dresses and new Keds that I’d get dirty right away.

And later, when the children were young, there was their joy to witness, the shaving cream fights at the bus stop on the last day (see above), the creek wading and romps in the woods, the road trips to Kentucky and Indiana and Montana and Maine. Summer was a time to put the world aside. Now the world pushes its way into every season.

One daughter packs for Africa, another is about to be a senior in college, the youngest a senior in high school. Time didn’t stand still after all.

Castle in the Clouds

Castle in the Clouds

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I sit at a stoplight, one of several long ones I’ve already encountered on the way home. I’m running late and the light takes forever. I strum my fingers on the steering wheel, tap my feet, fiddle with the knobs of the radio and then fiddle with them some more. I look up, light’s still red. 

It’s then that I think that I have become Fairfax County. Its tempo is my tempo. Its impatience is my impatience.  I drive too close to the car in front of me as I listen too intently to public radio. I have come to believe that what I do every day is more important than it actually is.

What I need is a summer off. Humility Camp. In which people from the East Coast are sent to carefully chosen out-of-the-way burgs in the Heartland. Let us walk down empty sidewalks to the only store that sells the New York Times, only to find that there is no Times delivery today. The wireless in our rented two-bedroom will long since have fizzled. Our Kindle is out of charge.

There is nothing to do, then, but to lie back on the grass, look up at the sky and find a castle in the clouds.

Waking Up

Waking Up

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Up and out early. Moisture fills the air and glows in the lamplight. I play some Gabrielli but it’s too loud for this delicate time of day. I try Dan Fogelberg’s “To the Morning.” Ahhh; that’s better.

I consider turning off the music entirely and listening to the birds. They’re waking up and singing lustily. But the music is good, too. In fact, it sounds a lot like the birds, has the same gradual crescendo.

There are few cars on the street at this time of day, and the ones I see drive sleepily, as if they, too, are just waking up. The day seems to be holding its breath.

On the main road, cars are more numerous and faster. I ease into a trot. The tall grass is wet as I brush by it. Time now for louder music. “Day by Day,” a sung prayer.  I’m fully awake now. Ready to come home, touch the keyboard, write.

Shade Seeking

Shade Seeking

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I finished writing an article yesterday morning, which meant that I didn’t walk until noon. But I found a trail with only dappled sunlight and fast-walked there. No sun. No sunscreen. No visor.

The summertime world is all about light, from the earliest gray dawns to the latest pearl twilights. But I’m trying to walk less in full sun this year, to choose my path carefully so that — at least at high noon — there will be blessed shade.

This is counter to every sun-loving bone in my body. But it’s to preserve my body, well, most particularly my skin, that I’ve suddenly become a shade seeker.

I’m coming to appreciate the play of light on tree trunks, the wagging of oak leaves high in the canopy, the trails that wind along the stream. There are animals, plants — even ideas — more visible in the shadows than anywhere else.

New Music

New Music

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My musical life has languished for years, taken a back seat to raising kids and earning a living and making a home in the suburbs. It’s not just the playing of music that’s dropped away but even the listening. Being at least two generations behind in recording technology (pre-MP3, pre-CD — most of my treasures are in vinyl), I’ve contented myself with the radio.

The radio, of course, is potluck, taking what you’re given and, in the case of D.C.’s current classical music offerings, listening to the same “greatest hits” over and over again.

But a couple weeks ago an iPod nano entered my life and I’m finding tunes I haven’t heard in years, downloading show music and folk tunes and arias, mixing them all together and coming up with playlists that start with Mungo Jerry’s “In the Summertime” and end with Gilbert and Sullivan’s “He is an Englishman.”

To paraphrase someone (Churchill?) who said, “It’s not the end, nor even the beginning of the end … but perhaps it is the end of the beginning,” I say, It’s not the revival of my musical life, or even a reinstatement. But it is, at least, the end of its dormancy.

Small Critters

Small Critters

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The baby chickadees look just like big chickadees only smaller. They are tiny replicas that flit and flutter in the bamboo that borders our deck.

I spotted one this morning perched on a twig so insubstantial as to bend slightly with his miniscule weight. The little guy made a “chick-a-dee-dee-dee” sound. Only it was higher and thinner than the mature chirp.

How darling are the small critters of creation. They train our eyes on the little things of life.

Photo: 50Birds.com

The Toll

The Toll

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Last evening, a walk I’ve never taken: A path between two houses to a woodland trail, and along that to another neighborhood. From there to a busy road, left past the shopping center and left again down a street where we once looked at a house to buy. It was faux Tudor and smaller than it looked outside.

I was deep into nostalgia, what-ifs. The yards were edged and tidy with fresh-strewn mulch. I noticed  the brave annuals planted by the mailboxes. The flower boxes and hanging baskets. The lawns were a proud, chemical green; most were new-mown and they sparkled in the slanting light.

Beyond the house life and the car life lies the curb life, the walker’s view. This walker has become more sympathetic over the years. More aware of the toil — and the toll — of the suburbs.

Fighting Fire

Fighting Fire

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Fahrenheit 451. The temperature at which paper burns; a novel by that name by writer Ray Bradbury, who died Tuesday.

Fahrenheit 451 was one of those novels I read as a kid and could never forget. It wasn’t just the frightening dystopia of a future without printed books. That future is becoming more real for us everyday.

It was something about the heart of the story, the way the characters cared for each other and for ideas. It was the elegant and practical and timeless solution they arranged to keep books alive — they memorized them. They learned them by heart. They became the books.

As we’ve all learned recently, painfully, book burnings are alive and well. And Fahrenheit 451 was often under assault for the vigor of its ideas. “The real threat is not from Big Brother, but from little sister [and] all those groups, men and women, who want to impose their views from below,” Bradbury told a Times of London interviewer (as reported in today’s Washington Post).

The way to fight fire is not with fire. Or with water. The way to fight fire is to believe,  hold fast and, ultimately, to become the solution. 


(Photo: Firepictures.net)