Desk Envy

Desk Envy

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I really can’t complain. I may not have the desk of my dreams, but it’s not bad. An apple-green table of a desk, only slightly dented and worn (a lopsided heart carved into the middle, a few splotches of salmon-pink paint in one corner, souvenirs of the girls who once used it).

True, it does not overlook the Atlantic Ocean, or the Front Range of the Rockies, or the harbor in Oban, Scotland. But it does have a lovely view of the backyard, the main street of the neighborhood and a corner of the woods beyond. 

My perfectly-fine desk doesn’t keep me from having desk envy, though. And last night I experienced a full dose of it while watching the movie “Something’s Gotta Give.” It wasn’t my first viewing of this film, but it was the first time I had desk envy watching it. 

Instead of focusing on the budding romance of Erica the playwright, I zeroed in on her writing space. The broad expanse of the (mahogany?) desk, the perfectly placed lamp. The windows! Oh, my gosh, the windows! And the door, open to sea breezes.

I keep telling myself it’s just a movie set. But still…

Catching up on Taylor Swift

Catching up on Taylor Swift

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I’ve just spent more time than I meant to reading about Taylor Swift. I’m not exactly at the vanguard of popular culture, but the juggernaut that is Taylor + Travis, especially as we race toward Super Bowl Sunday, seemed like something I should know just a little bit about. 

This led me to watch a few music videos, do a little googling (there’s a Taylor Swift class at Harvard and, of course, she was Time‘s Person of the Year for 2023) and feel just a little more a part of the cultural zeitgeist. 

I’m still mostly in the dark about the superstar and her super-athlete boyfriend, but I’m curious enough that I may tune in on Sunday, if not for the football then for the celebrity dish.

(Photo: Patrick Smith/Getty)

Up and Out

Up and Out

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Like many people these days I don’t need to leave my house to ply my trade. I can do it quite comfortably from my in-home office. The temptation, then, is to stay inside far too much, especially in the mornings, when I do most of my writing, and especially in winter, when it’s cold. 

But lately, I’ve been trundling out to a 9 a.m. Wednesday yoga class, climbing into a frigid car, battling rush-hour traffic (that again?!) and reaching class barely in time for sun salutations.

I love my small class — and the people in it. And I’ve come to realize that I also love getting up and out “early” one day of the week. Early is relative, of course. I used to leave the house before 7 every day. 

(A photo from the old days of “up and out.”)

Fourteen!

Fourteen!

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A Walker in the Suburbs turns 14 today! If it was growing up in England in the last century, it would be free to leave school forever and get a job. 

I learned this fact while reading a Washington Post article “Centenarians Tell Us What Matters Most.”  It strikes me this morning that the article’s subheads do a good job of explaining why I started A Walker in the Suburbs in 2010 and continue it still. 

Don’t neglect your education. Think positive. Keep reading. Keep moving. Do what you love. 

What started as an experiment during a snowstorm almost a decade and a half ago has become an essential part of my writing life. It keeps me learning and reading. It encourages positivity and perspective. And it certainly keeps me moving. 

Most of all, though, it gives me the chance to do what I love. But that’s just half the equation. The other half is what happens in the minds and hearts of the people reading it. I hope A Walker in the Suburbs brings you a bit of pleasure, too. 

(An old snapshot of the girls. I bet one of them was 14 in this photo.)

At Our Fingertips

At Our Fingertips

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This morning I’ve found myself reading about the wedding of a woman I do not know, will never meet but who provided a link to a story about her nuptials on her travel blog, which I’ve been sampling. 

I have good friends, people I’ve known for years, whose wedding pictures I’ve never glimpsed and probably never will.  But I could describe in detail the gold lace gown that Caroline wore on her special day in 2016.  Such is life in the digital age. 

In fact, there’s a chance that you are, even as we speak, reading a post by someone you don’t know, writing about someone she doesn’t know. 

For some of us, the world at our fingertips is much more real than the one outside our door. 

Laundry Day

Laundry Day

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“Perhaps the job most loathed by Victorian womanhood was doing the laundry,” Ruth Goodman writes in How to be a Victorian, which I mentioned a few days ago. 

As I sort through my own darks and lights, I can’t help but think about how differently my laundry day will proceed from that of the Victorian woman’s. Hers would have started on Saturday, when the soaking began. 

