Royal Wedding

Royal Wedding

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As I write this morning my eye is trained on a ceremony happening thousands of miles away. I listen to the men and boy’s choir sing a hymn. I marvel at the vivid reds of the robes and of the carpet that extends down the length of Westminster Abbey (different red carpet above but the best I can muster).

I remember visiting the place, the sacred ground, the poets and the leaders who are buried there, the ceremonies that sanctified the walls and windows and every inch of the air.

In the front of the altar stand a woman in a long white dress with tapering lace sleeves, and a man in a smart red jacket. They are special, these people, but their marriage, like any other, will rise and fall on their own efforts, on how much they can give, on how much they can receive. “Every wedding is a royal wedding,” they are told.

As the ceremony ends the congregation inside the Abbey and everyone outside it sing “Jerusalem,” a favorite of mine since I first saw the movie “Chariots of Fire” many years ago. I take that as a good omen!

Fear and Comfort

Fear and Comfort

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In the last few months our dog, Copper, has become afraid of thunderstorms. He is a plucky little guy with strong shoulders and haunches and otherwise unfazed by the world around him. But now he trembles and races for the lowest, most protected ground when he hears a rumble of thunder.

Copper makes me think about fear, the irrationality of it, how it comes unbidden and unbound; how it makes us its own. When I see him like this I want to sit and hold him all day. But even if I could he would have none of it. Fear makes him restless, too.

These twin impulses, to fear and to comfort, they are buried deep down in all of us. So deep that they are often obscured. They dress up in other clothes, they parade around as silliness or ambition or pride or addiction. But they are there. I’m sure of it.

Stewardship

Stewardship

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Passing through the woods last evening on a quick walk before dinner, I crossed a bridge that Tom built. It’s a very humble plank bridge (not the one above) that took him no time to throw together.

He did it to help us (and other ramblers) over a slippery crossing near Little Difficult Run. Other neighbors have mapped the paths, cleaned the creek and taken chain saws to downed trees, leaving the logs neatly stacked along the trail.

I think of a line from Frost: “Whose woods these are I think I know.” The forest paths we traipse are either neighborhood common land or Fairfax County stream valley park. They belong to all of us. But they belong more when we care for them. The bridge wasn’t about craftsmanship; it was about stewardship.

Rooted

Rooted

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The other day I cleared a three-foot square patch of ground to plant a crepe myrtle we bought over the weekend. I’ve wanted crepe myrtle for years, admired the pluck and the late summer color of the tree. We may not have enough sunlight for the plant but we decided to take the plunge anyway. All we have to lose is a few dollars and the time we spend planting and watering.

The plot where we planted the crepe myrtle is a three-foot square in front of our deck, a spot once inhabited by bamboo. I didn’t know just how inhabited until I started to dig and found root after root after root — although to call them roots does not do them justice. They are actually runners with roots attached, and they claim the soil with a vengeance.

I shoveled and yanked, pried and sliced; I struggled an hour and a half with a job I thought would take me 15 minutes. And the whole time I was thinking: So this is what rooted means. Not just planted or anchored, but bound to the earth with every fiber.

Easter Monday

Easter Monday

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In much of the world, the day after Easter is a holiday. In the Washington, D.C., area, it’s the day of the White House Easter Egg Roll, which was one of those things I always meant to do when the children were little but never quite had the energy to pull off.

I wondered this morning, is Easter Monday known for anything other than being the day after Easter?

Turns out, it is. In Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, Easter Monday is Dyngus Day or “Wet Monday,” a day when boys wake girls by pouring water over the heads. There’s a large Dyngus Day celebration in Buffalo, New York, too, involving polkas and squirt guns.

This reminds me of another holiday. The festival of Songkran in Thailand is when people pour water on your shoulders or head (or sometimes blast it at you from a fast-moving truck) to wish you a happy new year. Tom and I spent our honeymoon in Thailand and for seven days were dowsed every time we walked outside.

