The small hours

It's 3:25 AM on Tuesday morning, and I'm quite wide awake. I'm almost always awake at 3. I usually read when I wake up in the middle of the night, or I scroll mindlessly, and then feel bad about myself.  Yesterday, however, it occurred to me that I could try to write my way through the nightly periods of unwanted wakefulness. And so here I am. Welcome to the insomnia chronicles, volume 1. 

*****

That was last night, or early this morning. It's 5:30 PM now, closer to my usual writing time. I worked at home today as I always do on Tuesdays. I was not productive. Distracted, scatterbrained, and muddy in my head, I floundered through the day, flopping like a fish from one task to the next, from one idea to another. I need a deadline. Deadlines make me panic, and nothing puts things in focus like a good solid panic attack. 

Did you come here for time management advice? Probably not a good idea. 

*****

It's Wednesday now, 2:33 AM. I don't have anything to say at 2 in the morning, so I think I'll read rather than write. Good night. Or good morning.

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The small hours can be bleak, you know what I mean?  I've had some of my best panic attacks at 3 AM. But of course I have mental health breakdowns during the day, too. Really, there's no bad time for an existential crisis.

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And don't come around here looking for mental health advice, either. Word to the wise. 

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But the pre-dawn hours aren't always bad. Sometimes I just get up out of the bed and get a head start on the day and then get back under the covers an hour before I have to get up.  Even if I can't sleep, I lie there feeling peaceful, knowing that my to-do list is a few items shorter. When I do sleep in that last pre-alarm hour, it's really concentrated sleep. Distilled sleep. Essence of sleep. If I don't feel like doing chores at 3 in the morning, I read. Either way, the small hours of the morning can be a very pleasant time.

Or not. 

*****

I wonder sometimes if animals are fearful in advance. Like are they anxious about possibly running into a predator, and do they consciously plan their activities with hiding places and escape routes in mind? Or do they only feel fear when there's something to actually be afraid of. The latter, I hope. 

Anyway, I wonder about this because a coyote - a COYOTE! - was spotted in our neighborhood and now I gotta figure out how to survive an encounter with a coyote because I always feel fear well in advance of an event occurring, whether or not it’s an event that is likely to occur. That I now have to plan a coyote-fighting strategy doesn’t seem reasonable, since I’m in Maryland and not Arizona. Why on EARTH should I have to evade coyotes. I arranged my entire life so as not to ever have to be within 50 miles of a coyote. But of course, I also arranged my life so as to ensure the widest possible berth between me and the nearest bear and look how that turned out. 

Well, yes, of course this has something to do with insomnia. It’s stuff like this that keeps me up at night. 

*****

I did some research, and it turns out that Maryland has been home to a small but resilient little coyote population for over 50 years. The call has been coming from inside the house this whole time. Not sure if that makes me feel better or not - that I’ve managed to avoid coyote encounters for the entire 24 years that I have lived in Maryland is a good thing, of course, but I’d prefer to have held on to my blissful ignorance about their presence, because now I’m sure that it’s just blind luck that I haven’t been attacked by a coyote yet, and good luck is always due to run out at some point. According to the Maryland natural resources site where I learned that coyotes and I have been coexisting for 24 years, coyotes are the most-disliked wild animal species in Maryland, held in “almost universal disdain” (disdain is the state of Maryland’s word not mine) by human Marylanders. Nobody likes an animal that preys on cats and dogs, let alone small children. Not to mention the coyote’s well-known habit of blowing up their victims with Acme Corporation-manufactured explosives or dropping heavy objects on them from great heights. I’m not a road runner. When that anvil drops from an overpass, I won’t see it coming until it’s too late. 

*****

So it’s Memorial Day Weekend now, or MDW as we summer people like to call it. Saturday morning, bright and sunny but at least 15 degrees colder than I would prefer the first day of summer to be. This happens now - we have unseasonably cold weather in late May which gives way very suddenly to real hazy summer warmth some time around the middle of June. It happens so regularly now, in fact, that the cold late May temperatures aren’t really unseasonable anymore. 

MDW usually brings with it some relief from the sleepless stressed-out mental health misery of spring. But this year’s crisis feels like it’s going to stick around for a bit. It has some staying power. Intractable, that is the word I would use. Intractable. It’s too cold to swim and despite the pale blue cloudless sky and the clear warm sunshine, I find myself uninterested in leaving the house today. 

