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Joint Praise

Joint Praise

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Watching Tom recover (and nicely!) from knee replacement surgery makes me appreciate my own joints even more. That doctors can go in there, take out the diseased cartilage and bone and create a new knee (or shoulder or hip) from metal and plastic is amazing enough. But the originals are even more miraculous. 

Our joints are mechanical marvels that we take for granted every day. The range of motion, the strength and durability … I will never look at going up and down the stairs quite the same way again. 
While I seem to spend an increasing amount of time keeping my birth joints in working order, I have renewed incentive to continue and increase this practice. Not because I don’t admire the bionic versions, but because I’d just as soon keep the slightly creaky but still-so-serviceable ones I have. 

(Image: Wikipedia)
Night Walk

Night Walk

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I took a flash light but didn’t use it, because although it was dark, the clouds were illuminated in a strange sort of way, not glowing from within but lighter than they should have been at that time of night. 

It was a type of afterglow, but of sunlight rather than sunset. Clouds that had wandered into the evening sky and forgotten to dim their brights; clouds that almost looked fake, as if they were painted for the set of a high school musical. 

Walking home under the vault of heaven, staring at those clouds, I thought about how we so often forget that which is above us. It’s easy to do once inside, with our house pleasures and chores, with our television and computer screens, with the light they emit, the stories they tell. 

But all along, the night sky is out there, an abundance we ignore, perhaps because we must. Like all the seeds that never sprout, like all the words we never say. 
The Walking Wait

The Walking Wait

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I thought I had prepared well for yesterday. I would be waiting most of the day in a surgical center, so I packed a light jacket, took plenty of books and settled in for the duration. 

The surgical center had other ideas. I wasn’t allowed to stay there, due to Covid restrictions. I would be on my own all day in Bethesda, but of course wouldn’t want to be sitting inside anywhere. 

It was on the way back to the parking garage to figure out a new plan that I saw the sign: Capital Crescent Trail. This rails-to-trails path runs from Chevy Chase through Bethesda down to Georgetown. It is shady most of the way, with a great vaulting canopy of mixed hardwoods to cool and refresh the walkers and bikers that use it.  
I couldn’t believe my luck. This time, the wait wouldn’t be sitting in a sterile waiting room. It would be outside under the sky and clouds. I started off slowly, having already taken a fast walk earlier in the say. But with hours to kill before returning I could wander as far down the path as I chose. 
I didn’t turn around till Georgetown, almost to the C&O Canal towpath. I passed the Bethesda Pool, the Loughborough Mill and the dim spooky confines of the Delacarlia Tunnel (more on that in a separate post). It was a discovery-filled morning, a long, stretch-the-legs walk … and the perfect way to pass the time and still be close by. My prescription for waiting: whenever possible, take a walk. 
Back to Browsing

Back to Browsing

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Returns still go in the chute, and holds can still be delivered to an outside table in a plastic bag. But for the bold and restless, you can also now enter the Fairfax County Public Library branches in person. I took the plunge … and I’m so glad I did.

Though it was almost eerily quiet, it wasn’t like being in an empty restaurant, a place you expect to be lively and people-filled. The communion we have with the printed page is silent anyway.
I’d forgotten how much I enjoy finding the books I read in tangible form — not clicking to retrieve them on a screen or downloading them in an audio file. But browsing, tilting my head to read the titles, scanning up and down the shelves. Seeking and finding.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of picking Susan Orlean’s The Library Book because there it was in the “New Nonfiction” section and Anne Tyler’s Clock Dance because I was over in the “S”s anyway, looking for Stegner’s Crossing to Safety and her book was in the “T”s. It was the great pleasure of serendipity, of finding a book I wasn’t looking for but that was waiting for me all the same. 
The Competitors

The Competitors

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Here in the outdoor office, where I just completed several major tasks and am taking a brief breather before starting another, I often find my eyes wandering to the hummingbird feeder. 

After a dry spell earlier in the summer, the tiny birds are at it again, zooming in for a drink and battling off competitors with fierce territoriality.
The hummingbirds may not realize how much competition they have. They may not always notice the ants, bees and wasps, even the errant spider or two, which as far as I can tell are siphoning off more of the nectar than any rogue birds. 
But I’ll just ignore that for now. If it’s OK with the hummingbirds, it’s OK with me. 
The Beach, Again

The Beach, Again

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Being back at the beach always comes as a shock. I know that this world continues to exist when I’m not here. Its rhythms free for the taking, its palms swaying in the breeze whether I’m here to see them or not. 

But the year is long between visits, and sometimes it seems like a mirage. Oh, no, though. It is still here, with all its differences and beauties. 

It’s so lovely to be at the beach again. 

Lazy, Hazy, Crazy

Lazy, Hazy, Crazy

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“Bring back those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer,” went the old Nat King Cole song, which I just learned from Wikipedia was originally a German tune.  It’s one of those ditties that once stuck in your brain remains there, so I will not link to it.

The song has been in my mind these last few days as we enter full-on summer, with temperatures in the 90s and rising humidity. It is, without a doubt, my favorite time of year. And now that I’m working at home I’m able to be out in it most of the day.

Besides avoiding a long and often-arduous commute, being outside this summer is my favorite part of the new arrangement. To be a part of the scene — part of the whole buzzing, bird-chirping, lawnmower’ing, afternoon-thunderstorm’ing package — is as close to mindfulness as I can get.

Melody

Melody

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What a day —  family gathering, bright skies, air that feels like no air so lightly does it lie upon the skin, and,  this morning, the picture-perfect docking of the SpaceX Dragon capsule with the International Space Station.

As I conclude another trip around the sun, I think about what lessons, if any, the past year has held. One big one is this — that we choose what to focus on, what to believe. So today I concentrate on the miracle happening above us rather than mess down here below.

As I write these words a breeze stirs the wind chimes. It’s the happy key of D Major. A melody of one year ending and another just begun.

On Memorial Day

On Memorial Day

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On this Memorial Day, I’ll find time to be grateful for all who gave their lives so we might be free. I’ll listen to a patriotic song or two, and hang my little American flag out by the mailbox.

I’ll think, too, about the almost 100,000 Americans who’ve lost their lives to Covid-19, the 245,000 who’ve succumbed to the disease in other countries, and all those who grieve for them.

But mostly my thoughts will flow to the hillside in Kentucky where my parents lie. It’s a sunny peaceful spot.

Rest in peace, Mom and Dad.

Dropping In

Dropping In

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Yesterday my brother Drew surprised us by stopping by the house on his way home from an appointment. We chatted, nibbled on cookies and caught up. It turned an otherwise ordinary evening into a delight.

First, there is the wonderful reality that he now lives close enough to do such a thing. But more than that, I realized how much I relish a custom that has vanished to the extent that even its replacement (calling someone on the phone without texting them first) is on the way out.

In the old days, dropping in was how you stayed in touch, the original face time. As someone on the shy/introverted end of the sociability scale, this sometimes gave me fits. I once lived in a mountaintop community where people not only dropped by but walked right into your house unannounced. While that was taking things a bit too far, I’d rather have that than no dropping in at all.

(One home I dropped in on a few years ago.)