Working Al Fresco

I feel like a kid who finally has to come inside because the street lights are on. For the first day this week, I'm working inside. It was quite a run: four straight days of al fresco work. 

I've been writing this blog on the deck, editing articles, crafting talking points, and, yesterday, sending out a newsletter to 5,500 people, also from the deck. Kinda scary that one can do all this from the backyard ... but that's the way we roll now. 

Meanwhile, I go through two changes of clothes a day (it's been in the 90s with 70-percent humidity), drink glass after glass of water or iced tea, and every day when the accumulated heat of the day seems ready to collapse upon itself, I plug in a small fan to ease my way to quitting time.

Minor discomforts aside, working outside is divine. I type to the rise and fall of cicada song, I answer emails while birds settle in the azalea bush behind me. Though I don't hunt for worms or sip nectar to keep body and soul together, working outside makes me feel a part of the natural world in a way few other things have.  

Joyland!

Yesterday, the neighbors had their driveway sealed, which meant that I was whisked away to a place I used to love more than any other — Joyland, an amusement park in Lexington, Kentucky that closed when I was young. How I came to conflate the smell of blacktop with this down-on-its-heels fun park was likely due to the hot asphalt of the parking lot.

All I know is that the merry-go-round there was an utter delight, and the roller-coaster, called the Wildcat, was a rickety wooden model that clattered when the cars rolled up and down its hills and valleys.

When I made my First Communion and was told by the nuns that it would be the happiest day of my life, I asked Mom and Dad to take me to Joyland. All spiritual aspects of the day aside, if this were to be the happiest day of my life, Joyland would have to be involved.

And, dear people that they were ... they took me. It was after Mass and the family brunch, after the rain had stopped (because it was pouring that morning). The sun had come out and the pavement was steaming. The whole place smelled like blacktop. It was Joyland! My happiest day was complete.

(Photo: courtesy Wikipedia)

The Competitors

Here in the outdoor office, where I just completed several major tasks and am taking a brief breather before starting another, I often find my eyes wandering to the hummingbird feeder. 

After a dry spell earlier in the summer, the tiny birds are at it again, zooming in for a drink and battling off competitors with fierce territoriality.

The hummingbirds may not realize how much competition they have. They may not always notice the ants, bees and wasps, even the errant spider or two, which as far as I can tell are siphoning off more of the nectar than any rogue birds. 

But I'll just ignore that for now. If it's OK with the hummingbirds, it's OK with me. 

Most Beautiful Day

Today we celebrate the birthday of a daughter who is about to become a mother. It has me thinking back to the day when she was born, a most glorious day, as all three of the days were when my children came into this world. 

In this case, however, July 28 was the day when an oppressive heat wave had finally broken. My second-born, who was due almost two weeks earlier, had apparently been waiting until the temperature was back below 90 before she made her appearance. The weather had turned overnight, a cool breeze had sprung up, which led the TV weather person to announce "This is the most beautiful day of the year." 

It's something I've always repeated to Claire, and today was no exception. "It's certainly not the most beautiful day of the year today," she responded, referring to our high temperature and oppressive humidity. 

"That's because it's waiting for when your baby is born," I said. And of course, no matter what, it will be. 

Stegner and Home

It made sense that I finished this year's "beach book" just hours before firing up the work computer.  It made sense, though it made for less than 40 winks. That's the way it is — or can be, when the book is good enough. 

In this one, it was almost as if I could see Stegner coming into his own as a writer from the beginning of this 562-page saga to the end. The Big Rock Candy Mountain was Stegner's second published novel and an autobiographical gem that becomes wiser and stronger as the writer (and the characters) mature. 

I've always loved Stegner's depiction of the American West, his love for the landscape and the way he grapples with the nature of home. And here I could see this in full flower: 

It was a grand country, a country to lift the blood, and he was going home across its wind-kissed miles with the sun on him and the cornfields steaming under the first summer heat and the first bugs immolating themselves against his windshield. But going home where? he said. Where do I belong in this?

