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Twenty Years

Twenty Years

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When I visited Lexington last month, Phillip drove me through the University of Kentucky campus. He  wanted to show me that the twin towers were gone. Not those twin towers, though Phillip saw those come down, too. He was working in New York at the time, his office less than two miles north on Hudson. But it was the absence of the Kirwan-Blanding Towers he wanted to show me, two 23-floor dormitories that housed students for almost 50 years and that came down carefully, a floor at a time.

Not so with those other towers, of course, which pancaked to the ground 20 years ago today, taking the lives of almost 2,700 with them. As is so often the case, we hadn’t known what we had until we lost it. We also hadn’t known that terrorists with fake IDs were learning how to fly planes — but not to land them. There was ignorance within our innocence. Perhaps there must always be.

In the days and weeks that followed 9/11, I cooked up a storm. I made bacon-and-egg breakfasts, chopped vegetables for stews and soups. I drug out the crockpot and pressed it into service. I was making food for the bereaved and serving it to my family. It felt like a way to heal.

But that was long ago. Our problems have metastasized. The terrorism is still present but now we also have a pandemic, climate change disasters, and an ignominious end to the war we started to avenge the 9/11 attacks. So many challenges … and so little consensus on how to deal with them.

Ten years ago, I wrote that our children grew up in a different world. Now my children have children. What kind of world will they inherit?

Labor Day?

Labor Day?

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It’s my first Labor Day without a paid, full-time job to return to the next day. Does it feel different? Strangely enough, not much. I’ve known for a long time that what drives me is more internal than external. 

So there will be no 8 a.m. start time, no Tuesday 1 p.m. meeting — but there will be a to-do list — reading to finish, a class to attend, an appointment. And then there are the everyday tasks, the ones I don’t have to list: writing, walking, posting here. 

It has me thinking — what is labor, anyway?  And what is leisure? 

“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do,” said Mark Twain. 

But sometimes a body enjoys what it is obliged to do so much that it doesn’t seem like work. And now that my working life has changed, I realize that to make it full and rich I must insert tasks that I’m not obliged— and am maybe even afraid — to do. Is that labor? Is it leisure? 

On this sunny Labor Day, with a light breeze rifling the papers on my outside “desk” (the glass-topped table) … I say, who cares? 

Pause, Reflect, Enjoy

Pause, Reflect, Enjoy

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For a day that will end with the splashing of light across a night sky, that would if I were close enough to it, also include loud pops and bangs (but which will not since I’ll be viewing the fireworks from a ridge across the Potomac) … it is starting out calmly and quietly.

Bluebirds have been flitting between the neighbor’s yard and ours, their cerulean wings flashing out against the green grass of the yard, which backgrounds the birds when they perch on the chicken wire that now encloses the garden.

The deck, cleaned of the dried bamboo fronds that usually litter it this time of year, is blown clean and fresh. The air is cool, not yet humid.

It is a lovely, calm Sunday morning, a time to pause, reflect and enjoy.

Growing Family

Growing Family

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At my house, the longest day passed in a blur of baby giggles, burgers and corn on the cob. Not the most elegant Father’s Day repast, but one suited to young families.

These days are golden, and when the last toy is collected and stuffed into the diaper bag, and the cars disappear down the street, I’m left marveling, as I always do, at how our family has grown.

It will always be miraculous to me, which is, I suppose, how it should be.

(The elephant ear family is growing, too.) 
Bye Bye, Brood X!

Bye Bye, Brood X!

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There’s no way of knowing who he or she will be, no way of pinpointing the last cicada in Virginia. Will it be a female dragging herself to a Kwanzan cherry tree to lay her eggs, perform her final duty. She walks so slowly up the trunk, settles herself with infinite tenderness. 

Or will it be a male, singing forlornly to the ether, no ladies left with whom to mate but warbling his most beguiling tune anyway. Beguiling to other cicadas, that is, shrill and sad to us.

The rest of their brood has been swept off of decks and stairways. Cicada carcasses have piled up at the base of crepe myrtles or road berms, marking where the insects met with predators — birds, dogs, automobiles. The tiny corpses litter the yards and driveways. 

Except for a few stowaways, Brood X is becoming a memory, a moment, a thing of the past.

And yet … even now the young are burrowing into the dark soil, tunneling down to their long sleep. In their species memory is a golden era, filled with flitting and humming and loving. They know, if they bide their time, it will come again. 

