Virginia Tidewater

This is a land of inlets and bridges, of boats and buoys. It's the Virginia Tidewater, home of three peninsulas — the Eastern Shore, the Northern Neck and the Middle Peninsula.

It's a place of fringed coastlines, of oat grass waving in a stiff breeze off the Chesapeake. There are beaches here, but they are small and riverine. And the water is salt, fresh and brackish.

As if to mimic this variety, the landscape holds colonial churches, ancestral estates, boardwalks for bird-watching — and even an oyster academy.

It's not a matter of what to do ... but of how much we can cram in.

ROVA

It's the morning of a four-day weekend and we're off soon to Virginia's Northern Neck, a spit of land that lies between the Potomac and the Rappahannock.

It's a land of marsh and water fowl, of water vistas and sailing ships. Known for its oysters and wineries — also the birthplace of five early presidents.

I know far too little of this state that I call home. To be a resident of Northern Virginia (NOVA) is often to be far less familiar than one should be with the Rest of Virginia (ROVA).

Today we put that at least partially to rights.

Still Green

An evening walk after rain, fir trees dripping, sky a mottled blue with pink around the edges.  I take my time, and Copper wants to saunter, too.

It's slightly cool and very moist. The sound of gurgling from the neighbor's fountain matches the general wetness, though I notice that our driveway seems much damper than the street.

Two doors down I spot a bluebird flitting from branch to branch, flashing its bright plumage in the dusk.  A few steps away a giant arborvitae towers over a small culvert that is fenced off with split rails and a tough vine that sports purple flowers earlier in the season. In the meadow, a soft mist is gathering in the twilight.

Copper and I turn around under the large maple that will be flaming scarlet in a month or so. But for now ... it's still green.

Shock Absorbers

As a walker in the suburbs I do a fair share of pavement-pounding. But as a homeowner in the suburbs I do a fair share of driving, too.

Today I pick up a car that was in one shop and now must go to another. It's an — ahem! — older vehicle, a tad finicky, and has lately begun swaying like a covered wagon on the Oregon Trail. Faulty shock absorbers are the culprit. 

This has me thinking about shock absorbers in general, and how nice it would be to have them for the daily irritants of life, some sort of invisible bubble wrap that would protect us from missed trains and long waits at the doctor's office. 

I know they exist — they're called prayer and meditation and the active practice of gratitude. But sometimes I'd like an easier, more self-indulgent solution. 

Fallophoboia

You won't find this condition in the DSM. It's real, though. It's the fear of falling leaves, nips in the air and all the other harbingers of autumn that put a skip in other people's steps.

I won't deny that I've enjoyed the last few low-humidity days, the blue skies of Sunday, the white puffy clouds, sleeping under a light cover with the windows thrown open to the evening air.

But brown leaves on pavement give me a fright, as do quieter nights, crickets only, no katydids.

I love summer, that's all there is to it. And while I console myself with the knowledge that spring will be here again before we know it, the truth of the matter is that we must trudge through fall and winter to get there. And sometimes that seems like a tall order.

Saving Papers

It turns out that the torrential rains that plagued us the last couple of weeks seeped into our basement (usually dry) and had their way with a few boxes. Since these boxes contained paper (as oh so many of them do), this was not a welcome development.

Of course, it's never a welcome development when your basement is even partially flooded ... and let's just say that not everything in my house is tidily placed on shelves and ensconced in plastic tubs. Which means there were some waterlogged files. Nothing terribly vital, but material that I had saved, and at one point had some utility.

In the general vicinity were two large boxes of newspapers. Saving newspapers is something I come by honestly — Mom was a pro — and I'm no slouch myself. This was soon made abundantly clear. Some of the saved newspapers contained articles or op-eds I wrote. Fair enough. But do I need to save the entire newspaper? No! That was an easy one.

More difficult was deciding which of the historical newspapers to keep. I settled on 9/11, Clinton Elected, Clinton Impeached, Bush Elected and ... somewhere there's an Obama Elected one too but it must be in a different box.