...Where is home? he said. It isn't where your family comes from, and it isn't where you were born, unless you have been lucky enough to live in one place all your life. Home is where you hang your hat. (He had never owned a hat.) Or home is where you spent your childhood, the good years when waking every morning was an excitement, when the round of the day could always produce something to fill your mind, tear your emotions, excite your wonder or awe or delight. Is home that, or is it the place where the people you love live, or the place where you have buried your dead, or the place where you want to be buried yourself? 

...To have that rush of sentimental loyalty at the sound of a name, to love and know a single place ... Those were the things that not only his family, but thousands of Americans had missed. The whole nation had been footloose too long, Heaven had been just over the next range for too many generations.

Bodies and Souls

The several loads of laundry I've done since returning home are a good re-entry point. Cleaning and folding make me feel at home. And being on the deck as my nightgown blows in the breeze helps me remember the freedom I felt at the shore.

That feeling of freedom is more important now than ever. It's so easy to feel hemmed in by the pandemic, to think only about what we can't do, where we can't go.

Of course we must take care always to protect ourselves and those we love. But we must also find our own personal balance points, the tradeoffs we will or won't make to ensure that we not only keep our bodies intact — but our souls as well.

Traveling Twice

This year's beach read is The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner, a family saga as broad and as deep as the western horizon. It's been a fine book for this year's trip, accompanying me on the plane and on the strand.

There aren't many readers on the beach these days. There are plenty of people on their phones, and, believe it or not in this age of air buds, plenty of people listening to portable radios loudly enough that everyone nearby can hear them, too.

But I spotted only three or four people reading books on yesterday's walk, though the day before I happened to park myself by an entire family in thrall. But though few in number, readers stand out. There they sit in perfect communion with the printed pages, as waves break and gulls swoop. They could be anywhere — running through an airport in Bangkok or driving cattle through a freak spring snowstorm in Montana.

I like to think that these readers have discovered what I have: that when you travel with a book, you travel twice.

Beyond the Beach

When you're at the beach it's easy to be seduced by it, to think there is nothing else to see or do. But  there are other pleasures. The pool, for instance. I've spent many hours lazing by it, reading or writing, and many hours in it, as my body cools and my fingers shrivel.

And there is walking around the little village center here, where you can people-watch, pick up a salad for dinner and buy a souvenir or two.

Finally, there's the mental vibe of the beach, which expands beyond the sand and surf into the light and the wind — into the words I write, the thoughts I think and the dreams I dream.

I guess that's why I keep coming back.

The Eyes Have It

I noticed it in late March, when mask-wearing was still rare. I noticed it when I spotted a woman in the supermarket, between the dairy and meat section. 

Perhaps she had just landed some chicken, which was scarce in those days. But I think it was a gesture of simple human friendliness rather than an expression of triumph. Because it was only a simple smile. And it crinkled the edges of her eyes, fanned up in lines toward her temples, made her pupils dance.

This will pass, her smiling eyes said to me.  One day we will be beyond all this — and we best be beyond it with smiles on our faces and fellow feeling in our hearts. 

That's the moment when I decided that in this new world ... the eyes have it. 

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Puddles

The last few afternoons have featured big rains with dark clouds building, sheets of water falling and palm trees swaying. These storms have left large puddles in their wake, bodies of water like small ponds, making you cross the street when you're walking to the market to pick up the salad dressing you forgot to buy an hour earlier.

The puddles mirror the sky and the clouds that created them. The images vanish when the water meets the macadam.  I skirt them at first, but then take the time to snap a shot.

Looking at it now I see how the grain of the gravel underlies the mottled cloudscape — and the upside-down palms seem like two small brooms, ready to sweep the street of rain.

Fast Walk at High Tide

The sun is well up in the sky, the aroma of sunscreen fills the air, all the shells have been found. It's a fast walk at high tide.

