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Cherry Blossoms!

Cherry Blossoms!

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It was the end of a long day, a long week — and it was a long walk, too. But I left the office yesterday a little before 5, cruised through Judiciary Square, the Penn Quarter and onto the Mall. By that point the mood was decidedly celebratory.

And even though I said I wouldn’t do it again, I walked all the way around the pink-petal-rimmed Tidal Basin, joining the throngs on one of the first warm days in the nation’s capital.

It’s worth noting that unless you want to rent a paddle boat, strolling is the only way to see the cherry trees in their glory.

So I did. As did everyone else.  Babies in prams, bikers in spandex, bureaucrats in blazers — we were
all ambling for one purpose: to see the cherries in peak bloom and welcome the
spring.

It has been such a hard winter … but now it’s over.

Hallelujah!

Big Blue

Big Blue

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This is not a sports blog, of course, but I must say a few words about the University of Kentucky men’s basketball team. They lost last night 54-60 to the University of Connecticut Huskies in the NCAA final.

The team’s energy felt different right from the opening buzzer. Key players seemed off, were in and out of the game. Free throws missed as often as they hit. The Cats had finally met a team that closed as strong as they do. Stronger, in fact.

If this was a decade ago, we’d be shaking our heads at what they could do next year, this young, freshmen team. But this group is a one-year wonder. Most of them will be gone next year, in the NBA, most probably.

It’s hard to say that “one and done” is a failure when this team made it to the finals. But it’s not the kind of basketball I grew up with.

Still, I have to say it one more time: Go, Big Blue!


(A UK dormitory building snapped from the UK Library.)

The Sound of Engines

The Sound of Engines

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My suburb is quiet, given its proximity to a major international airport. But when a wild wind barrels in from the west, planes are routed over the house and the sound of jet engines fills the sky. The harder the wind blows, the more planes there seem to be. Just the opposite of what one would like, of course.

Last night the airliners seemed to be using Folkstone Drive as a runway and skimming the tops of the tall oaks. The fact that I was dodging limbs and crunching over downed tree branches on the drive home only heightened this impression. I was glad to pull into the garage.

But this morning the wind still roars and the planes still circle. Winter is back, and it wants us to know it.

West Wind

West Wind

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Any walker will tell you which way the wind blows. Whether it roars in from the west or brushes up from the south, all soft and warm. 

Often it makes the difference: How long I walk or how far.

On a route I’m getting to know here in Lexington, the west wind smacks me in the face every time I turn a corner. I know my directions here, so that helps. But I think I would know the west wind anywhere. It is not timid or subtle. It takes my breath away.

But oh, the joy of having it at my back. It pushes me all the way home.

Old Vine

Old Vine

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Lexington is an insider’s town. The one-way streets, the unmarked country lanes, the walled gardens — they come from long knowledge.

I noticed this yesterday as I was driving a route I hadn’t driven in years and on a hunch found the way to Old Vine. Not new Vine, the yin to Main Street’s yang, but Old Vine, which veers off its namesake at an improbable angle.

Inner cheers when I found this shortcut. The raised fist of victory. But I knew it wasn’t my superb navigational powers that led the way. It wasn’t a hunch as much as it was a long-buried map of the city that I carry around inside me.

I found Old Vine because I grew up here.

This Other Life

This Other Life

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The flight left at 5:30, which seems insanely early even for an airplane, creature of the sky that it is. But powered by humans, of course, humans who must sleep.

Still, it did leave and it did arrive, and before 9 a.m. I was already where it normally takes me all day to reach by car. And so into my life the gift of time has fallen.

What have I done with it so far?

I’ve written, read and snapped some photos. I’ve looked at snow on mountaintops and marveled at the thin pink line where earth meets sky.

I’ve seen my hometown from the air — there’s Keeneland Race Track on the right.

I’ve slipped quietly into this other life.

Company Town: Closed

Company Town: Closed

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Living in a company town produces some funny situations. Like today. The federal government is closed and so is my university. No complaints there, although deadlines being deadlines, I’ll be working anyway.

The funny thing is the unanimity of opinion. And the reliance on experts, in this case meteorologists. There’s not a flake of snow flying but we’re all hunkered down. The reason, of course, is traffic. In the last few years late-breaking snow storms have produced jams of biblical proportions, people arriving home seven, eight hours after they left for what they thought would be an hour-long commute.

So we’re taking no chances. We’re playing it safe. We’re grinding the wheels of government and commerce to a halt. We’re calling it a snow day.

Now all we need is the snow!

Keeneland

Keeneland

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Walking the roads and paths of this suburban land, I think often about belonging, about whether I do or do not. At this point, it’s a moot point. I belong, whether I “belong” or not! Our children have grown up here; this is their “hometown.”

But still, I often compare the way I feel about my home in northern Virginia with the way I feel about my hometown of Lexington, Kentucky. No matter how many walks I take, shortcuts I learn or people I know — this place will never be that place, the place where I grew up, where I first came alive to the world.

On Monday, the last day of a week-long trip to Kentucky, I spent a few minutes snapping photos at Keeneland. I remember going to this gem of a racetrack as a little girl, smelling the beer-and-cigar-laced air of the cool, dark area under the grandstand, watching the jockeys mount their horses in the paddock, joining the throngs screaming at the rail as a 99-1 shot pulled off the impossible.

Seeing it alone, in midwinter, stripped of the crowds and the thoroughbreds that bring it life could have been a melancholy experience. But it wasn’t. I have Keeneland right where I need it to be; it’s part of me now.  

Old Guard

Old Guard

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The Bluegrass region of Kentucky is a natural savannah land, and trees here are in short supply. The old oaks, the ones that have been here 100 years or more, are gnarled and magnificent.

They stand sentinel in fields. They rise handily above young maples or pines. 

Because trees are scarce here, I notice them more. To come upon one now is to see what a tree can be.

Needlework

Needlework

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The other day I sat in on a preview of a Supreme Court oral argument, a job perk as unique as the program it represents. I’m bound by confidentiality to say nothing of what I heard — but that’s not what I want to write about anyway.

I want to write about needlework. I want to write about the woman who sat beside me for two hours, and as complex legal arguments flew across the room — a room designed to look exactly
like the real Supreme Court, right down to the color of the drapes, the
style of the clock and the pattern of the carpet — her fingers flew, too.

She was knitting a sweater of warm burgundy wool, cable stitch. And every time my eyes would glaze over with strategies and counter-strategies, I would glance down at her hands, the surety of every knit and perl. I watched the sweater as it grew. Work of the hands, not of the head.

It was precious time for the petitioner, taking his strategies out for a test drive just days before facing the black-robed justices themselves. But it was precious time for the knitter, too, for the sweater that advanced several rows that morning — and for the person who will be wearing it soon.