Laundry Time

On these warm days I make the deck my home. The morning is for brain work, the afternoon for weeding, watering and, as much as I like to put it off, sometimes for laundry. 

Yesterday I sat outside while a hot wind stirred up the scent of crisp, drying dresses and t-shirts — and also provided a little screen from the late-day sun. 

Is there a scent more redolent and comforting than that of laundry detergent? I remember my friend Elaine, who lived a few doors down from us on St. Ann Drive. (No, my mother did not name me after our street; they moved there when I was 3 and she had long since named me for her mother, Ann Veronica Donnelly.)

Elaine's mother, Mrs. Scully, had only an ancient wringer washer (the only one I've seen in use before or since) and therefore devoted a day to the scrubbing, rinsing, wringing and drying of clothes. I remember her in loose house dresses with stockings rolled down around her ankles. 

The Scully house was one of the few in the neighborhood to boast a basement, and you could enter it from the garage. It was always cool and smelled of Tide. Yesterday, I closed my eyes and imagined I was there. 

ISO Open Days

For someone recently retired I haven't exactly been twiddling my thumbs. I didn't intend to be idle but I did expect to experience brief periods of thumb-twiddling, cloud-gazing or even some good old-fashioned afternoon ennui.

Nothing of the sort has happened. 

In part, this is because — in what seemed smart planning at the start but I now realize was the exact opposite — I spread out long-overdue appointments and errands so that no day was too full. As a result, there have been almost no days that are open enough for cloud-gazing or thumb-twiddling.

Even a planned business phone call can bisect a day, can puncture its purposelessness. This from a person who used to pride herself on how many to-dos she could pack into 24 hours. 

Lo, how the mighty have fallen.

(I borrowed this meme from a Jeff Speck newsletter.)

 

A Walking Trifecta

I'm filing this under the category of "books and book reviews I wish I'd written" — a single article in yesterday's print copy of the Washington Post that covered three books on walking — a trifecta of pleasure that has added three tomes to my must-read list.

In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration, by neuroscientist Shane O'Mara, describes the many benefits of walking, most of which I know but all of which I love hearing about again: how it helps protect heart and lungs and even builds new cells in the hippocampus.  

In First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human, paleontologist Jeremy DeSilva explains the importance of bipedalism to human exploration, how it made possible the longer legs and shoes that have taken us to colder climes and, ultimately, even the moon.

Finally, the reviewer, Sibbie O'Sullivan, discusses Healing Trees: A Pocket Guide to Forest Bathing, which explores the Japanese concept of shinrin-yoku, immersing oneself in nature:

"Every page of 'Healing Trees' reminds us how separated from the world, from nature, from the trees, we've become," writes O'Sullivan, who injects herself beautifully into the essay by describing her own walking, falling and resultant knee surgery. "Too often we take walking for granted," she writes, "but we shouldn't." 

Bare Bathroom

One hazard of having written almost 3,500 posts is that occasionally (only occasionally!), I repeat myself. So I'm glad I looked back in the archives for January 2020, because, sure enough, I had already written a post called "Bye Bye, Bathroom."

As a result, this post does not share that title. But it does share that sentiment. Because, encouraged by the success of bathroom remodel number one, we are embarking on bathroom remodel number two. 

This is a trickier proposition because it includes a shower (which, unlike a tub, must be built) and because it involves bumping out an interior wall and installing a pocket door — all to gain enough precious inches to put both the toilet and the 48-inch vanity on one wall. 

Yesterday was for demolition: In the space of a few hours out went the fiberglass shower, the down-on-its-heels builder-grade vanity, and, most notably, the mirror. Without it, the bathroom looks the size it is, roughly that of a broom closet. 

But it was a room like any other in this much loved, much-lived-in house. And when I saw it last night all stripped down to its barest essentials, I have to admit ... I felt a pang.

Drive to Walk

Now that I have a little more time on my hands (emphasis on "a little" ... but I'll talk about that in another post), I often drive to walk. That's drive to walk, not to work.

Before, I had meetings and deadlines that meant I would slip out of the house with 30 or 40 minutes only. No time for the 10-minute drive to my favorite Reston trail — only enough to get me up and down the main drag of my neighborhood.

