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Grasping the Moment

Grasping the Moment

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There was a last-minute offer to grill, a request for chicken, zucchini and tomatoes, all of which I gladly supplied. And then there was transporting the grill, the real thing, the Weber, with its bag of charcoal.

The real grill takes time to heat up so there were games of catch with Copper, plenty of ins and outs through the backdoor. People appeared on the deck, talked on their phones and then vanished back inside. Earlier we had sifted through an album, found a black and white photo of Tom from his long-hair days. This was passed around and admired. We opened some hard cider, marveling at its tang and effervescence.

Two more friends appeared, and now it was an impromptu party. I bounced on the trampoline, listening to songs I’d just bought: “Teach Your Children Well,” “September,” “Your Song,” “Morning has Broken.”

My troubles left me alone for this blissful, golden evening. The late light glancing the trunks of the oaks, the hydrangea blooming, voices from inside, laughing. People, young people, talking about music and jokes and places we don’t know and never care to find out. Someone could have pulled out a guitar, strummed a few chords, and I wouldn’t have been surprised. Maybe next time. It was life renewing itself. And I was pulled along by it, glad for the ride.

Day Off

Day Off

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The weather forecast looked good. And there is the birthday thing. So today seemed as good a day as any to play hookey.

Not that I’ve done much so far. Written. Talked. Opened email to find greetings from friends and family. A walk still to come.

A catbird is singing.  The day lilies starting to bloom. The new climbing rose surging skyward.

There is a sense of pleasant rightness in the air.

Decoration Day

Decoration Day

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We have no flagpole holder, no siding on our house to hold one, and the front of our house is obscured by large trucks. Still, I walked to the mailbox a minute ago to stick a small flag in its arm.  It’s Decoration Day, Memorial Day’s first name, what it was called when it was established in 1868 for the purpose of decorating the graves of fallen soldiers.

No longer May 30, Memorial Day is the last Monday of the month — a day for cookouts, pool openings and ushering in the summer. But long ago (and in some places still) it was a day for a solemn parade and a trip to the cemetery.

Here is a Decoration Day parade from Brownsville, Texas, in 1916, photographed by Robert Runyon and downloaded from the Library of Congress’ American Memory project.

(Photo: The Robert Runyon Photograph Collection, [image number, e.g.,
00199], courtesy of
The Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.)

Happy Anniversary!

Happy Anniversary!

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What started 60 years ago was not just a marriage; it was a family, a way of life. It was jumping in an old Chevy and driving across the country. Finally running away to California to start all over again — then realizing that Kentucky was where they wanted to be all along.

Mom and Dad married on May 24, 1952. Another of countless post-war weddings. A few years after the war, of course, but the soldier had to get his degree and start his career. And so the marriage began, and it has endured.

The family that flowed from that union has never felt like any other family. (Does any family, ever?) There were the businesses, the magazines, the museum, the houses with garages full of boxes that would become family rooms (but never did). There were the four children and the trips across the country in station wagons. Look at this country, they told us kids, see how big it is. There has always been a certain jauntiness, a sense that you didn’t have to be what circumstances dictated. Dreaming was encouraged. Escape was required.

So today we celebrate this union, these people, still here, still dreaming and planning. How lucky I am to have them as parents.  Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad!

Question and Answer

Question and Answer

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“What do you want for your birthday?” my daughters ask me.

“Family harmony,” I say, “world peace.”

I don’t say “what we have right now.” What we have sitting around this table, eating dinner at 10 o’clock. (Sometimes it takes that long to get everyone together.)

Give me a month of these conversations, of talking about what color to paint the kitchen and how much our floors creak. Of how much we love San Francisco and what our neighbors will think of our new siding. Of gun control and abortion. Of where we want to live when we grow up … or retire.

And, just to be really greedy, bottle these voices for me. These voices I could pick out of a billion, they are so clear to me, and so dear.

That’s what I’d like for my birthday.

And you say I’m hard to shop for.

Heeeere’s Johnny!

Heeeere’s Johnny!

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I stayed up late last night watching Johnny Carson. Tom and I laughed in front of the set as my parents had so many years ago. I remember hearing them from my little bedroom upstairs. Dad would pop popcorn and open a Pepsi; the Tonight Show was a grownup party I wasn’t invited to.

