Steeped

Steeped

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Making tea this morning, I ponder the word steeped, its meaning and its sound, how the double vowel elongates the word, how saying it out loud mimics its effect. “S-t-e-e-p” — as in a hard climb or a long soak. 

What a lovely word, steeped. It speaks of richness and tang and satisfaction. It speaks of judgment. Coffee is brewed, tea is steeped. There’s a world of difference in these processes. In one it’s clear and proscribed; in the other, it’s open-ended and subject to taste. With steeping, time is part of the equation.

This morning, I feel steeped in place, which does not mean I’m gazing at a fetching vista but that I feel totally saturated with the place I am. It’s not a bad place, not at all. In fact, it’s a wonderful place, this house, so full of love and memories.

But it is, after all, only one place. And there are so many other places out there. 

 

The Soundtrack

The Soundtrack

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With slower walks closer to home, the soundtrack of the stroll grows in importance. Because as much as I would like to say that I walk in silence, the better to hear the faint voice of inspiration, I usually do not. In fact, the music often is the inspiration. At the very least, it’s the pace-setter.

Sometimes it’s Bach or Brahms or Dvorak coursing through my brain, and my cadence flows from the tempo of the movement, speedy during the prestos, slower for the adagios.  Other times, I play jazz or folk or show tunes; the latter have a lightheartedness especially appreciated these days. The soundtrack can be seasonal, too: Irish tunes are prepped and ready for next month. 

Music is a mood enhancer, amplifying good thoughts, soothing anxious ones. Often I come back in the house from an amble and keep the buds in my ears, finishing a movement or a song, prolonging the escape just a little longer. The soundtrack of the walk throws long shadows on the rest of the day.  

Getting Out

Getting Out

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It’s Saturday, time to get some food into the house. Apart from walks around the neighborhood, the last time I jumped in the car and drove away was … two weeks ago. 

Even for Pandemic Speed this is glacial. No wonder I’ve been pacing the floors on Fort Lee Street. I thought it was to stretch my legs during long work sessions. But no! I think it’s been to re-enact a more primary urge: to leave, to step out, to move from one place to another.

While some people have been hunkering down like this for months, I’ve still been going out to the grocery store and on a few other errands most weeks. And I can say that while from a germ standpoint this practice may be debatable, from a mental health standpoint it is not. 

Getting out is good for you. Which is why I plan to do it … soon.

(Sorry to say I will not be seeing this on my drive to the supermarket.) 

Bedtime Stories

Bedtime Stories

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The voice is melodious, measured, often accented. The intoned words are taking me out of myself, out of the self that tosses and turns when it awakens at 3:30 or 4:20 a.m.  They are shifting my thoughts, turning them toward the drama of others. They are reminding me that the world is large. 

In my arsenal of sleep-inducing weapons I have a new favorite: Audible. I had tried using the recorded books program to this purpose more than a year ago, when I first discovered it, but I had not yet figured out the “Sleep” feature, which allows you to set a timer for anywhere from five minutes to 120. On that occasion, I lost about 30 minutes of the book and had quite a time finding my way back to the place where I lost consciousness

But now, I can set the timer to 10 minutes, certain that, even if I do fall asleep before it runs out, I will easily find my way back. No light to flip on, no pages to fumble through. The darkness of the bedroom preserved. I can plug in, listen to, and drift off as someone reads me … a bedtime story. 

Sleet!

Sleet!

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The fluffy white stuff we were (sort of) promised yesterday has turned out to be a bunch of crunchy ice crystals instead. It’s a sleet storm, not a snow storm, that’s greeting Fairfax County this morning. 

So what to do? You can’t sled on it, can’t walk through it, can’t drive in it, can’t even admire it as it falls. 

To put on my optimistic hat (oh my, it’s getting a lot of wear these days, since I only pull it out when natural optimism fails to respond), we are not getting freezing rain, which is what pelted us all day Saturday. Sleet does not coat tree limbs and bring them down. 

Let’s praise sleet then not for what it does … but for what it fails to do. 

(A photo of what we don’t have this morning.)

Ash-Free

Ash-Free

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It’s an ash-free Ash Wednesday here. Instead of spiritual reading, I’ve been trying to change a password and perform various other online acrobatics with all the attendant trials of patience that requires. 

Perhaps there is such a thing as a prayer for online patience. There are indeed prayers for calmness in the storm and for patience in times of confusion. I don’t see exactly what I’m looking for, though, something like this:

Oh Lord, I know that in the vastness of your creation there are answers to the technological problems that beset me. Fill me with calmness and understanding as I yet again attempt to _____(change my password/check on my order/request information/insert need here). I know that these bits and bytes are but a small part of the marvelous world we inhabit. Help me to put them in perspective as I live a full and meaningful life in the real world. Amen.

Misty Morning

Misty Morning

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With all the snow, sleet and freezing rain we’ve had recently, it was a relief this morning to wake up and find … fog! And not a pea soup variety but a gentle, mysterious, romantic kind of fog that softens the landscape and turns the trees into ghostly sentinels.

Here is a form of water molecule that we can handle, one that doesn’t need to be shoveled or sprinkled with melting crystals. 

Given the Arctic cold assaulting the midsection of the country, we’re lucky today to have what we have: not hard sub-zero temps but puddles of melted ice draped with mist and brume.

Floating

Floating

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It’s President’s Day, a celebration conflation closer this year to Lincoln’s day (February 12) than to Washington’s (February 22). 

Up until last year it was a holiday on my work calendar. This year it has been nixed to give us one floating holiday, which we can use to celebrate a birthday, religious observance or whatever we want. 

I decided to take my floating holiday today, since I’d already been planning on it and since it is, for me, more of a “Beat the Winter Doldrums Day” than anything else. 

With one ice storm melting away and another gearing up for later in the week, I plan to hunker down, to read, write and organize (not too much of the latter, I bet). In other words… to float.

Seven Degrees

Seven Degrees

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If there are seven degrees of separation, then are there not seven degrees of isolation? I’m thinking about the world as we know it: working remotely, separated from friends, too cold for outside get-togethers … and now further set apart by rain, snow, sleet and an anticipated ice storm.

I suppose it’s easier in one sense. We now have multiple reasons for staying at home. But that doesn’t warm the heart when the heart is accustomed to the stimulation and richness of a life fully lived.

What is called for, I suppose, is seven degrees of patience: hoping, praying, reading, writing, baking, cleaning — and of course, dancing. You can’t forget about that last one. It’s the most important of all. 

Walk Once Taken

Walk Once Taken

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Behind our street is an alternative universe of five-acre lots. There are barns and horses and houses with names. When the girls were young I would walk them to school through that neighborhood. 

We just had to slip through the backyard across the street to access one of the trails, stay close to the fence line for a few hundred feet and then reach the road, which was only paved a few years ago.

But the neighbors whose backyard offered access have moved away. And the house closest to us in that neighborhood has just been torn down. Construction trucks come and go, and you can see through the sparse winter tree coverage how large the new house will be. 

It will be difficult for me to walk that way again, though I doubt I will stop trying.