But leave the house I must and shall. I have things to do that cannot be accomplished remotely, and I want to feel the way it looks outside. So I’m doing outside things this weekend, cold water and coyotes be damned. 

*****

I really didn’t think that I was going to swim this weekend. It was chilly enough just sitting poolside with my friends that I needed a sweater. But the crazy children were all in the pool, and then a few adults ventured in a toe at a time. When my neighbor and fellow lap swimmer started on  his usual mile swim (I don’t swim a mile), I thought about how silly it would be to have spent two hours at the pool and not to have actually gone swimming. Then another almost-daily swimming neighbor showed up, pulled off her swim cover-up, stepped into a lap lane, and started swimming. Well, I thought, if another middle-aged lady can do it, then I can certainly do it. And I did, and it was freezing cold, and even after ten laps I was still freezing cold, and even two hours later after a hot shower and dry clothes, I was still cold. Actually, I was freezing cold all evening on Saturday - that might have been hypothermia. But everything that has been worrying me, fueling the nonstop panic and anxiety, was gone, just for a short time in that clear sun-sparkling cold blue water. It was glorious, and I’m going to do it again today. And I don’t think coyotes swim, at least not in the lap lane of a neighborhood pool. 

Spoiler alert: Putin is really bad

Although I was already on board with this thesis, I just finished reading two more “Putin is the worst” books and I’m even more convinced than ever that Putin’s Russia is a giant criminal enterprise and that he is one of the worst threats to peace and civilization and just plain human decency in the world.  

The books are Red Notice and Freezing Order, both by Bill Browder. Browder was one of the first Western businesspeople to invest in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. The son of a brilliant mathematician and the grandson of a prominent member of the American Communist party, Browder decided early to pursue a career that didn’t involve academia or politics. Of course, he ended up involuntarily up to his neck in the latter. 

At first, Browder’s Hermitage Capital was very successful. And then he began to learn the hard way that the Russians didn’t play by even the bare minimum dog-eat-dog-but-with-a-fork rules of Western high finance. I won’t go into the details of the Byzantine theft of Hermitage-owned shares by corrupt Russian oligarchs, for two reasons - you might want to read it yourself, and I honestly couldn’t recount all the details even if I wanted to. Suffice to say that Browder learned that Russia wasn’t a safe place to invest. And then he learned that Russia wasn’t a safe place for anything or anyone, including Russians. 

*****

You have probably heard of the Magnitsky Act, which imposes strict financial sanctions on Russian oligarchs (and now other foreign despots and kleptocrats) proved to be involved in human rights abuses. Bill Browder was the person responsible for getting this legislation through Congress and then getting many other countries to pass similar laws. The Magnitsky Act is named for Browder's Russian attorney and friend Sergei Magnitsky, who was murdered in his jail cell for refusing to cooperate with Russian officials' attempt to frame Bill Browder for their own crimes. Red Notice (named for the Interpol arrest warrants that the Russians repeatedly used to harass Browder) tells the story of the crime, the story of Sergei Magnitsky's ordeal, and the story of the creation and implementation of the Magnitsky Act. 

It's a very compelling story, heartbreaking and infuriating and terrifying and inspiring all at once. Both of the books (more about Freezing Order in a bit) make very clear that once the guardrails are off, and people like Putin are free to operate with relative impunity, then anything can happen and no one is safe. 

If you are a person who hears about an abuse of power by a high government official or a wealthy and powerful person, and  thinks "They can't do that, they can't get away with that," then you should read these books immediately and understand that every time a politician pushes for less regulation on commerce and lower taxes on billionaires and fewer protections for workers and consumers and less support for whatever is left of the the social safety net, what they want is a country just like Putin's Russia, where they CAN do that, and they can and do get away with it, all the time. Given the opportunity, the strong will always use their strength to crush the weak. Always. Without exception. 100 percent of the time. 

*****

I have mixed feelings about Bill Browder. By his own admission, he exploited the early post-Soviet privatization schemes, buying shares of newly privatized companies that ordinary Russians sold for practically nothing, just so they’d have enough cash for food and other essentials. He represented the worst of exploitative capitalism, and his work helped to enable the runaway greed and polarizing wealth inequality that turned Russia back into a vassal state. And I don’t know that he ever really acknowledges his part in the exploitation of ordinary people. In fact, I don’t know that he ever really acknowledges that exploiting ordinary people for profit is a bad thing to do. He is an unapologetic capitalist. 

