Woke up this morning thinking about love, all types of love, romantic and filial and maternal. Of the love of friends and the respect of colleagues. Of the love we’re supposed to show the stranger but (at least I) so often do not.
I thought about how hard it can be to love, and how easy.
And then I thought about having a day that celebrates love. Without expectation of belief or patriotism. Surely unique among the holidays.
Just a day for love — and the expression of it.
In honor of our 16th president and his February 12 birthday, a quotation. Not from the Gettysburg Address or the Second Inaugural. In fact, no one is sure exactly where it came from, or even completely confident that he said it. Though it has always been attributed to him, it is not an especially well sourced remark.
But still, it is funny and practical and about real life. A break from the ponderous union-preserving tasks with which he was shouldered. A witty aside the man might have tossed out into the world without expecting it to go very far.
“If this is coffee,” he said, “please bring me some tea. But if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”
So much for uniting the North and the South, those who sought to preserve the Union and those who clamored to divide it.
With one sentence this man could bring together — with humor — those who love coffee and those who love tea.
Now that’s saying something…
The Lincoln Cottage in northwest D.C., the president’s summer home, where he undoubtedly had a cup of coffee … or maybe it was tea.
Lately at lunch I’ve taken to walking around the Capitol. It’s only a few minutes from my office and I can stroll around it in 20 minutes or so, perfect if I don’t have much time.
The place has no bad angles. It’s grand and imposing no matter how it is viewed. The dome (finished 150 years ago; its completion of great importance to President Lincoln, a metaphor for uniting the divided country) is at its best against a blue sky. But even on cloudy winter days the building has its charms.
In the last two months I’ve watched as the West Front platform has been built, the fences have gone up and the chairs been arranged. The people’s place? Not exactly.
I’ll be glad when the inauguration is behind us and ordinary citizens can walk around the Capitol again.
In our neck of the woods the new year starts off with good news. A football championship, the lowest murder rate in years and a last-minute agreement to avert the fiscal cliff.
More to the point for a walker: No snow or ice on the ground and a lighter, balmier feel to the air this morning.
Before I amble out the door, a look back at the blog: 308 posts on everything from autumn to Africa to the retirement of my late, great flip phone. (Every year my family composes a funny “out” and “in” list — a shameless rip-off of a Washington Post “Style Section” tradition — and one of the 2012 items is “OUT: The flip phone Mom never answers” and “IN: The smartphone Mom never answers.”)
Which is to say that some things never change. Not exactly what one wants to be reminded of on this day of resolutions (more on those later). But worth a thought or two just the same.
Happy 2013!
Work, Christmas shopping, decorating — with all the distractions of the season I’ve been too busy to think about the end of the world, which will happen in a few hours according to the Mayan calendar.
As I began to write this post, I remembered writing about the end of the world before. Thirty minutes later I found the entry (so much for my filing system). It was May 21, 2011, a day when some Christians expected the Rapture.
Today, the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, it’s easy to understand these apocalyptic predictions. The days grow shorter and darker. Who’s to say they won’t go away entirely?
We can make all the jokes we want about the end of time (no need to finish your holiday shopping!), but ultimately, isn’t it all about fear?
So here’s to an end of our end-of-the-world worries. And to the end of fear, too.
A few days ago we basked in the mellow sun of late autumn, leaves falling slowly, desultorily, to earth. But arriving home on the back edge of the west wind, I find a cold, winter landscape in its place.
The stubborn leaves have finally fallen. Trees are gray and bare. All gone, all gone, the wind sighs. It is easy to feel bereft.
I remember the times of fullness. What is left after the last piece of pie. All gone then, too. But isn’t that the point?
It’s a harvest holiday, of course, planned for a time of bounty. But it arrives during a season of stripping down, of bare trees and chastened skies. The hills yesterday on our drive through the mountains, they are purple in the distance, no longer green or orange.
When all else is peeled away there is the essential, gratitude. Thanksgiving — what one does too often in between times.
Amid yesterday’s electoral busyness and drama came word came of a high school classmate’s death. He was a wild man and a lover of life who lost his own life far too soon. Hearing this sad news from my hometown put everything else in perspective.
Not just the brevity of it all or even the wonder of it all but the preciousness of each individual person. Each one a world apart, each with aspirations and aggravations that we, on the outside, can never know. As we emerge from the collective that is an election season, when people are numbers, weights on a swing state scale, we return to what really matters — the individual.
This is the morning after, the day we cheer or sigh. But tomorrow is a new day, and like every new day, composed of the individual actions of individual people.
I drove to work today, and as I crossed the Potomac the familiar landmarks loomed solid and significant in the wan winter light. Driving past the White House and the Capitol, I thought about the people who aspire to live and work in those places, people I’ll vote for today.
It does feel momentous, this election. Perhaps because we live in a battleground state and our phone rings half a dozen times or more a day. Perhaps because positions seem to be ossified — the fact that we had our first hard freeze last night, is that a metaphor?
Or perhaps because these polarized times make clear a truth we sometimes forget: that every vote really does make a difference.
(Photo: DClikealocal.com)