Decisions, Decisions

My morning commute involves driving to the Metro station, riding the train seven stops, hopping off, trudging up the escalator to an express bus that takes me to Crystal City, then walking to the office. Four segments, three types of transport, but it works. It's a routine, something I could negotiate in my sleep — and often feel like I do.

When it's very cold or rainy, I vary this slightly, stay on the train one more stop, then switch to another train, which also goes to Crystal City, where I can walk to within a few hundred feet of my office without going outside. This is the longer option, and it lacks the escalator walk (which has become part of my fitness routine), so I seldom take it.

This morning, though, I debated, because for once I dressed for afternoon warmth and not morning chill. When the train pulled closer to my stop, I deliberated. If I just missed a bus, I would have to wait and be cold. If I stayed on I would stay warm. What should I do? I really couldn't decide.

At the last second, I stuffed the newspaper in my bag and jumped off the train. I'll probably just miss the bus, I thought. But no, the bus was there. I stayed warm and got to my destination, where the time I've saved I'm now spending on this post.

Decisions, decisions.

The Return

Sometimes it's the ordinary miracles that touch us most. So it was yesterday when we spotted a hummingbird at the feeder. It's always good to see these amazing birds return in the spring. But this time, we knew when they returned last year and were watching and waiting, filling feeders.

And then ... a little bird appeared. It was April 28 — the exact same day they returned in 2018.

Do they have little timers inside? Small clocks? What is it that tells them when to leave and when to return? What propels them across mountains and oceans, back to this suburban backyard?

I'm sure there are theories, actual knowledge. I've probably even read some of it. But I don't want to know about any of this right now. I'd rather just marvel at it all.

Fallen Petals

In a slight twist on "March winds and April showers," we're in the midst of an April wind that follows on the heels of an April shower.

That has meant that the April flowers, in this case the lovely pink rose-like blooms of the Kwanzan cherry, are no longer attached to the tree but strewn about the grass.

This is the way of the world, is it not? And has anyone expressed this more simply and more beautifully than Robert Frost?

"So leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay." 

Walking Wordsworth

I knew the Romantic poet was a walker, but not the extent of his rambles. According to Alice Outwater in a new book called Wild at Heart, William Wordsworth spent much of his day walking. He would compose poetry as he strode along gravel paths, which he favored over the bushwhacking preferred by his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (I'm with you, Wordsworth.)

Wordsworth covered roughly 10 miles a day, an estimated 175,000 miles in his lifetime. He and his sister Dorothy walked so much and at such odd hours that the local people suspected them of being French spies.

According to Outwater, Wordsworth's perambulations were inspired by his meeting John "Walking" Stewart, an English philosopher who hiked from India to Europe. Wordsworth, 21 at the time, was especially interested in Stewart's philosophy on nature.

And it was in nature, not sitting passively in it but walking through it, that Wordsworth found his life and his inspiration.

(Dove Cottage, near Grasmere in England, where Wordsworth lived with his sister Dorothy. Photo: Wikipedia.)

Three Years

As if I needed another reminder of time's quick passage, today I celebrate three years at my "new" job. Three years sitting on the fifth floor of a steel and glass building, staring out the windows but mostly staring at my screen. Three years traveling to report on stories, visiting places I never thought I'd see, meeting people around the world.

I won't say it seems like yesterday that I began this new adventure. In many ways it seems longer (which, I guess, is a vote against time's quick passage). But it seems longer in the way that new and familiar things often do.

Already the years are speeding up here. The time between my first few months, when I could barely tell one project from another, and this time last year seems like quite a stretch compared with the past 12 months.

On the whole, though, I'm feeling quite lucky on this three-year anniversary. I work harder than I have to, but it's work that engages, and sometimes even inspires. Can't ask for much more than that.

Picking Up Sticks

Is there a less glamorous but more necessary lawn task than the picking up of sticks?

It must happen before mowing, of course, but preferably sooner than that. Around here, it needs to be done every day or so, at least in the spring when strong winds rattle the oaks and do as much pruning as shears or clippers.

With every bending down and picking up, I fell myself that I'm building up a pile of kindling for a bonfire some day. Or at the very least enough to stuff a can of yard waste for the recycling pick-up next week.

Most of all, I tell myself that these are nothing, mere toothpicks, the balsa wood of yard flotsam. The big trees they came from, they're still standing. And that's what matters most.

