A Trip to D.C.

A Trip to D.C.

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A few days ago I met a friend for lunch in D.C. I parked in the Union Station garage and made my way past the old neighborhood: New Jersey and 1st Avenue, along E Street to the National Building Museum, where I stole a glance at those stunning columns. 

From there to Chinatown, bustling again, though with way too many boarded-up stores. The restaurant we chose was still in business, though, and lively, to boot.

After that, a stroll down the Mall and over to the Botanic Garden and a cool outdoor exhibit/structure made of brush, a human-sized nest that kids were running in and out of. 

I love the views of the Capitol you get from the Garden. It humanizes and softens the building, makes it seem more a part of the landscape. Which, of course, it certainly is.

Calm after the Storm

Calm after the Storm

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We were pelted overnight by some much-needed rain. I could hear it beating the earth, could imagine it puddling on the driveway and in the low spots of the front yard. 

This morning the world looks fresh and clean. The azaleas are greening, shedding their brilliant jewel-toned flowers and becoming the sedate shrubs they are for most of the year. 

It’s a quiet, still day so far, the calm after the storm. Which at this point is … most welcome. 

Tallying…

Tallying…

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Over the weekend, a milestone: it’s been a year since I started this new life. The temptation is to tally up the “accomplishments,” to see if I’ve earned this freedom. 

But the “freedom” is already teaching me not to add up accomplishments, to see that as exactly the sort of mindset I was trying to escape. 

Instead, I’m remembering the farewell message I sent my colleagues in April of 2021. I told them that I was leaving to “write, study and travel.” And lo and behold, writing, studying and traveling is exactly what I’ve been doing. 

So the only tallying I’m doing today is … the counting of blessings. 

Double Sightings

Double Sightings

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Last evening, working in a walk when the wind had finally died down, I strolled past a woman standing by her mailbox. She looked familiar … and she was still there a few minutes later as I had turned toward home. “Do I know you?” she asked. 

In the few minutes since I’d passed her I’d figured out the connection. “I think you go to my church,” I said. And yes, that’s exactly where we had seen each other.

In a small town, you often bump into neighbors at school or at the grocery store—usually when you’ve run in grubby from gardening and hope you won’t spot a soul you know. Not so with suburban living: the population is exponentially larger but the possibilities of chance meetings infinitely smaller.  

I treasure these “double sightings.” From them grow the connections from which friendship flows. 

(Even snow people like company.)

Sky and Clouds

Sky and Clouds

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One of the more effective meditation metaphors I’ve learned is to see the calm mind as blue sky and the worries and troubles that beset us as clouds in that sky.  They come and go; they obscure our vision. But the blue sky is still there.

It reminds us that even when tranquility seems to have vanished, it actually has not. It’s there all along, and we can restore it by resting the gaze, stilling the breath, and seeing the clouds — the worries and troubles — for what they are: distractions.

This doesn’t mean I put this metaphor to practice, but it’s top-of-mind enough that when I look out my office window at thick clouds and an ever-shrinking patch of blue, I remember … and take heart. 

Mr. Basement

Mr. Basement

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The coffee table in the living room was cleared of its usual clutter in time for Easter guests and somehow still remains a blank slate. Carpets are vacuumed, and new floors gleam in the “dining room.” 

In other words, the first floor of the house is looking spiffier than usual. 

But for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And here, as soon as one floor of the house looks better, another looks worse. 

It’s a bit like Dorian Gray’s portrait in the attic, where the image of the man ages but the man himself does not. Or it could be two faces of the same person, a la Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: one industrious and law-abiding; the other … a monster. 

In my house, it’s Dr. First Floor and Mr. Basement. 

Out There

Out There

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I spent almost every minute Sunday outside: reading on the deck, bouncing on the trampoline, weeding in the yard, swinging on the hammock. 

It seemed the best way to honor the day, to be in it as much as possible. Because in this place, in this clime, spring is the season. 

Now I’m back at my desk, finishing up work for class tonight, trying to channel any intellectual energy I have to the difficult task at hand. Deconstructionism: there’s a reason why the prof saved it for last. 

But my heart is out there with the wood poppies and the lilacs, with the azaleas and the begonias, resplendent and dear. 

Orthodox Easter

Orthodox Easter

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They entered the ornate cathedrals, slogging through rubble to get there. One photograph shows a country church and a lone woman entering with a basket. Another shows a hastily assembled altar, soldiers in fatigues. 

It was Easter yesterday in Ukraine, but the shelling and the funerals continue. The message of a suffering savior and a glorious resurrection, the promise of eternal life, was delivered amidst the smoke and the terror. 

For us,  the war in Ukraine is a story we read in a newspaper, a report we watch on television. Switch off the screen, put down the paper … and it goes away.

For the brave souls in Ukraine, there is no pause, no end to the horror. For them, for now, war is life.  

The Unwritten

The Unwritten

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In a recent class on feminist literary criticism, my professor talked about the push to find overlooked female voices, the letters and journals, the stories stuffed in sewing baskets or left behind in convent cells. 

I found that exciting: the newest works of the literary canon, the books that are out there but must still be discovered, that don’t yet have a readership, a home. 

But at least these works exist in some form, ragged and hidden, inchoate and incomplete.  

What about the books that were never written, the ideas that vanished before they could be jotted down, that fell victim to the cookstove, the washtub, the cradle? How do we recover those? 

Earth Day

Earth Day

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How wise were the Earth Day founders to honor our “other mother” on this day, in this season (at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere). 

For who can ignore the earth on a day like this: just warming, just greening, filled with eye-popping color.

With tender shoots and delicate blossoms.

Still far too many of us, I’m afraid.