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Author: Anne Cassidy

Shoulders Back

Shoulders Back

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The correction came when I walked into exercise class Thursday, and the instructor, the jolly British Maureen, said she noticed my posture as I walked toward the gym. “You’re leaning forward, ” she said. Of course I am, I think to myself. This is how I barrel through life.

“Pull your shoulders back, tilt your hips forward,” Maureen said. “Walk as if you have a pillow on your head.” So yesterday, as I did my three miles, I righted my shoulders, felt a plumb line stretch from my head to the sky. My chest filled with air. I felt taller and a little uneasy, as if I was on stilts. As if I was pretending.

The Driving Lesson

The Driving Lesson

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I bite my lip. I still my heart. I fight the urge to press the ball of my right foot firmly onto the floor mat, my phantom brake. But my hands, they are not easy to hide. They flutter. They grasp. They reach for the side of the car.

Try as hard as I might, I will never be a calm driving instructor. When we’re skimming along one of our area’s “picturesque” two-lane roads — the ones that look so lovely on a sweet summer morning but are so terrifying for the novice driver with their twists and turns and nonexistent shoulders — I imagine the worst.

I’ve done this twice before now; I should be calmer. But this is one skill that doesn’t improve with age. And so, my hands remain. I clasp them in my lap. I dig them into the seat cushions. I try not to grab the side of the car; that looks desperate.

Instead, I practice my yogic breathing. I keep my eyes straight ahead and my voice as calm as can be: “That’s good. Now straighten out. Check your mirrors. Lower your speed. Great. You’re doing great.”

I wish I could say the same about myself.

Green

Green

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The pale yellow-green of the witch hazel flower. The dark waxy green of the magnolia leaf. The slight green cast of the March lawn as it stirs to life — these are the greens I see here today.

But in my mind are other greens: the Cliffs of Moher, their ancient, mossy backs emerging from the fog on the west coast of Ireland. The furze that carpets the barren ground. The fields emerald in the sunlight. The many greens of the old sod. It is a day when sentimentality is allowed, singing is encouraged — and green is celebrated.

Great Gate

Great Gate

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When I work at home I walk in the suburbs; when I work downtown I walk in the city. Or, if I’m too busy for that (usually the case), I dash from one building on campus to the other. Even a few minutes away from my desk lightens my mood.

Take yesterday, for example. It was about 10 when I went for my mid-morning stroll to the cafe for a cup of tea and heard piano music coming from the small chapel in the middle of the ground floor. It was the “Great Gate of Kiev” from “Pictures at an Exhibition” by Modest Mussorgsky. A noble, stately and expansive piece. A bit grand for a coffee break, but I wasn’t complaining. I slowed my pace, I listened as long as I could. I was all tingly from the swell of sound.

The Great Gate of Kiev Mussorgsky celebrated wasn’t ever a real gate, but the artist Victor Hartmann’s design for it (pictured in the copyrighted image above; pardon the “watermark”). The gate was never built. It is the art and the music that remain.

Japan

Japan

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Yesterday: a walk at lunchtime. A still morning with just enough warmth in the air that I only wear a sweatshirt — but just enough chill in the air that I wish I had worn more. In my ears, Vivaldi, “The Four Seasons.” In my head: thoughts of the tragedy in Japan, “thoughts that lie too deep for words.” The multiple catastrophes, the layered ironies — they are almost too much to comprehend.

Some offers of help have come with a statement saying that this is not Japan’s disaster alone; that it belongs to the world community, that we will all help however we can. With the worsening news of nuclear explosions and meltdowns the disaster may yet belong to all of us. But it belongs first of all to the Japanese people, and what I find most heartbreaking is their stoicism and dignity. To say that we pray for them is a given. Would it help to say we can’t stop thinking about them, that those of us on safe, dry ground (if there is such a thing) are crying for them?

Almost-Spring

Almost-Spring

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A long walk this weekend made me catch my breath. Everywhere I looked were green shoots, tremulous buds. High up in the woods, a pinkish haze of near-budding boughs. Every year I notice this: that for trees, spring starts at the top. Reckoned by calendar and temperature it is still winter, but the lengthening days, the bold plants reasserting themselves, the warmth in the air — all these speak to a shoulder season of green promise and yellow possibility. A season in its own right, a season of potential — almost-spring.

From Sticks to Flowers

From Sticks to Flowers

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Lately all we’ve been harvesting are twigs and branches from our brittle aging trees. The winds have blown and the sticks have fallen. But yesterday I noticed in the half-light of morning a tiny yellow flower, an anemone ( I think). I don’t recall planting it but I do remember seeing flowers like it in Sweden. Could a seed have slipped in on our shoes somehow? Are we planting in our sleep? I decide to take it for what it is: a mystery of spring.

Caught on Tape

Caught on Tape

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News of the earthquake in Japan and the tsunami racing across the Pacific Ocean makes it hard to think of much else this morning. But a Washington Post review of the movie “The Kids Grow Up” raises questions about our highly observed younger generation and the ethics of posting cute kid videos on You Tube. At one point the mother of the girl profiled in “The Kids Grow Up” said to her husband, the girl’s father and a documentary filmmaker, “Just think, when she works through all this in therapy, she can bring the footage with her.”

I don’t write much about kids anymore; writing articles for parenting magazines and an anti-parenting-book parenting book cured me of that tendency. But this article brings it all back, the self-absorption, the child-absorption, the difficulty of raising kids these days. I’m glad I’m at the end of my child-rearing years, not the beginning.

The View

The View

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Sometimes we talk about what’s next. Where will we live when our youngest graduates? Will it be city or country or (once again) somewhere in between? We never finish these discussions.

More than 20 years in the suburbs have narrowed my vision and worn me out. I don’t know where I want to end up. But I do know this: I want a view.

Lengthen

Lengthen

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Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. I heard a few years ago — and have since confirmed — that the word “lent” comes from the old English for “lengthen.” Lent happens in spring when days grow longer and light grows stronger, when we leave winter darkness behind. In this way, then, Lent is more hopeful than often portrayed. It is about moving ahead not just leaving behind.

I am never ready for the penitential parts of this season, for Lent’s fasting and denials. I usually give up chocolate, which isn’t easy but seems increasingly beside the point. Surely more is asked of us. So I seek an ally in etymology. When I think of Lent as Lengthen I concentrate on spiritual stretching, on growth.

I imagine the trees about to leaf, the seeds about to sprout, the grass about to green. All around me is the restraint of nature, a restraint that makes profusion possible.