Land of Trucks

Land of Trucks

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I’m the mother of three daughters, which means that I am, for the most part, a stranger in the land of trucks. But I’m becoming more familiar with them thanks to my almost two-year-old grandson, who has never met a truck he doesn’t love. 

There are trash trucks and food trucks (a nice modern touch) and dump trucks and more. There are trucks that hold stacks of alphabet blocks, which I’ve never seen in real life but which provide the all-important educational spin.

Most of all, I’ve seen Isaiah backing up his trucks, parking them, talking to them and immersed in play with them. That’s the part that makes me love them most. 

The Salad Green Blues

The Salad Green Blues

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I don’t usually read the food section of the newspaper because after decades of slinging hash I enjoy spending less time in the kitchen. But yesterday, I found myself pulled in by a piece that trashed, of all things, lettuce!

The author, Tamar Haspel, was not subtle: “Lettuce is a vehicle to bring refrigerated water from farm to table,” she began, explaining that the crop is 96 percent water. Then she launched into a discussion of why eating salad was bad for the planet (it consumes too many resources in exchange for too few calories and nutrients) and bad for us (it provides a halo effect for all the less healthy stuff we mix in with it — croutons, fried chicken strips — and is more likely to make us sick, since it can be contaminated with food-borne pathogens and we eat it raw). It’s not that we shouldn’t eat salad, she concludes, but that we should realize it’s a luxury to do so. 

As a person who builds many meals around salads (albeit forgoing iceberg lettuce, the most watery of salad greens), and who has sought them in vain in countries where food isn’t as abundant, I have to say that her piece was an eye-opener. I won’t be giving up my baby romaines and arugula anytime soon … but I’ll try to include even more beans, nuts and other nutritious add-ons when I eat them.

Seamless

Seamless

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There’s a way I want to live now that is best described as seamless. Unlike the work-for-pay life, where my time was parceled into segments set by modern office practices (meetings, deadlines, more meetings), the seamless life goes something like this:

I write for a few hours, then break to play the piano or clean the bird’s cage, followed by a walk and then more writing because a walk almost always gives me an idea or two. 

Which is not say there aren’t plenty of errands to run, laundry to do and other details of daily life. The seamless life is part reality, part aspiration. 

The Deer Did It

The Deer Did It

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Sometimes the deer do us a favor, although not often and not directly. Because the rapacious critters ate my impatiens while I was away, I wanted to put something in the large flower pots that flank the front door. Begonias have a reputation as deer-resistant, so I found a good deal on four plants.

The favor part of this is that the errand landed me in a part of town I don’t usually visit. And that meant a walk on a sunny and unfamiliar path. I cruised along a road for part of the route, then circled a pond that was luminous with bird and insect life.

Dragonflies buzzed, frogs croaked, birds chirped as they landed on lily pads. A gazebo let me view the scene from a shady perch. Afterwards I took a series of tree trunk steppingstones through the wetland bordering the pond, then strolled through a cool glade. 

It was lovely midsummer moment, brought to me (sort of) by the deer. 

Thoughts on the Fourth

Thoughts on the Fourth

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On one of my first trips abroad, the passengers in the airplane burst into applause when we landed back in the U.S. It wasn’t a difficult landing or an especially long flight. But it was a less jaded age, and I, novice flyer, started clapping, too.

I had more mixed feelings re-entering the U.S. a week ago. While we were away there were more mass shootings, several disturbing Supreme Court rulings (one of which produced equally disturbing vandalism at my Catholic church last week), and explosive testimony about the actions of our former president. 

I love my country, but three weeks away from it was refreshing. I read no newspapers, watched no televised news. I took a break from our Weltschmerz, an Old World term that has become a surprisingly apt way to describe our not-so-new problems. 

Tyranny, inequality and intolerance have always been with us. Many came here in hopes of escaping them. But they are part of the human conditions, and they have followed us here. 

