Melody

What a day —  family gathering, bright skies, air that feels like no air so lightly does it lie upon the skin, and,  this morning, the picture-perfect docking of the SpaceX Dragon capsule with the International Space Station.

As I conclude another trip around the sun, I think about what lessons, if any, the past year has held. One big one is this — that we choose what to focus on, what to believe. So today I concentrate on the miracle happening above us rather than mess down here below.

As I write these words a breeze stirs the wind chimes. It's the happy key of D Major. A melody of one year ending and another just begun.

Lift Off!

Surely we needed this, needed the collective holding of breath, the general release when the rocket rose from the launching pad, up into the Florida sky, away from this earth with its virus and lockdowns and riots. Surely we needed something to make us raise our eyes from the here and now, into the heavens.

The Falcon Rocket, along with its two human passengers, lifted off an hour ago, at 3:22 p.m. — the first launch in almost a decade and the first ever from a rocket built by a private company.  It plans to rendezvous with the International Space Station at 10:30 tomorrow, meaning that these astronauts, both veterans of other space flights, will not be hitching a ride on a Russian craft.

As I write these earthbound words I hear the roar of jets making their final approach to Dulles. The dreams of flight that were realized more than a hundred years ago are propelling us still — and, as today's milestone makes clear — they will continue to do so.

The Roses, Again

The climbing roses have burst into bloom. Pale buds are blossoming into creamy pink flowers, are shading the deck table, are hanging overhead even as I write these words.

Does nature produce any flower as lovely as the New Dawn climbing rose? The shiny green foliage, the shy petals, the subtle color, like the barest of blushes.

I trained the roses to shade the deck, to cover the pergola, and now they almost do. As a result, the best view is from a second-floor window — odd, but a feature of this plant, which grows up and out.

And how can you not love a plant like that? One with such high aspirations, with such beauty and patience (because the buds were ready to burst open for weeks it seemed)? One with such poise and determination?

I write about the roses this time every year. I know I'm being repetitive ... but I just can't help myself.

100,000

Yesterday, the number of deaths in this country from the novel coronavirus hit 100,000, so I spent some time this morning reading obituaries.

There were teachers and writers and veterans. Nurses and doctors, pharmacists and paramedics. A Broadway costume designer, a jazz trumpeter, a detective and a World War II veteran. There were husbands and wives who died within days of each other.

Each life precious, just as every life is. Each life giving us a glimpse of the faces behind these numbers. Each life representing a web, a cascade, of losses.

The reading of obituaries could become an obsession in the age of coronavirus. I've tried to keep it to a minimum. But today, of all days, seemed an appropriate one to honor the dead in this way. To know their stories, to celebrate their lives.

Technological Wonders

Like many people using one of the oldest templates that Blogspot has (are there any of us left?!), I often feel that I'm skating on thin ice, technology-wise. Some days, everything works perfectly. I log on quickly, answer emails, write this post, get into my work emails and early to-dos and scarcely a half-hour has passed.

Today was not that day. Today I could barely get online, seeing that dreaded buffering wheel go round and round and round. I needed to turn off my machine and reboot the internet booster, but I was waiting on a code that I needed to log on to a site where I build my company's e-newsletter.

The code would only be available if I could log onto the Office 365 site and get into an alternative mailbox. So I waited ... and waited. Eventually I realized that even if I could get online, the code time would have long since expired.

So I turned off the machine, rebooted the booster and — finally — success!

Yes, it's a world of technological wonders. Until it isn't.

Treading Lightly

To be a walker in the suburbs means, at times, to be a trespasser. There simply is no other way to get around out here than to (occasionally, and with great care) tiptoe through someone else's yard. It's the British right-of-way, the right to pass and repass, that I invoke here, if only to myself.

I'll admit, I don't have the best track record in this area. But on the whole I'm a respectful interloper, staying to the edge of property lines when the woodland trail I'm on suddenly leads me right into an alien backyard.

One of my solutions is to determine if a house looks currently habited. If owners are out of town, they won't mind if I walk up their long driveway instead of staying longer on the busy thoroughfare.  Now, of course, no one is out of town.

On yesterday's walk I suddenly found myself in a ferned forest with muddy paths and the only way out (rather than back) being along the side yard of a yellow split-foyer.  I just squeaked by on that one, seeing the owner out with a mower only 10 minutes after I'd skirted his lawn.

