Moderation

A metaphor came to mind today: As is true in many houses of this era (mid-1970s), the venting leaves much to be desired. Despite numerous adjustments, in the summer it's still too warm upstairs, too cold in the basement and, though I would like to say it's just right on the first floor, that's not entirely true. Let's just say it's less extreme than the others.

What I was thinking about this morning while adjusting the thermostat — with one of us in the basement, another on the first floor and the third up above — is about regulation, moderation, in general, how making one of us slightly more comfortable may make the others slightly less so. I was thinking, in short, of sacrifice: that the good of others may depend upon our discomfort.

I wan't intending this to be about mask-wearing. My initial thought was much more general. But given the times we live in, it wasn't long before it trended this way.

Spacious Mind

A happy mind is a spacious mind, intoned the voice that I have come to associate with calm. It's the voice of the Headspace application (its founder, as a matter of fact), and it has been my guide on this several-month journey I've been taking recently, dipping my toe into the shallowest end of the deep waters of meditation.

Any progress I've made has been courtesy of my place of employ, which has sponsored Headspace meditation sessions every workday since mid-March, most of which I've attended.

Some days I'm a hopeless case and can barely follow the instructions. But other days I can feel myself in another place, one where thoughts flit into my mind and just as easily float out again; one where following the breath, flowing with the breath, is becoming a little more second nature.

Today, when I heard this line that a happy mind is a spacious mind, a mind that has room for other people, other ideas, I'll admit I broke the first rule of meditation. I didn't let that thought move through and out. I savored it a bit, I pondered the implications.

Equating happiness with spaciousness, yes, it works — though you could just as easily equate it with coziness and smallness and manageability. But in this case I imagined the clear sky that you reach when you soar above the clouds. The spaciousness of the heavens, of the mind unencumbered.

Drippy Walk

A drippy walk last week had me dodging raindrops. When I left my parked car I thought the sun would burn the clouds away, but the farther I walked the less certain I was of that. 

Still, it was a grand way to spend an early summer afternoon, making my way along moss-slicked paths, inhaling the rain-spun air, exploring an unfamiliar corner of the neighborhood.

My shoes and shirt were growing soggier by the minute but I couldn't bear to turn around. The canopy was catching the worst of the weather, and the moisture seemed to accentuate everything — the leaves were greener, the air was fresher — and I was walking through it, gladly.

Virtual Shower

Today, we make one more notch on the digital belt, as we hold a virtual baby shower for Claire. With two expectant mothers in the family, we thought it best to forgo a real party.

By now most of us have been to Zoom happy hours, Zoom meetings, Zoom family reunions and all other manner of screened gatherings. We have grown accustomed to the squares on a screen.

So today, there will be more of that. There will be virtual games and present-opening. But the gifts, the decorations — and most of all, the love and good wishes — will be most emphatically real.

Dizzy Doggie

A dizzy doggie is a sad sight to behold, and we're beholding it now since Copper came down with something called vestibular disease. It affects the part of a dog's brain and ear that regulates balance, and is a condition known to affect old dogs.

This time yesterday we thought our dear pet was not long for this world. He couldn't eat or stand, was sick to his stomach. I thought he must have had a stroke and was preparing myself (not well, either) for the worst.

But a trip to the vet informed us that he would most likely recover and just needed to be kept quiet until this thing goes away. Of course, we left with medications because this after all is a modern, state-of-art veterinary practice. But time is the great healer here — as it so often is.

(Copper is looking ahead to better days.)

When Worlds Collide

Working outside means that my worlds collide. 

I sit in the office chair retrieved on Tuesday, a shiny, heavy object with padding everywhere a body needs it — but yesterday I pulled it out onto the deck in full view of the wood bees and the red-shouldered hawk family next door and the knockout rose bush, just planted on the side of the yard. 

In the way that white noise makes one concentrate, the sights and sounds of the outdoors do the same for me. And to concentrate while also seated in comfort is ... divine.

So let the worlds collide. I'm fine with it! 

Reading Double

What's a reader to do when she becomes totally engrossed in an Audible book while already reading a page-turner the old-fashioned way? There's only one answer to that: spend all non-work hours reading or listening.

Beyond that, though, there are some considerations. One can "read" an Audible book while walking or dusting or chopping vegetables, but one cannot read an Audible book before bed. I've tried that before, have fallen asleep to a mellifluous voice carrying me sweetly from novel to dreamland only to find myself hopelessly lost and frantically rewinding (using that five-seconds-back key) in the clear light of day.

