Happiest Day

Happiest Day

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“The happiest days are the days when babies come,” said Melanie in “Gone with the Wind.” For my family, this is a happiest day, as we welcome our first grandchild and first boy baby in a generation.

It’s an awesome thought, to know there is this new life in the world: the little fingers and little toes, the face that seems old and wise, a visitor from beyond.

We are grateful and excited, though nowhere near as much as his proud and weary parents. And we look forward to tomorrow … when we hope we’ll be able to hold the little guy. 

(Using this photo again, though I used it less than a month ago, because it’s of my sweet Claire, already loving babies, though she was barely more than a baby herself. Now she has a baby of her own!)

Shooting Stars

Shooting Stars

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By 3:30 this morning the sky was filled with thunder and rain. But only a few hours earlier, it was illuminated not by lightning but by the intermittent flashes of the Perseid Meteor Shower.

Viewed from the trampoline, which allows for an upturned gaze without a crick in the neck, the stitches of light were surprising and ethereal, each one a gift I didn’t expect to receive. But the best one of all came when I’d only been at my post a few minutes. 

It looked more like a artist’s rendering of a comet, with an orange-yellow fireball and a streaking tail that flowed into the velvety darkness. It may have been an “earthgazer,” a type of meteor I only learned about today, known for its longer streak of brightness and most commonly appearing before midnight. 

Whatever it was … it — and all the shooting stars I saw last night — took my breath away. They reminded me of the great beyond. They reminded me to look up. 

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Humidity

Humidity

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Humidity and dew points are meteorological variables that I’ve yet to fully understand. But I feel them and I see them and this time of the year that’s all that matters.

On after-dark walks with Copper I see dew glistening in the grass like so many diamond chips. Moisture lingers in the morning, so much so that the doggie comes back from his early constitutionals with tummy hair drenched by it. 

As the day heats up all this moisture becomes a weight I try to move with fans and shifts of posture and anything else I can come up with. Sometimes I give in and move inside. But mostly, I just live with it in the outside office I persist in inhabiting. Because it’s summer, and it’s humid, and before long it won’t be either.  

Endless Summer?

Endless Summer?

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As we head toward the midpoint of August, the summer starts to feel a little frayed around the edges. The heat still shimmers on still afternoons, katydids still serenade us on sultry evenings. But the soul of summer, its freedom and looseness, is tightening up.

In a typical summer, you might see bright yellow school buses  lumbering down the lanes, going on dry runs, striking fear in the hearts of children — and gladness and relief in their parents. 

But this year, summer continues without this ominous marker. School will be virtual here so buses will remain parked in random lots around the region. It’s what we always dreamed of as kids, what we didn’t know enough to dread as parents. 

It won’t be an endless summer. But right about now, it’s starting to feel like it might …

Poems through the Pandemic

Poems through the Pandemic

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In this morning’s newspaper I read about a Covid-19 newsletter in Portsmouth, Maine, which carries, amidst the grim statistics and prognoses … a poem. Once a week every Sunday Portsmouth residents can find something else to focus on besides numbers and test results.

The poems are supplied by Portsmouth’s poet laureate, the 12th to serve in the role and one of several in the state of Maine. Here’s one she wrote after she learned of the passing of a fellow poet:

Today I find the mask useful

along with sunglasses

to hide my tear streaked face,

not wanting to scare the barista

who has enough to deal with

behind his own mask. 

In general, writers weigh in later, sometimes years after a historical event.  Poetry is different, I think, and in this case it’s helpful that poets are commenting in real time. 

Walkable Communities

Walkable Communities

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An article in today’s Washington Post describes what it says may be the community development of the future, as the pandemic has accelerated a trend toward telecommuting that was already in process. Called the Hub at La Plata, this mixed-use development makes it possible to walk to shops and live with one car — or even no car at all. 

An excellent idea … and one that Reston, Virginia, where I (almost) hang my hat (you can walk to Reston from here) has been practicing for more than half a century. Though the New Urbanism roots of Reston have taken a beating over the years, there is still enough of the original plan to make you see the point and offer up a silent cheer for it.

I had just such a moment yesterday, when I fast walked on one of its many paved paths. Signposts directed me to South Lakes Village Center one direction and Hunters Woods Village Center the other. I didn’t walk to either, but just knowing I could … made all the difference. 

