Goin’ to the Chapel

Goin’ to the Chapel

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My niece is getting married today, so the family is gathering at an inn on the Chesapeake Bay for the ceremony and reception. I had a sneak preview of the spot at the rehearsal dinner last night. It’s right on the water, with gulls and boats and waves. Though less than two hours from home, it’s another world.

For the most part, my tenure as an aunt has coincided with my tenure as a mother. I had little time to relish the role in and of itself. But I felt a trace of pure “aunt-ness” yesterday … with the promise of more to come today.

It’s the same kind of love and pride you feel with your own children, just one layer removed. And, because there is more distance, there is also more perspective. At a wedding, especially, where I’ll have to do no more than a reading during the ceremony and the rest of the time enjoy myself. 

It brings back memories of almost exactly four years ago, when we turned our back yard into a wedding venue for Suzanne and Appolinaire. Weddings are like that, I think. They carry within them memories of nuptials past. 

Better Late …

Better Late …

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Most of the crepe myrtles in the neighborhood have long since bloomed and faded. The rose and magenta shades have faded to a translucent brown, the petals have dried and fallen.

But for some reason, the lavender-hued crepe myrtle in the front yard always begins and ends its blooming late in the season. Which means that instead of late-summer color, there’s early-fall color. 

I’ve meant to snap a photo against blue skies and puffy clouds. But those days came and went. Instead, yesterday’s rains have weighted the stems and leaves enough that they’re hanging their heads for a closeup.  I snapped a shot of their muted blossoms in between the showers. 

Simplicity

Simplicity

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I learned from the Writer’s Almanac  that today is the birthday of the poet Mary Oliver, who lived from 1935 to 2019. I discovered her only years before her passing, reading her prose before her poetry. But it poetry that she was known for and poetry that won her the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. 

Today’s entry includes a few words from Oliver about what she needed, which wasn’t much:

“I’ve always wanted to write poems and nothing else. There were times over the years when life was not easy, but when you can work a few hours a day and you’ve got a good book to read and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you’re okay.”

I will hold onto that simplicity today. 

Six Months

Six Months

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I snapped this photo of an empty movie theater after watching a film during Oscar season last winter. I didn’t know then that it would be my last visit to a theater in a very long time. 

A lapse in theater-going is only the tip of the pandemic iceberg, of course. It dawned on me yesterday that today would mark six months since I last worked in my office. I had a conference elsewhere that week, so I put in a full day in the office on March 9 and attended a conference downtown March 10-12. 

Everything changed on March 13. Shutdown orders were flying, quarantines were closing in. I managed to squeak in some errands, and even went to church that Sunday, March 15. But after that, I climbed inside and closed the hatch. Millions of others did the same. 

And where are we now? There have been almost 6.5 million cases in the U.S. alone, and almost 190,000 deaths. Global cases are topping out at 27,615, 676, and the numbers are on the increase in most parts of the world. 

Someday we will better understand this disease, someday we will have a vaccine for it. But until then, we isolate, mask and clean. It’s a new world — and we’re six months into it. 

All Dressed Up…

All Dressed Up…

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It’s the day after Labor Day, a momentous occasion that used to strike fear and excitement in the hearts of my children and all the kiddos in this area — and equal amounts of glee and relief for their parents. 

It was a day marked with the arrival of the big yellow buses lumbering down the street and stopping at the corner, where a parade of scrubbed schoolchildren with shiny new backpacks would step into them — and be whisked off to their new lives. 

That has all changed this year with the decision to hold virtual classes only in Fairfax County. There’s little glee and relief for parents, who are trying to make their children sit still for six hours of online education.  And there are no big yellow buses plying the neighborhood streets. Caption them … “all dressed up — and nowhere to go.”

Every Loop

Every Loop

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Having just completed an afghan for my first grandchild, I’m now beginning to crochet one for my second-born grandchild, due in seven weeks. It’s highly likely that the baby will be born before the blanket is completed — especially if, as seemed likely last night, I can’t even get the thing started!

I’m not what you would call a crafty person, but I believe wholeheartedly in the beauty of the homemade, in giving a child — and now a grandchild — a gift I have created with my own hands. There may be dropped stitches and other flaws, but what matters is the love worked into every loop.

This morning I decided to eschew the Youtube instructions I found last night, which got me started with a slight deviation that made me crazy, and now I’m back on track. It may not be the world’s most perfect afghan, but it will be my own — until it’s my grandchild’s, that is. 

Most of All

Most of All

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Yesterday, I read an entire book. The title isn’t important. Let’s just say it wasn’t War and Peace. But it’s worth mentioning because it’s been a while since I’ve read a book in a day, and it was satisfying in and of itself.

I must clarify that by “day” I mean 24 hours, which includes reclining in the hammock on a perfect late-summer afternoon as well as reading in the middle of the night, unable to sleep — with the latter a more common condition than the former, I’m sorry to say. But still, the words were digested, the book was read.

What this means, what I’ve known all along, is that reading is one of those things I’ll find a way to do no matter what. It’s one of the things I love to do most of all.

Lit From Within

Lit From Within

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Walking after dark, which I’m increasingly more likely to do these days, gives me the chance to observe neighborhood houses lit from within. 

I see the glow of bedroom lamps behind drawn shades, the flicker of television screens in living rooms, the laser-like beam above a desk in front of a window. 

While some families draw every blind, others leave windows open for all to see — the fishbowl approach to living. I try to give everyone their privacy, but I can’t help but notice the lights … and the lives lived within them.

(The turkey teapot is out-of-season, but it’s the best lamplight picture I can find right now.)

Public Transport

Public Transport

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My world changed dramatically on March 12, 2020, the last day I commuted into Washington, D.C. for my job. With my company having decided that the earliest we will return is January 2021, and the openness to telework after that, I think it’s fairly safe to assume that I probably won’t have to work in an office full-time again.

This is amazing in many ways, one of which is that is that I’ve gone from riding public transport three to four times a week to … not at all. And I’m not the only one. According to statistics in this morning’s Washington Post, ridership in one local transit system dropped by 95 percent. Similar shifts are happening in cities all over the country. 

I’m sorry about this, sorry because I think public transportation is the way more of us should be getting around. But I’m happy too, because my commute was a grueling, often three-hour roundtrip. I imagine I’m not alone in these mixed feelings. 

It’s only one of many challenges created by the strange new environment in which we live. Only one of many models, ways of doing things, that are crumbling, morphing, transforming, becoming a new world, seemingly overnight.

Part of the Furniture

Part of the Furniture

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Yesterday, a hummingbird dive-bombed me, flew around my head several times, then hovered right in front of me, as if to announce herself. Of course, I couldn’t get my camera ready in time to take a closeup shot (though I did snap the one above of her or one of her compatriots sipping nectar last week).

Hummingbirds aren’t the only animals who are becoming nonchalant about my presence. A six-point buck was grazing in my backyard this morning shortly after dawn. Foxes trot through the tall grass that needs mowing as if they owned the place. A few weeks ago, there was a tree frog in the wind chimes; his croaks were highly amplified.

But the birds are on a completely different scale. Because I’ve been working outside on the glass-topped table all summer they have begun to treat me like part of the furniture. They flit, they flutter, they feed. They completely ignore me. 

Because they do, I can observe their tiniest rustlings, the way a slender stem bends with their weight, or the chirps and peeps of goldfinches, cardinals and chickadees as they congregate around the feeder and gone-to-seed coneflowers. 

Amidst all this bounty, my task is simple: I sit and take it in. I am, after all, just part of the furniture.