Which is not a bad stroll. In fact, it's still my go-to favorite, with houses and people I know and a path so familiar I could probably trudge it in my sleep.

But now I can mix it up a little, even though that means indulging in the great suburban irony — driving ... to walk. 

(Bridge over Glade Creek on one of my favorite drive-to trails.)

Outside-After-Dinner

The sound of children laughing two doors down, birds rustling and roosting in the azaleas, the clatter of plates being cleared. It's 7:30 p.m. and as bright as day. It's outside-after-dinner. 

To a child, this is a place of its own, magical and wild, long shadows looming where there were none at noon. It's a place where rules are bent, bedtimes extended. 

When I was a kid I'd be excused early with cookies to go, then run to meet playmates from next door and across the street. We played SPUD and Red Rover till the streetlights came on.

For my own kids, there were long evenings catching fireflies or climbing hay bales to ride the zip line from the big oak on the Riley's side of the yard (which is still standing) to the big oak on the Voegler's side (which is not).

Now we sit on the deck slapping at mosquitoes, putting off going inside. There are grownup tasks awaiting us — bills to pay, emails to send.  But it's hard to abandon the soft light and the feeling we're getting away with something. It's hard to leave outside-after-dinner. 

Bikers and Bierstadt

A late walk yesterday after the rain stopped. Trees still dripping, air cleansed, sun blazing bright just hours before setting.

I wasn't the only one out and about. Neighbors were picking up their mail, stretching their legs, walking their dogs.

A bevy of bikers zoomed past, the usual Tuesday evening crowd. Except that nothing is usual anymore. I didn't see them for a year, so spotting them again, watching them fly past (I could barely wrestle my phone from my back pocket in time to catch them) was the cherry on the sundae that was yesterday's stroll.

As I walked back to the house, the trees were lit up like a Bierstadt painting. 

Basement-Bound?

On a rainy morning, my thoughts naturally turn to cleaning and tidying. Not that I'm actually doing any of that today, but I am thinking about how comforting it would be to purge a file cabinet drawer, to empty a closet, to fill a bag with old clothes stored in the basement and drive them to Goodwill.

I missed the Marie Kondo craze with its sparking of joy. Now I must go it alone, with only my own inclinations to guide me. And my own inclinations are to keep that letter, that sweater, and of course, that book.

But on rainy days, there's at least some hope of change, some inward focus that says ... get thee to the basement to sort and toss.

Growing Family

At my house, the longest day passed in a blur of baby giggles, burgers and corn on the cob. Not the most elegant Father's Day repast, but one suited to young families.

These days are golden, and when the last toy is collected and stuffed into the diaper bag, and the cars disappear down the street, I'm left marveling, as I always do, at how our family has grown.

It will always be miraculous to me, which is, I suppose, how it should be.

(The elephant ear family is growing, too.) 

Bye Bye, Brood X!

There's no way of knowing who he or she will be, no way of pinpointing the last cicada in Virginia. Will it be a female dragging herself to a Kwanzan cherry tree to lay her eggs, perform her final duty. She walks so slowly up the trunk, settles herself with infinite tenderness. 

Or will it be a male, singing forlornly to the ether, no ladies left with whom to mate but warbling his most beguiling tune anyway. Beguiling to other cicadas, that is, shrill and sad to us.

The rest of their brood has been swept off of decks and stairways. Cicada carcasses have piled up at the base of crepe myrtles or road berms, marking where the insects met with predators — birds, dogs, automobiles. The tiny corpses litter the yards and driveways. 

Except for a few stowaways, Brood X is becoming a memory, a moment, a thing of the past.

And yet ... even now the young are burrowing into the dark soil, tunneling down to their long sleep. In their species memory is a golden era, filled with flitting and humming and loving. They know, if they bide their time, it will come again. 

Voice as Vehicle

I've just finished Gail Caldwell's Bright Precious Thing, her third or fourth memoir but only the second one I've read. I found it while browsing at the library last week and picked it up immediately, based on how much I liked Let's Take the Long Way Home, which is about Caldwell's friendship with the late Caroline Knapp.