With eyes on paper, though, the worst that can happen is that you lose your bookmark in the bedcovers. But that, and one's place in the story, is easily found the next morning. 

So there develops the two-channeled reading mind, which thrills to American Dirt in the evening and revels in The Heart's Invisible Furies in the morning. And why should it not? After all, it's the same mind that holds recipes and birthdays, addresses and passwords. It can juggle more than one movie or television show in an evening, so why not two books in a day?

 I say this now, of course, but I'm only a few days into reading double. We'll see later how it all turns out. 

One Last Look

Not only is my office still in lockdown, with employees required to work from home, but we'll soon move to a new building. By early fall, we'll  have the option of returning to the office, but it won't be this office. Which is why I went down to Crystal City this morning to pack up my chair, standing desk, notebooks and files — and bring them home.

It was a big job that my becoming sentimental made even bigger. I couldn't stop thinking of all the colleagues who once peopled this place. Though I still work with them, we are now squares on a screen or voices on the phone. There is no more banter in the kitchen, no more planking in the hall.

I'll admit that working at home is wonderful, but I miss the camaraderie and the stimulation. I miss the life I used to have. Which is why I spent some time today running around with my phone taking pictures of the place.  Here's where we held potlucks. There's where we started planning the speech it would take me a month to write.

It may sound silly, it took time I didn't have. But I spent the better part of four years in this place. Surely it's worth one last look.

Re-reading Camus

Once we went into lockdown in March, the battered old copy I have of Albert Camus's The Plague was much on my mind. Part of me wanted to re-read it. I'd always liked the book, ever since I read it in college and taught it in high school. I thought it was profound — and that was before we were in a worldwide pandemic. But another part of me wondered, why do I want to read a book about a plague when I'm living through one?

The glutton-for-punishment part of me won out. I re-read the book — and am glad I did, even though cracking the volume open and turning pages guaranteed its destruction. When I began reading, my copy was hanging together not by a thread but by some errant glue that had not yet dried and flaked away. After I finished, the book was essentially a sheaf of loose-leaf pages. But that was okay; killing a book by reading it seems an outcome that an existentialist like Camus would have appreciated.

But beyond the mechanics of reading — the gentle way I had to handle the paperback, as if holding the hand of a dying victim — there was the content, which was both comforting and illuminating. Yes, we are suffering from a devastating coronavirus. But it's at least not the bubonic plague. There are no buboes to lance, no dying rats to herald the crisis. 

There were passages that could have been written yesterday, so clearly did they plumb the human heart in a time of mass contagion and illness. "There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet plagues and wars take people equally by surprise," Camus wrote, at the beginning of the novel. And, toward the end, he said this: "Whereas plague by its impartial ministrations should have promoted equality among our townsfolk, it now had the opposite effect and ... exacerbated the sense of injustice." 

And then, there is this passage at the end, which I noted a few months ago and will always give me shivers: "He [Dr. Rieux] knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedroom cellars, trunks and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city."

A Repost for Father's Day

For today, a repost from 2011, when Dad and I spent Father's Day touring his old neighborhood, which he liked to call the "culturally deprived North Side." Reading it now makes me miss him even more.

Sometimes the old brain is too full to process what it has stored. Today is one of those days. A high school reunion, the wedding of a dear friend's son and now Father's Day have all run together this weekend to create a mass of memories, thoughts and impressions. Should I write about dancing last night with people I haven't seen in decades? Or the tears that surprised me as I watched Jean's son kiss his bride?

A second ago I showed my dad photos of his father that my cousin had posted on Facebook. The kitchen of my Dad's boyhood home on Idlewild Court — a home we're about to see on a sentimental journey through the streets of Dad's past — came alive again in one of those pictures.

The multiple layers of meaning in that event — layers of nostalgia, wonder and mystery — are about as close to depicting this weekend as I can muster.

Victory Lap

Copper is an old doggie now who has twice torn his ACL. He gets around fine most of the time but is stiff after long sleeps and odd twists. Consequently, he has developed a reticence for going up or down the eight wooden deck stairs that provide access to the back yard with all of its canine potty potential. 

This, of course, has become an issue for the humans in Copper's life, who have been known to lure him down the steps with treats, bouncing balls and plain old cajoling.

Most mornings, Copper makes it up and back without encouragement, prompted by urgency, I suppose. But lately he's taken to celebrating this once-routine accomplishment by bursting through the back door and running around the house. 