*****

On the other hand, he is a capitalist who believes in a certain standard of decorum and decency in which people who play by the rules are rewarded for their intelligence and hard work. Never mind that he either doesn't acknowledge or maybe just doesn't understand that the rules of this game are inherently unfair and that only the already-rich and already-powerful can really win. That would be a whole different book 

Without giving away too many details (and again, I couldn’t even if I wanted to), Browder’s company, Hermitage Capital, was victim to a stock-dilution scheme that almost bankrupted him. My only knowledge about stock dilution came from watching “The Social Network,” and I don’t know why such a thing is or ever was legal in the United States but as we have established, we’re not talking about the United States and it doesn’t seem that any kind of financial skulduggery is off-limits in Russia. Browder gradually pulled all of his money out of Russia but had already attracted the attention of criminals in and out of the Russian government. They figured out a way to frame Browder for a $230 million dollar tax fraud, and then tried to coerce his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky into testifying against Browder. Magnitsky not only refused; he blew the whistle on the real criminals and was arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and eventually beaten to death for his trouble. 

Bill Browder made it his personal mission - there’s no other way to put it - to avenge his friend, not by violence but by targeting the only thing that Putin and his thoroughly corrupt cronies care about - their money and their right to travel outside godforsaken Russia any time they want. He worked his many contacts in the US and around the world to write, refine, and pass into law versions of the Magnitsky Act, which imposes crippling financial sanctions on foreign dictators and anyone else involved in human rights abuses. The original US Magnitsky Act targeted only Russians, but its successor Global Magnitsky Acts here and in other countries impose sanctions on anyone implicated in human rights violations. 

While Red Notice tells the story of the Magnitsky Act’s creation, Freezing Order tells the story of Putin’s fury in the aftermath of its passage. Putin has been obsessed with the Magnitsky Act since the day it became law, and has worked relentlessly to try to overturn it and to get back at Bill Browder. Browder has been harassed, followed, surveilled, threatened, and even arrested under spurious Interpol “Red Notices.” Interesting fact - as retaliation for the original Magnitsky Act, Putin put an end to US adoptions of Russian orphans. And so when Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. claimed that their 2016 conversations with Russians were about “adoptions,” that is actually half true. They were negotiating with the Russians over repealing the Magnitsky Act, which was the price for allowing adoptions to resume. 

Browder’s self-described “obsession” with honoring his friend’s legacy has cost him a great deal. He cannot travel internationally without fear of abduction or arrest under another trumped-up pun-intended Interpol warrant. And at the end of Freezing Order, he alludes to family strife related to his frequent absences and his wholehearted dedication to the Magnitsky case. I’m sure that his wife has endured a lot. It must be hard to be married to a person who pours themself out so completely for a cause. But of course, those people tend to be the ones who get world-changing things done. 

Sometimes, I miss a book when I finish it. I miss the characters if it’s a novel, or I miss the author’s voice. That’s how I felt after I finished Red Notice and Freezing Order. I missed Bill Browder’s relentless intensity, his only-I-can-save-the-world-from-Putin bravado. I don’t think I could live with that level of intensity but I admire his courage, and I respect what he has accomplished. I respect his refusal to back down, and his determination to make sure that his friend’s death was not in vain. And I really respect his refusal to shut up, no matter what it costs him. 

99 problems

After a week or so of bleak and cold weather, we had almost - summer warmth and sunshine today. I walked around the track, which was very well populated after a few days when it was nearly deserted, not because of the weather but because of the bear. They shipped the bear to parts unknown where I very much hope he will remain. I harbor no ill will toward that bear - I wish him all the honey he can eat, as long as it’s at least 50 miles away from Rockville and Naval Support Activity Bethesda. This Navy base isn't big enough for him and me. 

I started to round the corner today, figuratively speaking. Most people love the beautiful month of May but every year I have a mental health crisis that  has May's name written all over it, and I can't wait to see the end of this most Godforsaken of months. Everything is always better in June and June is right around the corner. Less than two weeks really because June begins with Memorial Day weekend as far as I’m concerned. Once MDW arrives, spring is dead to me, and I have no problems that summer can't solve. 

Well that's not actually true. I have plenty of problems that summer can't solve but they don't matter that much in the summer. Everything is bathed in sunshine and things that look like problems any other time of the year look like clear water and blue skies in the summer. Come June, I got 99 problems but a problem ain't one. 