It was a close call for this trespasser.

On Memorial Day

On this Memorial Day, I'll find time to be grateful for all who gave their lives so we might be free. I'll listen to a patriotic song or two, and hang my little American flag out by the mailbox.

I'll think, too, about the almost 100,000 Americans who've lost their lives to Covid-19, the 245,000 who've succumbed to the disease in other countries, and all those who grieve for them.

But mostly my thoughts will flow to the hillside in Kentucky where my parents lie. It's a sunny peaceful spot.

Rest in peace, Mom and Dad.

Mapping My Walk

Inspired by The Writer's Map, which I mentioned here a couple weeks ago, I embarked on a map-making project of my own. The result is "May 16th Long Walk," an amateurish work if ever there was one, but the first in a series, I hope, as I record the walks I take not only in words but also in cartography.

It was an interesting experience, chiefly because I haven't done anything like this since, oh, about seventh grade (I can't recall drawing any maps since high school other than ones scrawled on the back of envelopes in the old pre-GPS days) and also because, as is quite evident, I can't draw.

Creating this map called on that other side of my brain, the one that involves spatial relations (a perennial worst score on the SATs) and whimsy (which, though not tested, is far too often neglected).

But once I began creating this little map, I realized I could put anything on it —even silly things like the chain-link fence I had to climb and the large drainage pipes I call Snake Eyes. I realized I could be creative in a way I hadn't been in a long time. Mapping, like writing, is a way to make a place your own.

Brilliant Air

Up early for a walk in a luminous fog that seemed to be glowing from the inside out. It was as if the pinpointed radiance of a rising sun was smashed and diffused throughout the air.

Air we now see differently than we did a few months ago. A miasma, virus drops in an aerosol of danger.

But this morning the air was an invisibility cloak, a brilliant one that hid me (or at least I pretended it did) in a mantle of unknowing, so I could stride beneath the dripping oaks and into another day.

Going Nowhere

I've considered and forgotten several post ideas as this rainy day makes me sleepy. So far I've spent way too much time reading the newspaper. I've looked up recipes, made vague notes about what ingredients I would need to make them, then decided salad for dinner again isn't such a bad idea.

I've answered emails, tidied the kitchen, refreshed the cut flowers, written in my journal, eaten yogurt and strawberries, and brought my crocheting downstairs — though I've yet to touch the hook.

I tell myself that when one is normally a tightly scheduled person, it's healthy to do nothing for a few hours  — but of course, I don't believe it.

Outside, the world is green and dripping. I was out in it early, committing to the walk before I knew it was drizzling and not wanting to miss the birds calling to each other at daybreak. My shoes won't dry for hours.  But that's just fine — I'm not going anywhere.

(A rare photo of the house without cars in the driveway.) 

Ascension Thursday

Today is Ascension Thursday, a liturgical marker that I often forget but maybe, because of the strange way I'm "going to church" now (which is online), I noticed.

I heard an excellent sermon on this topic last Sunday, one that talked about the way Jesus leaves his disciples before he ascends to heaven. He says "I will not leave you orphans," explained the minister, who zeroed in the use of that word "orphan" with all the abandonment and grief it entails. She shared stories about the loss of her own parents, who died 11 months apart, in particular the passing of her father, whose death was the most difficult and yet also the most spiritual.

What the minister emphasized is that Jesus wasn't leaving his followers without a helper. He was sending them the Paraclete, which in this case means the Holy Spirit, part of the Triune God. The word paraclete, lower case, means "advocate" or "helper."

I like to think about this day, then, not as one of clouds and trumpets, or of loss and dismay. But rather one in which assistance is foretold, is part of the package. In Greek the word "paracletos" means "one who comes alongside." What a lovely way to look at spiritual help.

Rough Winds

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May 

And summer's lease hath far too short a date.

So go the third and fourth lines of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, which begins with the lines "Shall I compare thee to a summer day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperate."

They've been in my mind lately as the brisk winds continue to blow and the gray clouds continue to blot out the sun. It's been one of the coolest springs on record, and is beginning to bother me — not that there's a thing I can do about it except try to see the positive side.

And that brings me back to Shakespeare. Because the buds, though shaken, are staying buds longer than usual. They aren't flowering and fading as quickly as they would if our temperatures were topping 80 each day.