And then there were newspapers for the day of each daughter's birth. I'd forgotten I did this. These papers will, I hope, mean something to each of them someday. But what they mean to me now — especially since two of the girls were born on Sunday — is that I have just that much more heavy newsprint in of my house.

Simple Gift

One of the simple gifts, a gift that doesn't always seem like a gift but sometimes a drudgery, is waking up every morning. The weekend wake-ups are best, of course, unforced and un-alarmed as they are. But even the weekday ones, rushed and bolt-upright, are proof we wake to live another day.

A good thing? It doesn't always seem that way. But mornings are the exception even when there's general gloominess afoot. There is something about a morning, and especially this crystalline one I'm experiencing right now, that makes me glad to be alive.

I'm not going to analyze this too much — or second-guess myself for being a soppy optimist.

I'm just going to enjoy it.

(Morning light in the garden, late June. Alas, the coneflowers aren't looking this good now.) 

Silence

I just finished reading Jane Brox's lovely new book Silence: A Social History of One of the Least Understood Elements of Our Lives. Brox plumbs her topic by comparing the silence of solitary confinement with the silence of the cloister, an interesting approach that gives her a chance to examine the trials of silence as well as its gifts.

She draws often from Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who lived much of his life in the cloistered Abbey of Gethsemani but whose writings gave him a worldwide audience. Here she quotes from Merton's Asian Journal: "Our real journey in life is interior. It is a matter of growth, deepening, and an ever-greater surrender to the creative action of grace and love in our hearts."

Brox notes the creative power of silence, and its necessity. She concludes with this thought:

Silence can seem like a luxury. Or the fraught world has labeled it that way. But from what I know of it, I would argue that silence is as necessary as the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech, which we so carefully guard and endlessly ponder, for it affirms the meaning of speech even as it provides a path to inner life, to beauty, observation and appreciation. It presents the opportunity for a true reckoning with the self, with external obligation, and with power.

Sweet Little Liriope

I know few plants by their proper names. I only accidentally learned the name liriope when a friend, an avid gardener, admired it in the yard. I acted like I knew what she was talking about: "Oh yes, the liriope. I like it too."

In truth I didn't know what it was, and I certainly didn't know that it flowered. I thought it was a grass-like ground cover that never bloomed. But I've learned to appreciate its sweet lavender blossom, its hardiness. Like the crepe myrtle, it brings color to the late-summer garden.

It's also demure, and I've come to realize that I admire that in a plant. Something that doesn't call attention to itself, that improves on second glance, that brightens the dreariest corner.

And that would be ... liriope.

Their Own Season

Late afternoons have become their own season here, as the day becomes too much for itself and collapses under the weight of its own humidity.

First there is the darkening sky. The cumulonimbus loom large and black.The wind whips up and makes eddying noises as it blows in open windows, lifting up the light curtains. Even these many years later, I remember the earliest storms, rushing out to pull clothes off the line.

The smell comes next. It's ozone, I learn. A pungent odor shot from lightning and brought to earth by downdrafts. Then the thunder, crashing and booming.

And finally the rain itself, a relief on the hottest days, a nuisance on others. Great rolling sheets of it, sometimes more than an inch an hour. Rain that bloats streams and sends them spilling over their banks, that sends me scurrying home along alternate routes.

Because the storms arrive just as I make my trek westward, into the thick of it. And last night, back to a dark, warm house. No power for three hours. And the only sound: the loud hum of the neighbor's generator, installed just weeks ago. How did they know?

The Blues Brothers

A few weeks ago, the recently widowed Alfie got a new cage mate. His name is Bart, and he, like the late Dominique, is a rescue bird.

Strange to learn how many birds our local Humane Society offers, some from owners who can no longer care for them, but others because they are strays. (This more of a summer thing, I guess.)

Bart is friendly, well-loved and used to being held, but he is also an escape artist. Luckily, he ended up not in the jaws of a hawk but on someone's balcony — and from there to the shelter and, eventually, our home.