Bright Precious Thing is a slender book, and I didn't bond with it at first. But 20 pages in I was hooked — not so much by what Caldwell was saying — the women's movement and its effect on her life — but how she said it.

This has me thinking about voice, writerly voice, the tone and style a writer uses to communicate with her readers, and how personal it is. 

Voice is the vehicle, and when it's humming along, I don't much care where the reader is taking me. As long as we're together, I'm content.

(The vehicle above is a Seattle-bound Amtrak train, this coach almost empty.)

Empty Tables

There's a mournful tune from the musical Les Miserables, "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables," that describes the way I'm feeling about our bird feeder today, closed at the request of numerous local authorities in response to reports of sick and dying birds in the area.

Birds flock to feeders and spread the disease as they eat. Removing the feeders removes at least one source of contagion.

But it also removes the pushing and the preening, the darting and the chirping. It takes away the front row seat we have on avian life and the chaotic, swooping joy of it.

A downy woodpecker just landed, hopped on the deck railing, then flew away. A few minutes later, a confused chickadee perched on the bird feeder pole, gave a forlorn chirp, then zoomed off to a nearby azalea bush.

I know it's for their own good,  but I miss the critters ... and I like to think they're missing us.

Once More to Metro

Yesterday I went to D.C. via Metro, a trip I used to make most mornings but which I had not made since March 12, 2020.  That's 15 months ... a fact that even now I can't quite absorb.

The parking garage was almost deserted at 2:30 p.m., likewise the platform and the train itself. I did quickly realize, however, that one of the other two souls on my car seemed to be psychotic, so at the first stop I moved to the next car.  That's my Metro! 

Otherwise, though, the old system was gussied up and spit-polished, with new announcement boards and shelters and someone cleaning the elevator in the middle of the afternoon. 

I rode three lines, the Orange, Red and Silver. I read the newspaper, as I used to do, and noticed the changing scenery out the window. 

It was almost like old times ... except there were almost no people riding with me. 

The Leveler

It's a flag-snapping, low-humidity day, the kind I was hoping to have all month long. Weeping cherry boughs are swaying in the breeze and the back door is open to the sounds of the day, which is strangely bereft of cicada song (more on that, or the lack of that, later). 

A walk took me through the neighborhood, up and down the main street and the cul-de-sacs, my new home route: longer, as befits my schedule, and slower, as befits my joints. 

Which gave me more time to ponder the grand equation, one seldom acknowledged but always there, somewhat akin to Newton's Third Law — "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" with a touch of Ecclesiastes — "to everything there is a season." 

In other words, there's a built-in leveler that sees to it that we are paid back for sweltering humidity with perfect days like these. 

Thoughts on Emergence

In a single afternoon last week, I masked up and was led to a hand-washing station before a doctor's appointment. Later, at a small boutique, I had my temperature checked and was told to use hand sanitizer before venturing in. 

At my last stop of the day,  a small shop that sells Catholic books and gifts, I was one of the few folks wearing a mask. "How do people expect us to breathe in one," grumbled the proprietress, sans mask, as she wrapped up my purchase.  

Such is life as we emerge from pandemic restrictions here in northern Virginia.

In my travels to the Northwest almost a month ago, we wore masks most everywhere, including on the sidewalk in some neighborhoods, attempting to fit in with the locals. Yesterday, at a brunch in Arlington, the restaurant was fully occupied with scarcely a mask in sight. 

It's a weird hodgepodge and infinitely preferable to what we had this time last year. So I'm not complaining, only observing that if there is one truth somewhere, one right way to do things, I'm not sure who knows it. 

(Disinfectant, anyone? At Pike Place Market in Seattle, May 15.)

Lifespan

Get ready to meet your great-great grandchildren, says David Sinclair in his mind-boggling new book Lifespan. Sinclair, a Harvard geneticist, makes a simple but earth-shattering claim: Aging is a disease, and soon science will be able to cure it. Sinclair is not just talking about extending life, but about prolonging health, as well.

It would be easy to laugh this off if Sinclair was a no-nothing diet and exercise guru, but he's a serious scientist whose theory on aging is as brilliant as it is well-informed. 

Epigenetic changes drive aging, Sinclair says, and they can be reversed by certain supplements and by stressing the body in such a way as to trigger the survival response — intermittent fasting, low-protein diets, intensive exercise and exposure to hot and cold temperatures. 

