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Category: perspective

Slow Sunday

Slow Sunday

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It’s already past noon, but I’m finishing up laundry and online church in hopes that the rest of the day will be slow enough to read and write and generally while away some time. My partner in crime: this hammock, which I plan to enjoy again as soon as I push “publish.”

The evolution of Sunday from a day set aside for special treatment to just another weekend day is one I lament. Not that it would be fun to have stores closed and activities shut down. But it would be nice to have a day that is marked by doing less and reflecting more. A day devoted to gratitude and taking stock. 

Some would say we can get by with a few of these a year; we don’t need one a week. But I think we might be happier and healthier if we could make slow Sundays the rule instead of the exception.

Spent

Spent

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The climbing rose is losing its leaves and there are fewer rose hips than last year. Is the plant ailing or just tired after a long summer of heat and humidity? Probably a little of both. But it’s not just the rose; it’s all the plants, the ones that are here, fraying around the edges, and the ones I had hoped to plant … but did not.

It’s that time of year when you realize that what you have in the garden is what you get. The grand dreams of landscaping that were yours for the taking in the heady days of early spring seem silly now. There will be no clematis paniculata planted by the deck stairs, no zinnias by the mailbox. The weeds that once threatened are now welcomed because at least they are green. 

But this is not to sound an entirely disappointed note. There are some gardening success stories this year. The transplanted ornamental grasses are thriving farther down in the yard, beside the fence. And the knockout rose I bought on impulse has made a promising start (even though it will have to be moved, thanks to one of those doing-better-than-expected ornamental grasses). 

Still, it’s time to acknowledge that we’re moving out of the growing season, not into it. Acorns are falling fast and even a few yellow leaves have imprinted themselves on the black springy mat of the trampoline. In a month we will be entering meteorological autumn. Summer … is spent. 

Learning the Significance

Learning the Significance

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I learned from the Writer’s Almanac that today is the birthday of Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes. I remember reading that book the first time and marveling at the pathos and the humor and that marvelous opener: 

“It was, of course, a miserable childhood: The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and all the terrible things they did to us for 800 long years.”

Angela’s Ashes was on the best seller list for three years, won a Pulitzer and sold four million copies in hardcover. McCourt is the patron saint of late bloomers. He wrote the book in his mid-sixties. 

Re-reading McCourt’s obituary I came across this lovely anecdote. When speaking with high school students in New York in 1997, he said this about his book and the writing of it, something that should gladden the hearts of all those who labor with pen and keyboard, or the hearts of all of us, period. “I learned,” he said, “the significance of my own insignificant life.” 

In Person

In Person

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Yesterday’s rain has cleared out — an affront to the beautiful bridal shower my sister planned for her oldest daughter, a shower that went on as planned despite almost horizontal rain blowing into and around the gazebo near the Severn River, where it was held. 

The shower had already been moved outside to thwart the coronavirus, so the fact that we ended up with an atypical August monsoon made for the kind of event where everyone just shrugged and went on with it because, really, what else can you do.

But being there with family and friends yesterday reminded me of what life was like before mid-March, reminded me of gathering and chatting and pleasures we formerly took for granted. 

I know we must be careful when we meet in person, but it’s good to be reminded that behind these squares on a screen are real flesh-and-blood people. They’re around now and will be later, when all of this is behind us.

(The Severn River at sunset — in calmer, drier weather. )

On This Day …

On This Day …

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Yesterday, still giddy with the news of our first grandchild, I had no time for the details. Today, I look up, note the day, August 14, which was Claire’s due date, and the famous people who were born on it: comedian Steve Martin; Russell Baker, author of the lovely memoir Growing Up; “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson; and Doc Halliday, who survived the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. 

Those would have been interesting birthday mates, for sure. But it turns out there are some interesting characters born on August 13, too. There is sharpshooter Annie Oakley, who traveled with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and was the most famous woman in the world at one time; William Caxton, the first man to print a book in 1475, using the printing press that had just been invented 25 years earlier; and director Alfred Hitchcock, who made “Psycho, “Vertigo” and “Rear Window.”

So the little guy will have plenty of birthday company as he makes his way through life. For now, he is eating and sleeping and getting to know the world. For now, he is still pure potential. 

(Thanks to the Writer’s Almanac for these facts.)

