Back to School

Back to School

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They have new tennis shoes and big smiles. Their adventure is about to begin. But “they” aren’t mine.

It’s the first day of school in Fairfax County. But for the first time in 20 years it doesn’t matter. No kid of mine is boarding one of those big yellow buses. Or getting a ride or driving herself to school, either.

And this is fine.

I miss the little people my children once were. But I love the young adults they have become.

As for nostalgia, I’m channeling Alice Cooper:

School’s out for summer

School’s out forever!

(Celia on her first day of kindergarten in 2000.)

Trucks Behaving Badly

Trucks Behaving Badly

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Today millions of Americans are driving home from their Labor Day vacations. They are cruising up on ramps, merging cautiously, leaving a safe following distance and otherwise obeying the rules of the road.

OK, maybe they are speeding a little. But basically, they’re out there trying.

At the same time, hundreds of thousands of trucks are also on the road. I don’t mean to pick on trucks unnecessarily. They can’t help it that they are large and heavy and block the view of signs. I don’t expect them to be quiet or dainty. 

They can, however, behave better than they do. After just driving 17 hours this weekend, seven of them on the nightmare that is I-81, I think I’ve figured out why trucks behave badly. They think they’re cars! They whisk in and out of lanes at 75 miles an hour. They merge with gleeful abandon. They give way reluctantly and with a great screech of downshifting gears. Sometimes they travel in tandem, tying up both the travel and the passing lanes while dozens of cars fume behind them.

Trucks should act like trucks. They should plod along at a speed that befits their tonnage. They should give way more generously than they do. And they should let cars … be cars.

Silver Maple

Silver Maple

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I saw them on the drive Friday. Trees with leaves that are green on top but glint silver when tickled by the wind. Leaves with flip sides that shine like the scales of a fish.

Silver maples thrive in wetlands, I’ve learned; I know them from the mountains of Kentucky. I remember my parents pointing them out to me on those interminable Sunday drives.

Since then I’ve reveled in this botanical knowledge and in the secret beauty these trees possess. Leaves hiding their loveliest feature, revealing it only when the wind blows.



(It’s hard to find a picture of a silver maple with its silver showing.)

Same Route, New Light

Same Route, New Light

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I drove to Kentucky yesterday — but left Virginia about six hours later than I usually do. The Blue Ridge were not the morning smudge on the horizon they usually are; they were full-bodied mountains rising in the west.

The little trail at the White Sulphur Springs rest stop had no trace of morning mist. It was shimmering in the midday sun.

And that last hour to Lexington was strangely peaceful, with darkness closing in fast.

All along the way I marveled at the road. I knew it was the same one, the map told me so. But the light said something different.

House Keeper

House Keeper

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To be alone in a house that once was full is to feel tender toward it, to show it greater care than usual. So you scrub the floor of the pantry closet and purge its contents. The kitchen faucet is now shiny and spotless, and the bedrooms are freshened by clean linens. This is not their usual state.

You are hoping that this is not the way you’ll always be. You’d like to have some of that old devil-may-care attitude, the one that helped you shrug off the untidiness and the disorganization. The years of toys ankle deep in the dining playroom, the piles of shoes by the front door.

Not the toys and the shoes themselves, mind you, just the ability to forgive them for standing between order and disorder.

It struck me yesterday that I am a house keeper. Not a housekeeper. The word break is crucial. I’m not a professional. I’m an amateur, one who comes to the task not from duty but from love.

Late Summer Color

Late Summer Color

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Purples and yellows splash color into the late-summer garden. Chicory blooms blue along the roadside. And for contrast, the bridal-veil white of clematis paniculata.

Summer may not have been hot this year, but it has been colorful. Plentiful rain has kept the grass green, has meant no watering, no parched soil.

Wildflowers scarce in other seasons are emboldened this year.  The soil has a memory, especially when it rains.

Late summer color softens the blow, warms these days of waning light.

A Building is Born

A Building is Born

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This morning on my way to work I didn’t have to cross the street and cross it again a block later. I didn’t have to walk around a construction site. It seems that finally, finally, the new building is finished.

I’ve watched it fall and rise again, gutted, framed and windowed. The old building was indistinguishable from its brothers, another stone box. This new version is mostly glass, it seems. Shiny and bright, but I’m wondering how it will hold up.

No matter, though. I’m just relieved that my path here is not impeded, that cranes don’t swing across the sky, that First Street no longer narrows to one lane.

It happens all the time, I know, but usually not so close to home. And when it does, it’s worth mentioning: A building is born.

The Volunteer

The Volunteer

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I didn’t plant this flower, didn’t even notice it until last week. A volunteer, I suppose, a morning glory that decided to glorify us on its own, not sought out, not planted (its seed nicked and soaked as the instructions on the morning glory seed packet suggest).

Instead, it grew from escaped seeds, from flowers settled two, three summers ago, blown to the other side of the deck stairs, cosseted by leaf mold and azalea shade. Its green tendrils twined around the evergreen branches, spiraling up and around, through sunlight and darkness. Invisible for one season at least, maybe two.

And now, finally, it finds itself here, at the rag-tag end of summer, glinting in the sunlight of an August morning.

The volunteer proves that nature has its own designs and humans are often not a part of them. Beauty, however, often is.

Empty and Full

Empty and Full

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Yesterday we drove Celia, the youngest, a few hours up the road to college. For the first time since we bought this house in 1989, I awoke to no children living in it.

Until this morning the adrenalin carried me along. The list-making and packing, trying to make her transition as smooth as possible. But now the adrenalin is gone. The children are, too.

All the years of other-oriented living, of pushing my own needs aside for theirs, they haven’t come to a complete halt, of course, but they have come to a new phase.

I think of those amusement park rides that begin with a slow boat float through a cool tunnel only to shoot riders down a channel of water with a stomach-churning drop and a plume of spray.

What I thought would be easy turned out to be hard. Very hard. And at the end of the ride (the end of one phase of the ride, I should say), I’m exhausted, curious, wistful.

I’m empty — but I’m also full.

The van on the return trip. Those bags are empty — but the car is full.

Almost Morning

Almost Morning

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Though waking up in the wee hours has its deficits, it also has its benefits. And one of them is watching the sky lighten, the trees gradually emerge from the dusk, each individual branch making a pact with the light. Yes, we are here.

Today it was after 6 a.m. when this happened. And even now, as we edge toward 7, the morning is still uncertain, unknowable.

Soon the sun will glance through the front oaks and sparkle on the dew. I’ll walk out the door with music in my ears, lace up my shoes, trot down the street and put a stamp on the day.

But until then it is still almost morning. A time of infinite possibility.