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Grand Journey

Grand Journey

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Mom and Dad would have been married 67 years today. They made it to their 61st, which is quite a long run by modern standards. I bet I’m the only person remembering this today. Maybe not. My sister or brothers might be remembering it, too.

I was thinking a lot about their honeymoon when Drew and I took our road trip a couple weeks ago. Mom and Dad were married in Lexington, Kentucky, their hometown, but they took off immediately in an old Chevy bound for California.

The roads were barely all paved in 1952 — the interstate highway program officially began the next year — and though they were fine if they stuck to Route 66 … they didn’t always do that. They were prone to taking detours to “Kit Carson’s Cave” and other spots that piqued their curiosity.

Still, they made it to the West Coast, where they planned to start their married life. It was glamorous and exciting … but it wasn’t home. A few weeks later, they turned around and drove back.

It was the beginning of a grand journey together — and I’m thinking about it, and them, today.

Two Graduations

Two Graduations

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On Friday, I watched my son-in-law Appolinaire graduate from Northern Virginia Community College. Yesterday I watched my niece Maggie graduate from Johns Hopkins medical school. Two very special achievements, two very different graduations.

The Johns Hopkins ceremony was held at Meyerhoff Hall in downtown Baltimore, home of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The NOVA graduation was held at the outdoor concert venue Jiffy Lube Live, where you can hear Dead & Company or Wiz Khalifa. 
The Johns Hopkins event was only for Ph.D.’s and M.D.’s, so everyone was hooded. The NOVA event was only for associate degrees and certificates, so no one was hooded.
At Maggie’s graduation, the newly minted doctors rose and recited the Hippocratic Oath, which Maggie’s sharp-eyed great-aunt noticed did not include the phrase “First, do no harm.” (That’s because those words aren’t in the Hippocratic Oath.) 
At Appolinaire’s graduation, the dean asked graduates to “rock this house” as they answered a series of questions she posed to them. Questions like: How many of you were born in another country? How many of you speak a language other than English? How many of you are the first in your families to go to college? It looked like three-fourths of the graduates rose and cheered each time. I know that Appolinaire did.

What struck me most, however, was how in the deep-down important ways, these ceremonies were the same. The graduates grinned just as broadly, the families whooped and hollered just as loudly and “Pomp and Circumstance” (as usual) brought a tear to my eye.
An accomplishment is an accomplishment. I’m so proud of them both! 
Three Years

Three Years

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As if I needed another reminder of time’s quick passage, today I celebrate three years at my “new” job. Three years sitting on the fifth floor of a steel and glass building, staring out the windows but mostly staring at my screen. Three years traveling to report on stories, visiting places I never thought I’d see, meeting people around the world.

I won’t say it seems like yesterday that I began this new adventure. In many ways it seems longer (which, I guess, is a vote against time’s quick passage). But it seems longer in the way that new and familiar things often do.

Already the years are speeding up here. The time between my first few months, when I could barely tell one project from another, and this time last year seems like quite a stretch compared with the past 12 months.

On the whole, though, I’m feeling quite lucky on this three-year anniversary. I work harder than I have to, but it’s work that engages, and sometimes even inspires. Can’t ask for much more than that.

On Earth Day

On Earth Day

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Over the weekend I learned that a tornado touched down in my neighborhood Friday night. It must have been just the barest glance of a tornado, because the damage was minimal. But an expert was called in and he explained that the direction in which the trees fell and the crack down the middle of one proves that the tornado which hit Reston Town Center also hit Folkstone. It was a good reminder that nature is always ready to rear up and remind us who’s boss.

Perhaps Earth Day is a good day to remember this fact. Earth Day, which I remember from my youth as green-tinged and vaguely hopeful but which has taken on a grimmer tone in these days of global warming and Extinction Rebellion.

I have a much more protective feeling about the Earth now than I ever used to. And while I’m adding to the carbon load with my work flights to foreign shores, the travel those flights made possible is opening my eyes to the work we have in front of us, to the need to protect this good old Earth, which grows more vulnerable and more precious every day.

Mellow Mueller

Mellow Mueller

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Everyone was talking about it, reading it and tweeting about it, but by the time the Mueller Report finally came out yesterday, I just felt fatigued about it. I imagine many of us did.

I perked up a bit this morning, when the banner-headlined Washington Post landed in my driveway. (As is typical for a newspaper reader, I take my news a day old and more digested, thank you very much.) But on the whole, I’ve been ignoring the media feeding frenzy.

Maybe it’s because I’m distracted by the new leaves on the Rose of Sharon bush, or the carpet of petals underneath the Kwanzan cherry.

Or maybe it’s because I’ve been preoccupied with tech problems lately (email issues, Skype for Business issues, RAM issues, even voice recorder issues!).

