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End of Fear

End of Fear

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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.

Eighteen!

Eighteen!

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Today is Celia’s 18th birthday. Today she reaches
the age of majority … as we creak along toward the age of seniority.
Not really, though. A youngest daughter is a marvelous gift,
keeping her parents in fighting trim, bringing them face to face with the
future (whether they want to see it or not).
I went out before daybreak this morning to pick Celia a
rose. I had no trouble finding one; the whole yard was lit up by a full moon
ringed in a pinkish halo of mist. Above the moon was a contrail, a single arched eyebrow — a shooting star pointing up
instead of down.
It’s a lovely day for a birthday.

Celia at two-and-a-half.
All Gone

All Gone

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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?

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

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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.

Morning After

Morning After

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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.

Election Day

Election Day

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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)

Post Sandy

Post Sandy

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Sandy walloped us yesterday, but far fewer trees came down than expected and with new siding and windows we spent the day in relative silence. The battering and banging we used to hear during storms giving way to a muted roar as 50- to 60-mile-an-hour winds gusted outside.

Inside: a pot of chili, a stack of books and, more to the point, electricity.

Today, as the storm continues to send rain, snow and high winds our way, my thoughts head north, to New York, New Jersey and other Sandy-ravaged areas.



(It’s hard to imagine Times Square empty, but last night it was.)

Waiting for Sandy

Waiting for Sandy

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I grew up in the middle of the country, not right in tornado alley but close enough. So hurricanes are not part of my birthright. They are, however, something I’ve gotten used to living on the East Coast. What sets them apart for me is not the strong winds (those were worse with the derecho we had in June) or the copious rain, but the fact that you know they’re coming.

Tornadoes catch you unaware. A sultry spring afternoon, a strange light in the sky, and before you know it you’re huddling in a stairwell while your roof is blown off.

Hurricanes are charted and observed. We woke up today to this photograph in the Washington Post. As I write I think of what we still need to do: fill up the cars; charge the phones, laptop and iPod (heck, even the toothbrush); secure the deck furniture.

Time to prepare — and also time to worry.  I remind myself that — all talk of hybrid cyclones aside, headlines that call this the storm of the century — at the end of the day there’s often more hype than hurricane.



What will these waves look like a few hours from now?

A Birthday in Benin

A Birthday in Benin

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We were on the road to Toura when the phone went dead —  not literally, of course, but in our
conversation. Suzanne was telling me about the dust and the mud and the red
soil — and I was walking there with her.


She had warned me her phone was low on charge and not to worry if it went dead. We ought to have stopped talking then. But instead we chatted
minutes longer, then suddenly she was gone — and the great yawning space
between us opened even wider and I willed myself into her small African
village, along the red and rutted road, into her walled concession, past the
guinea fowl that live there too, through her humble door and into her life.

I couldn’t do any of that in real life, of course, but how I wish I could — especially today, her birthday.

Suzanne’s present came four months ago when she landed in Africa. My gift is knowing how very happy she is. 

Photo by Suzanne Capehart


College Tour

College Tour

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It’s been four years since we did this the last time.

Four years since we sat in a darkened auditorium and listened to an admissions director discuss interdisciplinary learning.

Four years since we were last told how to submit a FAFSA.

Four years (or almost that; we did one brief tour this spring and another this summer) since we sauntered through a college campus following a student ambassador who has mastered the art of  walking backward.

Four years, which seems like no time at all — except that a wispy 13-year-old has become a willowy 17-year-old. And we are embarking on our last few college tours.

Now we’re the ones who understand the difference between early decision and early action. We’re the application veterans, with the battle scars to prove it.

But there’s one thing we haven’t mastered yet — and that is saying goodbye.