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Usually Summer

Usually Summer

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The armchair travel of yesterday’s post has an explanation, of course. It’s almost solstice. School’s out for summer.

Once a student and teacher, always one, I guess. Or at least always attached to that kind and gentle calendar, the one that offers summer after a long year of toil.

I know that I live in a fortunate time, one in which I don’t have to work every waking minute, one in which I can expect to have some years off at the end of a long working life.

But to get there requires much shouldering to the grindstone now. Most of the time, the grindstone is cleverly disguised as a mission, a life’s work, But sometimes, it isn’t.

And when it isn’t … it’s usually summer.

Rice Paddies Gleaming

Rice Paddies Gleaming

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Yesterday was a Monday on steroids. I kept feeing all weekend as if a vacation were beginning … even though I knew one wasn’t. I came to the office and dutifully wrote, edited and interviewed. But I was longing to be away from my desk.

So for today’s post, a mental vacation, a memory. Two years ago, I was preparing for a trip to Bangladesh. It was a daunting assignment. I was interviewing dozens of people, many of them victims of human trafficking. And, to make me even more anxious, I was leading a writing workshop.

It all worked out, led to experiences and friendships I will never forget. So today, I’m thinking of Bangladesh, of the people there who have so little but give so much. Of sodden green pond banks, of rice paddies gleaming and jute drying in the sun.

Good Things Coming?

Good Things Coming?

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My punctual and reliable Arlington bus must now make a time-consuming detour to avoid construction in my work neighborhood. You can’t walk a block without hearing jack-hammers or the truck back-up sound. Amazon’s HQ2 is already making its presence known in the dusty streets, the demolition, even the scaffolding.

Having lived for five years in New York City, I consider myself a scaffolding expert. Not in the sense of knowing how to construct it, but in the sense of knowing how to walk beneath it, which used to be… gingerly.

With all due respect to Big Apple scaffolding, the Crystal City version is cleaner, sturdier — and kinder on the eyes and the feet.

In New York, I felt as if I was taking my life in my own hands to walk in a dark tunnel beneath a contraption of wood and metal. But the pedestrian walkway I take now is open and bright. It even has motivational phrases on the walls: Good Things Coming, it says.

Let’s hope.

Grateful Acceptance

Grateful Acceptance

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This ought to be an issue more than it is — accepting a Metro seat, that is. The truth is, very few are offered to me.

There are many ways to look at this. On one hand, you could say that people are selfish louts who seldom look up from their phone screens. Chivalry is not only dead, it’s frowned upon.

But the fact is, people are reluctant to give up seats not only because they enjoy sitting in them, but also because they’re unsure of the etiquette. Will a “woman of a certain age” be offended if said seat is offered? Will she take it as insult or generosity? So there’s the ambiguity issue.

But beyond that, there is, I was thinking yesterday, the acceptance issue. I often refuse the few seats offered to me. “I’ve been sitting all day,” I say. Or, “I don’t have many stops to go …” (in actuality, I get off at the end of the line).

Yesterday, however, I gratefully accepted the seat. I’d been sitting all day, so I didn’t need it. But I was glad to mute the Metro experience by sticking my nose in a book. I accepted the seat the young man (and he was a young man, with a neat haircut and wireless ear buds) generously offered. And I accepted it without hesitation. Graceful acceptance: sometimes it’s pressed upon us.

(Grabbing a seat no problem in this empty train!)

A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal

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For the last couple weeks I’ve been single-tracking it, consumed with a big project at work that is absorbing most of my waking hours. It’s still under wraps, this project, but suffice it to say that it involves some historical research, some text writing and some speech writing.

It makes me realize how fast the hours can pass when one is engaged in interesting work. But it also makes me realize how important it is to be balanced. It’s harder to think of post ideas this week, for instance. It’s harder to do my own writing.

Ideally, there would be double the amount of hours in every day. I would have the time to be as absorbed in my own work as I am in the paid stuff. It would still be exhausting, of course, but just think of how productive I could be!

Decisions, Decisions

Decisions, Decisions

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My morning commute involves driving to the Metro station, riding the train seven stops, hopping off, trudging up the escalator to an express bus that takes me to Crystal City, then walking to the office. Four segments, three types of transport, but it works. It’s a routine, something I could negotiate in my sleep — and often feel like I do.

