An Inventory

An Inventory

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Four years ago on this day, I left the world of paid employment and embarked on a new kind of life. Because the years seem to pass at the speed of light now, it hardly seems like two years since I made the leap. But in fact, it’s been twice that long.

My first instinct is to ask myself what I have to show for it. Although my newly found “wisdom of the pause” (is that what it is?) tells me that no metric is required, that to properly appreciate this stage of life one must cast aside the old ways of measure, I’ve just spent the last two hours taking inventory.

That’s right … taking inventory. I know; it’s box-checker behavior to the max, but it’s strangely satisfying. I won’t bore you with the list itself, but I will share that it’s more than 2,000 words long and reminds me why I feel busy all the time. Suffice it to say that although I’m no longer paid (much) for my services, I still produce. And that, I’m sorry to say, still makes me happy. Plainly, I have much to learn.

Light Show

Light Show

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I wake these days in medias res, a Latin phrase I remember from my study of The Odyssey in high school. It may not yet truly be “in the middle of things” — 7 a.m. isn’t that late — but it feels that way with so much light pouring in the front windows.

Wasn’t it just weeks ago when waking at this hour felt like getting in on the ground floor of the day? Not anymore. I feel like the party’s half over by the time I open my eyes. Sunrise at 6:14 and ever earlier through the next couple of months.

And so begins the season of light. It began weeks ago, I suppose, but I was too busy to notice. Now I have time to marvel at the way it slants in the house early in the day, making shadows on the wall, splashing us with warmth and well-being.

It’s not easy to sleep late these days. But why would you want to?

A Day in the Kitchen

A Day in the Kitchen

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Yesterday, after I’d read as much of the newspaper as I could handle, and while listening to smooth jazz on my “Sunday station,” I heard the kitchen calling. It doesn’t call very often, so when it does, I try to listen.

First, I made a casserole, then I baked a quiche. And finally, I whipped up some granola. Nothing “went” with anything else. Nothing was supposed to. One dish was to give away, another to use up some leftovers. The granola was to replenish my supply.

The menu items aren’t important, though; it’s how I felt preparing them, what a few hours in the kitchen can do for a body (and a mind) when the body and the mind aren’t on deadline. There is something — much! — to be said for the whisking of eggs and cream, for the rolling of piecrust dough, for the slow stirring of a white sauce.

It gives one time to think, to gently unravel thoughts that may have gotten tangled earlier in the week. I won’t be spending today in the kitchen; that’s for sure. But I treasure the time I spent there yesterday.

(This time, I cleaned up as I went along.)

Picking Dandelions

Picking Dandelions

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It’s dandelion season, which always brings to mind a story from my childhood. When I was in fourth grade, my parochial grammar school, Christ the King, had a dandelion problem. The whole expansive front lawn was filled with the yellow flowers.

I don’t recall them being as noticeable on the side yard, and behind the school was a parking lot with a line down the middle: girls played on one side, boys on the other. (A few of us found a way to circumvent that: we devised a game of “Four Square” with two boys on one side and two girls on the other.)

But that isn’t the only absurdity for which I remember Christ the King. One lovely April afternoon when spring fever was running high, the nuns turned the whole bunch of us out on the front lawn to pick dandelions. Mind you, we weren’t digging them up, just plucking them from the stem. Which guaranteed they would be around next year.

I’m trying to imagine what would happen if a school did that now. Without permission slips?! Despite seasonal allergies?! To say there would be an uproar is putting it mildly. But for a fourth-grader who liked to stare dreamily out the window, it was the best possible way to spend a spring afternoon in school. Which is why, all these years later, I remember that day.

(I was younger than fourth grade here, but it’s from the same era … and are those dandelions in the yard?)

Linger and Look

Linger and Look

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Classes are over for the semester, so it was my first free Wednesday evening (not including vacations) since last summer. I made good use of it by sitting on the deck until darkness fell.

These are days that beg us to linger and look. Days of leafing and blossom when it is enough, I think, just to witness, to be part of the human race.

Looking won’t keep the azaleas in bloom all summer, or the lilac scent wafting from the bush. Looking won’t halt the leafing of the trees or the greening of the grass. But looking makes these small miracles mine — at least for a time.

(A poppy’s eye view of the yard.)

Walk or Wait?

Walk or Wait?

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I’m walking longer these days, and when I don’t drive to walk (which I often do), at some point I must cross a busy, four-lane road. During off hours I might wait for a pause in the traffic, dash across to the median, then wait for another opening to cross the rest of the way.

It’s not what I taught my kids to do, and not something I’m particularly proud of doing. It puts pace before safety. Which is why these days I’m more likely to push the button and wait for the “walk” sign. What a wimp, I tell myself. But a living wimp, so worth the trade-off.

Still, I miss the halcyon days of urban walking. I miss being part of a pedestrian tribe propelling itself from block to block, fidgeting whenever a red light stopped our progress. We were fearless; we had strength in numbers. And sometimes, we walked right through those “wait” signs.