*****

It’s late Friday afternoon now and I’m contemplating a walk in the 85-degree sunshine. In just over two weeks, the pool will open and if the weather stays warm between now and then, then it might just be warm enough to swim on opening weekend. And I’ll swim even if it’s not warm enough, because that pool is only open for a few short months and during those short months I count the minutes wasted that aren’t spent immersed in clear blue chlorinated water. Just two more weeks, and I'll be free of May and its bullshit. I still got 99 problems but the countdown has begun. 

Suburban bear

A fire drill on a sunny warm Monday afternoon is a nice little break in the day. I work with friendly people so we had a pleasant little social gathering in the courtyard while we waited for the all clear. But fire drills aren't the most interesting thing happening on Naval Support Activity Bethesda. There's also a bear. That's not a joke, nor a metaphor. There was an actual bear sighting last week in the woods between the University and Walter Reed. I yield to no one in my respect for the Navy but they’re not trained to fight bears. 

The bear has been spotted at locations all over Rockville and Bethesda and Silver Spring, all close to one another and all places where bears do not belong. It's unnerving. I keep seeing social media posts offering well-intentioned advice from animal control and the Maryland and National Park Services. Don't run. Don't scream. Back away slowly. The don't run part is easy for me because I know that almost anything can outrun me. Especially a black bear, which can apparently run as fast as a race horse. You’d think that a bear would be a clumsy, lumbering creature, but apparently not. I learn something new every day, but this little factoid about the land speed of black bears is something that I would have been happy not to know. 

*****

I've been on guard on my walks around the neighborhood. I scan my surroundings and I maintain situational awareness. For what purpose, I don’t know because again, I have no chance of outrunning a bear and even less chance of winning a fight against one. Bear vs. Claire - Bear wins every time. But I’d like to at least see it coming, I guess. 

On Monday, I walked on the track on the base. It was a nice day - a really nice day - but the track was almost deserted. No students playing soccer, no PT, no one walking or running - it was disconcerting. I saw someone’s hoodie hanging on a railing, and I thought “Well, that’s it - the bear got someone, and left the evidence behind.” I thought for a moment about going inside, but then I decided to press on because they might never catch that stupid bear and I can’t stay inside all summer. And then a few other people ventured out and I wasn’t alone on the track anymore. I was still on my guard, but I felt much more at ease. 

*****

They got that bear (I can only hope it was the same bear and that the Maryland suburbs aren’t bear country now) in the most cartoon storyline way imaginable - they set a (humane) trap next to a beehive in a backyard where the bear had been spotted last week. The amateur beekeeper whose backyard it is apparently never considered that his beehives and the honey they produce might attract bears. And who can blame him? We’re in suburban Maryland not gosh-darn Wyoming. I’d never have worried about bears either. Of course, I also wouldn’t keep bees. 

According to the news reports about the bear’s capture, he weighs about 140 pounds. I saw a very grainy little surveillance camera video, and he’s really very cute. I don’t know much about bears but I imagined something ferocious-looking and Kodiak-sized, in the 500 - 700 pound range. I weigh more than 140 pounds, for crying out loud. I’m still pretty sure that the little bear would beat me in a fight, but he’d have had to work for it. I’d have gone down swinging. Anyway, he’s been relocated to a more bear-friendly location, probably somewhere in the Catoctin mountains. Maybe he’ll show up at Camp David. Then he’ll be the Secret Service’s problem. 

L'Air du Temps

When is the last time you smelled perfume - not from a bottle in a store, but just out and about in the world? One day at work last week, I walked down a corridor and into some perfume, just hanging there, lingering in the air. It hit me like a physical force. It had been years since I had smelled perfume - real, old-fashioned, lady-with-a-spritzer-at-department-store perfume - and it took me all the way back. I think I understand Proust and his madeleine now. 

The scent was maddeningly familiar; heavy on the Oriental notes, and a little bit floral but not rosy floral.  Something like Opium but not Opium. Maybe I should just Google a list of popular perfumes of the 1970s and 80s and then match a name with a scent. 

*****

Of course you understand that I actually did this, and I promptly ended up in a rabbit hole of mid-20th century beauty culture nostalgia, from which I emerged only days later.

