Slow Sunday

Slow Sunday

Comments 0 Comment

It’s already past noon, but I’m finishing up laundry and online church in hopes that the rest of the day will be slow enough to read and write and generally while away some time. My partner in crime: this hammock, which I plan to enjoy again as soon as I push “publish.”

The evolution of Sunday from a day set aside for special treatment to just another weekend day is one I lament. Not that it would be fun to have stores closed and activities shut down. But it would be nice to have a day that is marked by doing less and reflecting more. A day devoted to gratitude and taking stock. 

Some would say we can get by with a few of these a year; we don’t need one a week. But I think we might be happier and healthier if we could make slow Sundays the rule instead of the exception.

Spent

Spent

Comments 0 Comment

The climbing rose is losing its leaves and there are fewer rose hips than last year. Is the plant ailing or just tired after a long summer of heat and humidity? Probably a little of both. But it’s not just the rose; it’s all the plants, the ones that are here, fraying around the edges, and the ones I had hoped to plant … but did not.

It’s that time of year when you realize that what you have in the garden is what you get. The grand dreams of landscaping that were yours for the taking in the heady days of early spring seem silly now. There will be no clematis paniculata planted by the deck stairs, no zinnias by the mailbox. The weeds that once threatened are now welcomed because at least they are green. 

But this is not to sound an entirely disappointed note. There are some gardening success stories this year. The transplanted ornamental grasses are thriving farther down in the yard, beside the fence. And the knockout rose I bought on impulse has made a promising start (even though it will have to be moved, thanks to one of those doing-better-than-expected ornamental grasses). 

Still, it’s time to acknowledge that we’re moving out of the growing season, not into it. Acorns are falling fast and even a few yellow leaves have imprinted themselves on the black springy mat of the trampoline. In a month we will be entering meteorological autumn. Summer … is spent. 

About Last Night

About Last Night

Comments 0 Comment

This blog is mostly apolitical, but I do want to comment on the speech given last night by the Democratic nominee for president, Joe Biden. It was the only night I tuned in — and I’m glad I did. 

Yes, it was strange and stilted, given the raucousness of a typical convention. But when the nominee finally spoke, he pulled me in. What got me was not the critique of the current president he offered or the plans for the future he laid out. What got me was the hope and the empathy he seemed to radiate, right through the screen.  

I felt, at last, that someone gets what we’re going through right now, that we all need a sort of giant group hug (though of course a socially distant one). The truth is, most of us are hurting — in ways small and large — and we need the salve of understanding not the irritant of dissension.

The campaign is only just beginning in earnest. There are months to go before November 3. Anything can happen — and given the way things go now, anything probably will. But nothing can take away the moment of connection I felt last night. Or the thrill of hope that flowed from it. 

The Naturalist

The Naturalist

Comments 0 Comment

Lately it has been cool and dry enough to throw open the windows and door. Yesterday I worked on the deck in the late afternoon light, feeling that perfect balance of temperature and air weight that makes humans feel content, at home in the world.

Other creatures were out there with me. The crickets chirped, their music blending with the tinnitus that has become so much a part of my background noise that I seldom notice it anymore. The hummingbirds sparred and fed. Copper wandered in and out the open door. A squirrel landed on a branch of our neighbor’s tree, bending it with his tiny weight.

I was thinking the other day that working at home may turn me into a naturalist. Working outside, taking breaks in the woods instead of at the water cooler — for these reasons and many others I’ve gotten on myself for not knowing more about the trees I see, even the weeds I pull. 

For now, there’s little time for this … but when the impulse is there, the action may follow. Or at least that’s what I hope.

Learning the Significance

Learning the Significance

Comments 0 Comment

I learned from the Writer’s Almanac that today is the birthday of Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes. I remember reading that book the first time and marveling at the pathos and the humor and that marvelous opener: 

“It was, of course, a miserable childhood: The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and all the terrible things they did to us for 800 long years.”

Angela’s Ashes was on the best seller list for three years, won a Pulitzer and sold four million copies in hardcover. McCourt is the patron saint of late bloomers. He wrote the book in his mid-sixties. 

Re-reading McCourt’s obituary I came across this lovely anecdote. When speaking with high school students in New York in 1997, he said this about his book and the writing of it, something that should gladden the hearts of all those who labor with pen and keyboard, or the hearts of all of us, period. “I learned,” he said, “the significance of my own insignificant life.” 