This is dedicated ...

A spring walk yesterday took me from ugh-it's-a-Monday to I'm-glad-to-be-alive.

It was about 65 degrees with a brilliant blue sky and leaves that seemed to have their own power source, so brilliant was the green they were flashing.

Their power source, of course, was the sun, which was flooding the day with light and warmth. My winter-weary bones were soaking it up (through properly applied sunscreen, of course) and my work-weary mind was jetting off in several directions: how beauty sustains, how I wished everyone I love could be in my skin experiencing it with me.

Especially those no longer on this side of the ground, I wanted them to have it, too, to be back long enough to feel warmth on their skin and see a redbud tree in flower. So this walk, like the song says ... was dedicated to the ones I love.

On Earth Day

Over the weekend I learned that a tornado touched down in my neighborhood Friday night. It must have been just the barest glance of a tornado, because the damage was minimal. But an expert was called in and he explained that the direction in which the trees fell and the crack down the middle of one proves that the tornado which hit Reston Town Center also hit Folkstone. It was a good reminder that nature is always ready to rear up and remind us who's boss.

Perhaps Earth Day is a good day to remember this fact. Earth Day, which I remember from my youth as green-tinged and vaguely hopeful but which has taken on a grimmer tone in these days of global warming and Extinction Rebellion.

I have a much more protective feeling about the Earth now than I ever used to. And while I'm adding to the carbon load with my work flights to foreign shores, the travel those flights made possible is opening my eyes to the work we have in front of us, to the need to protect this good old Earth, which grows more vulnerable and more precious every day.

Transcendence

A friend sent me an electronic Easter card, the kind that comes with music and motion, with sweet scenes of birds and bunnies.

Only this one played the powerful "God So Loved the World" by John Stainer.

I've heard this piece before and marveled at it, but something about the animation of the dove — a pure white bird flying heavenward, spreading flowers in its wake — and the dynamics of this hymn, the great swells of its sound, the ache in its harmonies — spoke powerfully of the mystery and the promise of this day.

I write these words in the office, a room I don't often sit in this time of day. I don't know why not — because it sits in the front of the house, the one the light touches first.

It is not just Resurrection we celebrate on this day, but transcendence.

Foxy Morning

As I begin this post, Copper is barking his head off. And for once, I don't blame him. He did the same thing yesterday, also for good cause.

The culprit is a plump and prissy red fox, who trots through the neighborhood this time of day as if he owns the place. Today he entered the yard from the west and Copper spied him as he was about to slip through the back fence.

Yesterday was even worse. Before leaving our yard, the fox paused and looked back, as if he was taking the measure of the 30-pound hound yapping on the deck — and found him lacking. Copper may have sensed the scorn. I could swear there was some righteous indignation in his response.

For those who don't parse his barks as I do, it was just that crazy Copper, waking them up again.  But I know the truth. It was really just ... a foxy morning.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Mellow Mueller

Everyone was talking about it, reading it and tweeting about it, but by the time the Mueller Report finally came out yesterday, I just felt fatigued about it. I imagine many of us did.

I perked up a bit this morning, when the banner-headlined Washington Post landed in my driveway. (As is typical for a newspaper reader, I take my news a day old and more digested, thank you very much.) But on the whole, I've been ignoring the media feeding frenzy.

Maybe it's because I'm distracted by the new leaves on the Rose of Sharon bush, or the carpet of petals underneath the Kwanzan cherry.

Or maybe it's because I've been preoccupied with tech problems lately (email issues, Skype for Business issues, RAM issues, even voice recorder issues!).

But whatever has made me mellow about Mueller, I'm grateful for it.

Cathedral Time

I'm not used to reading good news in the newspaper, especially not these days, so I was surprised last night when I finally settled down with the paper to learn that the walls of Notre Dame are still standing and the exquisite rose window is still intact.

Yes, the roof and the spire are gone, and some priceless treasures are lost, but many others were saved. Already stories of heroism are emerging: the chaplain who braved the blaze, the human chain that rescued precious artwork. Donations and pledges are pouring in. Notre Dame will be rebuilt, though it will doubtless be on "cathedral time," not at the pace we might expect in the 21st century.