More than 36 hours later she’d begin hauling and heating the water to eke out suds from the harsh soaps of the day, then stirring and agitating the clothes in a tub with a dolly stick (a plunger-like item) to remove the dirt. If she was lucky and had a wringer, she’d remove water from the clothes that way; otherwise, she’d wring them by hand. This would repeat through a couple of rinses, of course. In between she would have to carry large tubs of water in and out of what was most likely a cramped, dark kitchen. Only then could she hang the clothes up to dry. 

Laundry took up so much space and water-heating capabilities that the family would have a cold supper on laundry day, relying on leftovers from what was usually a larger meal on Sunday. 

Goodman says that her own historical laundry experiences lead her to see the automatic washing machine as “one of the great bulwarks of women’s liberation, an invention that can sit alongside contraception and the vote in the direct impact it has had on changing women’s lives.”

Land of the Living

Land of the Living

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Yesterday I spent a few minutes in Lala Land, courtesy of a dental procedure. This is not the Lala Land of tropical breezes and white-sand beaches. This is oblivion followed by someone saying, “It’s over. You can wake up now.” 

Nevertheless, I’m not one to turn my back on oblivion when I have the chance. In fact, I think oblivion is the perfect way to visit an oral surgeon’s office. 

Today I’m back in the Land of the Living. A cup of tea, a bowl of yogurt (still soft foods at this point) and no oblivion at all. I’ll take it. 

A Prediction

A Prediction

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So we have finally come to the end of January, the longest month. I’m convinced it has at least 40 days. No wait, that’s Lent, and it will be arriving soon enough. 

But today we’re in the clear. It’s February 2, and the groundhog has predicted an early spring. Based on the blooming snowdrops and hellebores, on the inch-long daffodil shoots in the front yard and the faint fuzz of bloom on the witch hazel tree in back, I’d say the groundhog’s prediction may be true. 

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, though, the rodent has been right only 40 percent of the time. So I won’t pack away the hats, gloves and wool sweaters just yet. I won’t wish him wrong, either.

Mom’s Scott Hotel

Mom’s Scott Hotel

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It is February 1, 2024, what would have been Mom’s 98th birthday. Today, I cede this space to the person who inspired me first, and inspires me still. In today’s post, Mom writes about one of the homes she lived in when she was growing up. The Scott Hotel is still standing, and is a source of continuing fascination. 

Most towns have a street called Broadway, wider than the rest, wider than Main or any of the tree- or number-named streets. The name itself makes one expect it to be wider and more important than most — and in the early life of most cities, it was. In Lexington, Transylvania, the first college west of the Alleghenies, and the Opera House, where the Barrymores and others performed, were built on Broadway. 

So when my uncle wanted to build a hotel by the railroad, he built it across Broadway from the Southern Depot. More than 20 trains a day passed that way and all but the fastest stopped to deposit or pick up passengers. Some wanted meals, some lodging for a night or even longer. 

None of my friends at St. Peter’s School lived in a hotel. But I did. It was my Daddy’s hotel, started by his uncle John Scott, and the street beside it was called Scott Street. It was a small hotel, three floors and about 20 or 25 rooms. The Southern Railroad ran right beside it, and the impressive yellow brick Southern Station was right across the street. 

One of the rooms on the second floor had been turned into our playroom. We kept our toys there and played all sorts of games. Several times we put on plays there, hanging a sheet and pretending it was a velvet curtain. We practiced hard and then we had to find an audience. We would go down to the lobby and ask some of the regulars to attend: Cigarette Charley and Pink-Eyed Whitey.

Mom’s writings don’t always have a natural conclusion. This one, like so many, leaves me wanting more.

Together Again

Together Again

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It’s the last day of January, and I’m thinking ahead to tomorrow’s post, the only guest post I have all year. My mother will “write” that one, as soon as I browse through her papers and find which of her writings to highlight.

In the meantime, I’m thinking about Mom, who would have turned 98 tomorrow. Yesterday I was repairing a tear in a blue-striped toddler dress that I wore as a baby. I found the pinafore for this dress earlier (see basement decluttering, below) and put it aside for sweet Aurora. When I delivered it to her on Saturday and her mother slipped it over her head and shoulders she immediately started to dance. It’s that kind of garment. 

But a pinafore requires a dress, and once I dug through another box and found it, I could see why I’d not set it aside, too. The dress was badly torn, the skirt pulled away from the bodice, the sash unattached on one side. Nothing to do but find a needle and thread and begin. 

Once I got into the project, I could see the previous repairs, the mended side seams, the hem that Mom had let down, her stitches surprisingly small and tidy. For an hour or so last night I felt like we were working shoulder to shoulder, laughing and chatting as our needles flew, together again.