Outside on Earth Day

Outside on Earth Day

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It’s my first outdoor post of the season, and I’m writing it on Earth Day. The glass-topped table is perpendicular to the way it usually rests — a remnant from Easter dinner’s crowd of 20 — so I have an expansive ringside seat on the back yard.

As I type these words a glossy brown fox trots across the lawn and disappears behind the ferns. A few minutes ago I spotted a pileated woodpecker — a primeval-looking creature if ever there was one — drilling down into the stump of an old oak in search of breakfast. Hawks cry, squirrels hop, and a mama cardinal nibbles delicately at the feeder.

Before me flames an azalea that’s far too big for the garden in which it’s planted (a common failing of mine). Behind it, near the trampoline, blooms a pretty pink azalea transplanted decades ago from a friend’s house in the District. Ferns unfurl. Wood poppies pop. The lavender azalea behind the house isn’t as abundant as last year, due to some necessary pruning (we could no longer see out the kitchen window!), but it’s still striking. Did I mention it’s azalea season in my neck of the woods?

And finally, the most exciting garden news: The lilac I’ve celebrated for years has finally produced more flowers than I can count. To inhale its fragrance is to be transported.

Transported is what I am on this Earth Day. The long winter is finally over.

Mourning Francis

Mourning Francis

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The world awoke to the sad news this morning of Pope Francis’s passing. He had been ailing, of course, and recently hospitalized. But he made an appearance on Easter and, like many, I hoped he was out of the woods and would be with us a few more years.

I remember the excitement that greeted his papacy. Here was the first pope from Latin America, a pontiff who chose to name himself after Saint Francis, patron of the poor. Here was a leader who shunned the trappings of power and called our attention to immigrants and climate change. Here was a leader who spoke out against war and rampant commercialism.

Though at various points of his papacy Francis irritated both conservative and liberal wings of the church, he broadened the institution, and it feels lonely and frightening without him. So much darkness in the world right now. So little light.

What to do but seek comfort in his message, his hopefulness and the words and example he leaves behind. Rest in peace, Pope Francis.

Bells tolled today in Rome to announce the passing of Pope Francis.

The Final Word

The Final Word

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Last night’s Holy Thursday service included a tradition that my church has instituted, the washing of the feet. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples at that long-ago Passover supper, assuming the role of the lowliest servant, modeling the behavior he asked his followers to share: to serve others.

If only it were as easy as joining the queue to wash and be washed. But it’s increasingly difficult to be a good person, to understand and not judge, to give others a second, third or even fourth chance. We don’t live in easy times. Of course, first-century Jerusalem was no picnic either.

On Good Friday (and other days, too), I like to re-read one of my favorite Michael Gerson columns. Gerson died in November 2022. I often wish he were still alive and writing. He wasn’t afraid to discuss his faith or his struggles — or to be joyously optimistic when the times called for it.

One of those times was Good Friday. Not that things started off well: “It would have seemed that every source of order, justice and comfort — politics, institutional religion, the community, friendship — had been discredited,” Gerson wrote. “It was the cynic’s finest hour.”

And then, he wrote, something happened: “The cynics somehow lost control of the narrative.” Even those who believe the body was moved must admit that “faith in the figure Rome executed has far outlived the Roman empire.” For those who believe, Gerson said, Good Friday and Easter legitimize both despair and faith. But most of all, they remind us that God is on the side of those who suffer, the side of those who hope.

“There is a truth and human existence cannot be contained in a tomb. It is possible to live lightly, even in the face of death — not by becoming hard and strong, but through a confident perseverance. Because cynicism is the failure of patience. Because Good Friday does not have the final word.”

(A holy water font in the Cathedral of Seville in Spain.)

Many Worlds

Many Worlds

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The professor opened his lecture on quantum mechanics with the statement that people who said they understood it were not telling the truth, and he ended his lecture by saying, “I hope you’re now as confused about quantum theory as I am.”

My professor was repeating this story at the end of his lecture on quantum theory, which was, fittingly, the last class of the semester. Fittingly because how can you top quantum theory, especially when you (read I) can’t even define quantum theory.

Here are a few lines from my notes: “Because the measured electron is radically different from the unmeasured electron, it appears that we cannot describe this particle (or any other) without referring to the act of observation.”

Quantum mechanics both befuddles and ignores the Newtonian world view. Quantum theory “challenges our intuitions by having conscious observation actually create the physical reality.” It’s the stuff of science fiction. Only it’s not fiction. It’s the “most stunningly successful of all the theories in science; not a single one of its predictions has ever been wrong.”

From quantum has flowed the Copenhagen interpretation of Niels Bohr, who posits that there is no deep reality; that the world we see around us is real but floats on a world that is not as real. From quantum has flowed the Copenhagen interpretation number two, that reality is created by observation and there is no reality without observation.

From quantum has flowed the many worlds theory, the idea that innumerable parallel universes as real as our own exist. The fact that I’m writing a post on quantum mechanics is all the proof I need of the many worlds theory.