Even more encouraging were the perspectives the articles contained: that cathedrals are patchwork creations. The fallen spire we lament was a relatively late addition to Notre Dame. Europe is filled with cathedrals that have risen from fires and firebombing: St. Paul's in London, the cathedral in Dresden. Besides, in many ways the places are as sacred as the buildings, and they remain sacred even when the stones are singed and the rafters give way.

The most optimistic accounts mentioned the survival of the gold cross on the altar and the votive lights that remained lit throughout the ordeal — also the fact that the fire happened during Holy Week, the most sacred time in the Catholic church's liturgical year, a time when we celebrate redemption and resurrection.

I'll end with this from the Washington Post's architecture critic Philip Kennicott:

Meanwhile, the roof will rise again, and in a century some bored teenagers will stand in the plaza before the great Gothic doors and listen as their teacher recounts the great fire of 2019, just one chapter among all the others, and seemingly inconsequential given the beauty of the building as it stands glowing in a rare burst of sunlight on a spring day in Paris.

Flower Power

Saturday I impulsively bought two hyacinths at the grocery store. They were tidy little plants then, barely open at all. But even on the short drive home they filled the car with their scent. Now they're doing the same in the house.

I thought they would make a pretty Easter centerpiece, but they're opening so fast that I may have to buy another arrangement before Sunday.

The point is, they are blooming now, I tell myself. So enjoy them. Savor the blooming and the bending. Prop up the heaviest flowers with skewer sticks so they stay upright. And then ... inhale deeply.

Remembering Notre Dame

You tell yourself it's just a building, not a person; that it was not an act of terrorism; that it's silly to feel this way. But there is still something so sad about the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral.

Maybe because we already have so much destruction in this world, so much war and cruelty. Maybe because it is so beautiful and had survived so much.  Maybe because it has been with us so long and connects us with so many.

I find myself saying what we say in times of loss: How grateful I am to have seen the cathedral; to have climbed its towers and glimpsed its gargoyles; to have taken my children there; to have strolled through it as a young woman and a middle-aged one.

Once, long ago, I was ambling along the Seine on an April evening. The light was slanting low in the sky and throwing the old stones and the spire into high relief. It was a scene of incomparable beauty. I had no camera at the time, so I told myself, remember this, remember it always.  

I did — and I'm remembering it now.

Tub Envy

You could call it house envy, or even bathroom envy. I prefer to call it tub envy. It's what I felt when I toured our neighbor's home during Saturday's open house.  Their house is directly across the street, and though I had been in it off and on through the years, I had never seen it without furniture and with all its improvements showcased.

The house began its life identical to this one, but the previous owners, Brian and Kathy (who were along for Saturday's tour), bumped out both the front and the back. This elongated the entrance hall, straightened out the stairway and enlarged the kitchen, allowing for both an island and a door where a window used to be — all lovely additions.

It was the "new" owners, John and Jill (who lived there 14 years, but "new" in Folkstone terms), who re-did the bathrooms and installed the tub-to-die-for. This photo doesn't do it justice; it fails to capture the length and depth of it, the way the light pours in through the windows. I didn't climb into the tub (though I was tempted!) but I could tell that you'd be able to soak in there and look at the tree branches waving in the wind or at clouds scudding across the sky.

So even though I coveted the empty basement with the picture window, the tall kitchen cabinets, the cheerful tile backsplash and countless other features, it's the tub I want the most.

Tub envy. I'm not proud of it. But I have it something fierce.

Give(ing) Sleep a Chance

Lately I've been giving sleep more of a chance. When I wake up at 4 a.m. I don't always rise to start the day. Instead, I read or lie still and concentrate on breathing in and out. In other words, I try harder to add those elusive sixth and seventh hours to my nightly tally.

This may take time. It may be getting light by the time I finally drift off again. But I persist.

The other way, the way of wakefulness, is good too. It opens up hours in a life that seems to never have enough of them. But things are brighter, sharper, clearer, with those extra two.

By the way, this is a tip of the blog to the 1969 John Lennon song "Give Peace a Chance," which I found out this morning was recorded ... in bed.

The Lusty Cherry

Frequently writing about nature and the out-of-doors means that I often notice the same things every year. I've learned this by now — and have become more careful not to repeat an identical observation. Such was the case today when I thought about the Kwanzan cherry trees.

So I will not call this piece "The Other Cherry," because I already used that title. But I will say that yesterday a grove of Kwanzan cherries once again stopped me in my tracks.