But whatever has made me mellow about Mueller, I’m grateful for it.

Cathedral Time

Cathedral Time

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I’m not used to reading good news in the newspaper, especially not these days, so I was surprised last night when I finally settled down with the paper to learn that the walls of Notre Dame are still standing and the exquisite rose window is still intact.

Yes, the roof and the spire are gone, and some priceless treasures are lost, but many others were saved. Already stories of heroism are emerging: the chaplain who braved the blaze, the human chain that rescued precious artwork. Donations and pledges are pouring in. Notre Dame will be rebuilt, though it will doubtless be on “cathedral time,” not at the pace we might expect in the 21st century.

Even more encouraging were the perspectives the articles contained: that cathedrals are patchwork creations. The fallen spire we lament was a relatively late addition to Notre Dame. Europe is filled with cathedrals that have risen from fires and firebombing: St. Paul’s in London, the cathedral in Dresden. Besides, in many ways the places are as sacred as the buildings, and they remain sacred even when the stones are singed and the rafters give way.

The most optimistic accounts mentioned the survival of the gold cross on the altar and the votive lights that remained lit throughout the ordeal — also the fact that the fire happened during Holy Week, the most sacred time in the Catholic church’s liturgical year, a time when we celebrate redemption and resurrection.

I’ll end with this from the Washington Post’s architecture critic Philip Kennicott:

Meanwhile, the roof will rise again, and in a century some bored teenagers will stand in the plaza before the great Gothic doors and listen as their teacher recounts the great fire of 2019, just one chapter among all the others, and seemingly inconsequential given the beauty of the building as it stands glowing in a rare burst of sunlight on a spring day in Paris.

Remembering Notre Dame

Remembering Notre Dame

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You tell yourself it’s just a building, not a person; that it was not an act of terrorism; that it’s silly to feel this way. But there is still something so sad about the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral.

Maybe because we already have so much destruction in this world, so much war and cruelty. Maybe because it is so beautiful and had survived so much.  Maybe because it has been with us so long and connects us with so many.

I find myself saying what we say in times of loss: How grateful I am to have seen the cathedral; to have climbed its towers and glimpsed its gargoyles; to have taken my children there; to have strolled through it as a young woman and a middle-aged one.

Once, long ago, I was ambling along the Seine on an April evening. The light was slanting low in the sky and throwing the old stones and the spire into high relief. It was a scene of incomparable beauty. I had no camera at the time, so I told myself, remember this, remember it always.  

I did — and I’m remembering it now.

2,700

2,700

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Sometimes I only see the milestones after they happen. Yesterday’s was this: I’ve written 2,700 posts since I started this blog in February 2010.

It makes sense, I guess, numerically speaking. I’m in my tenth year, and I write almost 300 posts a year.

Still, the round numbers always make me reflect on how much this blog has become part of my life, an (almost) daily habit.

What this boils down to is that I make sense of the world by writing about it. I’m a born scribbler, that’s all.

Of Memoirs and Tree Ferns

Of Memoirs and Tree Ferns

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I began this International Woman’s Day reading (and finishing) a memoir by a most amazing woman, Diana Athill. Retiring at 75 from a successful editing career where she worked with such writers as John Updike and Jean Rhys, Athill began her second act — as a memoirist.

She penned several volumes in her 80s and 90s, including Stet, full of literary gossip and wise observations, and Somewhere Towards the End, which she wrote more than 12 years before the end, as it turns out. She died less than two months ago at the age of 101. She is my new role model.

Not that I think I’ll live as long as she, but it would be wonderful to write another book someday, and reading her gives me hope that there may be some juice left after I finally leave my day job.

Let me quote from her postscript, with a bit of explanation. Athill begins her book describing a tree fern that she would like to plant but hesitates to — because she thinks she won’t be around long enough to enjoy it. By the time the book ends, she has a more optimistic view:

The tree fern: it now has nine fronds each measuring about twelve inches long, and within a few days of each frond unfurling to its full length, a little nub of green appears in the fuzzy top of the ‘trunk’ (out of which all fronds sprout and into which you have to pour water). This little nub is the start of a new frond, which grows very slowly to begin with but faster towards the end — so much faster than you can almost see it moving. I was right in thinking that I will never see it being a tree, but I underestimated the pleasure of watching it being a fern. It was worth buying. 

A Day for Love

A Day for Love

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Since last Valentine’s Day I’ve read several books that detail our human origins, books about homo sapiens’ emergence from the muck and slime and ethereal dust, from the hunters and the gatherers. I read them and nod; I appreciate the science and the history.

But there’s always a point where I diverge, take issue. You can call it Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed. Wonderful Counselor. Mighty Father. 
Or, you can call it love. 
Love is what the theories don’t explain, what science has not yet mastered.
I don’t think it ever will.