In Lexington

In Lexington

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There are layers here, layers of time and memory. Everywhere I look there are layers. I wonder if I’ve been homesick all along, if my interest in place is actually homesickness.

I’m thinking about all of this because I’m in my hometown — Lexington, Kentucky. I drove here yesterday, taking the mountain route.

This morning, out early, I gravitate to the old neighborhood. I walk around the block that holds my grammar school, where I spent eight years. I pass the house where my friend Diane lived. We went there after school to make chocolate pudding on the stovetop. In my house we only made instant pudding. I was fascinated by the skin that formed on top of the concoction as it cooled.

Back in the car, I search for a café and find one. This place was most certainly not here the last time I visited. It’s one more layer in a place that is full of them.

A Birthday

A Birthday

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Today, the birthday of my oldest daughter, I crept into my office in the wee hours, suddenly on a mission to find the journal I was keeping on the day she was born. I picked it right up, the first one I touched in the crammed-full drawer. It was as if this black journal with red trim was aching for me to find it.

The journal did not disappoint. There were the final weeks of pregnancy, a strange netherworld when I wandered through the splendors of a New England autumn with what felt like a basketball between my legs.

There were all the doubts and fears: Would I be able to be a mother and still write? How painful would childbirth be? And always, of course, prayers for the safety and health of the little baby who was quickly outgrowing her first home.

Writing a note to that grownup baby today — a strong, loving, creative, accomplished mother of three — was the perfect — in fact the only — way to start this day.

(Suzanne with her own precious firstborn.)

Safer Walking

Safer Walking

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A group of Thomas Jefferson magnet high school students have designed an app to help kids walk to school more safely. This after one of them tried running home from school and discovered himself on a busy road with no sidewalks in the dark.

Pedestrian safety — and lack thereof — is the ugly dark side of walking in the suburbs. Pedestrian fatalities shot up 72 percent between 2009 and 2024.

These young guys decided to do something about it. They worked on the app for months, creating an algorithm that takes safety and speed into account as well as other mapping data. Their app notes streets with sidewalks and crosswalks, for instance.

After winning a school competition, the SafeWalkr app was rolled out for (semi) public consumption. Fairfax County families who live within walking distance of 14 schools are giving it a try. If successful, it will be expanded to all county schools.

It can’t come soon enough.

(These walkers are in New York City, where crosswalks are more plentiful than in the suburbs.)

Losing Literary Idols

Losing Literary Idols

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Within a two-week period last month I lost two of my favorite writers: Wendell Berry, who died August 31st, and Annie Dillard, who passed away on September 15th. I’ve already written about both of them on the blog and elsewhere. My Annie Dillard appreciation appears today in the Washington Independent Review of Books. My Berry essay ran last month.

I write here more generally about literary idols and the power they can have in your life. How many times have I pulled a Berry or a Dillard volume from my shelf? I still have their books, of course, but now there is no promise of more. Their work on earth is done.

For the first 14 years of this blog, I used a quotation from Dillard’s An American Childhood as the frontispiece: “When everything else is gone from my brain … what will be left, I believe, is topology, the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way or that.” Her writing never failed to inspire me, to jumpstart a writing day or encourage me in a down moment.

As for Berry, I sought him out for clarity and tone. His prose heartened me, convinced me I could say what I wanted to say, as long as I was direct and pulled no punches.

I feel bereft without these writers. I take comfort in the work they left behind.

(Dillard and Berry share a shelf in my office library)

Little Feet, Big Hike

Little Feet, Big Hike

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Yesterday’s walk was through the woods with two young hikers, ages 6 and 4. They could almost match their grandparents’ strides but they wanted to stop a lot, especially by the creek.

Our first stream bed foray was early on, when they begged to jump down and see the water. We complied, and found it dry enough to follow the bed for a few paces, dodging the few wet patches. We noted the bedrock and the roots of a giant oak, now exposed by erosion.

After finding a convenient way up to dry ground, we tramped along the path, looking for deer, which were strangely absent — probably at our house nibbling ground cover. The children waved their sticks and chatted so loudly that I’m sure all the forest animals were hiding, having heard us coming a mile away.