The trees were waving and petaling and being their lovely selves right in front of my office. I reveled in their peak bloom (and snapped some photos) as I ran out to the post office in the mid-afternoon.

I'm not the only one who appreciated them. Suzanne texted me this morning to say she'd noticed them on a run through my work neighborhood.

Every year I have this internal debate: Which is more lovely, the ethereal Yoshino or the lusty Kwanzan? I'll never come up with an answer.

Town Square

Yesterday I ran up to the closest grocery store, which is located in shopping center I sometimes call "the corner." I like the way it sounds, saying "I'm going up to the corner," as if I lived in an old-fashioned neighborhood where people yell out their windows and hang their laundry on the line out back.

I don't live in such a place, of course, and I don't go to the corner much anymore, either. I've switched to a discount grocery chain that saves me money but lands me in anonymous strip malls off busy suburban highways.

At one time, when the children were young, I seemed to run into friends all the time at the local supermarket. But that's been ebbing away for years, so I'd might as well drive a few more miles and save some cash.

Being back at the corner today reminds me of what I've missed, though, which is, in short, familiarity. I've been going to that grocery store as long as we've lived here. It feels homey, even though the produce is overpriced and the seafood is iffy.

For better or worse, that store — and the "corner" around it — are my town square, the closest thing I have to a meeting spot, where I rub shoulders with the people in my 'hood.

(Vale School House, which is near another corner where I live.)

A Moment

Yesterday before my own evening walk, I took Copper for a short stroll. It was warm and breezy. We did our usual, torn-doggie-ACL-shortened amble. Before heading home we walked into the Morrison's yard so I could pick up a throwaway paper that was left there.

And then, without warning, I had a moment. The wind was lifting pink blossom petals from the weeping cherry and swirling them around in a kind of pink snow. Two strings of wind chimes were rattling in a disjointed harmony. Copper, who can be cantankerous, was being sweet. I was aware of the softness of his fur and his big brown eyes.

I was overcome suddenly with a feeling of fulfillment, a realization that this is what it's all about: walking the dog at the end of a long day, dinner still to get, labors ahead of and behind me — but in this moment free to breathe deeply, to listen and to think.

Coatless

The first time each season always feels strange, like jumping off a high dive or setting off in a tube on a fast-moving river. There is a similar lack of control. The coat will not be there if the weather takes a nasty turn. There is no turning back.

Today I took a jacket from the house but left it in the car. It was that balmy this morning, with the promise of more warmth to come. The wrap would have been superfluous. It would have been wadded up in my tote bag before I even reached the office.

So off I went, with only a sweater between me and the elements. No jacket, no coat. It wasn't until I reached Metro that I realized I'd also left my umbrella. So now I'm coatless — and umbrella-less, too. It must be spring.

Baby Shade

As I've mentioned before, spring is farther along downtown and in Crystal City than where I live. Which means that when I strolled down the tree-lined stretch of Crystal Drive that leads to my office this morning, I was not seeing winter-wan trunks without a hint of green. Instead, I was walking beneath baby shade.

Baby shade comes from trees just leafing, still unsure what they're meant to do. They are uncurling, unfurling, making themselves useful not just to the plant in general but also to the pavement below.

We on the pavement are remembering what it's like to amble beneath a great arched umbrella of greenery: how it cools us and calms us, how it intercedes between heaven and earth.

Baby shade is wan and tentative, but it is all we have now, and it is precious in its fleetingness.

The Feeling of Clean

The urge to spring clean is a real one, I think. As nature renews itself outside, there's a strong need to spruce things up inside, to scrub and pound, to throw open the windows, to air things out.

The other day I washed bed linens, right down to the mattress casings. I dusted and vacuumed in a more deep-cleaning way than usual. As I fell asleep last night under a freshly laundered duvet cover, I pondered the feeling of clean.

There seems to be a tightness to it, as if fibers loosened over time have suddenly been compressed again, are back to their normal connections and boundaries. And there's a lightness to it, too. Those compressed fibers take up less room.

The feeling of clean should motivate me to scrub and scour more often than I do. But, alas, it must always compete with the feeling of too-much-to-do.

Birds, Waking

The birds wake to the crescendo of the kettle boiling. It is one of those sounds they have come to know means humans are nearby. They also thrill to the toilet flushing and the hall door squeaking.