I know that we humans must avoid the tendency to anthropomorphize our pet's behaviors, but it's hard not to see this as a victory lap.  Once again, Copper has prevailed over stiff joints and old age. He's made it down and back up again. He has triumphed. And surely this is worth a little celebration. 

My People

Yesterday,  I had a 4:00 Microsoft Teams meeting followed by a 5:30 Zoom meeting. Nothing strange about back-to-back virtual meetings, the now-familiar squares on the screen. Except that the first was for my paying job and the second for a journalist group I've belonged to for years.

In the first there were blurred backgrounds, and some relatively tidy houses. In the second there were papers and books and sloping roofs. The kinds of rooms I live in, the kinds of rooms I love.

I also noticed the difference in discourse. There were funny, smart people in both meetings, but in the first there was policy discussion (both corporate and political) — and in the second there was observation. Everything from school openings to vaccine development to interview transcription.

It should come as no surprise that a bunch of writers would live amidst books and papers, or that they would offer up a wide-ranging conversation — but it was especially heart-warming yesterday, and it made me feel something both simple and profound. It made me feel that ... these are my people.

Blackberry Winter

Though the heat and humidity are building here, for the last few days it's felt like Blackberry Winter, which is what I grew up hearing an early summer cold snap called. Curious about this expression, I just learned from the Farmer's Almanac that it's primarily a southern term used to describe a bout of chilly weather that happens when the blackberries bloom.

There are lots of words like this in my lexicon, though I'm not pulling others up right this minute, language that harkens back to the deep roots of my Kentucky childhood. These turns of phrase created a world view that was part lore, part poetry and only a small part reality. For instance, I recall few blackberry blooms in my neck of the woods. It's only since I've lived in Virginia that I've been aware of when the blackberries bloom, which is, interestingly enough, right about now!

As for the weather, it won't be cool much longer. Already the heat and humidity are building, the rain that fell yesterday becoming steam that rises from the lawn, aromatic and ever-so-slightly suffocating, too.

Reading in Circles

I still remember what I said when I opened the Kindle I received for Christmas some years ago. It was "get back from me, Satan," or some such line, punctuated with a laugh and accompanied by lots of thank-you's. Because it was a lovely gift and I appreciated it, even though I'd always said I'd never use one of the things.

The Kindle has been used often since then, and it has especially been pressed into service the last few months. I've found free classics to consume on it, purchased a novel my book group was reading, and it's now on top of my bedside table book pile.

A digital e-reader is perfect for these digital times, but, more to the point, the Kindle is just one of several book delivery platforms. I can listen to a book, courtesy of another generous gift (this one for Audible), I can read one on my computer through the library's lending service, I can use my Kindle or ... I can read a good, old-fashioned book.  I was saving the best for last.  

Walking the Fence

These days when I need a quick break from the computer, instead of making my way to the office kitchen to make a cup of tea or get a glass of water, I leave the house, descend the deck stairs and stroll around the back yard.

It's not a bad idea to inspect the boundaries occasionally, to find missing pickets or other spots where Copper might sneak out. And to monitor the undergrowth, this year's poison ivy crop and the Arbor Foundation saplings, which are still scrawny but now as tall as I am.

I started walking the fence back in early spring when the ground was still hard and plants were asleep. Since then I've watched the season unfold from these leisurely strolls around the property.

Mostly, it's such a lovely way to take a break — being outside amidst green and growing things. Taking leave, if only for a few moments, of the keystrokes that define my life.

Left with a Melody

Like so much else these days, deciding whether to go to church is fraught with questions. Since last week, we have been allowed to attend in person, but seating is limited and the experience is so different that I think I would miss Mass more sitting there than I would watching it on my laptop.

Which is why I keep tuning in ... as evidenced by yesterday's post.  It's imperfect, but the experience still leaves me with something to think about, and, maybe just as important, something to listen to.

Yesterday, it was "Let All Who Are Thirsty Come," a haunting melody that stayed with me as I swept the deck and mowed the yard and walked through the June afternoon.

Left with a melody ... there is a power and a purpose in that.

Reinvention

Reinvention is in the air, new ways of being and doing things. Many of them seem flat to me, necessary evils, the now-familiar checkerboard of faces in Zoom squares.

But there are benefits, too. Free classes, curbside services, a keener appreciation of the here-and-now, of how important it is to be strong of body and healthy of mind. I've just attended yet another remote Mass, one enlivened by the priest, who began intoning the Sign of Peace (where we shake each other's hands), only to say, "Oh, that's right, you can't do that anymore."