He and Alfie spent more than a week in separate cages, getting used to each other's proximity, then ... they moved in together.

They're both males, so Alfie sings less (there's only so much he'll do to impress another guy), but they frolic together, preen each other, share food and sit contentedly in each other's presence.

I worry when I see them squabble (a pet owner who thinks too much?), but I've decided there's no way to read parakeet relationship signals thoroughly enough to truly worry. Instead, I'm just sitting back and enjoying the show.

Endangered Evenings

For the last couple weeks, I've been stepping out after dinner to stroll a few blocks as the light fades.

This is a bonus amble, usually after a more serious effort earlier in the day. It's a wind-down walk, time to take in the night air and watch bats careen through the sky.

One night, a big orange moon hung on the horizon. Another, a post-deluge sunset purpled the sky and diffused the light so there were glimmers from all sorts of unusual corners. 

These late-August rambles are more precious because they're endangered.  The sun sets earlier, long twilights are on the way out. In yesterday's newspaper, a short article noted that for the first time in months, the sun would set before 8 p.m. Sunday night.

I walked anyway. And it was lovely. 

An Aquarian Exposition

It was three days of peace and music, revolutionary for some, a peak experience. It was to my generation what the beginning or end of World War II was to my parents. A seminal moment. That by which others are measured.

In the last few days I've read about Woodstock, watched a documentary, listened to the voices of those who were there, learned much about it that I didn't know.

I'm struck by several points, which many people may already have learned and processed, but which feel fresh to me this morning.

It was almost completely noncommercial. Due to a last-minute change of venue, organizers realized they only had time to complete the stage or the fencing — and they chose the stage. They declared Woodstock a free concert early on. There was almost no merchandise for sale at the concert, which means the value it retains comes primarily from the music (and the documentary film released the next year) and the experience itself.

It was by young adults, for young adults, and it happened in an era when young adults had far more autonomy and freedom than they do now. It seemed like fully half of the concert-goers I heard on this morning's C-SPAN call-in show were 16 or 17 at the time. "Your parents let you go by yourself?" the announcer asked, aghast. Of course!

Most of all, I'm struck by the seemingly impossible fact that it happened 50 years ago. And that is what ultimately unites the baby boomer generation with all that have come before. Time passes, bodies age — but spirits stay (at least we hope) forever young.

(Poster image courtesy Wikipedia)

The Thinker

For the walker, what you do with your feet is simple. You put one in front of the other and move forward.

Much trickier is what you do with your arms. If you're fast-walking, you pump them until they look like the connecting rod of a steam locomotive or the blurred, dust-kicking feet of a cartoon roadrunner.

If you're a bit slower, you swing them at your side, freewheeling, in time to the music in your ears or the rhythm of your heartbeat.

And then there is the meandering, meditative walk, which is best accomplished with arms behind and hands clasped behind the back. It's open, stilled and expansive — and it, more than the famous seated Rodin, is the true posture of the thinker.

There's only one problem: When I walk with my hands clasped behind my back, I feel much wiser than I actually am.

(Photo: Pixabay)

All Talk

I'm not methodical enough to measure this, but I wonder if my walking pace varies when I listen to radio voices rather than music. 

On Sundays, I can hear re-aired, commercial-free versions of "Meet the Press" and other programs, so I often time my walk to coincide with these shows, which run every hour from noon till 5 p.m. And some mornings I listen to news rather than music. It gets the heart pumping and stands in for the newspaper if it's not my morning to have it.

But beyond the pace there is the tone...

Walking with talk in my head creates a conversation, one-sided for the most part (unless I blurt out a retort to a particularly egregious statement).

But walking with music in my head allows for the inner dialogue that is such a healing part of the stroll.

Second-Hand Rain

An early walk this morning into a moist and muggy landscape, breathing steam — or what felt like it.

There were puddles beside the road and the leaves were gleaming from last night's dousing. We've been humid for days, but rain-fed humidity is different somehow, less oppressive, cleaner.

