A Creek

A Creek

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The ground is saturated. Rain water trickles through the soil and into drainage ditches that divide the meadow. Yesterday I spotted a young boy squatting down beside one of those ditches. His bike laid carelessly on its side, as if he couldn’t wait to plunge into the water, to see what he might find there.

I remembered the park a street behind us when I was this boy’s age. There was a creek that wound around the park, and the playground smelled of fresh mud. I imagine the creek flooded in the spring of the year. But I wouldn’t have noticed that at the time.

All I knew then was the smell of the run in the dank days of spring, standing on the bank, immersed as this boy was immersed, catching crawdads or, later, bottling creek water to look at under my microscope. Every day had the same catch in its breath as these days do.

The Results

The Results

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Last night I went to an awards ceremony for a writing contest I’d helped to judge. I wanted to see the people who’d written the essays, to match face with voice. The winners were younger than I imagined they would be. One of them I’d thought was female (our entries were identified only with numbers) was actually male. Two of the three honorable mentions were married to each other.

As the evening progressed, back stories emerged. Enough of them that I knew we had picked the right winners. Enough of them that I knew we, the judges, were the real winners after all.

Two Springs

Two Springs

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There are springs that flow smoothly from gray deadwood, sodden March soil to greening Aprils and ebullient Mays.

And then there are springs like this one. Several days of dreary clouds and then a jewel (yesterday) or, if you’re lucky, two jewels (today is promising). Rather than spoiling us with a steady pulse, spring teases us, stalls, then overwhelms. It is the mid-game reprieve, the comeback, the career that seemed to be over but somehow springs to life.

It is the dogwood, just flowering. The red buds — where have they been these weeks, how could I have missed their shimmer? The pink tulips I forgot I planted — they are blooming.

When the sun appears, the new grass quivers with green. The oaks are just past budding; each leaf opens heavenward, like a small prayer. And the air, pellucid, perfect.

Nine Lives

Nine Lives

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In My Nine Lives, the pianist Leon Fleisher describes the despair he faced when the fourth and fifth fingers of his right hand curled up and stopped working. He was in his prime, playing with the world’s great orchestras, when the mysterious ailment derailed his career. Fleisher had been playing since he was four — for as long as he could remember — and by age 9 was studying with the great Artur Schnabel. Music was Fleisher’s life.

Fleisher admits that he thought about suicide. But he loved life and he loved music, so he turned to teaching and conducting. He mastered repertoire for the left hand and gave recitals. He never stopped looking for a cure for his right hand, either, and more than 30 years later, he found one: botox injections for what was finally diagnosed as focal dystonia, a neurological condition that makes muscles contract.

The life he lived was not the one he planned; it was a richer one. “Time and again, I would look at my life and marvel that so many wonderful things had happened that never would have happened if my hand had not been struck down. I couldn’t imagine my life without conducting. I couldn’t imagine life without teaching so intensely. I couldn’t imagine my life without [my wife] Kathy.”

This is the door-closing-window-opening philosophy writ large. As I write these words I listen to Fleisher play the Schubert Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, Opus 960. It’s a piece that Fleisher (with co-author Anne Midgette) describes as “sublime,” “aching,” “like a memory from far away.” The music Fleisher makes now is transcendent. The desert years carved out a place in him, and the music that gurgles up from that place is both delicate and unflinching. His playing has a depth that comes from struggle.

Yesterday’s Post

Yesterday’s Post

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A day after the 57th anniversary of the least eventful day since 1900 (see Monday’s entry) came a day that was anything but boring. Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of human spaceflight — Yuri Gagarin’s 109-minute flight into the heavens and back again. It was the 66th anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s passing. His sudden death from a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 63 shocked Americans; he was the only president many of them, including my parents, had ever known. And it was the 150th anniversary of the first shots fired at Fort Sumter — the opening salvo of the Civil War.

By the time I post this entry, however, this will be yesterday’s news. And I will be wondering why we have become so fond of anniversary stories. Certainly we don’t lack news of our own. I think it may be a way to control the complexity of our lives. And we do honor history by bringing its highlights to our attention. But when the present is littered with the past, it’s hard not to feel encumbered.

White Trees at Sunset

White Trees at Sunset

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It was almost dark by the time I drove down Franklin Farm Drive with its magical, top-heavy Bradford pear trees. I had been meaning to make this pilgrimage for a week and am glad I made it before the blossoms blew away.