Noting the Passing

Noting the Passing

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The pianist Leon Fleisher died August 2 at the age of 92. I’ve written about him before, both as a pianist and writer. I even vowed to learn a piece of music because of watching him play it, a promise I have not kept, by the way. So the least I can do is honor the man here.

Fleisher was a master of reinvention: winning competitions as a prodigy, losing the use of his right hand, despairing for a while, then eventually remaking himself as a conductor, teacher and performer. The difficulty he faced almost sunk him — he considered suicide — but he emerged stronger as a result. 

“Time and again, I would look at my life and marvel that so many wonderful things had happened that never would have happened if my hand had not been struck down,” Fleisher wrote in his memoir Nine Lives. “I couldn’t imagine my life without conducting. I couldn’t imagine life without teaching so intensely.” 

Curiously enough, Fleisher’s obituary shared the page with that of another artist and master of reinvention. The film director Alan Parker directed several movies I’ve loved, such as “Fame” and “The Commitments,” movies that, until reading his obituary, I wasn’t even aware were his. Like Fleisher, Parker took risks, made changes, didn’t find a safe path and follow it but continued to learn and grow.

Two men, two creative careers, but one lesson (at least for me): Whatever you do, they say, don’t get stuck. 

Precious Moments

Precious Moments

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It’s easy to feel a failure at meditation, although I believe failure is a concept frowned upon in meditative circles. But despite the wandering mind I must constantly try to rein in during my brief sessions on Headspace, I stepped outside today to pick up the newspaper and felt a thrill just to be alive.

The sun was shining, I could walk barefoot to the street — the moment was perfect for celebrating the importance of all moments.

And as if to underline this view, as I write this post the hummingbird, elusive this year, seems finally to have decided our nectar is worth sipping. Already I’ve seen her make several passes at the feeder, dipping as well into the New Guinea impatiens, her needle-like bill stabbing the flowers with surgical precision.

A summer moment. A precious moment. Precious as all moments are.

The Miniaturist

The Miniaturist

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Today, Virginia enters “Phase 3,” which means that pools open, gyms can operate at 75-percent capacity and gatherings of 250 may be held.  But for many of us, I suspect, life will continue on its oh-so-different track.

Book group tonight will still be virtual. Going for groceries will remain my only weekly outside-the-house errand. Working-from-home has become routine, as have my take-a-quick-break strolls around the backyard.

It was on one of those yesterday that it dawned on me that this new life is making me a miniaturist. Not someone who builds tiny dollhouses or paints illuminated manuscripts, as tempting as those occupations might be, but “miniaturist” in the sense of paying attention to small things.

I notice the gall on the poplar and the chicory that has sprung up by the fence. Those parts of the yard that I seldom used to enter have become my secondary landscape, the place I go to make the world go away. And there is beauty in the small and quiet, the “violet by the mossy stone, half hidden from the eye.” 

A Clutch of Keys

A Clutch of Keys

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From a neighbor, we’ve received a windfall of dubious utility and uncertain origin: a clutch of keys — if that’s the best collective noun to use for them.

Some are for doors, some are for clocks. All are antiques. They hail from an era when keys were king. No plastic card, no fob, no key code. These are the real thing, known as bit or barrel keys, Wikipedia informs me. They’re the kind of keys that belong on a big ring, the kind of keys zealously guarded by housekeepers or superintendents.

Before I began this blog I would not have photographed these keys sitting on the counter. They would have been just another pile of stuff. But now I see the illustrative potential of things, find myself stopping to admire the kooky wall art in the lobby of my building (see yesterday’s illustration) or to snap picture of leaf shadows on siding.

It’s a new way of seeing … and yesterday, I saw these keys.

Virtual Vacation

Virtual Vacation

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Time for a virtual vacation. Today I’m heading to Florida, where I go every summer to walk the beach, inhale the sea air, and watch dune grass swaying in the breeze.

I’m thinking about how sultry it is there, and how I always intend to do more writing than I actually do — but how it works out anyway. Because the trip is always an inspiration and a restorative, much longed for, much appreciated.

It’s still months away but already I can feel a warm breeze on my face and the fine white sand between my toes. One of the best things about a virtual vacation is that it can happen whenever you want it to! And for me, it’s happening … right … now.