(A photo of Lake Anne taken from the top floor of Heron House, in Reston’s oldest village center.)

Noting the Passing

Noting the Passing

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The pianist Leon Fleisher died August 2 at the age of 92. I’ve written about him before, both as a pianist and writer. I even vowed to learn a piece of music because of watching him play it, a promise I have not kept, by the way. So the least I can do is honor the man here.

Fleisher was a master of reinvention: winning competitions as a prodigy, losing the use of his right hand, despairing for a while, then eventually remaking himself as a conductor, teacher and performer. The difficulty he faced almost sunk him — he considered suicide — but he emerged stronger as a result. 

“Time and again, I would look at my life and marvel that so many wonderful things had happened that never would have happened if my hand had not been struck down,” Fleisher wrote in his memoir Nine Lives. “I couldn’t imagine my life without conducting. I couldn’t imagine life without teaching so intensely.” 

Curiously enough, Fleisher’s obituary shared the page with that of another artist and master of reinvention. The film director Alan Parker directed several movies I’ve loved, such as “Fame” and “The Commitments,” movies that, until reading his obituary, I wasn’t even aware were his. Like Fleisher, Parker took risks, made changes, didn’t find a safe path and follow it but continued to learn and grow.

Two men, two creative careers, but one lesson (at least for me): Whatever you do, they say, don’t get stuck. 

Joint Praise

Joint Praise

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Watching Tom recover (and nicely!) from knee replacement surgery makes me appreciate my own joints even more. That doctors can go in there, take out the diseased cartilage and bone and create a new knee (or shoulder or hip) from metal and plastic is amazing enough. But the originals are even more miraculous. 

Our joints are mechanical marvels that we take for granted every day. The range of motion, the strength and durability … I will never look at going up and down the stairs quite the same way again. 
While I seem to spend an increasing amount of time keeping my birth joints in working order, I have renewed incentive to continue and increase this practice. Not because I don’t admire the bionic versions, but because I’d just as soon keep the slightly creaky but still-so-serviceable ones I have. 

(Image: Wikipedia)
Night Walk

Night Walk

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I took a flash light but didn’t use it, because although it was dark, the clouds were illuminated in a strange sort of way, not glowing from within but lighter than they should have been at that time of night. 

It was a type of afterglow, but of sunlight rather than sunset. Clouds that had wandered into the evening sky and forgotten to dim their brights; clouds that almost looked fake, as if they were painted for the set of a high school musical. 

Walking home under the vault of heaven, staring at those clouds, I thought about how we so often forget that which is above us. It’s easy to do once inside, with our house pleasures and chores, with our television and computer screens, with the light they emit, the stories they tell. 

But all along, the night sky is out there, an abundance we ignore, perhaps because we must. Like all the seeds that never sprout, like all the words we never say. 
The Walking Wait

The Walking Wait

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I thought I had prepared well for yesterday. I would be waiting most of the day in a surgical center, so I packed a light jacket, took plenty of books and settled in for the duration. 

The surgical center had other ideas. I wasn’t allowed to stay there, due to Covid restrictions. I would be on my own all day in Bethesda, but of course wouldn’t want to be sitting inside anywhere. 

It was on the way back to the parking garage to figure out a new plan that I saw the sign: Capital Crescent Trail. This rails-to-trails path runs from Chevy Chase through Bethesda down to Georgetown. It is shady most of the way, with a great vaulting canopy of mixed hardwoods to cool and refresh the walkers and bikers that use it.  
I couldn’t believe my luck. This time, the wait wouldn’t be sitting in a sterile waiting room. It would be outside under the sky and clouds. I started off slowly, having already taken a fast walk earlier in the say. But with hours to kill before returning I could wander as far down the path as I chose. 
I didn’t turn around till Georgetown, almost to the C&O Canal towpath. I passed the Bethesda Pool, the Loughborough Mill and the dim spooky confines of the Delacarlia Tunnel (more on that in a separate post). It was a discovery-filled morning, a long, stretch-the-legs walk … and the perfect way to pass the time and still be close by. My prescription for waiting: whenever possible, take a walk.