Our second dip down the creek’s bank came after we discovered a new plank bridge and tap-danced on it. This was a larger tributary, with plenty of water for stirring and even a sandy bottom, near where tadpoles swim in spring.

When we made the turn for home, their grandfather and I were more grateful than they were. Their energy seems unlimited, ours is not.

New Walk in Town

New Walk in Town

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The new walk in town is a flirt, a tease. You never know exactly where it will take you.

You stop at a crossroads. A path leads to the left, tree-shaded, inviting, but something tells you to stay straight. You realize a few paces up that it wouldn’t have mattered if you’d taken that turn because the two trails flowed together anyway. But when you’re first getting to know each other you don’t know that, and it’s exciting.

The new walk in town is of indeterminate length. Or at least you don’t know how long it is the first few times you take it. It seems to go on forever, but that’s just because you don’t understand it.

The new walk in town is a feast of discovery. Sudden glimpses of lake water, enchanting townhouses tucked away on treed lots, a pair of swings in a meadow. All new, all precious.

In time, this trail will be as calibrated as all the others. You will know just how long it takes to walk around Lake Thoreau. But until then, it will be shiny and bright: the new walk in town.

5,000!

5,000!

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I almost missed this milestone. I don’t pay attention to stats as much since I moved the blog to its new quarters. But a few weeks ago I noticed I was once again edging up to a nice round total of posts —5,000 in this case — and decided to celebrate.

Five thousand may seem a pittance in a world of AI. Heck, I could have Claude pen hundreds of posts a day with a few prompts. But imperfect human writing is all you’ll ever read here, which means some mornings the muse is nowhere to be found. I start writing, check email or brew a cup of tea. The essay I’m working on calls to me, or I decide to walk first, write later.

In other words, distractions abound. But most days, and every weekday, I publish. I notice a cloud, a bird, a single autumn leaf — and describe it here. It’s what I do. Someday, a few years from now, I hope I’ll be penning my 6,000th post.

Time Optimism

Time Optimism

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I always try to work one more task into the time at hand. Perish the thought of arriving early. I like to scribble one more paragraph, crochet one more row, send one more email. As a result I’m often five minutes late when I could easily have been on time. 

Why is this? Turns out, the condition has a name: I’m a time optimist or tidsoptimist, which means the same thing in Swedish (where it has apparently been identified and studied).

I first heard about time optimism from my youngest daughter, herself a time optimist, a skill she no doubt picked up from me. We have gotten many laughs talking about our “condition.”

What is the cure for this tidsoptimism? I’m not sure, but it’s definitely not trying to answer five emails, read the paper, and write a blog post in 30 minutes.

Origin Stories

Origin Stories

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It’s a Wednesday that feels like a Tuesday, because Monday felt like Sunday and yesterday seemed like Monday. This happens every week we have a three-day holiday, but this time there’s something extra: a national identity crisis.

I noticed in Maine that the second Monday in October is called Indigenous People’s Day. Apparently, 17 states and D.C. acknowledge the original settlers of this great land. Many don’t want to honor colonizers in any way, including Viking ones. (There has been a movement to create a Leif Erikson Day.)

The national identity crisis affects work and vacation schedules. In my family, one daughter didn’t have the day off, another used to have it off but now has Juneteenth instead, and the third, a federal employee, was off. She observed part of the holiday here with her family. (That was the best part of Columbus Day.)

Paid holidays aren’t as important to me as they once were, but I do care about origin stories, and ours is looking shaky these days.

Fade to Blue

Fade to Blue

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Books leave traces, contrails of thought, like plumes of exhaust from a jet plane. One that remains from Michael Pollan’s A World Appears is that the best time to catch ourselves in a state of pure awareness is right after waking. It lasts only seconds, then the mind fills with worries, thoughts, to-dos.

But for those first few moments, we are awake, alive — but not yet us. We observe ourselves in a state of pure being.

Since reading Pollan’s book I try to catch myself in that state. This morning I felt that I did for an instant. Inspired, I walked down the hall into the spare room where I write.

In the sky a single star shone from between treetops that were just emerging from darkness, a point of light millions of miles away from my apple green desk, my petty worries, my little life.

I put pen to paper. The words flowed. When I looked up to find the star again, it had faded to blue.