When it’s very cold or rainy, I vary this slightly, stay on the train one more stop, then switch to another train, which also goes to Crystal City, where I can walk to within a few hundred feet of my office without going outside. This is the longer option, and it lacks the escalator walk (which has become part of my fitness routine), so I seldom take it.

This morning, though, I debated, because for once I dressed for afternoon warmth and not morning chill. When the train pulled closer to my stop, I deliberated. If I just missed a bus, I would have to wait and be cold. If I stayed on I would stay warm. What should I do? I really couldn’t decide.

At the last second, I stuffed the newspaper in my bag and jumped off the train. I’ll probably just miss the bus, I thought. But no, the bus was there. I stayed warm and got to my destination, where the time I’ve saved I’m now spending on this post.

Decisions, decisions.

Three Years

Three Years

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As if I needed another reminder of time’s quick passage, today I celebrate three years at my “new” job. Three years sitting on the fifth floor of a steel and glass building, staring out the windows but mostly staring at my screen. Three years traveling to report on stories, visiting places I never thought I’d see, meeting people around the world.

I won’t say it seems like yesterday that I began this new adventure. In many ways it seems longer (which, I guess, is a vote against time’s quick passage). But it seems longer in the way that new and familiar things often do.

Already the years are speeding up here. The time between my first few months, when I could barely tell one project from another, and this time last year seems like quite a stretch compared with the past 12 months.

On the whole, though, I’m feeling quite lucky on this three-year anniversary. I work harder than I have to, but it’s work that engages, and sometimes even inspires. Can’t ask for much more than that.

Baby Shade

Baby Shade

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As I’ve mentioned before, spring is farther along downtown and in Crystal City than where I live. Which means that when I strolled down the tree-lined stretch of Crystal Drive that leads to my office this morning, I was not seeing winter-wan trunks without a hint of green. Instead, I was walking beneath baby shade.

Baby shade comes from trees just leafing, still unsure what they’re meant to do. They are uncurling, unfurling, making themselves useful not just to the plant in general but also to the pavement below.

We on the pavement are remembering what it’s like to amble beneath a great arched umbrella of greenery: how it cools us and calms us, how it intercedes between heaven and earth.

Baby shade is wan and tentative, but it is all we have now, and it is precious in its fleetingness.

Naming Names

Naming Names

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One of the more light-hearted aspects of my work is the opportunity I occasionally have to make up names for people. The reason I do this is anything but lighthearted, though. It’s because I interview and write about people who have been trafficked and can’t reveal their true identities.

Still, this gives me a creative license typically lacking in most of my daily to-dos. This morning I’ve been reading about Cambodian names, about how family names appear first and given names second (which I knew) and how name meanings are especially prized.

So I’ve been having some fun with it. Should the lovely young woman who met her husband at a survivor’s forum be called Bopha (flowers) or Arunny (morning sun)? Should her young husband be called Narith (masculine) or Leap (luck)?

The mother’s name was easy. The smiling woman who greeted us as we pulled into the brickyard, who wiped her hand on her skirt and reached out to shake ours, she will be called Sophea (wise).

(School children in Cambodia, who shall remain nameless.)

Under Construction

Under Construction

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It didn’t take long. Just weeks after Amazon’s announcement that my work neighborhood, Crystal City (aka National Landing), would be its new HQ2, the demolition — and the detours — began.

First, my cut-through was cordoned off, which made my walk from Metro to office less diagonal and hence longer. Then one whole stretch of sidewalk was blocked, a pedestrian walk constructed in the bike lanes, and the whole lot of it painted white.

Now I wait at the light and cross to the other side of Crystal Drive so that I’m strolling on a pavement-stone sidewalk that runs alongside apartment buildings where a few brave pansies still show their yellows and purples.

This is not just a construction zone; it is the construction zone. A transformation that will continue for years, and will, I imagine, outlast my presence in these environs.

There’s a tinge of excitement in it, I’ll admit. It’s not unlike the neighborhood I grew up in, full of two- and three-bedroom bungalows being built as quickly as the hammers and saws could make them. The sound of construction, the sound of new life.