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Goin’ to the Chapel

Goin’ to the Chapel

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My niece is getting married today, so the family is gathering at an inn on the Chesapeake Bay for the ceremony and reception. I had a sneak preview of the spot at the rehearsal dinner last night. It’s right on the water, with gulls and boats and waves. Though less than two hours from home, it’s another world.

For the most part, my tenure as an aunt has coincided with my tenure as a mother. I had little time to relish the role in and of itself. But I felt a trace of pure “aunt-ness” yesterday … with the promise of more to come today.

It’s the same kind of love and pride you feel with your own children, just one layer removed. And, because there is more distance, there is also more perspective. At a wedding, especially, where I’ll have to do no more than a reading during the ceremony and the rest of the time enjoy myself. 

It brings back memories of almost exactly four years ago, when we turned our back yard into a wedding venue for Suzanne and Appolinaire. Weddings are like that, I think. They carry within them memories of nuptials past. 

All Dressed Up…

All Dressed Up…

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It’s the day after Labor Day, a momentous occasion that used to strike fear and excitement in the hearts of my children and all the kiddos in this area — and equal amounts of glee and relief for their parents. 

It was a day marked with the arrival of the big yellow buses lumbering down the street and stopping at the corner, where a parade of scrubbed schoolchildren with shiny new backpacks would step into them — and be whisked off to their new lives. 

That has all changed this year with the decision to hold virtual classes only in Fairfax County. There’s little glee and relief for parents, who are trying to make their children sit still for six hours of online education.  And there are no big yellow buses plying the neighborhood streets. Caption them … “all dressed up — and nowhere to go.”

About Last Night

About Last Night

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This blog is mostly apolitical, but I do want to comment on the speech given last night by the Democratic nominee for president, Joe Biden. It was the only night I tuned in — and I’m glad I did. 

Yes, it was strange and stilted, given the raucousness of a typical convention. But when the nominee finally spoke, he pulled me in. What got me was not the critique of the current president he offered or the plans for the future he laid out. What got me was the hope and the empathy he seemed to radiate, right through the screen.  

I felt, at last, that someone gets what we’re going through right now, that we all need a sort of giant group hug (though of course a socially distant one). The truth is, most of us are hurting — in ways small and large — and we need the salve of understanding not the irritant of dissension.

The campaign is only just beginning in earnest. There are months to go before November 3. Anything can happen — and given the way things go now, anything probably will. But nothing can take away the moment of connection I felt last night. Or the thrill of hope that flowed from it. 

In Person

In Person

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Yesterday’s rain has cleared out — an affront to the beautiful bridal shower my sister planned for her oldest daughter, a shower that went on as planned despite almost horizontal rain blowing into and around the gazebo near the Severn River, where it was held. 

The shower had already been moved outside to thwart the coronavirus, so the fact that we ended up with an atypical August monsoon made for the kind of event where everyone just shrugged and went on with it because, really, what else can you do.

But being there with family and friends yesterday reminded me of what life was like before mid-March, reminded me of gathering and chatting and pleasures we formerly took for granted. 

I know we must be careful when we meet in person, but it’s good to be reminded that behind these squares on a screen are real flesh-and-blood people. They’re around now and will be later, when all of this is behind us.

(The Severn River at sunset — in calmer, drier weather. )

Endeavor

Endeavor

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The space ship Endeavour landed yesterday in the Gulf of Mexico, the first time a capsule had ever splashed down in that body of water — and from the the first flight operated by a private company. All this on top of the nine years it had been since American astronauts were launched into space from U.S. soil.

What struck me when reading the news accounts this morning was what astronaut Bob Behnken said after landing, thanking those who made the flight possible “for sending us into orbit and bringing us home safely. Thank you very much for the good ship Endeavour.” 
What a lovely word, endeavor: so much longer than the word “try,” more multi-faceted in meaning, more elegant in syntax. Though it is named for the space shuttle, the name spoke volumes about the vessel, the launch, the landing — and the times we live in. 
Funny Fourth

Funny Fourth

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Funny that I won’t be seeing live fireworks this year …

Or going to any cook-outs …

Or singing any patriotic songs.

Funny that it doesn’t really feel like the Fourth.

Or maybe not so funny after all …

Virtual Shower

Virtual Shower

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Today, we make one more notch on the digital belt, as we hold a virtual baby shower for Claire. With two expectant mothers in the family, we thought it best to forgo a real party.

By now most of us have been to Zoom happy hours, Zoom meetings, Zoom family reunions and all other manner of screened gatherings. We have grown accustomed to the squares on a screen.

So today, there will be more of that. There will be virtual games and present-opening. But the gifts, the decorations — and most of all, the love and good wishes — will be most emphatically real.

Reflections on Race

Reflections on Race

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We were given today off to reflect and recharge, a generous gift of time that I (as always) struggle to use as wisely as possible. The day is meant to mark a pause in the tensions that have roiled this country over recent instances of police brutality against African Americans. 

I’ve done some reading to mark the day, but for me race relations are a lived event. Because both the grand-babies I’m waiting to welcome will have brown skin, I think often about the world they will inherit. What kind of prejudices will they fight? What kind of opportunities will they have? Will they be roughed up by police because they happened to be jogging in the “wrong” part of town? 
Suddenly it is not “the other” — it is flesh of my flesh. So whatever I think is no longer a matter of mind only, but also of heart. Which makes me wonder … is this what it will take? Will things truly improve only when most marriages are mixed-race and most families blended? 
I certainly hope not; I certainly hope it happens much, much sooner than that.
Lift Off!

Lift Off!

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Surely we needed this, needed the collective holding of breath, the general release when the rocket rose from the launching pad, up into the Florida sky, away from this earth with its virus and lockdowns and riots. Surely we needed something to make us raise our eyes from the here and now, into the heavens.

The Falcon Rocket, along with its two human passengers, lifted off an hour ago, at 3:22 p.m. — the first launch in almost a decade and the first ever from a rocket built by a private company.  It plans to rendezvous with the International Space Station at 10:30 tomorrow, meaning that these astronauts, both veterans of other space flights, will not be hitching a ride on a Russian craft.

As I write these earthbound words I hear the roar of jets making their final approach to Dulles. The dreams of flight that were realized more than a hundred years ago are propelling us still — and, as today’s milestone makes clear — they will continue to do so.

In the News

In the News

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It’s a good day for journalism. The Pulitzer Prizes were just announced (the Washington Post won, as did the Baltimore Sun, the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Anchorage Daily News and many others), and it’s also the birthday of Mollie Bly, a journalist who pretended to be mentally ill in order to spend 10 days undercover in the Blackwell’s Island Women’s Lunatic Asylum in New York and document the horrendous conditions she found there.

In 1889 Bly traveled around the world in 72 days, beating the fictional Phineas Fogg’s “Around the World in 80 Days” timetable and becoming famous in the process. She wrote both of these big stories for the New York World, owned by … Joseph Pulitzer.

At a time when the news is often decried and challenged, it’s good to remember all that it does for us, all that it continues to do.