The Butterfly Effect

The Butterfly Effect

Comments 0 Comment

It’s a beautiful day here, with a light breeze, low humidity and hummingbirds topping up frequently at the nectar bar. The perfect day to take breaks in the yard, picking up sticks and pulling stilt grass.

A few minutes ago the chainsaws revving in the distance finally claimed their victim as Folkstone lost another of its giant oaks. By now I recognize the harbingers, those first crashing-through-brush sounds that are followed by the thud of a massive trunk hitting the earth. I almost felt the ground shake. And I wasn’t the only one. A distant dog began to bark, too. 

It made me think of the butterfly effect, a part of chaos theory which posits that small changes can have large effects, with the oft-used metaphorical example of a tornado’s path being affected by the flapping of a butterfly’s wings far away. 

Although that example is a simplification, small changes do have big consequences. We see it all the time in our lives, in everything from the first tiny crack in a windshield to the first small rupture in a relationship. I think that’s why the concept of the butterfly effect caught the popular imagination. And why I thought of today, as the tree fell and the dog barked and I … wrote my post about it.

In Person

In Person

Comments 0 Comment

Yesterday’s rain has cleared out — an affront to the beautiful bridal shower my sister planned for her oldest daughter, a shower that went on as planned despite almost horizontal rain blowing into and around the gazebo near the Severn River, where it was held. 

The shower had already been moved outside to thwart the coronavirus, so the fact that we ended up with an atypical August monsoon made for the kind of event where everyone just shrugged and went on with it because, really, what else can you do.

But being there with family and friends yesterday reminded me of what life was like before mid-March, reminded me of gathering and chatting and pleasures we formerly took for granted. 

I know we must be careful when we meet in person, but it’s good to be reminded that behind these squares on a screen are real flesh-and-blood people. They’re around now and will be later, when all of this is behind us.

(The Severn River at sunset — in calmer, drier weather. )

Made with Love

Made with Love

Comments 0 Comment

Though I’m not of the Facebook generation — and am barely of Facebook — I know enough about its etiquette to know not to publish a photo of my new grandson before his mother does. But there’s no law against grandmotherly gushing, so gush I will.

In short, the little guy is perfect. His dear little fingers and toes, his full head of dark hair, his skin that is so soft it’s like you were touching nothing at all. I could have held him for hours, just looking, marveling at his dear face, his sudden yawns and stretches. 

A week ago, Claire and I had sat knee-to-knee going through her old baby clothes that I had washed and brought over. There was the little bib that spelled “C-L-A-I-R-E” in counted cross-stitch, the pink shirt that said “Special Delivery: Reston Hospital Maternity Center” — two girly things this boy baby may never wear. But plenty of gender-neutral duds as well, and those he will don, along with all his new clothes that at this point still swallow him up. 

I was struck yesterday, as I will be over and over again, of life’s repeating itself in endless variation, of the love of his parents for him and for each other.  In another universe, with other rules, new life may spring fully formed from soil or wood or metal. I’m glad that in this universe it arrives in an impossibly tiny package, made with love. 

Brahms Second

Brahms Second

Comments 0 Comment

A morning errand, almost there, the radio on a news station. It would be a long segment about something I didn’t want to hear, so I pushed button six on the dial. 

The car filled with Brahms, the Second Symphony, the finale. I hadn’t heard it in a while, had forgotten how sonorous Brahms can be, how you get swept up in the sound so that nothing else seems to matter.

I only heard the last 10 minutes of the work … but it was enough.

On This Day …

On This Day …

Comments 0 Comment

Yesterday, still giddy with the news of our first grandchild, I had no time for the details. Today, I look up, note the day, August 14, which was Claire’s due date, and the famous people who were born on it: comedian Steve Martin; Russell Baker, author of the lovely memoir Growing Up; “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson; and Doc Halliday, who survived the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. 

Those would have been interesting birthday mates, for sure. But it turns out there are some interesting characters born on August 13, too. There is sharpshooter Annie Oakley, who traveled with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and was the most famous woman in the world at one time; William Caxton, the first man to print a book in 1475, using the printing press that had just been invented 25 years earlier; and director Alfred Hitchcock, who made “Psycho, “Vertigo” and “Rear Window.”

So the little guy will have plenty of birthday company as he makes his way through life. For now, he is eating and sleeping and getting to know the world. For now, he is still pure potential. 

(Thanks to the Writer’s Almanac for these facts.)