A cool spring may try the patience of one who loves warm weather, but it will, for a few days at least, keep time at bay.

(If the bottom photo looks blurry, it's because the wind was indeed shaking these fully bloomed knockout roses.) 

Running Start

Animals, in their vigor and innocence and lack of self-regard, often hold some deep and true lessons for humans. I was thinking of this today while watching Copper climb the deck stairs. He doesn't do them slowly and gradually, but quickly — and only with a running start.

There must be a physiological reason for running starts, something in the motion of muscles and mobility of tendons. But the psychological component is large, too.

There are the running starts that precede a dive off the high board, the quick steps that introduce a tumbling run — and then there is that scene I've always loved from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," where Paul Newman and Robert Redford dash and then leap off the cliff into the roaring stream below to escape their pursuers.

The running start is not always easy — I can see Copper pause at the stairs, as if to gather his energy before the effort. But there is much to be said for it: how it screws up our courage, helps us hew to our original intentions, how it commits us to action.

Roaming Free

What happens when a post idea flies through my head while I'm trying to participate in the meditation  program my office offers at 9 a.m. most mornings?

It flies through, that's all ... and is lost to posterity.

Meditation means clearing the mind of not only worry and clutter and pointless rumination, but also of the ideas that are sometimes worth developing in this blog.

There's always a chance that this idea will reappear later, of course. Ideas do that sometimes. But there's a greater chance that it's never coming back. And that's all right. Harvesting thoughts can be a tiring business. Better sometimes to let the mind roam free.

Sunday's Rhyme

Monday last was frantic-paced

Tuesday slowed, was still a race.

Wednesday came and went so fast

And Thursday zoomed by in a blast.

Friday to-dos meant more working.

Saturday had no time for shirking.

So now we have the Sabbath Day...

I hope to slow down, fi-nal-lay!

(With apologies to the nursery rhyme.)  

Speeding Along

There are fewer cars on the road than this time three months ago — but more on the road than this time last week. And many of the automobiles out there are apparently speeding.

Not to condone these scofflaws but I can understand the lure of empty pavement. It's such a departure from our normal state of affairs (see above).

I found myself putting the pedal to the metal a few weeks ago when driving down an almost empty Dulles Toll Road. But I slowed down after I spotted this sign:

"Speeding tickets available ahead."

At least the police had a sense of humor about it.

Newest Room

I write today from the newest room in the house, the one that is added every year about this time (usually earlier, since we've had such a chilly spring). That room is ... the deck.

It comes in especially handy now, as the other rooms are, like the poet said, "too much with us." I work in them, eat in them and sometimes (when napping, which is rarely) even sleep in them. In short, I am almost always either in the living room or the kitchen, and since these rooms have no door to separate them, this can become a bit monotonous.

Enter the deck, which runs two-thirds the width of the house and which has two distinct divisions of its own — the sunny section, where there's a chaise lounge, a grill and two wooden rocking chairs; and the shady section, where there's a glass-topped wrought-iron table and four chairs.

I'm sitting in the shady section now, having wiped the evening's moisture off the glass and parked myself and my two computers at the far end, where I can look over the yard, the garden and the Siberian iris. It's good to be back.

After This?

Sometimes I try to envision what our lives will be like coming out of this. I believe that eventually, once there's a vaccine and treatment, they will be somewhat the same. More chastened, more grateful, I hope, but similar to what we used to have. People are social creatures, after all. We want to be together.

But until we feel safe doing that, we will wear masks and stay mostly to ourselves. This is a poverty. It's a shrinking of our lives rather than an expansion of them. It's hard to stay aware of all the possibilities the world holds while we're in this cloistered state.

The life we had is a world I miss every day; we all do. A world we lost so quickly, almost with the hair-trigger quickness of a bomb exploding. All it took was a wily, tenacious pathogen.

What I hope most of all is that this pathogen, like so much else, doesn't succeed in pushing us farther apart, but instead pulls us together. All evidence suggests that it will split us up. But I'm an optimist; I like to believe that common sense and human kindness will prevail.

Fresh Flowers!

For Mother's Day, a harvest of cut flowers. What is it about them? What a joy they are, what an extravagance — a snapshot in time, catching beauty on the fly.

With several bouquets, I've been able to scatter them about the house, so that no matter where I look, I see lilies or freesia or mums or tulips, all in pinks and purples and spots of orange.