Experimentation can bring smiles or exasperated sighs. I'm hoping I can go with the former most of the time.

Through trial and error and reinvention we come to know each other better — and perhaps this, too, can be an avenue of love.

Empty Nest

Yesterday there was much fluttering and chirping in the garage as a bevy of Carolina wrens flew in and out the window. For the second or third year in a row Mama Wren had nested on an upper shelf full of old vases, tucking her abode in between a green vase and a clear one, using the shelf in between as a patio of sorts.

The fledglings must have been practicing their first moves over the last few days, when there seemed a confusing preponderance of bird life in and around the garage. There were suddenly wrens everywhere: in the holly trees, at the bird bath, at the feeder and the suet block.

Now that the nest is empty, I climbed up to take a look. How still and silent and abandoned it looked. One fact struck me: Unlike human nests, which empty and refill many times over a lifetime, when bird's nests empty ... they stay that way — at least for the season.

Bustin' Out

I'm not sure how much of my world view has been shaped by Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals — probably more than I would care to admit. Given that, perhaps I can be forgiven for hearing a certain refrain from "Carousel" pinging through my head these days.

"June is bustin' out all over
All over the meadow and the hill
Buds are bustin' outta bushes
And the romping river pushes
Every little wheel that wheels beside the mill

Because it's June — June, June, June
Just because it's June, June, June.

And my favorite verse:

June is bustin' out all over
The sheep aren't sheepish anymore
And the rams that chase the ewe sheep
Are determined there'll be new sheep
And the ewe sheep aren't even keeping score

Because it's June — June, June, June
Just because it's June, June, June!

All of which is to say ... it's a June-is-Bustin'-Out kind of day!

Newborn Fawn

On my walk this morning I spotted what I first thought was a pile of speckled leaves but which on closer examination turned out to be a newborn fawn.

The little thing was curled up in a ball and trembling, his big eyes staring up at me as I walked toward him. I kept my distance, not knowing if mama was nearby, talked to him gently, visions of The Yearling and feeding him from a bottle in mind.

This was midway through my walk, but I thought about the little guy all the way to the end of the street and back, wondering if he would still be there on my return. He was — so I called Animal Control, which informed me that mother deer often leave their babies in a "safe spot" and return from them in a few hours.

Since this "safe spot" was in clear view of passerby, I made a sign asking neighbors not to disturb him. But when I went to check on him a few minutes later, the little guy had scampered into the woods to get out of the rain.

In my rush to protect him, I forgot to snap a photo, so I found this picture online (it's exactly what he looked like). In a few weeks, this little tyke will be ravaging my garden, but for now, all I wanted to do was take care of him.

Puddles of Petals

To love a climbing rose means to accept it in all seasons. Last week it was at its peak, green and pink and aromatic, bursting with life.

This week, there are as many petals on the deck as on the flowers. Today, when the wind blows, it's raining roses. There are puddles of petals at my feet.

It's easy to mourn the end of the plant's most bountiful blooming season.  But there is such beauty in the spent blossoms.

June Afternoon

An afternoon walk on the W&OD Trail puts me in the very middle of summer. That ribbon of asphalt is a former railroad line, after all, and is as open and sunny as you would expect it to be, bright and straight. 

The trail is edged by tall grasses, daisies, Queen Anne’s lace and a tangle of other weeds and wildflowers that hang their sweet heads over the paved path. This time of year, it’s honeysuckle-scented, too, and the combination of sound and scent makes me feel like I’m eight years old and wading through the clover-filled empty lot behind us in the old-old house. 

What is it about summer that brings out the kid in us? Is it that when we’re young we practically eat summer up, sucking sour weed, whistling through a blade of grass, rolling down a hill? In summer we’re skin to skin with the natural world, we breathe it in and it becomes part of us. And every summer thereafter we live on that stored fuel. 

George Eliot said, “We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.” To which I would add “ — and no childhood summers.”  

Reflections on Race

We were given today off to reflect and recharge, a generous gift of time that I (as always) struggle to use as wisely as possible. The day is meant to mark a pause in the tensions that have roiled this country over recent instances of police brutality against African Americans. 

I've done some reading to mark the day, but for me race relations are a lived event. Because both the grand-babies I'm waiting to welcome will have brown skin, I think often about the world they will inherit. What kind of prejudices will they fight? What kind of opportunities will they have? Will they be roughed up by police because they happened to be jogging in the "wrong" part of town? 

