As we grind our way through winter (I’m trying to embrace it, but grey days and sleet make it hard), I’m taking delight in a newish enjoyment: watching, and identifying, the birds in my neighborhood.
I’ve long loved the sight of a cheery robin redbreast, and the squawks of a bluejay send me to the window to search out that flash of bright cobalt against the bare branches. I adore the cheeky house sparrows who perch on my windowsill, and I like watching the mourning doves who sometimes take up residence there. But lately, I’ve been trying to pay attention to other breeds as well.
I found an Audubon guide at a used bookstore last summer, and I’ve been using it to try and identify a few of the birds I see on my windowsill or on my morning runs: black-capped chickadees, bright goldfinches, the terns who swim in the harbor. The gulls and hawks are easy to spot, but so many of the smaller gray and brown birds (known, apparently, to birders as “LBJs” or “little brown jobs”) require a bit more attention. I’m not always sure I’ve gotten it right, but it’s fun to try and puzzle out the name of a new species.
The other week, on a walk with my friend Sharon, I stopped in Piers Park to watch a flock of birds on the water. We spent a few minutes debating: they were ducks, clearly, but what kind? We squinted in the fading light, studying the white rings on their necks and the little spikes on the backs of their heads. Sharon pulled out her phone, consulted a birding app, and we decided: they were probably red-breasted mergansers.
I get a little thrill from identifying a bird, as Mary Oliver describes in her poem “Bird in the Pepper Tree.” But I get a different, deeper satisfaction from simply watching: noticing, observing, trying to see these birds as separate from my categorization of them. I loved watching the flock of birds bobbing on the water, knowing some of them were mergansers but some might be other species. The snapshot, in my memory, of leaning against the railing with Sharon, watching their black bodies against the waves blue with reflected light, was better than knowing their names.
As Oliver notes, “a name is not a leash” – though it can be, or enhance, a true joy.
What can I say that I have not said before? So I’ll say it again. The leaf has a song in it. Stone is the face of patience. Inside the river there is an unfinishable story and you are somewhere in it and it will never end until all ends.
Take your busy heart to the art museum and the chamber of commerce but take it also to the forest. The song you heard singing in the leaf when you were a child is singing still. I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four, and the leaf is singing still.
I found Oliver’s collection Swan at the Booksmith this fall, and this first poem stopped me in my tracks, especially the lines about where to take “your busy heart.” As we enter a new year, I am hoping to take my heart to all those places: engaging with the world, noticing and absorbing beauty, and taking time to be in nature and be still.
Happy New Year, friends. However you celebrated, I hope your holidays were lovely.
I spent some time in Texas with family and longtime friends, then came back here for a few days to settle back in and hang with my guy. I’m grateful for the time away and also thankful to have had some time here, in my little book-lined flat near the harbor, which is currently filled with winter sunshine.
I often need a writing project to kick-start a new year or season, and – inspired by Ross Gay’s wonderful The Book of Delights – I’ve decided to share a different delight on the blog each Monday in 2023. I want to celebrate the good, especially after the last few difficult years, and this feels both fun and doable. Each week I’ll share a brief meditation on an everyday – sometimes overlooked, but truly wonderful – delight.
In the spirit of the holidays, here’s the first delight: giving, and receiving, gifts that make you feel seen.
I’ve written before about my gift-giving anxiety, the way I can get tied up in knots over what to get my people to properly express my love. Sometimes, I’ve put too much weight on the buying of said gifts: expecting them to somehow make up for the time I can’t spend with people, or the conversations we don’t have. But increasingly, when I can (mostly) let go of all that pressure, I truly enjoy searching for gifts that my people will love.
This year, I bought my guy a few things he adored: a new graphic novel, a bag of his favorite tea, a beautiful ramen bowl he’d admired, a bandana from Janine Kwoh’s wonderful shop. I found fun novels for a few girlfriends that I knew would suit their tastes, and bought my nephew the sequel to an adventure book he loves. And each time, I loved watching their faces light up (or receiving the joyous text) that let me know: I’d gotten them something that would bring them delight, something suited to their particular ways of experiencing joy.
