Mellow Mueller

Mellow Mueller

Comments 0 Comment

Everyone was talking about it, reading it and tweeting about it, but by the time the Mueller Report finally came out yesterday, I just felt fatigued about it. I imagine many of us did.

I perked up a bit this morning, when the banner-headlined Washington Post landed in my driveway. (As is typical for a newspaper reader, I take my news a day old and more digested, thank you very much.) But on the whole, I’ve been ignoring the media feeding frenzy.

Maybe it’s because I’m distracted by the new leaves on the Rose of Sharon bush, or the carpet of petals underneath the Kwanzan cherry.

Or maybe it’s because I’ve been preoccupied with tech problems lately (email issues, Skype for Business issues, RAM issues, even voice recorder issues!).

But whatever has made me mellow about Mueller, I’m grateful for it.

Cathedral Time

Cathedral Time

Comments 0 Comment

I’m not used to reading good news in the newspaper, especially not these days, so I was surprised last night when I finally settled down with the paper to learn that the walls of Notre Dame are still standing and the exquisite rose window is still intact.

Yes, the roof and the spire are gone, and some priceless treasures are lost, but many others were saved. Already stories of heroism are emerging: the chaplain who braved the blaze, the human chain that rescued precious artwork. Donations and pledges are pouring in. Notre Dame will be rebuilt, though it will doubtless be on “cathedral time,” not at the pace we might expect in the 21st century.

Even more encouraging were the perspectives the articles contained: that cathedrals are patchwork creations. The fallen spire we lament was a relatively late addition to Notre Dame. Europe is filled with cathedrals that have risen from fires and firebombing: St. Paul’s in London, the cathedral in Dresden. Besides, in many ways the places are as sacred as the buildings, and they remain sacred even when the stones are singed and the rafters give way.

The most optimistic accounts mentioned the survival of the gold cross on the altar and the votive lights that remained lit throughout the ordeal — also the fact that the fire happened during Holy Week, the most sacred time in the Catholic church’s liturgical year, a time when we celebrate redemption and resurrection.

I’ll end with this from the Washington Post’s architecture critic Philip Kennicott:

Meanwhile, the roof will rise again, and in a century some bored teenagers will stand in the plaza before the great Gothic doors and listen as their teacher recounts the great fire of 2019, just one chapter among all the others, and seemingly inconsequential given the beauty of the building as it stands glowing in a rare burst of sunlight on a spring day in Paris.

Flower Power

Flower Power

Comments 0 Comment

Saturday I impulsively bought two hyacinths at the grocery store. They were tidy little plants then, barely open at all. But even on the short drive home they filled the car with their scent. Now they’re doing the same in the house.

I thought they would make a pretty Easter centerpiece, but they’re opening so fast that I may have to buy another arrangement before Sunday.

The point is, they are blooming now, I tell myself. So enjoy them. Savor the blooming and the bending. Prop up the heaviest flowers with skewer sticks so they stay upright. And then … inhale deeply.

Remembering Notre Dame

Remembering Notre Dame

Comments 0 Comment

You tell yourself it’s just a building, not a person; that it was not an act of terrorism; that it’s silly to feel this way. But there is still something so sad about the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral.

Maybe because we already have so much destruction in this world, so much war and cruelty. Maybe because it is so beautiful and had survived so much.  Maybe because it has been with us so long and connects us with so many.

I find myself saying what we say in times of loss: How grateful I am to have seen the cathedral; to have climbed its towers and glimpsed its gargoyles; to have taken my children there; to have strolled through it as a young woman and a middle-aged one.

Once, long ago, I was ambling along the Seine on an April evening. The light was slanting low in the sky and throwing the old stones and the spire into high relief. It was a scene of incomparable beauty. I had no camera at the time, so I told myself, remember this, remember it always.  

I did — and I’m remembering it now.

Tub Envy

Tub Envy

Comments 0 Comment

You could call it house envy, or even bathroom envy. I prefer to call it tub envy. It’s what I felt when I toured our neighbor’s home during Saturday’s open house.  Their house is directly across the street, and though I had been in it off and on through the years, I had never seen it without furniture and with all its improvements showcased.

The house began its life identical to this one, but the previous owners, Brian and Kathy (who were along for Saturday’s tour), bumped out both the front and the back. This elongated the entrance hall, straightened out the stairway and enlarged the kitchen, allowing for both an island and a door where a window used to be — all lovely additions.

