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Driving Home

Driving Home

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Yesterday I drove past the house of the woman who watched the girls for a year or two when I was writing a book. Her name was Eva; still is, I imagine. She’s moved back to Hungary and we’ve lost touch.

Eva was reserved and all business when we met, but she proved loving, dependable, creative and quirky. The girls loved her rice pudding and began pronouncing words with a slight Hungarian lilt. “Quintan” (the name of a little boy she also watched) became “Quintone.”

Suzanne was in second grade then so she didn’t got to Eva’s, but most days I would drop Celia off in the morning and Claire mid-day, after picking her up from the kindergarten bus. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it’s what I had.

What I was remembering yesterday, though, was how it felt to be driving the girls home in the afternoon. Suzanne would ride with me to pick up her sisters, and as we chugged home in the ancient blue Volvo wagon, I would have moments of perfect contentment: a good day of writing behind me, the promise of another to come, and most of all, the girls and I together again. Dinner was yet to be cooked, homework yet to be checked, bedtime stories yet to be read. But even then, I knew — told myself — hang on to this moment, it’s as good as it gets.

Historical Aroma

Historical Aroma

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One of the fringe benefits of working at home is catching little household emergencies before they become big household emergencies.

I’m stretching the term “household emergencies.” Today, while pulling cereal out of the pantry closet, I was met with an aroma that was only slightly less putrid that a decaying animal. It was a rotten potato. This was not a problem last night, but it would have been an even larger problem by 6:30 p.m., which is when I usually roll back in here. Today, though, I could remove the offending vegetable and compost it before too much damage was done.

The point of this post is not to highlight my less-than-stellar housekeeping skills, but to ponder whether there is such a thing as an ancestral aroma sensitivity.

This potato smelled so noxious that I wondered if it had something to do with my Irish ancestry, with the fact that Mom’s relatives mostly came from the west of Ireland and were driven away by the potato famine.

Could I be especially sensitive to this because my great-great-grandparents smelled it all too often?  Putrid potato PTSD?  You never know.

A Day, a Diary

A Day, a Diary

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I found an old journal in the back room of my parents’ old house, my grandfather Cassidy’s diary from 1940. This is my father’s father, who I never knew; he died before I was born. He was a Nazarene preacher, and much of this diary records his prayer habits and the texts he preached from.

On this day, 78 years ago, the tent was in or near Clinton, Illinois, and his sermon came from 2 Samuel 25-28:

“I pray you, forgive the trespass of your handmaid: for the Lord will certainly make my lord an enduring house; because my lord fights the battles of the Lord, and evil has not been found in you all your days.”

Many days began with reading and praying. There were walks, helping friends cut wood, marveling at the beauty of the day.

My grandfather followed his calling even though his family, my father then a young man, were far away. I’m not sure what they lived on, how they made it. But somehow, they did.

The world is a different place now, but the pages in this diary are as crisp and clear as the day he wrote them. At the bottom of each page, a quotation. This one is from Emerson: “Give me insight into today, and you may have the antique and future worlds.”

Singing with Dad

Singing with Dad

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Sunday was the nativity of John the Baptist, a feast I don’t ever recall celebrating before. Something new in the liturgy? One of those days you notice every few years, when it falls on a Sunday?

We sang “Shall We Gather at the River,” a hymn I always associate with summer tent revivals — and not one of my favorites. To me, it sounds “Protestant”— a non-ecumenical term to be sure but the only one I can come up with. It’s not the kind of hymn I sang as a kid, one with verses in Latin. Singing it has always made me feel a bit strange and out of place.

But now I have an antidote for hymns like “Shall We Gather” or “How Great Thou Art.” Whenever we sing them now, I imagine Dad standing next to me, belting out the melody in his rich baritone. Dad was the Protestant in my life. He went to tent revivals and Wednesday night services as a kid. He knew the score.

So I follow his lead, sing out loud and strong. I can almost feel him nudge my elbow. “See, Annie,” he winks. “That’s not too bad, is it?”

Up, Up and Away!

Up, Up and Away!

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We took Celia to the airport this morning. She wanted to be early, and she was. I watched her move through security, chatting with a fellow passenger as she put her laptop, shoes and carryon into the bins. And then … she vanished.

Home now, I think at first that I can’t go in her room, but I’m pulled there despite myself. There are the cast-offs — the shoes, clothes and books that didn’t make the final cut.  There’s the cover to Jane Eyre, one of her faves — she has the book itself. And there’s the box I brought home from work on Monday. Something tells me I’ll be filling it soon and mailing it to Seattle.

For the first time in a long time, 2938 is an empty nest.  The youngest has flown the coop. My heart flies with her.

(The girls out on the town this weekend.)

