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Continuous Loop

Continuous Loop

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In the hours I’ve spent at Mom’s bedside recently I’ve found myself staring at a TV screen playing a continuous loop of nature shots. There is some New Agey music that goes with it, what we used to call Muzak, only with an airier, lighter touch. But the sound is usually turned off, so I’m looking at photographs without the benefit of soundtrack.

One thing I’ve noticed is the similarity of the shots. Though the landscapes may be of mountains, seascapes or red-rock deserts, the foreground is usually green. There’s a reason for that, I believe, something to do with our earliest origins, the safety of enclosure giving way to an open view. Splendor in doses. Domesticated wilderness. 

All I know is that it is mesmerizing. I look at Mom, I look at the screen, I think of all that can be held in a head and a heart.

Sunday To-Do List

Sunday To-Do List

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Yesterday was for catching up: on walks, laundry, sleep, the sound of my children’s voices. One from Africa, where it was just dark and couscous was on the stove top. Another from Fairfax, back home after a long shift at a second job. And still another from just upstairs, which can be the longest distance of all but thankfully was not this time.

Sundays are often like this, touching base with the people I love. But after a vacation I remember to include myself in this number.

I cross some chores off the list but then find time to plop in the hammock and read the paper. I dose off, rally, focus once again on the book review, then put it aside entirely to listen to the insects and watch the leaves wag in the early evening light.

Full Circle

Full Circle

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Our neighbors are expecting their first grandchild, due any day now. These folks have lived next door since we moved into the house 26 years ago. I remember their daughters as little kids and they remember my daughters as babies.

It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that we would stay in the house more than a quarter century (maybe two years?!), but stay put we have, and the staying and the putting have brought a great full-circle quality to life that almost makes up for the years lost to traffic jams and Metro delays.

So on this red-letter day for my family — one daughter celebrating a birthday and another learning that a long wait will soon be over  — I pause to savor the richness of it all — and to give thanks.


(Two rush hours, two red-letter days, much gratitude.)

A River Runs Through It

A River Runs Through It

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A family wedding brought us to Montana, so yesterday we gathered on the banks of the Gallatin River (of A River Runs Through It fame) to celebrate the bride and groom as they begin their life together. The vows were handwritten and heartfelt. I’ve known the bride since she was born, and her parents since before they were married.

Later, in a tent under the vast northern sky, we ate and drank and danced until the band stopped playing. The bride had hauled her couch down to the meadow for photographs, and the sight of that familiar piece (I’ve seen it in Indianapolis and Missoula and now here, in Big Sky) and the bride’s father’s toast likening marriage to a river brought all the circle-of-life feelings to an intense and memorable pitch.

The professional photographer didn’t want us snapping many shots of our own, but I couldn’t not take this picture. To me, it says it all.

The Art of Eating Crabs

The Art of Eating Crabs

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Yesterday there was a graduation in Maryland, so after the congratulations and the photographs and the appetizers it was time for the main culinary attraction — that would be the Maryland blue crabs.

They start off blue but by the time you eat them they are red from the steaming and the seasoning. And eating them is an art. First you pull off the legs, then you find a little tab on the underside of the shell that opens up the critter — almost like a can with a pop top. Then you scrape off the gills and eat the meat inside. You save the claws for last, cracking them with a nutcracker or pounding them with a mallet. The meat is delicious!

Yesterday I sat next to some accomplished crab pickers who made the difficult look easy and left a pile of picked-clean shells. “Eating crabs is not just about eating,” said one of the experts. “It’s about sitting around and talking, the whole experience.”

And this was true. Because it takes so long to eat a crab — and because you have to eat so many of them to fill up — the meal is long and the stories fly. We talked about history and the Bible and Willie Nelson and the singer Meat Loaf, the stories unspooling, the crab shells flying and the perfect May day winding down into dusk.

Mother’s Day Hike

Mother’s Day Hike

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You can do a brunch or a picnic. You can do church and a corsage or dinner and a movie. When asked how I’d like to spend Mother’s Day, I said, let’s take a hike.

We went back to Great Falls again, the park I visited Friday to see vintage aircraft but left that day without walking even 10 minutes on one of its inviting trails.

Yesterday the road to the park was closed when we first drove by. Completely full. But after trying a crazy trail head parking lot we could barely get out of once we got into it, we drove back by the park and found it was admitting visitors again.

We strolled above the chute and the falls and Mather Gorge. Then we looped down to Sandy Point where we picked up the Matildaville Trail that took us back to the parking lot. It was a perfect Sunday amble with rocks to scramble, straightaways to savor and views to inhale.

