Shank’s Mare

Shank’s Mare

Comments 0 Comment

Today, my feet are in the suburbs but my soul is in the city. I’m missing New York City in many ways, especially in this one: walking there is purposeful. It’s about getting where you need to be, not taking 10,000 steps.

You don’t bother with the subway if you’re just hopping 20 blocks. Taxis are harder to come by than they used to be, and on Thursday night, Uber was asking $120 to take you from the Upper West Side to the Lower East Side. Yes, they are on opposite sides of the island, but come on!

Which brings us to shank’s mare, that most dependable mode of transportation. It might be hot and it might take a minute, but walking will get you where you need to be.

Yes, I rhapsodize about the practice of walking. It calms and inspires me on a daily basis. So much so that it’s easy to forget its original purpose, which is to get us from one place to another. In New York City, you don’t forget.

A Symphony

A Symphony

Comments 0 Comment

If walking in the suburbs is a sonata, walking in the city is a symphony. It is the cued entrance of  countless well-tuned players, the trilling of a piccolo, the thrum of a timpani. It is pedestrians striding through the square and construction workers in hard hats taking a break. 

It’s a stroll on the High Line and a view of lower Manhattan from Little Island, the city’s newest park. 

It’s meandering through the West Village, down Bedford and Barrow, past the Cherry Lane Theater and on to Bleecker, where I’ll grab a Napoleon and watch ten white-habited monks who’ve come from Our Lady of Pompeii to buy some cannolis. 

It’s the plume of a fountain in Washington Square Park and the chess players and weed hawkers and pickup jazz bands that gather nearby.

It’s a trip to the Strand Bookstore (still there!) on the way uptown, then dinner at a hundred-plus-year-old bar and grill.

Four movements, none of them replicable. A city walk. A symphony. 

Exhaling…

Exhaling…

Comments 0 Comment

During the depths of the shutdown, as I wondered if life would ever be back to normal, I thought often of New York City. I had seen photos of empty streets, unpeopled sidewalks. I wondered if the city would ever be bustling again. I could take emptiness elsewhere — but not here.

Yesterday, as we drove through the Lincoln Tunnel, I held my breath. Would the city be … the city? Or would it look like parts of Portland and Seattle — other metropolises I’ve visited recently that were still shadows of their former selves?

The answer, at least so far, is no. Pedestrians strode down 34th Street, idled at corners staring at their phones, scampered under the omnipresent scaffolding. Delivery women pulled huge handcarts piled high with boxes, the NYC version of the Amazon Prime van that careens down our street at all hours. 

And on the Lower East Side, our destination for the evening, the pierced and tattooed ones sallied forth into the night wearing every crazy outfit you could imagine. 

I could finally exhale. 

The City Itself

The City Itself

Comments 0 Comment

Today my brother, sister and I head north to the city, not Baltimore or Philadelphia, which are north of here too, but the city, which to me will always be New York City, where three of the four of us once lived.

The occasion is a birthday celebration, but do you need a reason to visit New York? 

Or, is the reason … simply the city itself? 

Tales to Tell

Tales to Tell

Comments 0 Comment

For the last few months I’ve been slowly moving books into the spare bedroom I now call my office. It was my office once, long ago, when I was a full-time freelance writer and two of our daughters still bunked together in the room across the hall.  

But since then it has been Claire’s room, from the time she was a grade-schooler with hermit crabs and hamsters (including one who miraculously gave birth two days after we brought “him” home from the pet store) to a teenager with walls covered by photos of the band Green Day.  

The door to this room has been slammed shut so many times that it barely closes. But it does close, and that is important. 

For now, I sit here in hard-earned quiet, thinking about the journey it took to reclaim this room — not just the painting and decluttering but the long journey from moving out to finally moving back in. 

This room has tales to tell. 

Tuesday Already?

Tuesday Already?

Comments 0 Comment

I’m only two months into this new phase of life, taking a measure of its contours, trying to figure out if time will pass more quickly now that I have a slightly less crammed-full schedule or if it will slow down instead. 

I’m hoping for the latter. Which is a good sign, I guess. One wouldn’t want to slow time down if time were hanging too heavily on one’s hands.

But what if the opposite is true? What if the days and weeks are still winging by? What if the chunks of free time are still not roomy enough? Am I being greedy? Am I asking for the impossible? After all, I’m not 11 years old and on summer vacation. 

Patience, I tell myself. The long afternoons are on their way. Just not yet. 

Eat Your Greens

Eat Your Greens

Comments 0 Comment

The parakeets consume mostly seed (and a prodigious amount of it, too, I might), but every so often I dig up some dandelion greens for them.  The plants are pesticide-free and full of nutrition. 

Interestingly, though, when I’m actually looking for weeds, I have trouble finding them. Or I should say, when I’m looking for dandelion greens I have trouble finding them. They’re increasingly pushed out by the Japanese stiltgrass. 

Ah yes, it’s a battle of the weeds in our yard, with the much-preferred dandelions on the losing end of the scale. Which means that when I do score a clump of them, Alfie and Bart tuck in with all the ardor those little beaks can muster. 

In my more earnest moments, I think the birds have the right idea: eating seeds and greens — and singing their hearts out the rest of the time. 

Pause, Reflect, Enjoy

Pause, Reflect, Enjoy

Comments 0 Comment

For a day that will end with the splashing of light across a night sky, that would if I were close enough to it, also include loud pops and bangs (but which will not since I’ll be viewing the fireworks from a ridge across the Potomac) … it is starting out calmly and quietly.

Bluebirds have been flitting between the neighbor’s yard and ours, their cerulean wings flashing out against the green grass of the yard, which backgrounds the birds when they perch on the chicken wire that now encloses the garden.

The deck, cleaned of the dried bamboo fronds that usually litter it this time of year, is blown clean and fresh. The air is cool, not yet humid.

It is a lovely, calm Sunday morning, a time to pause, reflect and enjoy.

Welcome, July!

Welcome, July!

Comments 0 Comment

July has started off with a bang, which suits this month of blistering heat, fireworks and frequent performances of the 1812 Overture. 

Last night stormy weather moved in. While it drenched us, it downed trees and may have even spawned a small tornado closer into town. (And it happened almost nine years to the day from when a powerful derecho storm blew in, leaving almost three million without power.)

Today’s morning-after is much less significant, though one daughter still has no power at her house, and a downed tree crushed one neighbor’s porch and crashed through the windshield of another neighbor’s car. 

But here in the outer ‘burbs (touch wood), the lights are on, the air conditioner is humming and I just sent off my first (in a long time) freelance assignment. 

Time for a nap? It’s tempting!

The Bunny

The Bunny

Comments 0 Comment

I’d heard a bunny had been spotted, a creature new to these parts, but until last Saturday I had yet to lay my eyes on him. I was mulching the knockout rose and digging up day lilies when I caught his slight movements from the corner of my eye. 

The rabbit was about eight inches long, with perfectly upright ears that perked up at the slightest noise and strong little jaws that would, if they could, eat all the flowers we’ve fenced off from the deer. At the time, though, he was only nibbling harmlessly at the weedy grass on the garden’s border.  

I watched him for several long minutes, pondering the nature of cuteness, how much of it has to do with the size, shape, fluffiness and configuration of the tail — long and thin (rats) creepy; puffy and white (bunnies) adorable. 

Though we have squirrels, chipmunks, deer and even the occasional raccoon and skunk in these parts, rabbits are rare. Which gives them a luster — and a free pass — that other creatures lack.

Were the bunny to procreate, though (which bunnies are wont to do), he might lose a lot of his charm.