*****

When I was growing up, lots of women - maybe even most women - wore perfume. The women in my working-class Philadelphia neighborhood wore Tabu or Charlie or popular Avon scents (if you’re young, then you might not know that Avon used to be known mostly for perfume - the cosmetics came later). When I was in high school and college and then a young person in the working world, I learned about expensive perfumes, classics like Chanel No. 5 and Joy and Arpege. Perfume was very popular among young women in the 80s - we favored overwhelming heavy scents like Opium and Lauren and Chloe, suitable for the aspirational luxury ethos of that decade. Every city still had fancy downtown department stores, marble floors and high vaulted ceilings and full-service restaurants and dressed-up salespeople and elaborate Christmas displays that families made special trips to visit. You couldn’t walk into one of those stores without being chased by a young woman wielding a spritzer of perfume. Just thinking about those department stores makes me miss my grandmother. 

*****

I read Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties early in 2022, and I started writing about it, but I never finished. Here’s a preview - if you were a young person in the 80s and 90s then you might remember that right around 1991, there was a very abrupt popular fashion 180, from glamor and high heels and big hair to hippie revival and grunge. In 1987, young women dressed up to go out - full hair and makeup, high-heeled shoes with designer jeans and dressy tops, and of course, perfume. In 1992, the aesthetic abruptly changed. This is not to say that young women no longer cared how they looked - they very much did care. But it was no longer acceptable to act or look as if you cared. It really took just as much time and effort trying to appear as if you didn’t make any effort at all as it did to look flawlessly put together. Perfume did not survive this fashion transition, perhaps because it was an obvious olfactory clue that a woman cared about being conventionally attractive. 

*****

When I was very young, age 5 or so, we lived with my grandparents for a time. I think we were there for about a year, more or less. My grandparents went out most Saturday nights and my grandmother would usually let us sit on her bed and watch her get dressed and fix her hair and put the finishing touches on her hair and makeup. Perfume was always the last step. 

Eventually, I realized that my grandparents’ nights out were not particularly glamorous - they went to movies sometimes, or to VFW or American Legion events, or mostly to friends’ houses to play cards. Perhaps it was that perfume, lingering in the air long after my grandmother left the room, that made grown-up life seem very exciting and romantic.

I never did figure out what last week’s perfume was, even after my internet rabbit hole research. It reminded me of Opium or Chloe, not because of how it smelled but because of how it felt. It was like John Wanamaker or Strawbridge and Clothier, circa 1980. It was like midnight Mass at St. John the Baptist, circa 1975.  It was like my Nana’s bedroom on a Saturday night in 1971. It was like my childhood in the middle of the American century. 

Pastime

I'm at my son's baseball game, one of the last few games of the season and one of the last few games of my son's high school career. I arrived midway through the 5th inning with Rockville up 6-2. It's the top of the 8th now. 

It's a fun game. The weather is perfect and the teams are evenly matched in on-field and dugout trash talk talent. They're all very funny. They affect a growly deep voice and they shout things like "He's a very healthy boy!" And "Where's the ball? Right field can't see so good!" The idea seems to be to say the most innocuous and inoffensive things possible, in a tone and timbre suitable for the vilest insults. My son is very good at this. It's very amusing. 

*****

The play of the game belongs to a Richard Montgomery outfielder, who just made an insane running, diving catch. A sick catch, as the young people say. A filthy play. The batter tipped his helmet to the fielder who had robbed him of at least a double, and the Rockville dugout applauded. Respect. 

*****

The game is over now. Rockville held the lead and everyone is going home happy. I'm sitting in the bright late afternoon sunshine waiting for my son to pack up his gear and say goodnight to his team. I haven't looked at a schedule but I think they have five games left. 

Book snob

I’m reading Snobbery: The American Version, Joseph Epstein’s very long (well, it seems long) book about the history of snobs and snobbery and snobbishness in America. I don’t know how I ended up with this. It was published in 2002, which was pretty much centuries ago in terms of social commentary. 

Epstein approaches the subject from a (not the, but a) classic American snobby perspective. He’s an academic and writer (and kind of a jerk) who can’t conceal his disdain for most aspects of American life, including democracy and egalitarian social structures, both of which he tries to convince us contribute to snobbery - in other words, the more “classless” a society considers itself, the more prevalent snobbery will be in that society. And maybe he’s right although he doesn’t really make a convincing case, but even if he is right, I think I can live with a few snobs as the price of democracy so the point is moot. 