In my optimistic moments I still think the grand experiment that is the United States of America can weather these difficult, polarizing times. But it will take our efforts and our prayers and our sacrifice to do so. I hope we are up to the task. 

Happy Flower

Happy Flower

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Zinnias have long been on my list of must-grow flowers, but previous attempts to coax them from seed have come to naught. 

But this year, thanks to careful planting (not by me!) and well-timed rain, we are enjoying these bright, cheerful blossoms.

I’m not sure what they say in the official language of flowers, but to me, zinnias are the frank and friendly kid sister. They lack the creamy beauty of the rose, the showy splendor of the iris and the delicacy of the forget-me-nots. 

But they more than make up for those in their color, durability and their winning personality. Zinnias are the happy flower.

Walking the Line

Walking the Line

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The temptation, for me at any rate, is to say, this time last week, I was … exploring a palace, clambering up the ramparts in a castle, nibbling a delectable almond pastry in a tiny cafe.

Not the healthiest approach to re-entry. So I tell myself that vacations can’t go on forever, that I don’t live in a quaint European village, and that, in short, I should get on with it.

On the other hand, I see no harm in letting my mind drift to the narrow lanes of Barrio Santa Cruz in Seville and the lull that comes over them before the restaurants open for dinner at 7:00 or 7:30.  Or the view I would wake up to in Sintra, turrets and towers tucked in among the green. 

There’s a fine line between dissatisfaction and enlargement. And I’m trying to walk it right now.

Camp Reston

Camp Reston

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On a walk my first day back I marveled at the transformation. When I left for vacation, school was still in session and early heat was still battling spring chill. But now it is full-on summer. 

On the lake, fishermen wait patiently for a nibble. Children cavort on canoes and paddle boards. Sunbathers turn their towels toward the sun. Shade is deep and wide; the walker seeks it when she can. 

The place I live no longer feels like a suburb. It feels like a camp. 

The Concert

The Concert

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The crowd began to gather 30 minutes before the performance, a ragtag group of concert-goers, including students, friends of the musicians, and a few tourists thrown into the mix.  It was our last night in Portugal and we had been wondering how to spend it when I happened upon an announcement of a concert on the grounds of the Quinta da Regaleira, of spiral staircase fame. What fun it would be to return in the evening, just as the last light was slanting onto the twisted spires and tree trunks! 

That was before we arrived to find a black-clad musician (perhaps the cellist?) exclaiming to the guard on duty that, at least from what I could make out, something was missing at the venue. Forty-five minutes later, we were escorted through the grounds of the Quinta right up to the stage where the Damas de Sao Carlos, a 10-member all-female ensemble (plus a male harpsichordist) had taken the stage. The musicians came from Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and Portugal. They had decked out their concert black with scarves of scarlet, blue and green. 

We had barely taken our seats when they launched into “Spring” from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” How the music filled and animated that special space! How good it was to hear those familiar notes in that unfamiliar setting. And how strangely comforting: it reminded me that just as music transcends all languages, travel transcends all cultures. It draws us together. It makes us, however briefly, one. 

Old World

Old World

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On the way to the airport Sunday, the chatty cabdriver, Isabel, pointed out sights along the way. “Here is where the king would stop on his way to Sintra,” she said, pronouncing it “Seen trah.” It was a two-day trip so he needed an intermediary palace, she explained. And sure enough, there was a telltale spire amidst the trees and apartment blocks. 

“The past is so alive here,” I said, exclaiming over the beauty and the bounty of the place I was sad to be leaving. 

“But you are a young country,” she said, pronouncing it “young uh.” “We are old.”

I thought of her words as the plane touched the tarmac at Dulles Airport in the waning light of a midsummer evening. Everything was so green, and there was so much space. It was easy for a moment to see the potential of this continent, the feelings that must have greeted its discovery by Europeans. 

It’s easy to rhapsodize over the quaint lanes and cobblestones of Europe, to decry the fast food joints and 10-lane highways of the U.S. But it’s important to keep Isabel’s observation in mind. Portugal is the Old World. We are the New.