It wasn't until the end of the stroll that I saw the second-hand rain. A brisk breeze was stirring the high branches of the oaks and sending down a spray of drops that caught the sun and shone there. It was last night's precipitation recycled beautifully in the morning light. I walked through it as if through an illuminated mist.

It was a beautiful way to start the day. But now I'm dashing inside from moment to moment trying to dodge the second-hand rain ... which is landing lightly on my computer keyboard as I try to write this post.

Walking in Pace

The tiger does it, in his cage. Weary parents do it, up and down a hall, hoping that the baby in their arms will soon nod off to sleep.

Pacing is to walking as the treadmill is to the sidewalk. It is walking on adrenaline, super-charged with nervous energy that must be let out, even if there's nowhere to put it.

While I'm lucky enough to have a strip of asphalt on which to pound out my anxieties, there have been times when nothing made me feel better than walking the circuit through my house: living room, hall, office, kitchen ... living room, hall, office, kitchen.

I've never thought this a failing, only a useful habit. But reading A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles, has given me second thoughts:

...[I]t had been the Count's experience that men prone to pace are always on the verge of acting impulsively. For while the men who pace are being whipped along by logic, it is a multifaceted sort of logic, which brings them no closer to a clear understanding, or even a state of conviction. Rather it leaves them at such a loss that they end up exposed to the influence of the merest whim, to the seduction of the rash or reckless act—almost as if they had never considered the matter at all.

I'll never look at pacing the same way again.

(It's not pacing if you do it in a portico.)

Feeling Tropical

... And why not, with these in the front yard.?

The elephant ears (colocasia) started as tubers in June, but they're as tall as I am now and show no signs of stopping. I snapped a picture of them over the weekend.

Elephant ears salute the sun, wave in the breeze and shade weeds (I'm hoping enough to kill a few).

Rain and dew pool on their soft leaves. They give the front yard a primeval look, which matches the ferns.

While I'd rather have an English cottage garden, it's hard to argue with success.

Weekend's End

Usually I celebrate the beginning of the weekend. Tonight I celebrate the end.

Well, maybe not celebrate, but savor.  Because I don't want it to end. I want it to continue.

It was well-balanced: There was time with family and friends, time to read and write, walk and stretch, mow and weed, cook and clean.

What more do I want?

More of the above.  That's all.

Citizen Abo

When the time came, Appolinaire stood with 47 other immigrants, raised his right hand and recited the oath of allegiance. He was wearing a new blue suit that he bought in Benin. He looked like a million dollars.

After he recited the oath, he waited his turn to shake hands with a customs officer and be handed his certificate of naturalization.

Also receiving their certificates yesterday were immigrants from Macedonia, Honduras, India, Nepal, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Colombia, Turkey, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Denmark, Canada, Sweden, Mexico, Brazil, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, South Korea, Guatemala, the United Kingdom, Russia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Ghana, Bolivia, Pakistan and one other country that I didn't catch.

They are our newest citizens, the most recent immigrants in a land that is made of them.

E Pluribus Unum

I imagine there will be more than one post about this momentous occasion. This is my first:

Today, my son-in-law, Appolinaire Abo, becomes an American citizen. We are gathering soon at a federal office building to witness Appolinaire and other immigrants take the oath of allegiance. For more than 200 years, new citizens have been vowing to support the Constitution; renounce fealty to foreign rulers; bear arms, perform noncombatant service or work of national importance when required by law; and to defend our laws against all enemies, foreign or domestic.

It's more than what birth-citizens do when we recite the pledge, but this is a good day to ponder the words that have become hackneyed from repetition.

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Those words take on a new meaning today. The simplicity of the language and the depth of its meaning. One nation. Under God. Indivisible. With liberty and justice for all.

We are struggling mightily now with some of these ideas. May the fervor of Appolinaire and other new citizens fill us with hope for this blessed nation and renew our faith in the motto "e pluribus unum" — out of many, one.

