Profusion

Profusion

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This morning we were awakened by a woodpecker drilling into the side of our house. The sound has the staccato intensity of an alarm, and we jumped to attention, convinced it was time to get up for work. Instead, it was time to get up and shoo away the woodpecker. Such is life in the suburbs.
Today is Easter Sunday–and our anniversary. A good day to write about abundance, profusion, the groaning Easter buffet, the bounty of buds and birds and blossoms. I doubled my recipe for rolls, I’m about to peel a dozen potatoes. We’re serving ham and lamb. There is more chocolate in the house than is sane or responsible. An Easter lily perfumes the air. It’s a day to rejoice.

Ritual of the Season

Ritual of the Season

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I went to see the cherry blossoms late yesterday. I walked down 18th Street, to 17th, past the dignified though scaffolded Old Executive Office Building, across Constitution to the Mall. By that point I was swept along with the throng. On we moved, past the Washington Monument and the World War II Memorial, its fountains flying, to our destination, the cherry trees of the Tidal Basin. I try to visit every year, even when it’s cold, even though it’s crowded, even if I don’t have time. This year’s blossoming coincides with Easter and with the first truly convincing days of spring. There were old folks and babies, screaming toddlers and young couples. Walking the path I think about the circularity of seasons and the circularity of life. I’ve seen the cherry blossoms with my husband, my parents, my sister, my children (when they were those screaming toddlers) and other family and friends. This year I saw them alone. I snapped pictures and savored the scene. At one point a mild breeze blew, caught some petals and sprinkled them over the crowd. Now it isn’t snow that’s falling, it’s cherry blossom petals. The long winter is over.

Down and Out

Down and Out

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“We’re just homeless people, trying to keep ourselves together,” said the woman as I passed her this morning. “One of these days we’re gonna live in a house again, just like you.” I often see homeless people on my way to Georgetown Law, but this woman and the two others walking with her were sane, dressed for work, in a hurry. Just like me.

When I walk in the suburbs, I write about trees and flowers and reflections in the rain. When I walk in the city, I write about people, the down and out as well as the up and coming. Walk in the city for long and it will break your heart.

The Spring Issue

The Spring Issue

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Yesterday, Celia and I watched the documentary “The September Issue,” which is about Anna Wintour, Grace Caddington and others putting out the September issue of Vogue magazine. It was fun to watch together, especially after watching “Coco Before Chanel” over the weekend.
The timing was interesting, though, because I had just finished reading the final (printer’s) proofs of Georgetown Law the same day and my desk is littered with page proofs, little yellow stickies and other proof of editorial toil.

Of course, we didn’t have a celebrity cover shoot with Sienna Miller and our models weren’t wearing gowns worth tens of thousands of dollars. But once you discount these, er, differences, the editorial process is remarkably similar. Putting out a magazine takes time, has its own seasons and dramas. It’s about winnowing down, removing what isn’t necessary. It is often tedious but ultimately fun.

Blue Monday

Blue Monday

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For most people, a blue Monday is what we have today in Washington, D.C., a rainy start to the week. But for me a Blue Monday will always be a candy bar, a most scrumptious treat — melt-in-your-mouth cream candy on the inside and thick semi-sweet chocolate on the outside. It’s a regional specialty, sold only in Kentucky as far as I know.

Given that the closest Blue Monday is hundreds of miles away, I will scrimp on the description. Were I to explain how it tastes to bite into one of these confections, the slight bitterness of the chocolate, followed by the exceptionally creamy and sweet innards of the bar… well, I might start climbing the walls. Instead I search through my files for a photo. It’s not of a Blue Monday; that’s probably copyrighted by Ruth Hunt Candies. Instead, it’s a photo Suzanne took at a candy shop in Bratislava. A chocolate fountain par excellence. So for chocolate lovers everywhere–from Kentucky to Slovakia–here’s to Blue Mondays.

Squeaky Clean

Squeaky Clean

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Three months ago our dishwasher broke, and we have yet to replace it. Sometimes when I’m scrubbing an especially crusty dish, a Cream of Wheat bowl that wasn’t immediately soaked, for instance, I ask myself why the holdup. Part of it is frugality, another part is economy (there are usually only three of us here now). But most of all, it’s because I enjoy the feel of suds up to my wrist, the squeak of a clean glass rinsed clear, the slow act of drying, always remembering the line I learned as a child from our babysitter, that a good dish dryer makes up for a bad dish washer. There is a lot of life wisdom in that line.
So even though washing dishes is a chore, especially after a long day at work, I take pleasure in the menial task. It’s tedious work that lets me think about what’s happening in my life. In that sense, it’s a lot like ironing, only the sink has a view. While swishing in the warm water, I can study the trees and measure the place of the sun in the sky. That just doesn’t happen when I load the dishwasher.

Freeze Frame

Freeze Frame

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Before the hedge can grow the bud must disappear, must burst open and give up its life for the leaf. But before that happens there is a moment of equilibrium, just a few days in the spring when the pink of the bud and the green of the leaf are in perfect balance. At that moment, the hedge doesn’t look at all as it will this summer, dark green and shaggy. It is, instead, the frosting on a birthday cake or a young girl’s party dress. That is the moment I was trying to capture in this picture. It’s not quite there. It lacks the delicacy of the plant in person, the slight chill in the air, the sound of the birds fluttering about it.

If it turns cold, this equipoise may last till next week. But I’m not counting on it. Like so much beauty, it’s momentary. If you don’t look closely, you’ll miss it entirely.

Living with Longing

Living with Longing

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If I remember to turn my head when I walk from Metro to work, I see a sliver of the Capitol dome. And still, after many years, I can’t believe I’m here.

People from big cities don’t know what it’s like to grow up in a world where things are always happening somewhere else. When I was a child in Lexington, we went to Cincinnati to shop, to Dayton to visit family and, eventually, to Indiana and Illinois and New York for college. For us, the important stuff was happening elsewhere. And seeking it, traveling or moving or going away to find it, gave us something to aspire to — gave us, you might say, a life’s work.

Children raised near the center of world gravity (like my own) live where things are already happening. They don’t arrive in a big city with a sense of astonishment so deep and so grand as to resemble madness.

When you start your life away from the fray, you learn to live with longing. You don’t always get what you want. It is a healthy tension.

Plant in a Hurry

Plant in a Hurry

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There are more beautiful pictures of daffodils, but the reason I like this one is that you can see, on the left hand side of the plant, a speared leaf. This plant is in a hurry. It has grown right up through the leaf, has moved it skyward. And that is how I sometimes feel in spring, lifted up, buoyed by something larger than all of us — the life force stirring again.

Missing Out

Missing Out

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Yesterday I talked with a woman on Metro. Nothing much, just a small conversation. But any pleasant exchange is a surprise when people are packed so close together. She was sitting on the aisle and the man she’d been sharing her seat with had just missed his stop. “I wish he’d told me that he needed to get out,” she said. I nodded politely. After all, I’d just taken the seat he had vacated. I was glad he was gone.

As she explained more, I learned that the man may have assumed she was getting up because she was putting her magazine away. He was trying to read her body language and (perhaps I’m making him more deferential than he actually was) save her from standing up sooner than she needed to. Was he, too, leaving cues about his intentions, cues that she wasn’t picking up?

But then she said more. “We have all this technology. We have email and cell phones and computers. But we still don’t know how to communicate.”

I would take it a step further. Perhaps we don’t communicate because we have the technology. It keeps our gaze down at our palm instead of outward, toward each other.