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Spanning Worlds

Spanning Worlds

It was still light when I drove home yesterday, and as I made my way along the parkway the planes rumbled, soared and landed, and the river flowed by as it always does, with the cars flowing beside it, a liquid line of red lights and exhaust fumes.

Still a novice car-commuter, especially on this route, I marveled at the sights before me, as clogged and crowded as they were, marveled because, for all the bother of living here, there is sometimes something so right about it.

I feel it when I drive along the parkway and see Memorial Bridge, its stone arches and masonry as hospitable a welcome as any city could provide.

I think it is the southerness of Washington that speaks to me through this bridge. Or perhaps the in-betweenness. Spanning two worlds.

Turning a Corner

Turning a Corner

Yesterday’s drive to and from the office was like a dream. Forty minutes in and forty minutes out. I gained 100 minutes of free time. I know it was unusual, I know it won’t hold up over time, but even if I saved 50 minutes, that’s almost an hour (a daylight hour!) a day.

Put five of those together and you have a paragraph written,  a closet cleaned — a walk enjoyed.

Driving has its own frustrations. Stop-and-go traffic, crazy drivers, the inability to get anything else done at the same time. (I love my reading time on Metro.)

But a flip has been switched, a corner has been turned. Fifty minutes is 50 minutes.

Farewell to the Van

Farewell to the Van

“For many families, it was a compromise made long ago,” I wrote back in 2003. “For us, it is a new one. The day we bought our minivan it rained for the first time in weeks. It’s a sign, I said. Even the heavens are crying.”

Now the heavens are crying again, this time because the van has given way to a shiny new Toyota Corolla.

Though initially resistant to van-dom, I grew to love the old car. After all, it was the spiritual heir to the ’60s woody station wagons, and as such reminded me of my youth in the back seat. The van was more comfortable, of course; these are modern children. But the basic principle remained the same: buy large vehicle and pack it with kids.

The van was a workhorse. It lapped up the miles without complaint, and wore its 240k with grace. In 14 years it gave us very little trouble. Though short on style it was long on practicality.  Its motto: I will get you there.

Oh, the carpools that car has known, the cellos and clarinets and sweaty track kids it has transported. The boats it has towed, the trips to college it has made, the moving of furniture into first apartments, including, just last month, the transporting of newlyweds to their home in Arlington. (We threw rice!)

All of which is to say, what a lot of living that car has known! So I can’t let it go without a backward glance.

Thank you, dear van! We’ll miss you!

Sunlight and Shadow

Sunlight and Shadow

Each drive to and from Kentucky takes on a character of its own. Yesterday’s began with wet roads and misty mountains — but it didn’t stay that way.

One minute I was in sunlight and the next in shadow. One moment wearing sunglasses and the next not. A brisk breeze blew in from the west, sent leaves flying across the interstate asphalt. Flocks of birds wheeled in the wind, swirling and dipping and looking not unlike those spinning leaves.

I drove in and out of rain, in and out of radio contact, in and out of cruise control. I looked for a lesson in the changeability, and it wasn’t hard to find.

This will pass, that will pass. Everything will pass. As I write these words, what started as a gray day has suddenly turned sunny.

Equinox

Equinox

It was a day of balancing — darkness and light, summer and fall. And for me, a day of driving eight and a half hours from Kentucky to Virginia.

Fall comes early in the higher elevations, and the hills were brushed with yellow. Yellow from the thinning trees, from the just-turning leaves, from the goldenrod. Yellow set off by the shaggy gray limestone cliffs that line the road.

A drive is a balancing act, too, a passage from one place to another, holding each in mind as you pass between the two.

Segments

Segments

Walking home from the Silver Line yesterday and driving to the Orange Line this morning, I noticed the journeys have something in common.

Like any trip, they are not just one long sweep of motion; they are segments cobbled together by time and movement.

I hadn’t driven to the Vienna Metro (Orange Line’s last stop) for almost four weeks, so I saw it with fresh eyes: the Fox Mill Road segment, up one hill and down another; the Vale portion, before the big turn and after it; the straightaway that is Hunter Mill Road; the short stretch of Chain Bridge; the newly repaved and bicycle-laned Old Courthouse, then the turn onto Sutton, Country Creek and right then left into the parking garage.

Walking gave me these eyes, let me see the drive in segments as I would a stroll. I’m grateful for that.

Last Drive to Vienna?

Last Drive to Vienna?

It’s a gray day (not like this photo), flecks of rain on the pavement, when I rush out the door. I grab the newspaper, jump in the car, buckle up — and I’m gone. There’s the familiar route down Fox Mill to Vale to Hunter Mill.

I know every curve and hill of these western Fairfax lanes. I know where the school buses stop, the garbage trucks too. It’s 17 minutes of twists and turns that make me feel as if I’ve come down the mountain. And in fact, the route once took hours instead of minutes.

But today’s trip was different — though I was three-quarters of the way there when I realized it:  The next time I take public transportation downtown I will most likely be riding the Silver Line. I will be leaving from Reston, not Vienna. I will drive different roads — or maybe not drive at all.

I can still ride the Orange Line, of course; no one will stop me. But will I want to when the Wiehle Station is half as far from home?

It was a poignant moment, even at 6:20 a.m.

Road Trip

Road Trip

I take a lot of  these, but usually alone. I listen to music, chew gum, sing along to musicals, daydream.

Still, eight-and-a-half hours is eight-and-a-half hours.

This time I’m traveling with my sister. Words make the miles fly. 

Greening

Greening

I noticed it ten days ago on the drive to Kentucky. I was heading west on I-64, about an hour outside Lexington, when something caught my eye. It was the pasture to my right. It was as if someone had taken a green crayon (“spring green” by Crayola) and scribbled furiously on the grass.

One minute it was brown and dull, winter’s leftover. The next it was verdant and bright, an advertisement for spring.

Nothing else had changed; the highway was still gray and the sky was still blue. But I had crossed some sort of line. The stealthy greening that had been happening for weeks — some of that time beneath the snow — had suddenly revealed itself.

 Meteorological spring had long since passed, but this was the real thing.

32 Degrees Fahrenheit

32 Degrees Fahrenheit

Once an English major, always an English major. And as an English major, I’ve always appreciated imprecision. The characters are motivated by greed — or maybe it’s ambition. The landscape mirrors the late 19-century love of technology — or maybe it’s the late 19-century fear of technology.

It’s the principle that’s important — and the principle is often imprecise, something to ponder or debate. It’s not black or white but something in between.

Which is all to say that I’m fascinated by the unerring precision of the natural world. Water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Not at 34 or 36.

I was tremendously grateful for this fact yesterday, as I crept up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to collect my college student. It took three hours to drive 54 miles. But if it had been three degrees chillier, it might have taken me six hours.

There I go again — thinking like an English major.

(This picture has very little to do with 32 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s an English major kind of photograph.)