Yes, the intentions are pure. I could imagine the early rising as I took 40 more winks, could feel myself pulling on running shoes, tying the laces, tucking my hair up in the baseball cap, heading out into a still, silent world where only a few beachcombers strolled meditatively along the shore.

Instead, I found myself hours later, dodging the breakers as they edged onto the only hard sand left, crunching the dross of smashed shells and dried seaweed.

It was hot, it was invigorating. It was a fast walk at high tide. 

Kinda Sorta Like Normal

It's not like you can forget the pandemic here. I'm aware that the virus is still raging. To get here, I wore both a mask and a face shield. And when I enter a grocery store, which is the only place I enter other than my room, people wear masks.

But on the beach, which is so broad and glorious, so built for social distancing, I can walk and look and sit and stare and pretend that life is whole once again.

In other words ... it's kinda, sorta like normal.

The Beach, Again

Being back at the beach always comes as a shock. I know that this world continues to exist when I'm not here. Its rhythms free for the taking, its palms swaying in the breeze whether I'm here to see them or not. 

But the year is long between visits, and sometimes it seems like a mirage. Oh, no, though. It is still here, with all its differences and beauties. 

It's so lovely to be at the beach again. 

Overwritten

That I'm an Annie Dillard fan will come as no surprise to anyone who glances at the title of this blog with its Dillard quotation below. It's taken from my favorite of her books, An American Childhood. A more perfect evocation of growing up, of coming to inhabit one's self, I do not know.

I've been less a fan of Dillard's fiction. But a few days ago I picked up The Maytrees. It has a slightly standoffish quality that keeps me from fully digging in, but, like all Dillard's works, it has lines that stop me in my tracks. Here's a passage that did just that:

Often she missed infant Petie now gone ... He fit her arms as if they two had invented how to carry a baby. ... Later she washed his filthy hair and admired his vertebrae, jiggled his head in toweling that smelled like his steam. She needled splinters and sandspur spines from his insteps as long as he'd let her. Every one of these Peties and Petes was gone. That is who she missed, those boys now overwritten.

How beautifully does she say what parents feel as their children grow up. That as much as you love them, love them more each year though it seems scarcely possible, you miss them, too, miss their younger selves that flit in and out of their smiles and expressions, tantalizing just enough to let us know they're in there still, somewhere. Thanks to Dillard, I have a new word for where they are. They are "overwritten," stuck beneath layers like primary code.

Tomatoes!

The tomato plant on the deck is bending from the weight of its top-heavy stalk. There are almost a dozen little tomatoes-in-the making in various stages of fruitiness. Toward the bottom of the stalk one of a trio is almost completely red. It will no doubt ripen while I'm gone next week.

Meanwhile, in what seems like Jack-in-the-Beanstalk fashion, the plant continues to climb, with clumps of tomato flowers turning, magically, into tomatoes themselves, albeit still tiny.

As backyard garden operations grow, it's not a big one. But like any backyard garden operation it's a reminder that much of what we eat comes from the soil — or from animals who eat things that come from the soil — not from hermetically sealed packages in the grocery store. 

Soil, fertilizer, summer sun and rain ... when the combinations are right, there is growth, there is harvest ... there is a tomato on your plate.

Outside the Lines

I won't say I wrote the first over-parenting book, but I did write an early one. So I pay attention when new volumes come out on the topic.  One of the latest is Parenting Outside the Lines by Meghan Leary, which is excerpted in the Washington Post today.

Leary has her work cut out for her. The little I've been learning about the commercial assault on and considerable expectations of parents these days, the more amazed I am. Take the products and gadgets that are supposedly filling needs but are actually inflaming fears.

There's something called the Owlet Smart Sock, which keeps tabs on baby's vital signs so you can sleep in peace. Sleep in peace, that is, until baby kicks off the Owlet Smart Sock, at which point you run, heart-pacing, into the nursery to find your sweet babe snoozing in rosy good health. Of course, you're awake for the night.

