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Flags Flying

Flags Flying

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The inaugural festivities had already begun on Wednesday when I realized I had not hung our little flag. I stopped what I was doing (exercising on the elliptical), grabbed the flag and ran outside to the mailbox with it, where it proudly “flew” for the rest of the day.

It was not alone. Down on the National Mall, a “field of flags,” almost 200,000 of them, stood in for the people who would usually be there, waving their own flags. 

Wednesday was windy, a good day for flying flags. Their rippling made them look alive, the embodiment of all the hope and promise of a new era. 

(The flags seen from space, courtesy Planet Labs Inc.)

Amplified

Amplified

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It’s been a happy coincidence that along with all the inaugural activities and excitement this week I’ve also been listening to the soundtrack of “Hamilton.” Since that Broadway musical has long since moved from smash-hit to iconic status, I feel like one of the last people to the parade … but hey, at least I made it!

To walk, dance and bounce to songs like “Satisfied,” “My Shot” and “You’ll Be Back” is to be reminded of all that this great country has to offer — the creativity, the humor, the jumble of life all packed into two-and-a-half-plus hours. 

But it was the four years ahead that was mostly on my (and most everyone else’s) mind yesterday. There was the call for unity and sacrifice that I hoped Biden would make. There were stirring marches and anthems and invocations. There was President Biden saying, “We have never ever ever ever failed when we have acted together,” to which late-night host Stephen Colbert later joked, “Someone clearly never saw the “Cats” movie.

But, kidding aside (and it feels luxurious to be silly), yesterday’s big happening was a four-Kleenex event for me, unexpectedly moving — and listening to “Hamilton” just amplified it. 

Imagining 2021

Imagining 2021

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The new year arrived wearing top hat and tails. It landed with a swoop and a glide and an elegant dip. It was Fred Astaire tap-dancing on the ceiling, Gene Kelley singing in the rain and Judy Garland dreaming of somewhere over the rainbow. 

Plans were canceled, isolation strictly enforced, but the American musical was not shut down, or at least not the American musical as imagined by Metro Goldwyn Mayer in the 1974 classic “That’s Entertainment.” Hosted by a slew of stars (Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minelli and Jimmy Stewart), there were clips of everyone from Esther Williams to the Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. 
It was a surprisingly apt way to see out an old year and bring in a new one. No, it wasn’t realistic. The world depicted was mostly on a sound stage or a backlot. But it was vivid proof of human imagination.  And imagination is looking pretty good these days.
Zoom Memorial

Zoom Memorial

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Over the weekend a friend and neighbor was memorialized over Zoom. My initial skepticism at this 2020 version of a final send-off melted away in the first few moments when a devoted son — one of five — opened the call, his voice slightly husky from the task at hand. 

There were photo montages of his father as a young man, a proud dad, a world traveler, a loving husband. Each son spoke in his own way, one from his father’s garage. And though each had a different mode of expression, in the end, the portrait became clear. 

Here was a family grieving but also celebrating a life well-lived. Here was as much life and music as could be crammed into 60 minutes of screen time. And in a strange way, the screen amplified the presence, made it at once more intimate and expansive. 

I imagine Zoom memorial services are as many and varied as the people they honor. The fact that this one was so touching may have nothing to do with Zoom and everything to do with the man himself. But I’m not ruling out the nature of the event, the fact it came into our living rooms and kitchens, where, without diluting the enormity of the loss, it softened and transformed the sadness. 

The Ninth

The Ninth

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I hadn’t heard it in a while, and I caught only fragments on my drive to and from the post office last week. But there it was, the syncopated rhythm of the second movement on the way there and, on the way back, the first strains of the fourth movement.

Today is the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, and he will be well-represented on the radio —just as he would have been thundering through the concert halls, if those were open. If I’m lucky, I’ll find a way to hear his Ninth Symphony today, too.

But I doubt it will compare with last week’s performance. After arriving home, I rushed out for a walk, headphones in, classical station blaring, so that I could move through space as that sublime music moved through my brain. 

There was the first “Freude!” “Joy!” The soloists’ voices entwined and melodious, the pulsing timpani and the chorus filling my head with sound. And in that way, the ordinary walk became a celebration of life.

Rejoice!

Rejoice!

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Yesterday was Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent, when the message shifts from one of “beware and prepare” to “rejoice and prepare.” 

I love both Advent messages. For that matter, I love Advent. It’s a season of anticipation — and isn’t anticipating an event usually always better than the event itself? 

More than two decades ago, I happened to read Kathleen Norris’s book The Cloister Walk during Advent. It was a busy time for me as a writer and a parent, and when I’d collapse in bed each night I’d savor a chapter or two of this fine volume and be transported into the silence of the cloister.

The image I have of Advent is one of cold stone and plainsong, of middle-of-the-night awakenings for prayer and devotion. Though Norris spent time in a monastery in Minnesota, it was the old churches of Europe that came to mind as I visualized her progress through the liturgical year. The long centuries of hope condensed into an annual calendar. 

By the reckonings of that calendar, we have already begun a new year. 

Gratitude 2020

Gratitude 2020

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The rain has cleared out, the sun is peeking through the clouds. It’s warm enough to have an al fresco Thanksgiving meal — if only we had known that a couple weeks ago. But that, like so much else lately, is out of our control. 

Thinking of thankfulness today, as many of us are. All signs point to the moment as the source of gratitude and wonder. The moment indivisible, the moment extinguishable, the moment which is all we have so we must live fully in it.

A tough lesson to learn. But grateful I have another day to try. 

A Bump in the Night

A Bump in the Night

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Halloween is behind us. The skeletons and graveyards that decorate neighbor’s yards have given way to sedate autumn wreaths. But my heart was beating faster yesterday than it did the entire month of October. 

The reason: a bump in the night. The early night, to be sure, but it was dark and it was rainy and the bump sounded like something big had fallen upstairs. 

Was it a cat burglar come to get my jewels (an errand sure to disappoint, I might add)? We crept upstairs to check it out, entered each room carefully, and there was  — nada. No box had fallen from a shelf, not a thing out of place.

There’s a chance this was an outside noise mimicking an inside one. But I doubt that. I’m going to assume it was just a friendly poltergeist messing with us a little, taking advantage of this old house, with its creaks and groans, sending us a message — that we are not alone. 

Celebrating Hope

Celebrating Hope

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When the word came that Joseph R. Biden had been elected the 46th president of the United States, the country was well along on its Saturday morning. I’d just put the groceries away. Celia in Seattle seemed to have the word even before the news alert on my phone did.

There was no ringing of church bells, no banging of pots and pans or shooting off of firecrackers in my neighborhood, but there was one joyful family and, I assume, many joyful families throughout Folkstone, each celebrating in their own way, glad that a new era is dawning for this country.

I seldom write about politics in this blog — this week has been an exception — but today, especially, is a day worth noting. It’s not that the road won’t be steep and the going tough. But there is now a hope that we may come together as a country. And that is definitely worth celebrating. 

Auguring Good

Auguring Good

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I don’t want to write about politics all week, but it’s difficult to think about much else these days. I’m also trying not to read too much into omens and symbols, though I do anyway. Sometimes I think I was born into the wrong time or culture, because I do more than my share of knocking on wood. 

Yesterday, hoping that my candidate will prevail, I took comfort in the fact that the climbing rose is still producing lovely, creamy pink flowers — even this first week of November. 

And so, although I have already featured the climbing rose in recent posts, I feature it again today. The bloom of a rose, the scent of a rose, speaks of renewal and beauty and augurs many good things. Surely we all need those now.