Browsed by
Category: events

Birthday Surprises

Birthday Surprises

Comments 0 Comment

An email this morning told me a package had been delivered.  I got a kick out of this — the fact that I had come in through the garage last night and overlooked this large item on the front stoop, being informed of it through a bunch of 1s and 0s on my computer. It was a funny way to begin this last day of November, the birthday of two people I love — my daughter and my brother.

But that was just the first surprise.  The second happened when I was lugging in the first — and Copper trotted around the front of the house (where he is never, ever allowed to be because he will run away) and right through the front door. The backyard gate must have been left open.
Whatever the case, it was all meant to be — the package left out overnight so that I could be there when Copper escaped, could usher him back where he belongs. The rescue of a dog that means so much to the birthday girl.
Yes, it’s often a random world — but sometimes it’s not. Today is one of those times.
Groaning Board

Groaning Board

Comments 0 Comment

Little chance of this groaning board giving way, but it is quite full as I lay out the ingredients for my contribution to the Thanksgiving feast. Pumpkin, spices, brown sugar and condensed milk for the pie. Onions, celery, bread crumbs, wild rice, pecans and butter for the stuffing. And — new this year — red cabbage, dates, cilantro and more pecans for “autumn coleslaw.”

As I type the list, I take mental inventory. Do we have enough butter? Enough broth? I foresee another trip to the grocery store.

All to make this groaning board … groan a little more.

In Praise of Service

In Praise of Service

Comments 0 Comment

When Dad posed for this shot he was younger than my youngest child, a 21-year-old man with a skip in his step and (though you can’t tell it from this picture) his heart in his throat. It was terrifying to be a tail-gunner in a B-17 bomber, to fly across Germany with the enemy shooting at you, to return to the base in Horham, England to see the empty bunks of those who didn’t make it back from their own bombing missions.

So of course I’m thinking about Dad on this Veterans’ Day. But I’m also thinking about Drew, my brother, a civilian in harm’s way, using his skill and knowledge to protect our country.

How important it is on Veteran’s Day to thank those who are not yet veterans, who are still in active service, or even those not in the military at all, but who nevertheless risk their lives to keep us safe and free.

Pedestrian

Pedestrian

Comments 0 Comment

While each terrorism event evokes shock, horror and the sickening realization that it’s happened again, each has its own particular stamp of sadness. Yesterday’s was familiarity — I’ve walked that path often — and the pedestrianism of it all.

While terror has struck crowds of pedestrians before, they’ve never been at places I know so well. This happened on a late autumn afternoon, the perfect time to hop on a bike or stroll a walkway with a splendid view of the harbor and the Hudson. If last month’s incident was an assault on the concert-goer (an all too familiar theme), yesterday’s was an attack on walking itself, on the pedestrian.

Not just pedestrians but the pedestrian: “lacking inspiration or excitement, dull.” And of course that’s the point, isn’t it? To make even the most quotidian of tasks an opportunity for mayhem. The retort is pedestrian, too. We will keep riding, keep walking, keep being ourselves.  It’s pedestrian, but what else can we do?

Telling Numbers

Telling Numbers

Comments 0 Comment

In Vietnam we learned the battlefield could be anywhere: in a rice paddy or a house full of children. So we should not be surprised when the bullets ring out at elementary schools, college campuses, nightclubs, restaurants, amphitheaters and now in the most unreal of all unreal places, the Las Vegas Strip.

Violence is always unreal, until it is not.

So the children and grandchildren of a generation defined by “four dead in Ohio” have …

59 dead at Mandalay Bay
49 dead at Orland’s Pulse
32 dead at Virginia Tech
26 dead at Sandy Hook.

When will it stop? I think we’re all afraid that it won’t. So we say prayers, light candles, hope the next time never happens — even though in our heart of hearts we know it will.

Earth from Saturn

Earth from Saturn

Comments 0 Comment

When the children were young and studying the planets, Suzanne decided she didn’t like Saturn. “It’s a show-off, Mom,” she said. All those rings, you know.

I’ve been thinking of Saturn the last few days as images of it were beamed back by the spacecraft Cassini, which plunged into the planet’s atmosphere on Friday, ending a splendid 20-year mission.

For decades Cassini has been enlarging our knowledge of the solar system, taking us to Saturn’s cool green moon Titan, and, with its Huygens lander, actually touching down on the moon’s rocky surface. Cassini discovered plumes of water vapor spouting from another moon, Enceladus, and made many other discoveries.

And then there were the photographs Cassini sent back. The rings and moons and other planets. My favorite is the NASA pic I’ve reposted here.  Earth is the tiny speck on the lower right-hand side of this photo.  Beautiful, yes — and very, very small.

Comey Walk

Comey Walk

Comments 0 Comment

There is the quiet walk: no earphones, mind open to bird song and insect chirp.

There is the musical walk: with Brahms or Bach or Simon and Garfunkel.

And then there is the Comey walk. That’s what I’ve been taking the last few days. It’s a subset of the all-news walk, and it consists of the following: what will he say, what did he say, and now, what will happen because of what he said.

This is not the most restful soundtrack for an early-morning stroll. But it’s an itch that must be scratched. As soon as I returned home this morning I picked up the newspaper. Now I’m reading about what Comey said. At least I’m consistent.

Honorary Degree

Honorary Degree

Comments 0 Comment

I didn’t place much importance on the commencements of my youth. I completed the requirements, I graduated.  These were launching pads not retrospectives.

But watching these ceremonies as a mother, aunt and sister is altogether different.  Now I tear up at “Pomp and Circumstance,” get goose bumps from an academic procession. It’s clearer to me now that these are true endings and beginnings, the kind of clear line life seldom hands us.

It’s also clear that for many, a degree is not a given. And for every smiling graduate there is someone who will not walk across a stage this year, someone who may never have worn a gown, hood or mortar board. Their reasons for not doing so are legion, and may have nothing to do with intelligence or drive. For like their robed compatriots, they too have completed difficult assignments.

So this post is for them, an honorary degree of sorts. Maybe there will be no diploma this year, but there was learning and effort and sacrifice. To the great, un-graduated multitudes, I offer my humble, heartfelt congratulations.

Internal Dialogue

Internal Dialogue

Comments 0 Comment

As national events heat up and the news changes by the minute, I’m tuning my headset to news stations as I hoof it.  It’s not the calm strolls I usually crave, but it makes for some brisk walks and some fascinating internal dialogue.

“How could he?” “Will they really?” “Oh yeah?” “We’ll see about that.”

These conversations take place only in my head, but they are stimulating in their own way.

Walking and talking: It’s the way it is now.

Pink and White

Pink and White

Comments 0 Comment

They were selling pink and white carnation corsages at church yesterday — pink if your mom is living, white if she is not. I bought neither, but even the choice made my eyes sting.

I can remember wearing corsages on long ago Easters and maybe I could even fish up a memory of wearing a corsage on Mother’s Day. It wasn’t reliving memories that made me sad. It was knowing that, if I had bought a flower yesterday, it would have been white.

Which is why I was even more grateful to come home, take a walk and spend the rest of Mother’s Day on the deck with my daughters. There were some vague plans for a group hike, but we all agreed that just sitting and talking was best.

There was a fullness to the day that doesn’t come often enough and is all the more precious when it does. There was laughing and talking and cooking and eating. And there was this thought, poignant and comforting : If my girls were wearing corsages, theirs would be pink.