One thing I'm sure of — every parent wants the best for her child. The question is, how to achieve it. And the infuriating answer is .. we don't really know for sure. Accepting that answer, believing in that answer, can take a lifetime.

Lighting the Way

Walking in the dark has always appealed to me, not so much for what I gain cardiovascular-wise, but what I see when I stroll. The shimmer of TV screens, the toys abandoned in the driveway, waiting to be picked up by children in the morning.

One house I passed last night has been empty for months, and the new inhabitants are just settling in. All I spotted in the dining room was a large potted plant. Seeing the emptiness of that brightly lit room, comparing it with the full-to-bursting condition of my own house, reminded me of when we first arrived here with a six-month-old baby.

The house felt like a mistake, a far-too-roomy abode that we'd never grow into. Four bedrooms? A living room, dining room and kitchen? And a full (though unfinished) basement? We would always be bouncing around in here like three tennis balls, I thought.

Obviously, we have filled the place up, no problem, and used every nook and cranny. But that wasn't what affected me so much last night. It was a visceral memory of that younger self, and a sudden rush of realizing how long ago that has been. It was the biggest story, and sometimes I think the only story. It was time passing ... that's all.

Gloveless

It's ironic that after months of wearing gloves for grocery shopping, a doctor's visit and most any other time I've ventured into a public space, I wasn't wearing them when I needed them most — in my own kitchen.

Last night's dinner was a Thai shrimp dish I'd never made but which sounded good when I found it online. It called for a jalapeno pepper, two of them, in fact, with or without seeds. I settled on one and one-half without seeds. That was about right, flavor-wise. Blended with the coconut milk, fish sauce and Thai curry paste, they provided just enough kick.

But my hands told another story. Hours after I'd rinsed, de-seeded and diced the peppers my fingers and palms felt like they were on fire. A couple of hours of keeping them wrapped in a cool wet washcloth or on top of a bag of chipped ice left them little better than before.

When I finally googled the symptom, I learned that I should have been slathering my hands with milk or yogurt instead of cold water — and, most of all, I should have been wearing gloves. Now you tell me!

(Entries from a salsa competition last year at work.) 

Precious Moments

It's easy to feel a failure at meditation, although I believe failure is a concept frowned upon in meditative circles. But despite the wandering mind I must constantly try to rein in during my brief sessions on Headspace, I stepped outside today to pick up the newspaper and felt a thrill just to be alive.

The sun was shining, I could walk barefoot to the street — the moment was perfect for celebrating the importance of all moments.

And as if to underline this view, as I write this post the hummingbird, elusive this year, seems finally to have decided our nectar is worth sipping. Already I've seen her make several passes at the feeder, dipping as well into the New Guinea impatiens, her needle-like bill stabbing the flowers with surgical precision.

A summer moment. A precious moment. Precious as all moments are.

Anniversary of a Classic

Catching up on email, I learned from the Writer's Almanac that To Kill a Mockingbird was published 60 years ago yesterday — and that it was not an easy book to write (if any book is). 

Apparently, Harper Lee was so frustrated by her work-in-progress that in 1957 she threw the manuscript out the window. Luckily, she retrieved it and went on to finish the book, which has sold 30 million copies, been translated into 40 languages and won the Pulitzer Prize.

Lee admitted that she didn't know what to expect when the book was published, and hoped that if it was panned, it would be a "quick and merciful death" at the hands of the critics. She later admitted that she found the success almost as frightening as the "quick and merciful death" would have been.  And in fact, Lee never wrote the next book.

If communication is the point, how our work is perceived by others, then perhaps Lee said everything she needed to say in that classic and her silence was justified. But if the point of writing is the doing of it ... then Lee was robbed.

