Laundry Time

Laundry Time

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On these warm days I make the deck my home. The morning is for brain work, the afternoon for weeding, watering and, as much as I like to put it off, sometimes for laundry. 

Yesterday I sat outside while a hot wind stirred up the scent of crisp, drying dresses and t-shirts — and also provided a little screen from the late-day sun. 

Is there a scent more redolent and comforting than that of laundry detergent? I remember my friend Elaine, who lived a few doors down from us on St. Ann Drive. (No, my mother did not name me after our street; they moved there when I was 3 and she had long since named me for her mother, Ann Veronica Donnelly.)

Elaine’s mother, Mrs. Scully, had only an ancient wringer washer (the only one I’ve seen in use before or since) and therefore devoted a day to the scrubbing, rinsing, wringing and drying of clothes. I remember her in loose house dresses with stockings rolled down around her ankles. 

The Scully house was one of the few in the neighborhood to boast a basement, and you could enter it from the garage. It was always cool and smelled of Tide. Yesterday, I closed my eyes and imagined I was there. 

ISO Open Days

ISO Open Days

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For someone recently retired I haven’t exactly been twiddling my thumbs. I didn’t intend to be idle but I did expect to experience brief periods of thumb-twiddling, cloud-gazing or even some good old-fashioned afternoon ennui.

Nothing of the sort has happened. 

In part, this is because — in what seemed smart planning at the start but I now realize was the exact opposite — I spread out long-overdue appointments and errands so that no day was too full. As a result, there have been almost no days that are open enough for cloud-gazing or thumb-twiddling.

Even a planned business phone call can bisect a day, can puncture its purposelessness. This from a person who used to pride herself on how many to-dos she could pack into 24 hours. 

Lo, how the mighty have fallen.

(I borrowed this meme from a Jeff Speck newsletter.)

 

A Walking Trifecta

A Walking Trifecta

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I’m filing this under the category of “books and book reviews I wish I’d written” — a single article in yesterday’s print copy of the Washington Post that covered three books on walking — a trifecta of pleasure that has added three tomes to my must-read list.

In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration, by neuroscientist Shane O’Mara, describes the many benefits of walking, most of which I know but all of which I love hearing about again: how it helps protect heart and lungs and even builds new cells in the hippocampus.  

In First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human, paleontologist Jeremy DeSilva explains the importance of bipedalism to human exploration, how it made possible the longer legs and shoes that have taken us to colder climes and, ultimately, even the moon.

Finally, the reviewer, Sibbie O’Sullivan, discusses Healing Trees: A Pocket Guide to Forest Bathing, which explores the Japanese concept of shinrin-yoku, immersing oneself in nature:

“Every page of ‘Healing Trees’ reminds us how separated from the world, from nature, from the trees, we’ve become,” writes O’Sullivan, who injects herself beautifully into the essay by describing her own walking, falling and resultant knee surgery. “Too often we take walking for granted,” she writes, “but we shouldn’t.” 

Bare Bathroom

Bare Bathroom

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One hazard of having written almost 3,500 posts is that occasionally (only occasionally!), I repeat myself. So I’m glad I looked back in the archives for January 2020, because, sure enough, I had already written a post called “Bye Bye, Bathroom.”

As a result, this post does not share that title. But it does share that sentiment. Because, encouraged by the success of bathroom remodel number one, we are embarking on bathroom remodel number two. 

This is a trickier proposition because it includes a shower (which, unlike a tub, must be built) and because it involves bumping out an interior wall and installing a pocket door — all to gain enough precious inches to put both the toilet and the 48-inch vanity on one wall. 

Yesterday was for demolition: In the space of a few hours out went the fiberglass shower, the down-on-its-heels builder-grade vanity, and, most notably, the mirror. Without it, the bathroom looks the size it is, roughly that of a broom closet. 

But it was a room like any other in this much loved, much-lived-in house. And when I saw it last night all stripped down to its barest essentials, I have to admit … I felt a pang.

Drive to Walk

Drive to Walk

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Now that I have a little more time on my hands (emphasis on “a little” … but I’ll talk about that in another post), I often drive to walk. That’s drive to walk, not to work.