Suddenly it is not "the other" — it is flesh of my flesh. So whatever I think is no longer a matter of mind only, but also of heart. Which makes me wonder ... is this what it will take? Will things truly improve only when most marriages are mixed-race and most families blended? 

I certainly hope not; I certainly hope it happens much, much sooner than that.

Visiting

A late post today, in part because I've been mowing and weeding and spending as much time outside as possible. But also because I've been visiting.

When I was young, that's what Sundays were for. We would go to my grandparents' house after church for a big afternoon meal and then hang out with family, which seemed tedious to me at the time but I'm sure was a boon for my parents.

Conversation was the name of the game. There wasn't much else going on, and we kids would slip outside as soon as we could and play in the backyard. (I can especially remember trying to clamber up the antenna, a tall, triangular, aluminum ladder-like thing that practically begged to be climbed.)

But I digress. Today's visits and visitor were especially welcome because of how little social contact I've had these last few months. The interactions weren't that long, but they were long enough to remind me how invigorating it is to chat, trade stories — and while away an hour or two in pleasant company.

Catching Up

Saturdays are usually for catching up, for buying groceries and running errands, for cleaning the house and doing the laundry. 

Today I'm posting this blog using a new browser, which is a different kind of catching up, the technological kind, one I'm less familiar with and not very good at. The switch is not altogether by choice. It's been progressively more difficult to write posts using the previous interface, and an older browser wasn't helping. 

So now there's a new browser and a new back end for the posting process and ... it's anybody's guess what this will look like once I press publish. 

Wild Things

On yesterday's walk I marveled at the wildflowers — the daisies and clover and honeysuckle — how they hemmed the sidewalk along West Ox where I was huffing and puffing in the late afternoon humidity.

Last night, I fell asleep to a chorus of frog song, as the critters enjoyed a dousing in the thunderstorms that rolled through our area after dark.

Then this morning, Copper and I saw a fox cross the road in front of us. The creature trotted confidently through our neighbor's yard, turning his head occasionally to stare at us, as if to ask, what are you doing here?

We live in a tame suburb of Washington, D.C. — but we are surrounded by wild things. And yes, they make everything groovy.

(A tip of the hat to the Troggs and their great one-hit wonder.) 

Change of Heart

When driving west on Interstate 66 last Monday, I thought about how many times I made that drive, countless trips from Virginia to Kentucky — all the thoughts I had, the fears I was fighting.

In later years, the trips were often in response to a health crisis for Mom or Dad, so I sought distractions wherever I could find them. The scenery out my window was embroidered with worry. But when I looked to the mountains,  I found relief.

It was that way this week, too. All of which is to say how much a change of scene can mean a change of heart.

I Feel the Earth Move

From next door comes the sound of whirring chain saws. The tree guys have been at it for two days, felling a 100-footer with much skill, hard work and fearlessness.  To hang from the very tree you're taking down — while holding a chain saw — requires a kind of courage I can scarcely imagine.

Meanwhile I sit here with my little computer keyboard, moving words around on a page. Yesterday I listened from inside, alternately opening and closing the window depending upon the state of tree demolition and whether or not I was on the phone.

But today I'm on the deck with a front row seat for the experience. Occasionally, there will be a thud as yet another large limb or chunk of the massive trunk hits the ground. And that's when ... I feel the earth move.

Hidden Blossoms

While it's easy to be captivated by the grand views off the ridges of Shenandoah National Park, one of the prettiest sights I saw yesterday were these pink lady's slippers. They were tucked behind a stand of (as yet un-bloomed) mountain laurel, as if they were hiding, biding their time. 

Spring is still arriving at 3,000 feet, and many of the trees were still flashing gold at their crowns. Wildflowers we welcomed weeks ago, like buttercups, are in their prime on the slopes.

But no matter the season, the views captivate year-round, whether framed in flaming leaves or spring wildflowers.

One-Day Getaway

A drive west today, out to the Blue Ridge Mountains, the great ridge that runs down the eastern spine of this country, out to where the sky meets the land.

It's been a while since I've been more than 20 miles away from home. Half a year, I think. And while it is true that one can travel widely without ever leaving home, at least for this wanderer, an occasional glimpse of the world beyond helps maintain sanity.

So a drive west it will be, out to the ridge I took pains to see yesterday on my walk. The Shenandoah — the shaggy old hills that mark the beginning of the rest of the country.