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Category: time

Night and Day

Night and Day

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Last night, after the kiddos were rounded up and their weary parents pulled away from the house, heading home, I noted the miracle that’s so easy to ignore this time of year, the great gift of evening daylight. 

Family activities postponed my morning walk, but there was still (barely) enough light to take a late stroll. It had been awhile since I took this walk on the downwind side of the day, and I couldn’t help but notice how different it was. 

Yellow lamplight glowed through windows. Late birds rustled in the trees. Sprinklers made that tst, tst, tst sound. I was the only walker on the road. Houses and lawns that look ordinary at 8:30 a.m. look positively fetching 12 hours later. 

With walking, as with so much else, timing is key.

Singing Chicken

Singing Chicken

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For years I stored my oldest journals in metal boxes tucked away on the highest shelf of my closet. I had to stand on a step ladder and move so much stuff out of the way to reach them that it was as if they didn’t exist. But now they’re placed spine-side-up in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet next to my desk, so they are ripe for exploration.

Before my discovery of Moleskine notebooks I gathered my thoughts in a hodgepodge of blank books bound in everything from leather to corduroy. The journals are a motley crew, but they served the purpose, which was connecting the dots, remembering, as Joan Didion wrote, “how it felt to be me.” 

Sometimes I dip into them for a fact: When exactly did I leave for that trip to Yugoslavia? How long did I work for the lovable but crazy family on West 94th Street? But I always read more than I intended. 

The other day, I discovered an encounter I had with a singing chicken. The “chicken” had been hired to serenade a friend and colleague on her birthday. My job was to meet the chicken and escort him to my friend’s desk. In his other life, the actor who took on this second job was playing Theseus in a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Or at least that’s what he told us.

You can’t make this stuff up. But, if you’re lucky, sometimes you write it down. 

Time for Talking

Time for Talking

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Thinking about time this morning, about the way it gets parceled out, about its being, in the end, the only true currency. Since time passes more quickly as we age, that should mean our wallets are slimmer, too. 

Yet mine can feel so full! Not everyday, of course, but on days I spend with dear family and friends. Maybe it’s because a good talk puts me in the eternal present, when time-passed and time-yet-to-come slip away and all that matters is the time-that-is, the words and the moment. 

Which means that having as many good talks as possible is a worthy goal. Making (yes!) time for them, enjoying them, and afterwords, savoring their insights and their joy.

The Annuals

The Annuals

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They lasted almost till Thanksgiving, but last night finished them off. I’m talking about the summer flowers, the impatiens I transplanted after a deer took them down and the begonias that took their place. 

I snapped a photo of these plants the other night, after I realized how cold it would be. I may have snapped a shot of them earlier, but I was taking no chances. I wanted to preserve their bounty in some way. 

Surely the begonias by the front door were princes of plants, their lift and height, their regal presence. And another begonia on the deck, the one pictured above, already wilting a bit, was resplendent in its youth, a gift from a green-thumbed friend, which  apparently imbibed some of her plant goodness at the start.

Annuals are the victims of seasonal change. They lack the immortality of the perennial. For that reason, they draw our attention to the fleetingness of life. And for that reason, among others, I honor them. 

Mornings at 7

Mornings at 7

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These are good days for morning people. 

No more darkness at 7 a.m., no more rolling over and drifting back to sleep, pretending it’s “still nighttime” even though a quick glance at the clock reveals that it most certainly is not.

The time change has given us back our precious early hours and we must decide what to do with them: a walk, a blog post, a head start on homework? All of these and more?

One thing is clear, though, and that’s the urgency to use these hours now, while we have them, because in a month or so, it will once again be dark at 7 a.m.

(Morning light illuminates a tributary of Little Difficult Run.)

Leaves in Balance

Leaves in Balance

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It’s warmer this morning, a beckoning kind of warmth, a come-out-and-walk-in-me warmth. I need to get up and get out in it, but first I want to write about the leaves, about how somehow, despite the three (3!) trees we lost last month there are still piles of leaves in the yard. 

I must put those leaves in perspective, though, remember the depth of them in the old days, when raking was even more daunting than it is now and my efforts were often undermined by three giggly girls jumping and playing in them. 

Now the girls are grown and the leaves are sparser, the muscles weaker, too, so perhaps it all balances out. I’d like to think it does.

Merry-Go-Round

Merry-Go-Round

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It was almost 6 p.m. when we dashed down to Frying Pan Park, less than three miles from home. There was a carnival there, and the place was swarming with kids and parents, including some very special kids and their kiddos, our children and grandchildren. We took in the big trucks and avoided the cotton candy, but what we could not miss was the carousel.

Is there a better ride in the park? I say this as a reformed roller-coaster rider, my last foray on one of those contraptions giving me a headache so powerful I thought I was having a stroke. 

But give me the merry-go-round any time, and call it a merry-go-round, too, not a carousel, because that name carries with it the madcap quality of time’s passage. Watching it last night, trying to pick out my children and grandchildren, it could have been my own girls who were squealing in delight, not their toddlers … so quickly does time pass … sometimes, it seems, even faster than the merry-go-round itself.

Late August

Late August

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It’s warm and slightly muggy today but the cicadas are quiet, the children are, too. It’s the first day of school in Fairfax County.

It’s early this year. When our children were young, they never went back until the day after Labor Day, which meant that this last week of August was the one when we’d  buy school supplies, learn about teachers and schedules, take one last trip to the pool.

It’s a desultory time, summer’s last gasp. The zinnias are leggy, the mint has bolted, and brown leaves are sifting down from the dying oak. 

How can summer be ending? There must be some mistake!

Long-Day Season

Long-Day Season

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The headline caught my eye just in time to save the page of newsprint from becoming part of the fire-starting equipment last week at the late.  “Darkness creeping in as long-day season ends,” it said. 

Apparently Saturday, August 6 was the last day we’ll have 14 hours of sunlight until May 2023. It was the end of what the article called the “brightness quarter,” the 90 or so days of “solar beneficence and dazzle” we receive every May, June and July. 

It’s also the end of long twilights and drawn-out dawns, of slower living made possible by humid air and looser schedules. You might even say it’s the end of that feeling of limitlessness and possibility that summer brings. 

But that would be a gloomy thing to write on a spectacular late-summer morning, not in keeping with the bountiful daylight we still enjoy. 

Bewilderment

Bewilderment

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A late post today since I was preoccupied earlier with errands and a birthday. It’s my middle daughter, Claire’s, special day. When I began this blog, she had just started college. Now she’s a working mother preparing to have her second child. 

While I try to make gratitude the chief emotion of each day, other feelings creep in. Today it’s bewilderment, an all-too-common response. 

How can Claire be a young mother already? How can any of my daughters be grown women with families and jobs and adult responsibilities? 

Time passes. It’s the oldest story of all — and the hardest to believe.