I was also on the receiving end of this delight: my sister bought me a sweatshirt that says, “Drink tea, read books, be happy” (basically my life motto). A friend got me a gift card to the charming new bookstore in Abilene, so I could browse and pick out just what I wanted. Other friends sent citrus shower steamers and cute spatulas and a darling red hat (my favorite color). My guy bought me a stack of thoughtfully chosen books, and a delicate pair of gingko-leaf earrings I’d wanted. And my parents got me a couple of gift cards that will help me plan my next trip – plus a chic plaid scarf, a Christmas ornament from a favorite local shop, and a big bar of creamy Cadbury chocolate.
I often quote Clare from I’ll Be Your Blue Sky: “I am one of those people who believe at least half of love is paying attention.” Giving, and receiving, gifts like this lets me know that my people and I are paying attention to each other. They see me, with my quirks and preferences and particular tastes, and I see them, too, and celebrate their unique souls. Tangible gifts aren’t the only way to pay attention, of course, but they can certainly be a delightful one.
What’s delighting you so far in this new year? I’d love to hear.
September is flying by so far – amid work and daily adventures, here’s what I have been reading:
The Lost Summers of Newport, Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen White I enjoy Team W’s richly detailed historical novels (and I’ve devoured nearly all of Williams’ books). This one follows the intertwined stories of three women connected to the same Newport, R.I., mansion during different eras: architectural preservationist Andie, music teacher Ellen, and Italian-American socialite Lucia. Rife with family secrets and dripping with diamonds – great escapist reading.
TheHouse of Eve, Sadeqa Johnson Ruby Pearsall is on track to be her family’s first college student – but a forbidden love may derail her plans to escape her rough neighborhood. Meanwhile, Eleanor Quarles, a brilliant young woman from small-town Ohio, struggles to find her place at Howard University and with her rich boyfriend’s family. Their lives collide in an unexpected way. A powerful, sometimes wrenching novel about the struggles of Black women in the mid-1950s. So much here around shame and womanhood and making choices. To review for Shelf Awareness (out March 2023).
Love, Lies & Spies, Cindy Anstey Miss Juliana Telford is more interested in publishing her research on ladybugs than diving into the London Season. Mr. Spencer Northam is far more preoccupied with espionage than with matrimony. But all this might change when they encounter one another by chance. A witty, hilarious, romantic tribute to Jane Austen and a really fun love story. Recommended by Anne.
Blood from a Stone: A Memoir of How Wine Brought Me Back from the Dead, Adam McHugh After years as a hospice chaplain, McHugh found himself burned out, and needing not just an escape but a whole life change. His love of wine led him – several times – to California’s Santa Ynez Valley, where he began a career working in wine. An honest, sometimes snarky, well-researched, thoughtful memoir about wine and transformation. To review for Shelf Awareness (out Oct. 11).
Viviana Valentine Gets Her Man, Emily J. Edwards Our titular heroine loves her job as secretary/girl Friday to NYC private eye Tommy Fortuna. But when she finds an unconscious man in the office and Tommy disappears – right after taking on a case for a wealthy client – Viv must marshal all her wits to solve the case and stay alive. A fun romp with an engaging heroine, though the dialogue read almost like a send-up of 1950s phrases. To review for Shelf Awareness (out Nov. 8).
Bicycling with Butterflies: My 10,201-Mile Journey Following the Monarch Migration, Sara Dykman I picked up this memoir last fall at the Harvard Book Store and have been reading it sloooowly. Dykman takes a months-long solo journey starting and ending in Mexico at the monarchs’ overwintering grounds, following their trail and giving presentations about the importance of these beautiful creatures. She’s a lovely writer, though the trip logistics dragged sometimes (as I’m sure they did in real life!). Fun bonus: she went through my dad’s tiny hometown in southwestern MO.
