Newest Room

Newest Room

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I write today from the newest room in the house, the one that is added every year about this time (usually earlier, since we’ve had such a chilly spring). That room is … the deck.

It comes in especially handy now, as the other rooms are, like the poet said, “too much with us.” I work in them, eat in them and sometimes (when napping, which is rarely) even sleep in them. In short, I am almost always either in the living room or the kitchen, and since these rooms have no door to separate them, this can become a bit monotonous.

Enter the deck, which runs two-thirds the width of the house and which has two distinct divisions of its own — the sunny section, where there’s a chaise lounge, a grill and two wooden rocking chairs; and the shady section, where there’s a glass-topped wrought-iron table and four chairs.

I’m sitting in the shady section now, having wiped the evening’s moisture off the glass and parked myself and my two computers at the far end, where I can look over the yard, the garden and the Siberian iris. It’s good to be back.

After This?

After This?

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Sometimes I try to envision what our lives will be like coming out of this. I believe that eventually, once there’s a vaccine and treatment, they will be somewhat the same. More chastened, more grateful, I hope, but similar to what we used to have. People are social creatures, after all. We want to be together.

But until we feel safe doing that, we will wear masks and stay mostly to ourselves. This is a poverty. It’s a shrinking of our lives rather than an expansion of them. It’s hard to stay aware of all the possibilities the world holds while we’re in this cloistered state.


The life we had is a world I miss every day; we all do. A world we lost so quickly, almost with the hair-trigger quickness of a bomb exploding. All it took was a wily, tenacious pathogen.

What I hope most of all is that this pathogen, like so much else, doesn’t succeed in pushing us farther apart, but instead pulls us together. All evidence suggests that it will split us up. But I’m an optimist; I like to believe that common sense and human kindness will prevail.

Fresh Flowers!

Fresh Flowers!

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For Mother’s Day, a harvest of cut flowers. What is it about them? What a joy they are, what an extravagance — a snapshot in time, catching beauty on the fly.

With several bouquets, I’ve been able to scatter them about the house, so that no matter where I look, I see lilies or freesia or mums or tulips, all in pinks and purples and spots of orange.

I know they won’t last, so all the more reason to celebrate them here.

The Luckiest Generation

The Luckiest Generation

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Dad would have been 97 today, a most beauteous day, as many of his birthdays were. I’ve been thinking a lot about Dad’s generation, often called the “greatest.” I think you could make a case that it was one of the luckiest, too.

Born into a Depression, members of Dad’s generation were schooled in poverty and deprivation. They learned early to rely on themselves. Families were close then, and many were multi-generational.

Dad joined the Air Force before he was drafted, and thus began the most romantic and far-flung chapter of his life. He was a preacher’s kid from Kentucky who was suddenly touring European capitals (albeit from 25,000 feet while scrunched into the tail gunner’s seat of a B-17).

Afterward, Dad’s generation returned to sweethearts and GI loans and one of the greatest economic expansions of all time. They came back to joy and acclaim. They had saved the free world, after all. That’s a lot to do before the age of 30.

Medicine matured as they did. They lived much longer than they would have had there been no antibiotics or bypass surgery. Which is not to say they did not suffer. But most of them lived lives neatly tucked between the 1918 Flu and COVID-19.

Which means that, world-events-wise, Dad’s generation suffered more at the beginning of their life span than the end. They came of age expecting little and left this world with much. They didn’t have it easy, but they did have it early. One of the greatest generations? Absolutely. But one of the luckiest, too.

Blue and Green

Blue and Green

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When walking on clear days I lift up my eyes and am startled by the contrast, the deep beauty of the line where where sky meets foliage. It is a combination only nature could pull off — shades of azure and emerald so brilliant that they would be considered tacky in any other setting.

As I admire the colors I wonder what this place is called. It’s not the horizon because it’s not where earth and sky meet. It’s more of a tree-rizon, where treetop meets firmament.

Whatever it is, it’s looking gorgeous these days.

Mothers and Daughters

Mothers and Daughters

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I’ve been missing Mom more than usual lately, not just because it’s Mother’s Day but also because of what I’m reading and thinking, because there is so much to tell her, and most of all because not just one but two of my daughters are soon to be mothers.

It’s a joy and a privilege to watch your child become a parent. It’s role-bending and life-affirming. It’s an excellent counterbalance to a worldwide pandemic. And it’s the sort of experience that makes me wish my parents were still here to share it with (putting aside for the moment that I would be worried sick about them if they were).

So today I will just have to share it virtually, as we do so much these days; share it by saying here how thankful I am to be not just a mother, but a mother of daughters — and of daughters becoming mothers.

An Old-Fashioned Girl

An Old-Fashioned Girl

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First, I re-read Eight Cousins, because I could find it in an old bookcase. Little Women I felt no need to re-plumb, having just enjoyed the movie a few months ago. But there was one Louisa May Alcott book that I’d been dying to read again. It was An Old-Fashioned Girl, one of my favorites.

It’s not in the house — I believe one old-fashioned girl I know is keeping it on her bookshelf now — but I was able to find a free copy for my ancient Kindle, and am now happily ensconced in the joys and sorrows of one Polly Milton, a bright, kind girl who lives alone with a bird and a cat, who fights disappointment by reaching out to help others, and who makes life pleasant for all who know her.

Is it saccharine? Is it treacly? Yes, ma’am, it is. But it’s wonderful to be a part of Polly’s world again!

Summer Shade

Summer Shade

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Accompanying me on yesterday’s walk was my old friend, shade. There’s always a point in the spring when I notice it’s back. It builds gradually, of course, leaf by leaf. But yesterday it announced itself in sharp lines, patches of light and dark, stripes made of shadow.

We don’t yet need the coolness shade gives us, but we can always use the contrast, one of the great, unappreciated gifts of life. It gives us depth and richness. It gives us variety.

Winter gives us shadows, but they are harsh and linear. Summer brings contrast with softer contours, smudged margins. And it brings us more of it. Summer weather is not yet with us, but summer shade is starting to be.

Possible Again?

Possible Again?

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Warmth has been slow to arrive this year, so as I listen to the furnace purr, I’m reliving travels to steamier climes, from the white sand beach of Siesta Key, Florida, to the dark, broad beach at Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.

I’m remembering the feeling of sand in my toes and the lap of surf in my ears. I’m dreaming of a world where traveling to these places is possible again.

I must need a vacation or something!

Not Complaining

Not Complaining

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Somehow, there is still moisture in the sky, and rain in the air. It’s falling now in gentle sheets, greening the new leaves and the grass and the weeds, making us feel more hemmed in than we already do.

Not that I’m complaining. There’s a roof over my head, and the basement doesn’t flood every time it rains, only in downpours. There’s electricity so I can turn on lamps in the morning (something I’ve very much needed to do this gray day).

And in the kitchen, just steps away from where I now sit (on a comfy new couch, I might add), there is more food than we know what to do with.

So I will take this rainy day, embrace it and even (in my own way) celebrate it. Because that’s where we are now … or at least it’s where I hope to be.

(Sunrise on the Mekong … from the vault.)