Lessons for a Lifetime

Lessons for a Lifetime

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He stood behind the lectern on one leg, resting the other, knee crooked, on his desk. I’m still not sure how he achieved this position without falling over, but somehow he did. His sleeves were rolled up, and his voice was husky. 

Toiling in the vineyards of academia can be a lot of work. But Dr. James Ferguson did that work, and because he did, legions of Hanover College students fell in love with The Magic Mountain and The Brothers Karamazov, with Faulkner and Bellow and Eliot. 

Dr. Ferguson, who died May 12, was the kind of teacher you get once in a lifetime — if you’re lucky. Though I studied with professors who published more, whose names were more recognized in literary circles, Dr. Ferguson was the real thing: a man who loved the great books and thrived on helping others love them, too. 

The details of his life that I learned from his obituary — that he came from a family of Dust Bowl migrants who moved from Missouri to California and slept for a while in their car, that he served in Korea and got his Ph.D.  with the help of the GI Bill, that he took care of his wife, who had a chronic illness, and his mother, who lived to 102 — tell me that his didn’t just teach the great books, he lived the great life. 

But these facts don’t surprise me.  His respect for the written word seemed to flow from his whole being. What I took from him was to love literature not for where it could take me but for what I took from it—  lessons for a lifetime. 

(“The Point” at Hanover College, where Dr. Ferguson taught from 1963 to 1992.)

In Formation

In Formation

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In honor of Memorial Day, the movie channel has been running World War II-era films. I’ve caught parts of several — “The Great Escape,” “Destination Tokyo” — plus a War Department short about the U.S. Army Air Corp.

In the film, narrated by then-actor Ronald Reagan, a young cowboy from the boonies becomes a war hero. We watch him go through basic training, meet the people who knew him back when, follow his improbable journey from ranch life to flying B-17s over Japan. 

What struck me about the flying scenes is the tightness of the formations. The crew members (including my Dad) were not only united within their Flying Fortresses, but were nestled together outside of them, too. They did not fly into battle alone. 

As I embark on another trip around the sun, I’m grateful for the ones who travel with me. 

The Spa Treatment

The Spa Treatment

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I’m trying not to make too much of the fact that although there are three mothers now in my immediate family, the only creature who had a spa treatment on Mother’s Day was Copper the dog, who not only is not a mother but was most likely never a father either.

Granted, it was not exactly a long languorous soak in the tub followed by a mani-pedi and massage. It was a trying hour in a van in our driveway during which he almost hyperventilated. 

The groomer finally gave up without trimming his ears and neck, but she got much further than last year’s groomer, who cut short Copper’s appointment, told us never to come back, and left our nervous canine with a funny patchwork trim he’s been growing out all year. 

“Most of the dogs I see have already been banned from PetsMart,” this year’s groomer said. 

How did she know? 

Happy Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day!

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Today I share Mother’s Day with my daughters. I always do, of course, but today I do so in a special way, as two of them celebrate their own first Mother’s Days. 

It hardly seems possible. Though all three have blossomed into strong, kind, beautiful young women, in my mind they’re still long-legged girls running through the kitchen. 

What can I tell them as they embark on this journey of parenthood? Right now, I can only think of only one thing. Enjoy it all … because it goes so very fast. 

Weightless

Weightless

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I knew that the last day of full-time employment would be a humdinger because it was the one that required technical tasks — and in that I was not mistaken. But as is so often true in life, it unfolded in a way I didn’t expect.

It wasn’t the “wiping” of the computer, the backup and removal of files, that had me flummoxed. I had been going about that fairly steadily for days. What held me hostage almost to the end was … the cloud: disentangling my work machine from iMessage and iPhoto and iTunes and all the other i’s that seek to unify our lives and terrorize us in the process. Because don’t you know that if you remove photos when you are signed into iCloud you will delete them from “all your devices.” And when you have more than 17,000 images (yes, dear reader, I am embarrassed to admit that is how many I have), which include the precious first photographs of your sweet grandchildren, even the thought of removal is enough to paralyze one for hours. 

Only I didn’t have hours — I had minutes, which were quickly ticking away. Luckily, an Apple Support person talked me down from the ledge, and after 30 minutes on the phone with her, and an hour of two of agony before and after, I was ready for the drive to Crystal City. 

There was a moment yesterday after I had solved these problems, after I had dropped off my computer, monitor and other work gear in a new and near empty office, when I had started driving home along the river, a drive I hadn’t taken in almost a year, when I felt positively weightless. And that’s what I’ll remember.