What Comes from Spirit, Richard Wagamese I picked up this collection at the wonderful Savoy Bookshop in Westerly, R.I., in June. Wagamese was an Indigenous Canadian writer who wrote extensively about his journey away from and back to his Native identity, as well as noticing the natural world, building community and paying attention. Short, lovely meditations – exactly my kind of thing for slow morning reading.
The Star That Always Stays, Anna Rose Johnson When Norvia’s parents divorce, she and her siblings move from rural Beaver Island to a small Michigan city with their mother. Norvia must navigate a new school, a tricky blended family and her own shyness and anxiety, while striving to be a heroine. A sweet middle-grade story (though the middle dragged a bit); I loved Norvia’s family, especially her spunky younger sister, Dicta. Reminded me of Emily of Deep Valley.
Saving Main Street: Small Business in the Time of COVID-19, Gary Rivlin Americans idolize small business – though we give a lot of our money to the colossal chains. It’s common knowledge now that small shops were hit hard by COVID-19. Veteran reporter Rivlin follows several business owners, including a restaurateur, a pharmacist, a Latina hairstylist and three Black brothers making chocolate, through the first 18 months or so of the pandemic. Full of fascinating anecdotes and a thorough explanation of the government’s confusing (but ultimately sort-of-effective) struggle to help small businesses. To review for Shelf Awareness (out Oct. 18).
Running has brought me many unexpected joys: as previously stated, I never expected to try it at all, let alone love it this much. But even after I discovered the meditative, satisfying qualities of running, I mostly expected that to be part of my daily life. I was surprised to discover that running on vacation is its own particular pleasure.
I started my vacation running by going back home: I packed my gear for Christmas vacation, the year I became a runner. My in-laws had recently moved to a new town in East Texas, and I came to enjoy running around a local park and the surrounding neighborhood. (I did hop on the hotel treadmill one rainy day when I got desperate, but I’d much rather run outside.) And I love morning runs around my parents’ neighborhood: they live in a quiet subdivision with wide streets, and I have taken myself out there in all seasons, enjoying the big Texas skies, the sunshine, and (in December) the neighbors’ creative Christmas decorations. (Bonus: it’s often a dose of much-needed solitude during crowded family holidays.)
I’ve taken my sneakers on a few other trips, so far: I loved running the High Line in Manhattan, and I did a big loop around Prospect Park in Brooklyn last summer. My favorite place to run, other than Boston, might be Coronado Island in San Diego: I’ve visited friends there several times, and relished morning runs around the island, past palm trees and the golf course and all manner of blooming flowers.
Running is a way for me to pay attention as I move through the world, so it adds a new dimension to any place I’m visiting. I love running past tall apartment buildings and corner delis, through winding neighborhoods with wide curving roads, past whatever local features, natural or human-made, dot the landscape. I love how I notice different details when I’m on foot rather than whooshing by in a car or a bus. And the particular qualities of each place – the feel of the air, the strength of the sun, the humidity, the altitude, the smells and sounds – all combine to form indelible memories that add to my experience of each trip.
I’m not doing much traveling at the moment, of course, but am looking forward to lacing up my sneakers in new places when it’s safe to go on long-distance adventures again.
If you run (or otherwise exercise), do you do it on vacation?
This is the summer, as I said recently, of antiracist reading (along with sunflowers and bike rides and strawberries). On a recent Monday afternoon, a friend and I decided to explore with both our feet and our brains: we met up in Beacon Hill to walk the Boston Black Heritage Trail.
I’ve lived in Boston for a decade now, and I used to wander Beacon Hill frequently when I worked at Emerson College. But I didn’t know this trail existed until recently, and the more sites we found and the more snippets I read aloud from the National Park Service website, I wondered: why not?