But there would be plenty of time to watch Carson — when I was in high school; during college summers, when I came in from my 3-11 p.m. waitress shift; when I was single and living on my own; and (less so) after I married and had kids. Johnny’s last show was in 1992. Our middle daughter was not quite one; our oldest was three. I slept whenever I had a chance — including through the last Tonight Show. This is something I’ve been sorry about through the years, so when I heard there would be a documentary about Carson on last night, I made a point to tune in.

There they all were — Ed McMahon, Doc Severensin, Johnny in his natty suits  — all of them young, so young. There was Johnny bursting through the curtain, fiddling with his tie, swinging his imaginary golf club. There he was running from a baby cheetah and jumping into Ed’s arms, wearing a turban as Carmak, deadpanning after a guest’s wacky comment, saying things he would surely be called sexist for now. Johnny worked a flubbed joke better than anyone in the business.

It seemed like most everyone watched Carson, liberal and conservative, gay and straight.  Carson has been off the air for 20 years — and the world has become a more brittle, more divided and less funny  place. Don’t you wish we could all stay up late again watching Johnny?

Photo: dvdtalk.com

Through a Glass

Through a Glass

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If eyes are windows to the soul, then windows are eyes to the world. It is through them that we see what goes on beyond the house and family.  If they are old, scratched, unable to open smoothly; if their vapor lock is broken — what will we then make of the world?

Probably much the same as if they were crystal clear, in all truth. After all, we aren’t hermits hibernating in this house. We leave and return to it every day. Our view of the outside isn’t limited by what we see from the inside.

And yet, as I look out a pair of brand new windows, the world is new born. The recent arrivals slide up and down in their casements. They are so clear and unsullied that they are invisible.  May’s green grass and leaves explode outside them.

For years we have been silting up and clouding over, but the transformation has been so subtle and gradual that we haven’t noticed. Now that the old windows are out and the news ones in the scales are off. We no longer see through a glass darkly.

Missing Out

Missing Out

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I usually write here of things I’ve seen. Today I write of something I didn’t see. As the shuttle Discovery made its graceful curtain call on D.C. the day before yesterday, I was sitting in my office, preoccupied with matters I thought were more important. It wasn’t that I couldn’t get away. It was that I didn’t. I hadn’t known how visible the shuttle would be. Some folks even spied it from the roof of the tallest building on campus.

A few minutes before 11 a.m., Suzanne called: “Mom, I see it. It’s flying right over me on 66. Cars are pulling off on the shoulder. It looks like a dolphin on top of a whale.” We didn’t talk long. I kept imagining how she was gazing at the shuttle, driving the car and talking on the phone at the same time.

Yesterday’s paper was full of photographs and quotations. People waited hours to see the spacecraft. It’s the end of an era, they said. They imagined all the miles the Discovery had logged, the places it had been. They felt privileged to witness its last flight.

After I took myself to task for missing this spectacle, I tried to think positively. There’s no way to go back. So how to move forward? Here’s what I came up with: The world is rich and full of possibilities. But it will shrink to a pinhole if I let worries and obligations overwhelm me. The next time I have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I’ll take it.

photo courtesy NASA vis Georgetown Law Facebook page

The Aroma of Hyacinth…

The Aroma of Hyacinth…

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Is what remains of Easter. A whiff of a flower that droops upon its stem; that bends, heavy with fragrance and with blossom. This one is lavender, the color of regret.

A brief holiday is over. The world is still light with the new green of spring, but duty makes it feel heavy. The birds are calling and the azaleas flash pink along the walkway. The tulips arch toward the sun. I pick up where I left off. I begin again.

I keep the hyacinth by the kitchen window, where I can savor it often.

The Same Path

The Same Path

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On a walk through the meadow the other day it dawned on me that my path was made possible not only by my treks but also by Tom’s. A trail is born of frequent footfall, and the two of us, though separately more often than we’d like, give the Folkstone routes a pounding.

It is a strange sort of togetherness that I celebrate here, then, that of walking the same trail at different times. But that is often the way of marriage, both in a practical sense (you watch the kids now and I’ll do the same for you later) and an emotional one. We come to terms with life in our own time, but we share in the great labors of child rearing and home creating. We are stronger because we’re together — and because we’re together, we don’t have to stride in lockstep.

Today, Tom and I celebrate 25 years of walking the same path — and it is still a grand adventure.