I know they won't last, so all the more reason to celebrate them here.

The Luckiest Generation

Dad would have been 97 today, a most beauteous day, as many of his birthdays were. I've been thinking a lot about Dad's generation, often called the "greatest." I think you could make a case that it was one of the luckiest, too.

Born into a Depression, members of Dad's generation were schooled in poverty and deprivation. They learned early to rely on themselves. Families were close then, and many were multi-generational.

Dad joined the Air Force before he was drafted, and thus began the most romantic and far-flung chapter of his life. He was a preacher's kid from Kentucky who was suddenly touring European capitals (albeit from 25,000 feet while scrunched into the tail gunner's seat of a B-17).

Afterward, Dad's generation returned to sweethearts and GI loans and one of the greatest economic expansions of all time. They came back to joy and acclaim. They had saved the free world, after all. That's a lot to do before the age of 30.

Medicine matured as they did. They lived much longer than they would have had there been no antibiotics or bypass surgery. Which is not to say they did not suffer. But most of them lived lives neatly tucked between the 1918 Flu and COVID-19.

Which means that, world-events-wise, Dad's generation suffered more at the beginning of their life span than the end. They came of age expecting little and left this world with much. They didn't have it easy, but they did have it early. One of the greatest generations? Absolutely. But one of the luckiest, too.

Blue and Green

When walking on clear days I lift up my eyes and am startled by the contrast, the deep beauty of the line where where sky meets foliage. It is a combination only nature could pull off — shades of azure and emerald so brilliant that they would be considered tacky in any other setting.

As I admire the colors I wonder what this place is called. It's not the horizon because it's not where earth and sky meet. It's more of a tree-rizon, where treetop meets firmament.

Whatever it is, it's looking gorgeous these days.

Mothers and Daughters

I've been missing Mom more than usual lately, not just because it's Mother's Day but also because of what I'm reading and thinking, because there is so much to tell her, and most of all because not just one but two of my daughters are soon to be mothers.

It's a joy and a privilege to watch your child become a parent. It's role-bending and life-affirming. It's an excellent counterbalance to a worldwide pandemic. And it's the sort of experience that makes me wish my parents were still here to share it with (putting aside for the moment that I would be worried sick about them if they were).

So today I will just have to share it virtually, as we do so much these days; share it by saying here how thankful I am to be not just a mother, but a mother of daughters — and of daughters becoming mothers.

An Old-Fashioned Girl

First, I re-read Eight Cousins, because I could find it in an old bookcase. Little Women I felt no need to re-plumb, having just enjoyed the movie a few months ago. But there was one Louisa May Alcott book that I'd been dying to read again. It was An Old-Fashioned Girl, one of my favorites.

It's not in the house — I believe one old-fashioned girl I know is keeping it on her bookshelf now — but I was able to find a free copy for my ancient Kindle, and am now happily ensconced in the joys and sorrows of one Polly Milton, a bright, kind girl who lives alone with a bird and a cat, who fights disappointment by reaching out to help others, and who makes life pleasant for all who know her.

Is it saccharine? Is it treacly? Yes, ma'am, it is. But it's wonderful to be a part of Polly's world again!

Summer Shade

Accompanying me on yesterday's walk was my old friend, shade. There's always a point in the spring when I notice it's back. It builds gradually, of course, leaf by leaf. But yesterday it announced itself in sharp lines, patches of light and dark, stripes made of shadow.

We don't yet need the coolness shade gives us, but we can always use the contrast, one of the great, unappreciated gifts of life. It gives us depth and richness. It gives us variety.

Winter gives us shadows, but they are harsh and linear. Summer brings contrast with softer contours, smudged margins. And it brings us more of it. Summer weather is not yet with us, but summer shade is starting to be.

Possible Again?

Warmth has been slow to arrive this year, so as I listen to the furnace purr, I'm reliving travels to steamier climes, from the white sand beach of Siesta Key, Florida, to the dark, broad beach at Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh.

I'm remembering the feeling of sand in my toes and the lap of surf in my ears. I'm dreaming of a world where traveling to these places is possible again.

I must need a vacation or something!

Not Complaining

Somehow, there is still moisture in the sky, and rain in the air. It's falling now in gentle sheets, greening the new leaves and the grass and the weeds, making us feel more hemmed in than we already do.