Change of Scene

For months we have been mostly at home, not leaving at all except for groceries in March and April, tip-toeing out a bit more in May and June, and now, in July, a couple of full-blown trips are in the offing. The first of these is today. I take Celia to the airport in a few minutes.

It seems strange after a period of home-based quiet to suddenly be encountering the world again. The world has shrunk in these months. It's now a creaky rocking chair in the kitchen, a yoga mat in the basement and my office chair pulled out onto the deck, looking incongruous there but oh so much more comfortable than the wrought iron patio furniture with the old blue cushion.

You'd think that after such enforced seclusion one might have startling insights. Maybe those are yet to come. My trip is next week, so ... I'll be waiting.

The Weeds

Since I work outside most days now I'm constantly reminded that there will always be work to do for those who lift up their heads and look around. I say this because of the weeds, which will always be with us. 

Whereas I used to walk around the office, make my way to the kitchen and brew a cup of tea, now I walk down the deck stairs into the backyard and pull a bunch of stilt grass ... or crab grass ... or dandelions.

Weed eradication is strangely satisfying. It's a way to improve the yard that takes no imagination or forethought. The material is always at hand, and there are infinite possibilities. It's also not unlike editing. Instead of removing the errant dash or comma, I pull up the wild strawberry. 

It's all in a day's work. And like all sweet toil, there is never an end to it, only a pause. 

Ready for Rest?

Within this morning's walk, rushing to work in a work-out before the heat begins to build, there was a sudden awareness of pause amidst the hurry. The feeling you get at the top of roller coaster, infinite and infinitesimal at the same time.

It was the feeling of summer at its peak, full of birdsong and cicada crescendo. Of crows, discussing the world and its problems as they often do, hopping along the gravel berm with their wise eyes and sleek black coats.

And for some reason this summer, what has become a signature sound, the felling of trees, the grinding up of deadwood. Are lawn services offering specials or something? Or are the trees, like so many of us, ready for a rest?

What Remains

Since mid-June I've been in fighting mode.  The day lilies were budding and the deer were biting — and I was determined to win the battle this time. Armed with both liquid and granular deer repellent, I spent time each evening treating the flowers, dousing them with so much foul-smelling stuff that I dared any young buck to come near them.

But the young bucks did — and the young does, too. Apparently they were hungrier or more numerous than usual, because, despite all my efforts, the deer have decimated my day lily crop. The brilliant yellow and orange accents to the pink coneflowers ... are not there. It's a sparser and more monochromatic garden than I had anticipated this spring.

It's easy for me to be discouraged by such matters, as seemingly trivial as they are. But I realized yesterday that I was looking at it all wrong. I was gazing at the garden and seeing what was not there rather than what is.

So I shifted focus. I skimmed over the stripped stalks, the nubs left by the marauding hordes. Instead, I appreciated the coneflowers, the pink ones and the white ones. I spotted the black-eyed Susans that are just beginning to pop. I took a couple of deep breaths and almost — almost — saw the beauty ... in what remains.

(The garden a few years ago, when the day lilies still had a fighting chance.) 

Out of State

Over the weekend, I took a brief trip to the state of Maryland. It was only a quick visit, I was home in less than five hours. Yet so homebound have I become that it felt like I was taking off for a cross-country expedition.

While the go-go-ness of my life up till March has meant no time to process the people and places I was visiting, recent stay-at-home mandates haven't given me much time to digest things, either. Because there's never a shortage of work and chores, and low-level anxiety has a way of gumming up the gray matter.

Still, even a short sojourn helped. There was a new path, familiar beneath the feet — but it had been more than a year since I strolled it. There was fresh air from the river and bay, and, most of all, there were the dear faces of people I love but hadn't seen since wintertime. 

It was a short trip but a good trip, proof that even a little break makes a difference. On the way home I sang in the car.  

A Day's Work

Today I've spent roughly five hours (and counting) on a call with Apple Support. I have installed and uninstalled, saved and unsaved. I've held my phone up to the screen of my computer at the same time that I typed on that computer's keyboard. 