And when it was over, we had a piece of the sinfully rich chocolate strawberry cake that Claire made.

VE Day Plus One

VE Day Plus One

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I heard them before I saw them, a great roar that meant business. I craned my head out the car window, but the tree cover made it impossible to see the planes overhead. I was sitting in line to enter Great Falls Park, an idea that I realized wasn’t so very original as I saw the dozens of cars ahead of and (soon) behind me.

Less than a few thousand feet away was the Potomac River. The World War II aircraft assembled yesterday would fly down the river to the Capitol. It was my best chance to see the planes in flight.

Finally, I reached the gate, paid $5, found a parking spot and ran — full-out ran — to the overlook. As I did, I heard more engines. A group of four planes rumbled overhead. This was enough. Just to see and hear these four.

But oh, it gets better. Because the planes were actually circling above us before they flew downtown, so we saw most of the formations twice. And it quickly became apparent that I was standing with a bunch of die-hard WWII aircraft enthusiasts. “Look, it’s a P-38,” said one. “You can tell by the twin fuselage.”

Maybe it was just me, but I think most of us were there not just for ourselves but for others. The man standing next to me said his father was a tail gunner in a B-29. And when I nodded and smiled at one woman about my age, I noticed her eyes were as full as mine.

One thing I’m sure about — and I’m not sure about much — is that once our loved ones are gone, we become their eyes and ears. Yesterday, Dad was all around me — in the warm spring sunshine, in the contrailed sky. And he was there especially when the B-17s flew out of the clouds, over our heads and into the limitless blue beyond.

B-17 in flight

Wild Blue Yonder

Wild Blue Yonder

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It’s the 70th anniversary of VE (Victory in Europe) Day and what I’m thinking about most is that my dad is not here to see it. How he would have loved to see the planes roaring down Independence Avenue and soaring above the Capitol.

It’s being called the “Arsenal of Democracy Flyover” and is the largest array of World War II aircraft ever assembled.

If we were watching it with Dad, we would have needed no cheat sheet; he could have identified all the aircraft himself with his still-sharp (at 90 years of age!) eyes.

“There’s a Mustang, there’s a Wildcat, there’s a Lightning,” he would have said. Of course, he would have been most excited to see his beloved B-17 bomber, the Flying Fortress. I grew up hearing stories of that plane and his special spot in its, the tail gunner position. He flew 35 missions over Europe — two on D Day — and in every one of them he was facing backwards.

The WWII veterans are over 90 now, but there will be a great gathering of them today, too. This flyover is in their honor — and the honor of all their fallen comrades. 


(The Missing Man formation.)

The Watch

The Watch

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After Dad died (a year ago today), I brought his watch home with me to Virginia. He had worn it almost to the end, said it drove him crazy not to know what time it was.

It’s a plain watch with a metal case, easy to read, with a simple leather band bent at the second smallest hole. It sits on my dressing table — one of the last things I see before I go to bed at night and leave for work in the morning.

I brought it home because it’s a small, humble thing that belonged to Dad for years. Now it reminds me not only of him but of all that’s happened since he’s been gone. The college graduations, college returns, graduate school and medical school acceptances, trips to Africa and Afghanistan and back. All the mornings without him at the table, sipping what he liked to call “Brazilian Novocain.” All the trips home without him walking out to greet me, rubbing his hands together in that way that he did.

The watch reminds me, too, that time is the only currency we have. Dad spent his well. Which is why his wife, children and grandchildren, his coffee buddies, basketball buddies and friends old and new — why all of us smile through our tears on this day. How we miss him! But how lucky we were to have him for so long. 

Visits to Ireland

Visits to Ireland

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“The people here look familiar,” said Mom, a few hours after we’d landed at Dun Laoghaire off the ferry from Holyhead, Wales. At first I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. But after a few days in Dublin I began to understand. The people looked like a lot of the Irish Catholics we knew back home, people like the Bryants, a family with 10 children who lived on Providence Avenue across the street from Christ the King School and Church. They had freckles and round faces and a pleasant way about them.

A week later, down a long lane in County Clare, Mom and I found her cousins, a pair of bachelor uncles who lived in a cottage without electricity. They served us tea in thin china cups that they produced with great ceremony, and they reminisced about meeting my mother’s aunts when they were little boys.

A few days after that, in County Galway, we came across a man named Paddy Concannon, whose connection to us was unknown except that he was the spitting image of my grandfather, Martin Joseph Concannon.

I’ve visited Ireland only once. But I have to remind myself of that fact; it seems like I’ve been there at least a half a dozen times.