The Summer Book

The Summer Book

Comments 0 Comment

I picked up Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book because it showed up in a list of books that feature grandparents. There are precious few of these, I’ve noticed. 

Jansson’s Grandmother (she’s given no other name) is crotchety and wise and foolish and loving. She smokes cigarettes and breaks into a neighbor’s house. No cookie-baking for this grandma. She’s a renegade. But she also understands her granddaughter Sophia, pushes her and puts her in situations where she is bound to succeed. 

Grandmother also levels with herself and with others (when she’s not lying, that is). Here she is after the break-in: 

“My dear child,” said Grandmother impatiently [to Sophia], “every human being has to make his own mistakes.” … Sometimes people never saw things clearly until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to start again. Or else they forgot their idea along the way and didn’t even realize that they had forgotten.”

That’s the kind of gem Jansson strews about for us through the pages of this slim and lovely book, all of it amidst a natural world (an island in the Gulf of Finland) that is as beautiful as it is dangerous. 

Seasonal Migration

Seasonal Migration

Comments 0 Comment

It’s time for the annual migration. I’m not talking about birds flying south for the winter but of the seasonal switch from shorts and t-shirts to tights and sweaters. 

One thing struck me yesterday as I laundered and folded and ran up and down the stairs carrying warm clothes up and cool clothes down. It was that many of these clothes would be better off going not up or down but out of the house entirely.

How many sweaters and shirts and scarves do I hang onto because I love the person who gave them to me? The answer is … many! 

Yesterday I told myself once again that I need to stop hanging onto these duds. It’s one thing to have papers and books and knick-knacks you cannot bear to part with … but to have clothes that are this way, too, is far more inconvenient. What’s required is a certain ruthlessness. I’m awaiting its arrival. 

A Patch of Blue

A Patch of Blue

Comments 0 Comment

It’s easy to be morose when the great trees fall, as indeed they have done, over and over and over again. 

But when they come down, they free up a spot of sky. 

I snapped this shot yesterday, returning from a walk in what I’ve now come to think of as tree-falling weather: rain-saturated ground with a stiff wind from the west. 

This empty sky used to be filled with a tall tree. Not it’s open, free, giving us all a patch of blue.*

(*Writing this reminds me of the lovely film by that name, a 1965 flick staring Sidney Poitier and Shelley Winters. One worth watching.)

Unsettling

Unsettling

Comments 0 Comment

I write this only minutes after learning that the president has tested positive for coronavirus, as a year we thought could not be more unsettling has suddenly become more so. 

I look back to my earliest posts on the new order and think about how much has changed since then: our notions of disease and contagion, the reality of remote work, the way this virus has infiltrated almost every aspect of our lives from how we shop to how often we see our dearest family and friends.

And now this. 

Is there anyone who has not suffered from the disease and the social and economic havoc it has caused? Some, of course, so much more than others. A prayer and a hope today for our country, that it emerge from this stronger, healthier and more civil. 

New Month

New Month

Comments 0 Comment

The witch hazel tree, first to bloom, is also the first to turn. But this year, other trees are following suit. Cold evenings have also tinged the maples and oaks. 

In the garden, the weeds I haven’t pulled are thinning and retreating on their own. Summer is giving up the ghost.

It’s a new month, an autumnal month. And months matter more in this time of few markers. 

Sleepless in America

Sleepless in America

Comments 0 Comment

It was raining last night, hard at times. It pounded the roof and formed a curtain of sound between the house and the world. It seemed to be washing away all that had come before, including the presidential debate we had just watched.

I thought it would be difficult to sleep, but exhaustion and the sound of rain on the roof carried me away for five hours, when I awoke chest pounding, thoughts ricocheting. No need to go into those; let’s just say they weren’t pretty. 

But there was one consolation: Last night, I imagine, I was not alone. I can only assume there were legions of us tossing and turning. Last night, I suspect, it was the exception rather than the rule to be sleepless in America. 

The Raven’s Debut

The Raven’s Debut

Comments 0 Comment

Last night I caught most of “You Can’t Take it With You,” Frank Capra’s 1938 film staring James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Basil Rathbone and … Jimmy the raven. It was first of many appearances for Jimmy in Capra films, most notably (at least for me) in It’s a Wonderful Life. 

I’m not a Capra expert, but I certainly picked up on themes I’ve known from his other films — the little people against the big people, the importance of friendship, the corrupting influence of money, and the dearness of animals. 

In this film Jimmy the raven helps make fireworks (don’t ask) and a small kitten sits charmingly atop a sheaf of papers that one of the characters is typing up for a book. She decided to become a writer when a typewriter was accidentally delivered to their house. Perhaps as good a reason as any to take up the profession.

Whether it was the writing, the raven or the sheer zaniness of the plot, the film left me light-hearted. Not a bad way to end the day.  

A Post at Midday

A Post at Midday

Comments 0 Comment

While I would like to bookend last evening’s “A Post at Sundown” with “A Post at Sunrise,” alas it is far too late for that. Perhaps “A Post at Midday.” 

Which gets to one of my favorite topics, which is time: the numerous time zones in which we live — not just around the world but within individual lives. To the young, days and weeks pass oh so slowly. To those of us who have a few more years under our belts, they fly. 

And nowhere does this reveal itself more clearly than with the arrival of a new generation. To a grandparent, the changes a baby undergoes during those first precious weeks and months, from a completely helpless newborn with wise eyes that seem to carry within them the wisdom of the ages to a smiley six-week-old are doubly amazing. Miraculous in and of themselves — and more so for us, because the transformation occurs at warp speed. 

With change happening this quickly, no wonder A Post at Sunrise becomes … A Post at Midday.

 

A Post at Sundown

A Post at Sundown

Comments 0 Comment

It’s past six on a Sunday evening, late enough that if I hadn’t written a blog post I would just skip it for the day. But not this Sunday — or any of the 51 others we’ve had this year.

That’s because about this time in 2019, I realized that if I wrote a post every day, I might hit the 3,000-mark at about the same time as this blog’s 10-year anniversary in February. I figured that if I could write five or six posts a week I could probably write seven. And so I did.

I didn’t quite make 3,000 posts by the 10-year mark, though I was close. But as it turns out, I’ve kept up the daily blog-writing routine for more than 365 days now. Come October 1,  I’ll start giving myself an occasional pass on a Saturday or Sunday.

It’s all rather silly, I know — a resolution I didn’t have to make for a blog I don’t have to write. But that’s the fun of it.

Metronomic

Metronomic

Comments 0 Comment

Today I was idling at an intersection, turn signal on, when I noticed how the tick-tick of the signal was in perfect sync with the meter of the Bach on the radio. I enjoyed the music even more with the pulse of 4/4 time reinforced in the car.  

My days of musical study are long since over, but I still find myself tapping out beats. If it’s not convenient to nod my head or tap my fingers, I move my toes quietly inside my shoes, as we were taught to do long ago in orchestra class. 

What strikes me then, and still seems true now, is how we live in rhythms of our own making and how music merely makes us aware of that lovely fact. It’s the rhythm of life — and it’s ours for the tapping.