Loss and Fullness

Loss and Fullness

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The deck, the morning after our Father’s Day celebration. Here’s the fish griller that Claire used to cook the salmon.The new hanging plant I bought over the weekend, its purple blossoms cascading over the rim. There’s a half moon of package sealing that came off when I opened the tub of deer repellent to sprinkle on the flower bed.

The white bucket in the back yard holds the pétanque balls we used to play a few rounds of that game before dinner. Appolinaire was the champ, despite the fact that he’d only heard of pétanque minutes before we played. Maybe French-speaking folks just naturally excel.

Scattered around are the big sticks Claire’s dog Reese picked up and dropped. Copper sniffs them, wary still. This time last year we had just met Reese, a small ball of fluff. Now he’s a 100-pound “baby.”

Further back into the yard, the new picket fence panels gleam. One day they’ll be as weathered as the ones they replace.

Thinking about loss, about fullness.  That from this home, this yard, three little souls were launched into the world.

Last Day, Redux

Last Day, Redux

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To be the parent of young adults means getting used to the filling and emptying of the house that gave them birth. The house didn’t really give them birth, of course — I did. But sometimes it feels like it did, the rooms have so absorbed the people who grew up in them.

This old house has gotten pretty good at it by now. People move out, then in … then out again. The house accommodates it all — I just hang on for the ride.

Today is the last day of school in Fairfax County, a day my kids once celebrated with shaving cream fights at the bus stop, a celebratory fast-food lunch and the ceremonial viewing of one of our fave family movies, “The Music Man.” I hear the buses already, revving up for early dismissal. Soon they’ll be disgorging young’uns into an endless summer.

It doesn’t seem so long ago that I was meeting my own girls down at the corner. Now Celia (front row, left) is about to move in with her friend Jessy (standing right next to her), who lives … on the other side of the country.

It’s a grand adventure for all of us, the ones just starting out and the ones who’ve lived long enough to marvel at it all.

Whistle Them Home

Whistle Them Home

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It was after 6:00 p.m. yesterday and the children — two boys, one  girl — were angling for some park time.  “You can play outside for a while, but you have to come in when I whistle for you,” said the mother. Maybe she was in the middle of cooking dinner, or had just changed from her work clothes. Or maybe she works at home, as I did when the girls were young.

But the whistling, that was unique. No texting, no agreed-upon time to be home. Just wait for the whistle. A bit canine,  to be sure. But deliciously old-fashioned.

Where I grew up in Lexington, only one family had a dinner bell. Other parents just cupped their hands around their mouths and yelled for their kids to come home in the evening. “Johnnnnny! Sallllly!” (Children had primary reader names back in those days.) These ersatz bullhorns are the original communication device, are they not?

And they did the job.  The kids came running home.

(These tunnels — I call them “snake eyes” — are near the park where the kids were playing.) 

Life Preserver

Life Preserver

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If all birthdays should hold within them some memento mori, some reflections on our own mortality, then my recent one was complete even in that way, with the funeral of an acquaintance, a woman my age (too young to die!) held Saturday in a local cemetery.

Attending this funeral brought many thoughts to mind: Sadness for the family, especially the two twenty-something children who now must make their way without their mom; gratitude for my own health and family, for everything I have; and relief that I’ve escaped a trap that suburban living makes women especially prone to.

It isn’t always easy to schlep to the office, but the suburbs have a way of sucking women in and making everything about the kids. While I made sure I was home with the girls as much as possible when they were young, and I look back on those years as some of the most precious and happiest of my life, I tried always to have a separate self, a career (writing) self — an Anne that is not also Mom.

Now I tell my girls to do this, to keep themselves alive. The childrearing years only seem like they’ll last forever. In truth, they’re over in a flash.  When they are, you want a self to go back to.

Good Night, John Boy

Good Night, John Boy

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I’m remembering Mother’s Days of the past, including my first as a mother, which was also my first day in the Virginia house.  I can remember another a few years later, including a meal at a now-defunct restaurant when the cleaning crew started sweeping around our table mid-meal because the girls had made such a mess — and we swore we wouldn’t eat out again as a family for at least 10 years.

I can remember so many other Mother’s Days with my own dear mother, and how I would sometimes have breakfast with her and dinner with my daughters.

Yesterday I hung out all day with the girls, laughing over old times and new times, buying and planting flowers, sipping Mimosas, sharing laughs and eating way too much yummy food. One of the highlights was when Celia unveiled this Mother’s Day card, riffing on my fave show (from eons ago), the Walton’s — complete with Capehart stand-ins (including dogs and cats). We roared over this one!

Feeling so grateful this morning, so thankful that these smart, funny, beautiful young women are my daughters.