To do this has required multiple plugs and passwords, a backup disc, three computers and a technician who is as calm as she is smart. "Patience is my middle name," she said during our third (fourth?) hour together. I've gotten so used to her voice in my ear that I'm wondering if I can write a blog post without her. 

This is by no means finished. I imagine we will go on long past 5 p.m. But at the end of this I hope to be able to use my new work computer — and, given how long I've spent holding my smart phone up to my computer, be sporting a newly toned set of biceps. 

It's all in a day's work for this most un-tech-savvy of writers ...

(Using a calm picture to soothe frayed nerves ...)

The Fifth of July

It was the first time in a long time that I didn't see a live fireworks display. But because I didn't — or for a thousand other reasons, some of them valid — last night's show was especially touching to me.

Maybe it was because of the anger in the air, justified to some extent but frightening, too, because it seems to be blinding us to all that is good about our country. Or maybe it was because I always appreciate a fine soundtrack, and televised viewing allows for that. (What could be better than fireworks plus "Stars and Stripes Forever"?)

Mostly I think it was because there is still so much good in our country, and we are having such a tough time of it, are hurting in so many ways. I worry that we have lost sight of what makes us great, of "e pluribus unum." But last night, sitting in front of the TV with a bowl of popcorn in my arms (dinner!) I found cause for optimism. I hope it lasts.

Funny Fourth

Funny that I won't be seeing live fireworks this year ...

Or going to any cook-outs ...

Or singing any patriotic songs.

Funny that it doesn't really feel like the Fourth.

Or maybe not so funny after all ...

Lazy, Hazy, Crazy

"Bring back those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer," went the old Nat King Cole song, which I just learned from Wikipedia was originally a German tune.  It's one of those ditties that once stuck in your brain remains there, so I will not link to it.

The song has been in my mind these last few days as we enter full-on summer, with temperatures in the 90s and rising humidity. It is, without a doubt, my favorite time of year. And now that I'm working at home I'm able to be out in it most of the day.

Besides avoiding a long and often-arduous commute, being outside this summer is my favorite part of the new arrangement. To be a part of the scene — part of the whole buzzing, bird-chirping, lawnmower'ing, afternoon-thunderstorm'ing package — is as close to mindfulness as I can get.

Books, Books and Books

From a book I'm reading that I may have read once before, I caught an aha moment last night. It's a passage from Jewelweed by David Rhodes, and it involves a conversation between a man in prison and the minister who comes to visit him.

"Is there anything you'd like me to bring next time?" she asks.

Yes, says the man in prison, whose name is Blake. "Three things ... books, books and books."

When the minister asks what kind of books, Blake says he will read most anything, but what he really wants are ... "thick books with fine print, difficult sentences, long words, and enormous ideas, books written in a feverish hand by writers who hate the world yet can't keep from loving it, whose feelings so demand to be understood that if they didn't write them down they would go blind."

Sounds good to me.

The Miniaturist

Today, Virginia enters "Phase 3," which means that pools open, gyms can operate at 75-percent capacity and gatherings of 250 may be held.  But for many of us, I suspect, life will continue on its oh-so-different track.

Book group tonight will still be virtual. Going for groceries will remain my only weekly outside-the-house errand. Working-from-home has become routine, as have my take-a-quick-break strolls around the backyard.

It was on one of those yesterday that it dawned on me that this new life is making me a miniaturist. Not someone who builds tiny dollhouses or paints illuminated manuscripts, as tempting as those occupations might be, but "miniaturist" in the sense of paying attention to small things.

I notice the gall on the poplar and the chicory that has sprung up by the fence. Those parts of the yard that I seldom used to enter have become my secondary landscape, the place I go to make the world go away. And there is beauty in the small and quiet, the "violet by the mossy stone, half hidden from the eye."