I’ll spend Easter Monday as I spend most Mondays — writing, editing, reading, walking and doing laundry, which is about as close to ritual purification as I’ll get today.

Earth and Heaven

Earth and Heaven

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Yesterday was Earth Day; tomorrow is Easter. Today we are nicely tucked between earth and heaven. Which is where we are most comfortable, anyway.

“[It is a] a shabby genteel sentiment,” wrote the 19th-century British historian William Winwood Reade, “which makes men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels rather than elevated apes.”

I disagree. It is not a “shabby sentiment” that makes us feel uncomfortable in our human skin, that makes us believe there is something for us after this life is done. We may be wrong, of course. But hope is a choice. An informed choice.

Incense

Incense

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Last night’s Holy Thursday service brought back an old friend — incense. I grew up with the stuff, but it’s pretty scarce these days, at least in my church. Last night they pulled out all the stops, though, and by the end of the evening, incense was wafting all over the sanctuary. It matched the solemnity of the mass, the Pange Lingua, the stately procession at the end.

Some people coughed and sneezed when the incense came our way. It was too much for them. But I took deep breaths. The incense was more than just an odor, more than particles in the air. It reminded me of ritual and childhood piety. I didn’t mind it at all.

The Pedometer Made Me Do It

The Pedometer Made Me Do It

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It was my first time so I wanted to make a good impression. I parked the car at the high school and hiked to Metro. At the office I made more trips to the water cooler, mailbox and colleagues’ offices. At lunchtime came the big kahuna — a fast walk to the mall and back. At the end of the day I was well over the 10,000 recommended steps. But come on, I’m a walker in the suburbs. What else could I do? Which is why I must wear the gizmo again. Wear it and forget about it.

I push aside questions of motivation and ambition — what kind of person shows off for a tiny gadget attached to her waist, something that no one else can see? I give myself a break. It was my first time. The pedometer made me do it.

Photo of Sportline ThinQ pedometers from Slippery Brick

Sheep May Safely Graze

Sheep May Safely Graze

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My piano is an old love, a dusty, overlooked and abandoned love. But reading Leon Fleisher’s book (see April 14 post) made me seek out the piano again, the rent-to-purchase spinet that my parents bought for me to learn on and then gave me when I had a house of my own.

I had watched Fleisher play “Sheep May Safely Graze” on YouTube last week. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzLYxiLNJj8 It was sublime — and even more moving because you could see his little finger curl up after striking the high notes. You could see the effort it took him to play this piece.

I did something impulsive. I ordered the sheet music. And when it arrived yesterday I took it right to the piano. I’ve always loved this Bach cantata, even had a string quartet play it at our wedding. It is sweet and simple, with a melody that wanders off a bit, like a lost lamb. The piece starts off easily enough, but by the second page there are intricate fingerings. You must bring out an inner melody amidst scores of other notes — not easy for someone who’s been doing a lot more typing than playing the last few decades.

Still, I vow (and I vow it here, in a semi-public place!) to learn “Sheep May Safely Graze.” To prepare each part separately. To take it slowly enough that the notes enter my hands and my head. To increase speed only when I’ve mastered the voicing. To bring that lamb home. To play again.

One Story

One Story

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At the writing contest awards ceremony Friday night, and again this morning as I finished reading Out Stealing Horses, a lovely novel by the Norwegian author Per Petterson, I think about fiction and nonfiction, how close they can lie, how they are the same bones with different skin.

In this novel an old man recalls a summer that altered his life, that took his 15-year-old self and changed it forever. So fully does he live in his own thoughts, this man, that at one point he wonders if “the difference between talking and not talking is slowly wiped out, that the unending, inner conversation we carry on with ourselves merges with the one we have with the few people we still see, and when you live alone for too long the line which divides the one from the other becomes vague, and you do not notice when you cross that line…”

There is one conversation in our heads, one story. Maybe it doesn’t matter whether it emerges as fiction or memoir, essay or poem. All that matters is letting it out.