Before, I had meetings and deadlines that meant I would slip out of the house with 30 or 40 minutes only. No time for the 10-minute drive to my favorite Reston trail — only enough to get me up and down the main drag of my neighborhood.

Which is not a bad stroll. In fact, it’s still my go-to favorite, with houses and people I know and a path so familiar I could probably trudge it in my sleep.

But now I can mix it up a little, even though that means indulging in the great suburban irony — driving … to walk. 

(Bridge over Glade Creek on one of my favorite drive-to trails.)

Outside-After-Dinner

Outside-After-Dinner

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The sound of children laughing two doors down, birds rustling and roosting in the azaleas, the clatter of plates being cleared. It’s 7:30 p.m. and as bright as day. It’s outside-after-dinner. 

To a child, this is a place of its own, magical and wild, long shadows looming where there were none at noon. It’s a place where rules are bent, bedtimes extended. 

When I was a kid I’d be excused early with cookies to go, then run to meet playmates from next door and across the street. We played SPUD and Red Rover till the streetlights came on.

For my own kids, there were long evenings catching fireflies or climbing hay bales to ride the zip line from the big oak on the Riley’s side of the yard (which is still standing) to the big oak on the Voegler’s side (which is not).

Now we sit on the deck slapping at mosquitoes, putting off going inside. There are grownup tasks awaiting us — bills to pay, emails to send.  But it’s hard to abandon the soft light and the feeling we’re getting away with something. It’s hard to leave outside-after-dinner. 

Bikers and Bierstadt

Bikers and Bierstadt

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A late walk yesterday after the rain stopped. Trees still dripping, air cleansed, sun blazing bright just hours before setting.

I wasn’t the only one out and about. Neighbors were picking up their mail, stretching their legs, walking their dogs.

A bevy of bikers zoomed past, the usual Tuesday evening crowd. Except that nothing is usual anymore. I didn’t see them for a year, so spotting them again, watching them fly past (I could barely wrestle my phone from my back pocket in time to catch them) was the cherry on the sundae that was yesterday’s stroll.

As I walked back to the house, the trees were lit up like a Bierstadt painting. 

Basement-Bound?

Basement-Bound?

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On a rainy morning, my thoughts naturally turn to cleaning and tidying. Not that I’m actually doing any of that today, but I am thinking about how comforting it would be to purge a file cabinet drawer, to empty a closet, to fill a bag with old clothes stored in the basement and drive them to Goodwill.

I missed the Marie Kondo craze with its sparking of joy. Now I must go it alone, with only my own inclinations to guide me. And my own inclinations are to keep that letter, that sweater, and of course, that book.

But on rainy days, there’s at least some hope of change, some inward focus that says … get thee to the basement to sort and toss.

Growing Family

Growing Family

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At my house, the longest day passed in a blur of baby giggles, burgers and corn on the cob. Not the most elegant Father’s Day repast, but one suited to young families.

These days are golden, and when the last toy is collected and stuffed into the diaper bag, and the cars disappear down the street, I’m left marveling, as I always do, at how our family has grown.

It will always be miraculous to me, which is, I suppose, how it should be.

(The elephant ear family is growing, too.) 
Bye Bye, Brood X!

Bye Bye, Brood X!

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There’s no way of knowing who he or she will be, no way of pinpointing the last cicada in Virginia. Will it be a female dragging herself to a Kwanzan cherry tree to lay her eggs, perform her final duty. She walks so slowly up the trunk, settles herself with infinite tenderness. 

Or will it be a male, singing forlornly to the ether, no ladies left with whom to mate but warbling his most beguiling tune anyway. Beguiling to other cicadas, that is, shrill and sad to us.

The rest of their brood has been swept off of decks and stairways. Cicada carcasses have piled up at the base of crepe myrtles or road berms, marking where the insects met with predators — birds, dogs, automobiles. The tiny corpses litter the yards and driveways. 

Except for a few stowaways, Brood X is becoming a memory, a moment, a thing of the past.

And yet … even now the young are burrowing into the dark soil, tunneling down to their long sleep. In their species memory is a golden era, filled with flitting and humming and loving. They know, if they bide their time, it will come again.