May Day?

May Day?

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Here we are at May Day — sodden, squishy, water-logged. The petals of our dogwood, our Kwanzan cherries, scattered and beaten to the ground. Our airy forget-me-nots hardly the azure clouds they were three days ago. The azaleas hesitant, unwilling to bloom.

After this winter, I’d hoped for a knock-’em-dead spring. Something to warm and delight us. But nature doesn’t operate like that, I tell myself. Rain pelts and puddles — or fails to fall at all. Winds  funnel and destroy. Sometimes, snow even falls in spring.

The balance we seek, the recompense, is not in the natural world. If it is to be, we must supply it.

Coverage

Coverage

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It seems as if we’ve gotten all our April showers in the last two days, last night in particular. Walking to and from Metro in these downpours has made me ponder the efficiency — or inefficiency — of my umbrella.

The way I look at it you have a choice. You can either have a small umbrella with you at all times, a folding insurance policy, or take along a large one when the weather calls for it.

I’ve opted for the former. It’s easier to maneuver, fits in a pocket or bag and is light to carry.

But what it boasts in portability it lacks in coverage. It’s the diameter, I guess. There simply isn’t enough nylon to keep all the drops at bay.

I think there’s a life lesson here; I’m just a little too soggy now to figure it out.

Dogs Wearing Clothes

Dogs Wearing Clothes

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Our little ragamuffin pooch Copper was glad to see me when I walked in the door Sunday night. I gave him a hug and a pat, and yesterday, when we had more time together, I told him what I really thought about the dogs of New York.

They’re cute, I said, and you would probably like to sniff them out. But then again, you might not take them seriously because … they wear clothes. I mean, not just the random pampered poodle, but the perky bichon and the elegant whippet.  I would say about a third of the canines I spotted in the Big Apple were wearing something other than their leashes.

Dachshunds were the best dressed. They wore knitted shirts and tuxedo vests. And one dog (not a dachshund) in Washington Square Park was decked out in a plaid shirt and tennis shoes. This dog also walked on his hind legs.

I’ve heard there’s a new movement afoot to accord animals the rights of people. If not the rights, then at least the wardrobes. At least in Manhattan. 

Stopped in Their Tracks

Stopped in Their Tracks

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On the High Line yesterday nature-starved New Yorkers clustered around a red bud tree as if it were a work of high art. It halted them mid-promenade — the beauty of the nubby blossoms, the radiant color against the neutral palette of lower Manhattan.

I compare this tree with all the wild red buds I saw driving through the hills of West Virginia ten days earlier. Brilliant volunteers alone and unnoticed, living out their bloom on lonely hillsides.

Not this tree. It’s well loved, earnestly photographed. And it’s no volunteer. Even its position — pushing up through the rails of an abandoned railway— is no accident.

New Yorkers stride nonchalantly past soaring skyscrapers — but a single tree stops them in their tracks. It’s a reversal worth noting.

West Side Story

West Side Story

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I used to live in the West Village. Now I’m a visitor here. It’s taken a while to adjust to this fact. “A while” is an understatement. We’re talking more than two decades now!

It must be the timelessness of the place, the winding streets that began, they say, with cow paths. The bohemian flavor that lingers amidst the wealth and Starbucks.

But it’s not just the timelessness that draws me back. It’s the new features, like Hudson River Park, a ribbon of asphalt and greenery that runs from 59th Street to the Battery. To stroll or bike here is to be of the city but not in it. It’s to be moving as the river flows, as the city itself moves, poetry in motion.

Every time I visit, I add another chapter to my own West Side Story.

Big Apple Bound

Big Apple Bound

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Back in the salad days of freelancing, I made routine trips to New York City to visit my editors. We would have expense-account lunches or just chat in their offices, and in between I would walk up and down the streets and avenues.

It was rejuvenation in more ways than one. I usually came back with a few assignments — and even more important, with a lot of creative energy.

I no longer make my living as a freelancer, though I still make my living from words, and today I’m attempting to rekindle a bit of that excitement. There will be a conference and editors — and more to the point, there are still those streets and avenues (to say nothing of Central Park).