Not that I'm complaining. There's a roof over my head, and the basement doesn't flood every time it rains, only in downpours. There's electricity so I can turn on lamps in the morning (something I've very much needed to do this gray day).

And in the kitchen, just steps away from where I now sit (on a comfy new couch, I might add), there is more food than we know what to do with.

So I will take this rainy day, embrace it and even (in my own way) celebrate it. Because that's where we are now ... or at least it's where I hope to be.

(Sunrise on the Mekong ... from the vault.)

In the News

It's a good day for journalism. The Pulitzer Prizes were just announced (the Washington Post won, as did the Baltimore Sun, the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Anchorage Daily News and many others), and it's also the birthday of Mollie Bly, a journalist who pretended to be mentally ill in order to spend 10 days undercover in the Blackwell's Island Women's Lunatic Asylum in New York and document the horrendous conditions she found there.

In 1889 Bly traveled around the world in 72 days, beating the fictional Phineas Fogg's "Around the World in 80 Days" timetable and becoming famous in the process. She wrote both of these big stories for the New York World, owned by ... Joseph Pulitzer.

At a time when the news is often decried and challenged, it's good to remember all that it does for us, all that it continues to do.

Good Morning

A morning rinsed and spun-dry, cleansed by thunderstorms in the night and a cool breeze in the morning. Whereas yesterday was about humidity and heavy possibility, today is quick on its feet, ready to move into the month, into this strange new almost-summer that is upon us.

In the garden, the irises are prepping for their appearance, narrow buds on the Siberian ones and plump buds on the others. The inside birds are singing in the brightness, having spent some of yesterday with heads tucked and wings folded. They are like little barometers. You can almost mark the weather by them, so tied are they to the world outside.

As for the mammals in the house, they have slept late, as they are wont to do these days.

(I snapped this photo about 10 days ago, when the dogwood and azaleas were still in their prime.) 

Missing the Derby

For the first time since 1945 there was no Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May. There were no thoroughbreds thundering down the back stretch at Churchill Downs. There were, I hear, some fans — many wearing fancy hats — who couldn't stay away. They appeared, crowned and masked, to traipse around the track and take photos of vacant betting windows and empty paddocks.

We've lost many of our traditional markers this spring. No tournament basketball in March, no first day of baseball in April. And now ... no Derby in May — to be followed by no Preakness or Belmont, either, at least for the time being.

Of all the pain, sadness and disruption brought on by this pandemic this is hardly the greatest. But for this transplanted Kentuckian, who has never missed a Derby either live (twice) or televised (every other time), it was a loss indeed.

Book Maps

I've loved maps since I was a child. I grew up with a mother who would eat her lunchtime sandwich and pickle while looking at a map, feeding her body and her soul at the same time. I've done the same off and on through the years (minus the pickle).

If I were to write another book, I've long hoped it would be the kind of book that would have a map in its frontispiece. I had no idea that so many others felt the same way. Enough to fill an entire book, The Writer's Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands, edited by Huw Lewis-Jones.

I found this book on my last trip to the library March 15, and since I've not yet had to return any of those books, I've had plenty of time to savor this one. In it, authors from Philip Pullman to Robert McFarlane wax lyrical about the book maps that inspired them and the books they've written because of them.

"A map helps to make an imaginary place real. The more detail you put into your beautiful lie, and the more you base it on things that are true, the more it comes alive: for you and for your readers," says Cressida Crowell in one of the book's essays called "First Steps: Our Neverland."

Crowell sees maps as story starters. "When I draw the map of my imaginary world, it will tell me the direction I want to be going in, even when I don't yet know it myself."

I'm starting my own map soon.

(Photo: The Land of Make Believe from The Writer's Map by Huw Lewis-Jones.)

Brilliant Green

I walked outside today into a world of green, all shades of green. Dark firs, emerald hedges and verdant lawns, lush and mower-striped. Weeds are greening too, but I chose to ignore them this morning.

The lawn is an English invention, and it rains all the time in England. So said a gardening expert we talked to in early March before purchasing lime and seed. The message was, don't worry too much about your lawn; it will never look good.

But this year the weather has been English and lawns are greening accordingly. Ah, but it does a soul good to see a lawn stretching from house to street — a greensward, a tribute, an invitation to doff shoes and run through it.

I see the point of a cottage garden, of a wild and natural look. But there's something about a lawn, too. And there especially seemed to be something about it this brilliant green morning.