I had long heard that one of the few ways known to prolong life was to consume fewer calories. This book helps me understand why. And though I'm not exactly eating one-third less than I usually do, I am skipping an occasional meal — and would love to get my hands on some of those supplements. The cost, after all, is relatively low — and the payback, enormous. 

(A two-foot tall, 90-year-old spruce tree from the Japanese Garden in Portland.)
 

Love Bites?

Skin: For so much of the year it's just there, boon and barrier, boundary between world and self. 

In winter it may chap or dry, nothing lotions can't handle. But in summer, ah, in summer — well, I forget every year that I'm not the only one who likes to be outside all day and into that evening, that there are skeeters and spiders and no-see-ums that leave their marks.

In time (starting day before yesterday!), I'll spray on repellent if I venture beyond the deck. But up until then I've weeded and bounced and walked with springtime abandon, forgetting that the insects are out there too, biting and stinging their way into summer. As a result, I've been making liberal use of the hydrocortisone cream. 

On the other hand ...  it's finally warm. My sweaters are packed away with cedar balls.  I don't exactly love the bites — but they're worth it.  

(Photo of cicadas, which do not bite but which may confuse your arm or leg for a tree trunk.)

From the Top

It's been two weeks since we returned from our Northwest jaunt, and I often catch myself looking through photographs when I have a spare minute. Which means that I've noticed trends.

For instance, I was often pointing my phone camera at flowers: roses, rhododendrons, formal gardens, cottage gardens. You would think I have no blossoms whatsoever at home, which is not the case. 

But also, whenever possible, I snapped photos from ridges and hilltops. Luckily, both Portland and Seattle cooperated, providing expansive views where I least expected them, like the one above — which appeared out of nowhere on a walk — and others (like the one below) where I huffed and puffed to reach it.

Reliving these vistas now, I feel like chucking it all and buying a piece of land in the Shenandoah. It can be small, it can be humble — all it needs is a view. 

The Blocks

You can stack 'em, you can nest 'em — but before little hands touch them, you must wash 'em. 

So I did that, as much as you can when the blocks are made of cardboard. And before they were barely dry, someone found them!

These are blocks that Isaiah's mother remembers, that all our children played with — and now, our grandchildren. 

It's a little more incentive to tidy up the basement.

Lake Anne, Part 2

I'm so used to walking clockwise around Lake Anne that the other day when I strolled counter-clockwise with a friend I felt the world tilt a little. I also saw unexpected vistas. But this isn't about that walk. It's about three days later, when I went around the lake the right way (my right way, that is!).  Maybe I needed a stroll in the opposite direction to balance things out. 

Leaving the plaza behind, I passed quickly onto a wooded trail and then to a sunny embankment where morning light touched the tall grass.  

From there it felt good to slip into a shaded neighborhood, cool and inviting, lake water lapping at the shore. The townhouses here are some of Reston's oldest (old being a relative term in Reston). I admire the variety of plantings, the lavender and roses, the whimsical touches.

Everywhere I looked was sparkling lake water, supporting a flotilla of kayaks or sending plumes of spray into the June sky.

I knew I'd come full circle when I reached an arched footbridge over a tributary. I wish I'd snapped a picture of that, too. But alas, it seems the only part of the walk I did not photograph. Next time ...

Lake Anne: Part 1

While I am in no mood for a staycation, I did feel like a tourist in my own town when I walked around Reston's Lake Anne Saturday morning after buying strawberries at the farmer's market.

I parked near a pedestrian tunnel and entered the plaza near the fountain. A brunch crowd was gathering at Local VA, an outdoor spinning class was in full swing, and merchants in booths were selling homemade ceramics, finger puppets, filmy scarves, imported rugs and hand-painted notecards. 

The big show was in the parking lot farmer's market, where you could find tomatoes and greens and other seasonal delights. After I stowed the berries in the car, I walked around the lake, snapping photos as I strolled. More on the Lake Anne walk tomorrow ...

The Afternoon Amble

Twice this week I've found myself out for a jaunt not at 10 or 11 a.m. but at 3 or 4 p.m. It's warmer by then, so I drive to the Glade Trail where tall trees arch across the paved walk and shade pools in deep pockets along the way. 