So while I will listen and take notes and learn how others are weathering the changes in our profession, I will also pound the pavement. I’ll be a walker in the city instead of the suburbs.

That’s how it all began.

The Smell of Cut Grass

The Smell of Cut Grass

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If greening is here, then mowing can’t be far behind. And indeed it is not. Where I live, the mowing season has definitely begun.

Mowing is one of the yard chores I like best — in part because I can zone out while doing it. But also because of the wonderful aromas it stirs up.

I’ve been conducting my own little fragrance test lately, and in a highly unscientific fashion I concluded that the cut bluegrass I inhaled deeply while in Kentucky last week smells better than the cut grass I know at home.

As it turns out, the explanation for this must lie in my head — not my nose. A few minutes online convinced me that the lawns in Virginia are as likely to be composed of bluegrass as the lawns in Kentucky.

So it’s not the grass type that’s making the difference. There is something else here. A whiff of nostalgia, perhaps?

Greening

Greening

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I noticed it ten days ago on the drive to Kentucky. I was heading west on I-64, about an hour outside Lexington, when something caught my eye. It was the pasture to my right. It was as if someone had taken a green crayon (“spring green” by Crayola) and scribbled furiously on the grass.

One minute it was brown and dull, winter’s leftover. The next it was verdant and bright, an advertisement for spring.

Nothing else had changed; the highway was still gray and the sky was still blue. But I had crossed some sort of line. The stealthy greening that had been happening for weeks — some of that time beneath the snow — had suddenly revealed itself.

 Meteorological spring had long since passed, but this was the real thing.

Resurrection, Continued

Resurrection, Continued

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As it happens, the priest based his Easter sermon on the article mentioned below. There was no equivocation from the pulpit — not that I expected any. But there was this comment: that we need no proof, no scientific evidence, to believe. All we need is faith.

Having my father on the other side now — someone who lived so fully on earth in his human “skin” — makes me think and hope that all that love, all that energy, has gone somewhere. That it exists in a form I can’t access at this point makes sense to me.

Last Friday I stopped by the church for a few moments. I had driven home from Kentucky that day and missed the service I usually attend. By instinct I headed for the small chapel, what used to be the main sanctuary before the grand, new one was built.

The minute I stepped into that welcome darkness I was struck by the aroma. It was the Easter flowers. They had already been delivered — all the lilies, azaleas, hydrangeas and hyacinths — and were being stored in the chapel until the great Easter vigil celebration Saturday evening. The fragrance was almost overpowering, but I inhaled deeply anyway.

It was a preview, a welcome aromatic reminder, of all that lies in store.

Resurrection

Resurrection

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Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. It is also April 20, exactly a month after my father passed away. I’ve  been thinking of this coincidence —3/20 and 4/20 — and of the leap of faith required to believe in bodily resurrection after witnessing first-hand a bodily demise. 

It is, I suppose, an appropriate time to be pondering this eternal mystery. And an article in today’s Washington Post convinces me that I’m not alone.

As Easter approaches, many Christians struggle with how to understand
the Resurrection. How literally must one take the Gospel story of Jesus’
triumph to be called a Christian? Can one understand the Resurrection
as a metaphor[?] …

Here’s what I’ve decided. And it solves no great theological mystery. It’s only what I have to get me through:

It is no metaphor to me that Dad is gone — nor is it metaphor that he lives on. There is real, tangible proof that he does.  He is there in the World War II books and the multiple DVDs of “Twelve O’Clock High” (his favorite film and one he believed everyone should watch. “It’s not about war,” he told his friends. “It’s about leadership.”).  He is there in the bell he installed on the back door so the cat could be let in. He is there in the statue of St. Francis, one of many items he planted in the now overgrown garden. Most of all he is present in all of his friends, in my mom and in each one of us, his children.

You may have to look harder for him now — you couldn’t miss Dad before; he was always the life of the party — but he’s there, I’m sure of it.