Small Changes

Changes: can't live with them; can't live without them. Whether willed or imposed, they present difficulties — or perhaps I should say "opportunities for growth."

Shifting to another spot in the Metro parking garage because there's an 18-month rebuilding plan, for instance. Or switching my commute from drive, Metro and bus to ... drive and Metro alone.

Small changes, one imposed and one chosen. Both a lot to wrap my head around before 8 a.m.

They're just ways to stay limber, I tell myself as I walk to work. As if to underline these thoughts, I trod upon the first crinkled brown leaves of the season. Is it autumn already? No, just a couple of streetscape oaks that have fallen on hard times.

Almost Empty

It's the dog days — and I'll take them. Uncrowded Metro, open roadways, Congress in recess, school out for summer. It's a lovely pause, one to savor.

Walking back to my car in the warm air,  I passed through the tunnel, dark enough by 6:30 for the lights to be illuminated. From the neighborhood that backs up to Route 66 came the sound of children playing, the voice of summer.  I smiled broadly at a stooped woman in a sari and she smiled and waved in return.

Everything seemed in harmony:  the bushes and trees, the sky and land, the people and place.

The world seemed almost empty, and that was fine with me.

13 Hours

I was confused at church yesterday morning when I heard there were prayers for El Paso and Dayton. Dayton? How did I miss Dayton?

It wasn't hard to do, given the timing and the (apparently magical) thinking that there just couldn't be two mass shootings in less than 24 hours. But of course, there were.

Even though we're getting hardened to random violence, I hope that having two mass shootings in 13 hours will make even the most resigned and cynical among us cry "Enough!"

The resigned and cynical may say they thought Virginia Tech (33) would be enough. Or Newtown (26) and Parkland (17), because of the children. Or Pittsburgh (11) and Sutherland Springs (26), because they occurred in houses of worship. Or Las Vegas (58), because of the sheer number.

Am I alone in worrying that we are forgetting these? There were 12 killed in my state just two months ago, and that massacre barely registers. It has already taken its place in line behind El Paso and Dayton.

And still, we dither. At this point, should we not be trying any sane and fair solution, knowing it will take many solutions ... and many years.

This time, can't we finally, truly begin?

(Photo of Las Vegas, courtesy of Wikipedia) 

Brahms to the Rescue

Brahms came to the rescue yesterday. He didn't ride in on a white horse, but he was there with his complex melodies and lyricism, with his passion and playfulness.

He was there in the morning when I walked, he was there in the evening when I bounced on the trampoline. And he stayed with me as I sautéed squash and onions and mixed it with farfalle pasta, as I broiled and plated the chicken, as I remembered I had fresh basil to season it all.

What a utilitarian composer! Brahms is not just for bedtime or funerals or academic processions. If you give him a chance, he will stay with you all day long.

(Photo courtesy New York Public Library Digital Collection)

Moving Image

When I woke up this morning I was dreaming I was snapping a picture. I was a passenger in a moving car, and the terrain we were driving through was like an ancient Chinese painting.

There were human-sized hills, a winding stream and perfectly coiffed trees. There was a sense of scale that made me think I could capture the landscape quickly from a vehicle.

The dream probably augurs nothing. But if it does, could it mean that I've become less of a words person and more of an image one? It's happening to many of us these days.

Of course, there's the fact that I'm writing about this experience, not illustrating it. And I'm doing it on an outmoded platform that is anything but image-friendly.

Whew! I'm probably safe — at least for the time being.

Night Air

Last night the heat slaked off enough to open the windows, so that cool, fresh night air poured into the house. I fell asleep to the sound of a whirring fan.


It was like another place, the house with night air. Like a place that is part of the world it inhabits rather than separate from it.

The cicadas and crickets were singing their songs, and their music contributed to the feeling of aliveness in the house.

In the old days, we almost never used the air conditioning. But it comes in pretty handy these days, and I no longer roll my eyes at it. I accept the comfort it makes possible.

Still, the best sleeps are those without it, the ones when night air fills the house.