Like many American schoolchildren, I learned certain parts of Boston history: Paul Revere’s famous ride, the Boston Tea Party. I walked most of the Freedom Trail as a newcomer to Boston, ten years ago. I knew Boston was a center for the abolitionist movement (though it is also persistently racist). But I didn’t know about so many of the folks we learned about on the Black Heritage Trail: their names or their occupations or their contributions to the ongoing fight for Black freedom.
The trail comprises about a dozen sites, starting at the memorial to the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, a volunteer infantry regiment made up of Black soldiers (made famous in the movie Glory). The memorial itself is closed for restoration right now, but there’s a great temporary exhibition wrapped around the fencing, so you can still learn about the soldiers of the 54th.
Most of the trail’s other sites are former homes of Black people who fought for the abolition of slavery, helped house people escaping enslavement, helped integrate schools and churches in Boston, and played other important roles in Black community life. There are two former schools along the trail: the Abiel Smith School, the first Black public school in Boston, and the Phillips School, which became one of Boston’s first integrated schools.
The trail ends at the Smith Court Residences and the African Meeting House (now the Museum of African American History), which seem to have been the epicenter of Black life in Boston in the late 19th century. But even as we walked, we saw plaques on other buildings noting people who had lived and worked for abolition and Black rights in the neighborhood.
I might never have seen these plaques, or any of these houses, if I hadn’t been looking for them – and I kept wondering: why not? Why aren’t we taught these stories, alongside those of Paul Revere and Samuel Adams and John Hancock? Why had I never heard of Lewis and Harriet Hayden or George Middleton or Elizabeth Smith? I want to find out more about them now – but their stories should not be tucked down a side street. They should be highlighted, celebrated.
So much of the work of adulthood, for me, is paying attention: noticing the details of each day, really listening to my loved ones when we’re talking, not simply scrolling or sleepwalking through this life. The work of anti-racism also involves paying attention: seeking out the stories we don’t know, the ones that have been ignored or erased or shunted aside. This walk, this trail, is a small beginning. I’m glad we went, and I’m committed to finding out more.
We haven’t had a lot of snow (yet) this winter (though I hesitate to discount March, having lived in Boston this long). It’ll be a while yet before everything is green, but I’ve been noticing the colors of early spring on my walks lately. In addition to the browns of mud and tree trunks, and the grey of misty skies, here are a few…
The witch hazel (hamamelis) is out in the Public Garden, and I snapped a few shots of its neon yellow blooms last week.
Along Commonwealth Avenue, the hellebores (also known as Lenten roses) are out. They come in white, pale pink, deep purple and even green, but I’d never seen this mauve shade before.
I’m used to seeing snowdrops poking through the snow – but these white beauties make a lovely contrast to the brown leaf mold. They always make me think of The Secret Garden.
And finally, I spotted the first crocuses on Comm Ave the other day, during a lunchtime run. I love their cheerful little faces and splash of purple. I’ve seen more sprouting in both my work and home neighborhoods.
What are the colors of early spring where you are?
My favorite colors are the colors of the sea, blue and gray and green, depending on the weather. My brother William is a fisherman, and he tells me that when he is in the middle of a fog-bound sea the water is a color for which there is no name.
—Sarah, Plain and Tall, Patricia MacLachlan
When I was a child, I read this book – slim and spare, with a pale pink cover – over and over again. I loved the story of Sarah, who comes from Maine to the wide plains of the Midwest, to be a new wife for Jacob and a stepmother for Anna and Caleb. She brings her cat, Seal, and they all learn to live with one another. The children, who have never seen the sea, listen enthralled to Sarah’s stories about Maine.
My beloved Neponset river trail, here in Dorchester, winds along marshes and brush and through several public parks, with views of water and trees (and also bridges and roads). Nearly every time I’m out there, especially when it’s overcast, I think of Sarah’s words, the rhythm of them: blue and gray and green.
