It’s a day to feel grateful … and to ponder gratitude. One thing I’ve noticed is how mercurial it can be, how it can lie leaden in the heart until something happens — a friend calls, a baby laughs, the dough rises — and suddenly it flies up, a bird with fluttering wings.
You try to catch it as it soars, but soon it’s gone again. Was it really there, or were you just imagining it?
I choose to believe the former. Its sightings may be sporadic, but its presence is real.
This morning I’m considering the cranberry, the perfect color of it, its tartness and completeness … and the way it slides beneath the knife when you try to slice and dice it.
I’m considering the many berries I have to slice and dice … and potential ways around that. Food processor to the rescue!
It’s not even Thanksgiving and I’m already looking for ways to avoid cooking. This doesn’t bode well!
Walking through the woods lately has brought verticality to mind. Tree trunks stand unadorned. Without leaves to distract us, their upright posture is all the more stunning.
I feel dwarfed by the size and grandeur of these trees, by their bare beauty.
In winter, our eyes and minds are drawn to the essential nature of things.
The other night I had a funny anxiety dream. I was strolling through a store on Thanksgiving afternoon, casually browsing, picking up treats for the holiday meal, when I suddenly realized that I had not put the turkey in the oven. Not only that, but I had failed to bake the pumpkin pies the night before.
As I frantically tried to figure out how to feed 20 people with no turkey or pie … I woke up.
Ah yes, I thought groggily, a Thanksgiving anxiety dream. When I came to full consciousness the next morning, I remembered my middle-of-the-night panic with a smile — but a jolt, too.
Yes, I was given a reprieve. But the big day is coming up. I hope I’m prepared!
(As close as I can come to a turkey photo: a turkey teapot photo!)
They lasted almost till Thanksgiving, but last night finished them off. I’m talking about the summer flowers, the impatiens I transplanted after a deer took them down and the begonias that took their place.
I snapped a photo of these plants the other night, after I realized how cold it would be. I may have snapped a shot of them earlier, but I was taking no chances. I wanted to preserve their bounty in some way.
Surely the begonias by the front door were princes of plants, their lift and height, their regal presence. And another begonia on the deck, the one pictured above, already wilting a bit, was resplendent in its youth, a gift from a green-thumbed friend, which apparently imbibed some of her plant goodness at the start.
Annuals are the victims of seasonal change. They lack the immortality of the perennial. For that reason, they draw our attention to the fleetingness of life. And for that reason, among others, I honor them.
The world lost a great columnist and thinker yesterday when Michael Gerson died of cancer. Though I’m not an evangelical Christian Republican, I fond much to admire in Gerson’s columns, especially the ones about faith. I was not the only one. The tributes are flowing in.
In 2019 he spoke at Washington National Cathedral about his battle with depression, which had hospitalized him only weeks before. Though he credited medication for helping him turn the corner, he also spoke of “other forms of comfort,” including “the wild hope of a living God.”
Those who believe, he said, know that life is not a farce but a pilgrimage, that hope can “grow within us, like a seed,” and “transcendence sparks and crackles around us … if we open ourselves to seeing it.”
Gerson didn’t just write about heavy stuff, though. Last summer he described his new Havanese, Jack, as a “living, yipping, randomly peeing antidepressant” and declared “I’ll never live without a dog again.” He never did — but now Jack, his family, friends and readers will have to live without Gerson.
I’ve written very few fan letters in my life, but last May I wrote one to Michael Gerson. He’d written a column that acknowledged a return of the cancer he knew would end his life, and I wanted to let him know that one reader, this reader, had taken much comfort from his words. He was kind enough to write me back. But it’s in his published words that I will remember him best, like this one from 2017:
If the resurrection is real, death’s hold is broken. … 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.
Yesterday there was a drive and some errands that reminded me how many worlds exist inside this one world we call home.
There was a body shop with country music blaring and an American flag flying and a mechanic named JJ who pronounced the bill — “that will be nine thousand dollars” — before grinning and saying he was just kidding.
There was a hole-in-the-wall eatery with goat meat and fou-fou and a woman wearing a colorful West African print in bright yellow.
And in between these places were parkways of green, the home of our first president, and the Potomac River flashing bright outside the car window, its bridges arching gracefully over the waves.
It’s a big world out there. How good it is to be reminded of it.
Last night I read Erling Kagge’s Walking: One Step at a Time, and I did so blind, you might say, unaware of the Norwegian explorer’s biography and significance.
It was the journalist in me that wanted to shout “you buried the lead” when I came across — on page 155 of a 166-page book — the acknowledgment that “I had a bit of luck in that no one else had yet managed to walk alone to the South Pole.” Uh, what?!
Still, it was an interesting exercise to make it almost to the end of this slim volume before learning why, in essence, this slim volume was written. Which is not to say that Kagge doesn’t have a lot to share even as an “ordinary” walker. But being the first human to reach the North Pole, South Pole and the summit of Mount Everest — the “Three Poles Challenge” — on foot does give him a certain authority.
However, I do believe that the revelations he experiences are available to those of us who only trudge around the block. “And this is precisely the secret held by all those who go by foot,” he says. “Life is prolonged when you walk. Walking expands time rather than collapses it.”
(A diagram of the South Geographic Pole, South Magnetic Pole, South Geomagnetic Pole, and the South Pole of Inaccessibility. Courtesy Wikipedia.)
One hazard of being a writer is the frequent discovery of ink stains on my clothes. This happened the other day after a trip to the grocery store, where in the course of crossing items off my list (which has nothing to do with being a writer and everything to do with being a compulsive list-maker) I somehow smudged black ink on a white sweatshirt.
We’ll leave aside for the moment why in the world I bought a white sweatshirt and move along to the stain remedy.
Long ago, I acquired a chart which listed such items as ammonia, baking soda, lemon juice and glycerine in an arsenal of stain busters. Glycerine is key here, being one of the only substances I’ve found that can remove ball point ink from fabric. I worked with glycerine, and a mixture of glycerine, dish detergent and ammonia, off and on for an hour: applying, rubbing, rinsing, reapplying. But in time, and with effort, the ink stains went away.
I’m wearing the white sweatshirt again. Is it my imagination or does it look even creamier and more pristine than it did before I defaced it? I think it does.
(Imagine the stain potential here.)
I pulled up at the light, heart pounding. I’d missed the turn-off for Rock Creek Parkway and now was in some sort of endless correction loop, counting the one-two-three-four-five-six — sixth! — exit of the roundabout, which would take me, after more twists and turns, to the parkway entrance.
As I waited at the light, I stared longingly at the pedestrians. They were mostly young (this was a university area), bopping along with backpacks tossed carelessly across their shoulders, chatting as they crossed at the light. How I longed to be one of them!
Instead, I waited for the light to turn green, then put the car in first and made my way (eventually, after a hair-raising U-turn) onto the parkway. Yes, I reached my destination … but at a price.
I’ll always be a pedestrian at heart.
(Hoofing it through an urban center.)