There are fewer cars parked along the road at that hour, fewer walkers, too. And the ones I see tend to keep their heads down. I'm fine doing that, too, so strolling at that hour tends to feel more solitary.

The air is heavier and the pace is slower, with time to sniff the honeysuckle or take a detour on one of the side paths that wind into the woods. 

On Thursday, the air was so steamy that I felt as slow-moving as the stream, now in full summer dawdle. Forty-five minutes in, I noticed that heavy clouds had moved in and there was a pre-storm excitement that made me pick up my pace. 

I hadn't been home more than 15 minutes when the skies opened and rain sheeted the house and yard. 

An afternoon amble, just in time.

Seize the Day!

Their sound holds within it the rattle of a snake and the swish of a beaded curtain. It has more crescendoes than a brass band on a June afternoon.

The cicadas have brought us quickly to the soul of summer.  They have taken us to the brink of that shimmering, simmering time of year when everything seems more intensely alive.

Yesterday, on the Glade Trail, I moved into and out of various cicada hot zones, places where the critters congregate more plentifully, where they sing their songs with more abandon than others. 

Maybe it's because they prefer laying their eggs on these branches (in our backyard they seem to like the crepe myrtle more than the dogwood, for instance). Or maybe it's for some other reason buried deep in the cicada psyche.

All I know is that seeing them mate and fly, hearing them shout and sing, knowing what I do of their lifespan and life story, leaves me with one urgent message: Carpe diem, folks, seize the day. 

The 70s

This post is not about bell bottoms and polyester, the Bee Gees and disco.  It's not about the decade of the '70s but the temperature of the 70s, a most delightful one to walk in, talk in, be in. 

This spring we've had a lot of 50s and 60s, and, recently, some 80s and 90s. I was worried we might skip the 70s altogether ... until this week. 

But ah, here it is, the temperature of nothingness, of skin meeting air, of long sleeves or short, of no heat or air conditioning.  The temperature of balmy breezes and wildflowers, of one layer not three. 

It's the 70s. Bring it on! 

Lessons for a Lifetime

He stood behind the lectern on one leg, resting the other, knee crooked, on his desk. I'm still not sure how he achieved this position without falling over, but somehow he did. His sleeves were rolled up, and his voice was husky. 

Toiling in the vineyards of academia can be a lot of work. But Dr. James Ferguson did that work, and because he did, legions of Hanover College students fell in love with The Magic Mountain and The Brothers Karamazov, with Faulkner and Bellow and Eliot. 

Dr. Ferguson, who died May 12, was the kind of teacher you get once in a lifetime — if you're lucky. Though I studied with professors who published more, whose names were more recognized in literary circles, Dr. Ferguson was the real thing: a man who loved the great books and thrived on helping others love them, too. 

The details of his life that I learned from his obituary — that he came from a family of Dust Bowl migrants who moved from Missouri to California and slept for a while in their car, that he served in Korea and got his Ph.D.  with the help of the GI Bill, that he took care of his wife, who had a chronic illness, and his mother, who lived to 102 — tell me that his didn't just teach the great books, he lived the great life. 

But these facts don't surprise me.  His respect for the written word seemed to flow from his whole being. What I took from him was to love literature not for where it could take me but for what I took from it—  lessons for a lifetime. 

("The Point" at Hanover College, where Dr. Ferguson taught from 1963 to 1992.)

Discipline

What a solid word it is, the ascender and descender anchoring it to the line, the three i's a constant, the other consonants rounding it out. Though it's difficult to see the word without the lens of meaning, even its structure seems no-nonsense.

Discipline for so long my way of life, a particular discipline made for the paid workforce. And now, the freedom, intoxicating and terrifying, an end to the regimentation I chafed against for years.

And yet, some discipline still. In some ways even more, but of a different type, one that I devise and (I hope) enforce. 

Discipline so different it seems to require a new word. Not control, structure or regulation. None of those will do. Some word I've yet to come up with. 

I'll let you know when I do. 

(A deer spotted up close on yesterday's walk, which has nothing much to do with discipline but was a photo I had handy.)