The water is sometimes blue, of course, though it’s often gray (the same goes for the sky). The grass and trees are greening up, right now, and the broken slabs of granite along the shoreline are always gradations of gray. Sometimes the sky glows pink or orange, streaked with sunset fire or smudged with purple. Sometimes, the light on the water glitters gold.
In the winter, the trail is often edged – occasionally submerged – with fresh white snow, turning the color scheme into blue and white and brown. But in all other seasons, it is blue and gray and green. The combinations shift, depending on the weather. I have run it in all seasons, in bright morning sunlight and pitch winter dark and every time of day in between, and I love noticing the changes, subtle brushstrokes shifting with the light and the time of year.
My favorite color, as most people know, has long been red – and I’ve not lost my love for a bright flash of scarlet or deep crimson. But my favorite landscape, these days, is blue and gray and green.
I’m back home after two weeks dog- and house-sitting in East Boston, watching spring emerge in a new neighborhood as Phoenix the pup and I walked the streets and ran the Harborwalk together. Not surprisingly, one of the things I missed most about Dorchester was my river trail. I came home after work midweek, suitcase in tow, and immediately laced up my running shoes and headed out there. It, too, is growing greener (and bluer).
I’ve been for a few runs since coming home, and on Easter Sunday, I finally ran all the way out to Port Norfolk and the second pier where that part of the trail ends. I was tired, but the sun had broken through after days of thick clouds, and I snapped a few photos of the blue water and a few wild patches of daffodils.
I remembered seeing a particular forsythia bush last spring, between the pier and the house that faces it, and so I jogged over to see if it was in bloom. (They’re late again this year – so late that they’re blooming alongside the magnolias and early tulips.)
As you can see above, that bush is in full glorious flower. There was no rainbow that day, but it felt like finding a pot of gold. And I remembered: it’s always worth looking (especially if you know where to look).
If it’s spring where you live, I hope it’s showing up in delightful and unexpected ways.
The calendar has flipped, officially, to spring. The piles of snow (mostly) melted while I was on vacation in San Diego, though the wind’s still got a bite, most days. But this week, I was still searching for a reliable sign of spring: the snowdrops I watch for every year.
I’ve been seeing tiny green spears – “crocuses an’ snowdrops and daffydowndillys,” as Ben Weatherstaff has it – poking out of the ground for weeks. But I was afraid they’d get frostbitten, and they did get covered up, by February’s bitter winds and an early March snowstorm. I hadn’t seen the shy white bells of snowdrops yet, though I had seen – to my relief and delight – the electric yellow and vivid red of witch hazel.
When I worked at the Ed School at Harvard, I would walk to Darwin’s down a straight side street, past a yellow house where an elderly woman could often be found reclining, apparently sound asleep, in a lounge chair in her front flowerbed. That same bed was a tangle of spring delights: snowdrops and scilla, hellebores and lilac, tiny white lilies of the valley. I made a point to stop by often, every spring, even when my daily orbit changed slightly, even when I hadn’t seen the woman for months.
That house has been under construction for a while now: workmen in boots and overalls have been gutting and sawing, replacing windows and repainting. The front flowerbed is a sandy mess, and I was afraid they’d dug up all the bulbs that have come back, reliably, every spring for so long. Or that they’d simply get buried under construction refuse and wait until next year to emerge.
Yesterday, I slipped out of the house early, heading to Darwin’s for the first time in a while. I turned down that side street on my way from the T station. And there they were, poking up out of the gravel and rocks: snowdrops. And crocuses. And green spears that aren’t quite identifiable yet, but will be.
I suppose I should have known. As Anne Shirley says, “That is one good thing about this world…there are always sure to be more springs.” And more snowdrops. But it’s a relief and a joy to see them, all the same.
RT @LyricStageCo: Tonight is our last performance of The Great Leap! Their breathtaking and heartfelt performances inspired and moved our a… 2 days ago
cakes, tea and dreams 