It was the “new” owners, John and Jill (who lived there 14 years, but “new” in Folkstone terms), who re-did the bathrooms and installed the tub-to-die-for. This photo doesn’t do it justice; it fails to capture the length and depth of it, the way the light pours in through the windows. I didn’t climb into the tub (though I was tempted!) but I could tell that you’d be able to soak in there and look at the tree branches waving in the wind or at clouds scudding across the sky.

So even though I coveted the empty basement with the picture window, the tall kitchen cabinets, the cheerful tile backsplash and countless other features, it’s the tub I want the most.

Tub envy. I’m not proud of it. But I have it something fierce.

Give(ing) Sleep a Chance

Give(ing) Sleep a Chance

Comments 0 Comment

Lately I’ve been giving sleep more of a chance. When I wake up at 4 a.m. I don’t always rise to start the day. Instead, I read or lie still and concentrate on breathing in and out. In other words, I try harder to add those elusive sixth and seventh hours to my nightly tally.

This may take time. It may be getting light by the time I finally drift off again. But I persist.

The other way, the way of wakefulness, is good too. It opens up hours in a life that seems to never have enough of them. But things are brighter, sharper, clearer, with those extra two.

By the way, this is a tip of the blog to the 1969 John Lennon song “Give Peace a Chance,” which I found out this morning was recorded … in bed.

The Lusty Cherry

The Lusty Cherry

Comments 0 Comment

Frequently writing about nature and the out-of-doors means that I often notice the same things every year. I’ve learned this by now — and have become more careful not to repeat an identical observation. Such was the case today when I thought about the Kwanzan cherry trees.

So I will not call this piece “The Other Cherry,” because I already used that title. But I will say that yesterday a grove of Kwanzan cherries once again stopped me in my tracks.

The trees were waving and petaling and being their lovely selves right in front of my office. I reveled in their peak bloom (and snapped some photos) as I ran out to the post office in the mid-afternoon.

I’m not the only one who appreciated them. Suzanne texted me this morning to say she’d noticed them on a run through my work neighborhood.

Every year I have this internal debate: Which is more lovely, the ethereal Yoshino or the lusty Kwanzan? I’ll never come up with an answer.

Town Square

Town Square

Comments 0 Comment

Yesterday I ran up to the closest grocery store, which is located in shopping center I sometimes call “the corner.” I like the way it sounds, saying “I’m going up to the corner,” as if I lived in an old-fashioned neighborhood where people yell out their windows and hang their laundry on the line out back.

I don’t live in such a place, of course, and I don’t go to the corner much anymore, either. I’ve switched to a discount grocery chain that saves me money but lands me in anonymous strip malls off busy suburban highways.

At one time, when the children were young, I seemed to run into friends all the time at the local supermarket. But that’s been ebbing away for years, so I’d might as well drive a few more miles and save some cash.

Being back at the corner today reminds me of what I’ve missed, though, which is, in short, familiarity. I’ve been going to that grocery store as long as we’ve lived here. It feels homey, even though the produce is overpriced and the seafood is iffy.

For better or worse, that store — and the “corner” around it — are my town square, the closest thing I have to a meeting spot, where I rub shoulders with the people in my ‘hood.

(Vale School House, which is near another corner where I live.)

A Moment

A Moment

Comments 0 Comment

Yesterday before my own evening walk, I took Copper for a short stroll. It was warm and breezy. We did our usual, torn-doggie-ACL-shortened amble. Before heading home we walked into the Morrison’s yard so I could pick up a throwaway paper that was left there.

And then, without warning, I had a moment. The wind was lifting pink blossom petals from the weeping cherry and swirling them around in a kind of pink snow. Two strings of wind chimes were rattling in a disjointed harmony. Copper, who can be cantankerous, was being sweet. I was aware of the softness of his fur and his big brown eyes.

I was overcome suddenly with a feeling of fulfillment, a realization that this is what it’s all about: walking the dog at the end of a long day, dinner still to get, labors ahead of and behind me — but in this moment free to breathe deeply, to listen and to think.

Coatless

Coatless

Comments 0 Comment

The first time each season always feels strange, like jumping off a high dive or setting off in a tube on a fast-moving river. There is a similar lack of control. The coat will not be there if the weather takes a nasty turn. There is no turning back.

Today I took a jacket from the house but left it in the car. It was that balmy this morning, with the promise of more warmth to come. The wrap would have been superfluous. It would have been wadded up in my tote bag before I even reached the office.

So off I went, with only a sweater between me and the elements. No jacket, no coat. It wasn’t until I reached Metro that I realized I’d also left my umbrella. So now I’m coatless — and umbrella-less, too. It must be spring.