What they love best, though, is the sound of water running. Does it remind them of some avian past when their relatives roosted near brooks and springs so they could sip small drops in that way birds do, a way that is more of a splash than a drink?

Or do they simply love the sound of it best, as I prefer Brahms and Mendelssohn? I'll never know, of course. But I do know that I thrill to the sound of their waking, to the warbling and the rustling, to the   peeps and songs of these feathered creatures, so small, so delicate, so alive in every way.

Procession of Bloom

According to my favorite weather site, the cherry blossoms may last as long as 10 days this year. Though I haven't checked on the Tidal Basin flowers since Monday evening, I can tell by the hordes on Metro that hanami is still in full force.

As the blooming season moves out to my neighborhood (always a few days later than the city trees), my ho-hum daily drives are taking on a hanami quality of their own. I'm slowing down, seeking out the streets I know from years past.

There are the Bradford pears in Franklin Farm, the redbuds on Folkstone, the Kwanzan cherry in my own front yard. All of this, if the weather cooperates, in a slow steady procession through dogwoods and azaleas — a riot of bloom that takes us from the gray trunks of winter all the way to the vivid fuchsias and scarlets of  mid-May.

Happy National Walking Day!

It's the first Wednesday in April, which the American Heart Association has deemed National Walking Day. You can go on their website and read about the health benefits of walking, the best warm-up stretches and how to prevent injury.

Notable to me is the word "National." Most countries don't need a Walking Day to get their citizens up and moving. In many parts of the world, if you don't walk you don't work and you don't eat.

I see no need to extol the benefits of walking more today than other days. There's a reason why I named this blog A Walker in the Suburbs. But I will point out that in one of my favorite cities in all the world, walking is not just popular on National Walking Day but all year long.

New York City is a walker's paradise. It's the place Alfred Kazin describes in A Walker in the City, to which this blog tips its hat. It's no coincidence that lively walking cities are lively cities, period.

There is something about a human that loves a walk. And what better day to remind ourselves of that?

Hanami

I just happened upon the ranger talk at the Tidal Basin last evening at 6 p.m. I'd decided to see the cherry blossoms after work, and then, impulsively, walked counterclockwise instead of the other way around. And there, at the FDR Memorial, was a green-suited ranger with a Smokey the Bear hat.

He was speaking of L'Enfant when I arrived, but went on from there to cover the flood of 1881, the creation of the Tidal Basin and the ugly construction-site look of the land around it at the turn of the 19th century. He described National Geographic writer Eliza Scidmore's 24-year campaign to plant Japanese cherry trees around the basin, a quest that finally took root, so to speak, when President Taft's wife, Helen, became interested in the project. (The lantern above commemorates the spot where Taft planted one of the first cherry trees.)

There are other twists and turns to this story and how cherry trees came to dominate the landscape around the Washington and Lincoln monuments. But my favorite part of the talk came when the ranger talked about the Japanese custom of hanami or "flower viewing" of the sakura or cherry blossoms.

The sakura represents a "short life, well-lived," the ranger said, and for that reason was revered by both samurai warriors and kamikaze pilots. Hanami celebrates the fleetingness of the blossoms, the beauty that is ours just for a moment — and more lovely because of it.

The Overdog

Yesterday, I watched my first and last University of Kentucky basketball game of the season. Such is the hubris of this Kentucky fan that she missed the first two rounds of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, figuring she'd tune in only if her team made it to the Elite Eight.

There was a not-so-subtle assumption here, of course ... which is that her team would make it to the Elite Eight. Not such a crazy assumption given that they've been there 34 times. Heck, UK has played in 17 Final Fours. Auburn, the team that beat us yesterday, has never been to the Final Four. Which means that, as usual, many people were pulling for our opponent to win.

I understand this emotion. In fact, I usually pull for the underdog, too — except when the underdog is playing UK. My rationale is that Kentucky is not the first in much else. US News ranks the Bluegrass State 34th in education (which is an improvement from when I was in school) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis lists us 42nd in per capita income.

The fact that we're not the the underdog in basketball — that you might even call us the overdog (no fooling) — seems only fair to me. But that never stops me from pulling for the boys in blue. I want them to win every time.


("Underdog" cartoon photo courtesy Wikipedia)