I counted 40 trees just on one side. Spring is extravagant here; it sends forth far more beauty than we need. Honestly, it’s hard to criticize the suburbs too much this time of year. The flowering cherries, phlox, redbud and forsythia see to that. They remind me that these outlying neighborhoods are designed to be beautiful.

I often forget this. I rail about the crazy highways and the ugly strip malls— but the suburbs happened when people left the dusty, dangerous, crowded city for a calm, green, airy substitute. The movement from city to suburb is as certain as the American push westward toward the frontier — and perhaps springs from the same place, a need to step out of the fray, to find a place we can call our own.

Another Day in Paradise

Another Day in Paradise

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Today I heard on the radio that a Cambridge University scientist has declared April 11, 1954 the most boring day since 1900. This is based on a computer analysis of 300 million facts, according to an NPR interview with William Tunstall-Pedoe, the scientist who invented the search engine that sifted through the facts and arrived at this oddly compelling conclusion.

Listeners who’ve commented on the story have mostly offered personal evidence to refute it — usually their own birthdays or those of their loved ones. None of the comments convinced me that this day shouldn’t be one of those most boring in history.

If April 11, 1954 was so ho-hum and ordinary, then wasn’t it also the most wonderful day, too? No great people were born, but neither were there explosions, battles or mass murders. And aren’t the simple, uneventful days the most special?

In Abraham Vergehese’s book Cutting for Stone, the character Ghosh tells his son, Marion, “You know what’s given me the greatest pleasure in my life? It’s been our bungalow, the normalcy of it, the ordinariness of my waking, Almaz rattling in the kitchen, my work. My classes, my rounds with the senior students. Seeing you and Shiva at dinner, then going to sleep with my wife.” Ghosh, the overworked doctor at a poor hospital in Ethiopia, falls asleep every night with these words on his lips: “Another day in paradise.”

I hope that April 11, 2011 — like April 11, 1954 — is just another day in paradise.

Low Clouds

Low Clouds

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A chill air has arrived; a few minutes ago it was sleeting. I try to look at the bright side. The warmth, when it gets here, will be that much more welcome. And cool temperatures make the blossoms last longer.

Still, it’s hard to be patient. The winter has been long. The clouds have been low. The carefree days of summer seem far, far away.

People Power

People Power

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Yesterday the air had a softness and a fragrance that practically begged me to come outside. And once out, I ran into friends and neighbors. In the city, at work, I met someone new in the courtyard; at home, in the suburbs, I chatted with a neighbor I’ve known for years but hadn’t seen in months.

As I was walking back to the house after that second conversation, it dawned on me that one of the things that puts a spring in my step are these random conversations. Research shows (ah, I love writing “research shows” — I’ve spent so much of my career writing those words!) that interaction with friends and acquaintances bolsters mood.

Yesterday at least I would have to agree with those researchers: Maybe it’s not just the warm weather that makes us feel like we’re coming alive again after the long winter; maybe it’s the people we see when we finally emerge from our cocoons.

A note on the photo: Unable to find a picture of my neighbors, I can only come up with a photo I snapped last November during a walk through Chinatown in New York City. Now there’s a place where people get out and enjoy their friends!

The Kindness of Strangers

The Kindness of Strangers

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During the last few months I’ve gotten to know a man named Pat, who is blind. I met him on the Metro. Our schedules are similar; we get on at the same stop and get off two stops apart. More to the point, we both change trains at Metro Center. This is no big deal for me, but quite a big deal for Pat, who must navigate the walk along the narrow platform, find and ascend the escalator (if it’s working), then get to the right spot on the platform to catch the Red Line train to his final destination.

While he can do this on his own with a cane, it’s much easier if someone helps him. And often someone does. More than most of us, Pat is dependent on the kindness of strangers. “I’ve met some wonderful people,” he told me this morning. “And some who aren’t so nice.”

Perhaps because he can’t see, he’s closely attuned to sounds. “Twenty years ago people used to talk on Metro,” he said. “They laughed and told stories and exchanged business cards. Now it’s quiet.” We talked about the reasons for this: Blackberries and iPhones, iPods and laptops.

The lack of chatter makes it harder for Pat to know where he’s going, but the lack of camaraderie isn’t good for any of us. It’s a still and stilted world we travel in — and I’m as much to blame as anyone, my nose in a book or my journal. But sometimes, when I’m lucky, I run into Pat. When I ride with him and we chat, the Metro seems a warmer, friendlier place.

Don’t we all depend on the kindness of strangers?