I have been slogging - slogging, I tell you - through this book for several days now. I’m only about a third of the way through and at this rate I’ll throw off my whole reading schedule for spring.  But I feel compelled to finish it. I have no idea why.  

*****

During the pandemic, I used to order groceries through Instacart. I was a very good tipper so my groceries were always delivered quickly and correctly. Then I started to feel bad about making other people do my shopping - even though I was tipping very well - and it also just cost too much money. But last week, Instacart sent me a postcard with a $20 off promo code. So now I’m waiting for my grocery delivery, with a $20 tip courtesy of Instacart. I feel like a plutocrat, sitting in luxury while others perform my household tasks. 

If you’ve ever used Instacart, then you know that the app offers suggestions - sometimes helpful, sometimes less so - for additional things that you might need to buy. Today’s suggestions included items for my “charcuterie board,” including Ritz-style crackers and a processed cheese spread. I could hear Epstein’s voice in my head, expounding on the connection between taste and snobbery. Do snobs shop at Aldi? Does Instacart snobbishly assume that Aldi shoppers are so lacking in sophistication that we don’t know the difference between charcuterie and an after-school snack? I feel like he could easily take a simple thing like a grocery order and dissect it and examine it 25 different ways, and both explain why a person’s grocery order ranks them as an educated professional or a plebe AND why such distinctions are inherently contrived and artificial but he’s still going to write about them. 

*****

I finally gave up on this absolutely insufferable book when I reached the chapter on college snobbery, a subject about which I know a few things, being the parent of a college student and a high school senior. Epstein, a scholar and college professor, is actually in a position to offer some real insight on the subject of Americans’ obsession with the “right” schools, but he’s too lazy to bother, and instead spends pages sneering at Ivy League pretension with no attempt to examine or illuminate the topic. I don’t often abandon a book less than halfway through but I have limited time on earth and I find myself unwilling to spend any of it thinking about Joseph Epstein’s analysis (lack of) of American snobbery. I feel good about this decision. 

*****

Except that now I'm reading something else that's almost as terrible, but not quite. It's a novel, a much quicker read, and I'm almost finished, so I'll just suck it up and read it until the end. In the future, I'll be a little more selective. I'm a bit of a book snob. 

Squirrel snacks

It’s Friday afternoon and I’m just wrapping up my work week. I worked from home today, with the windows open, feeling the balmy breeze and listening to the birdsong. 

My husband hung a new bird feeder in the side yard, right in front of my office window. We’ve had a hummingbird feeder in that same tree for some time, and I have to think that the sugar water that’s been in there for some time and that I am pretty sure has not been changed for at least a month is fully fermented now. Maybe that’s why I never see any birds at that feeder - it’s a nighttime spot now. But the new feeder is very popular. Every time I looked out the window today, I saw at least one or two birds enjoying a seedy snack. That is what I call entertainment. 

Even more entertaining than the birds was the determined squirrel who ran along the x and y axes of the fences between my yard and the neighbor’s, with a few forays into the tree branches just above the feeder, sniffing and stretching and examining the thing from all angles, trying to figure out how to reach the feeder and snag some seed for himself. 

A few minutes later, I saw the squirrel again. He was on the ground, vacuuming up some seed that had dropped from the feeder. And that seed was delicious, I’m sure, because a minute later, the squirrel had climbed the fence again and was scheming and planning its route to the feeder. He sat on the fence (literally) for a few minutes; wondering, I think, if he had a chance at the feeder. It hangs about a foot or so from one side of the fence and at least two feet or more from the other side. The drop from the tree branch where it’s suspended is about 18 inches. All of these distances are longer than the squirrel’s body, excluding the tail, but he’s stretchy and agile and unafraid to climb, even upside down. And that’s what he did. He got up on a branch and calculated the shortest distance between the branch and the feeder, and then stretched himself far enough to grab onto the hanger. And then he made his move, a half stretch and half jump that landed him upside down and just able to sniff under the lid of the feeder. But not enough to actually get any seed. 

Did you think I was kidding? 

I felt sorry for him. All that planning and scheming, all that work - and he came so close. SO CLOSE! Do squirrels feel frustration, I wondered - was he furious? Was he cursing our stupid bird feeder and and our stupid trees and fences? Did he stamp his little squirrel foot or punch the top of the feeder with his tiny squirrel fist? That’s what I would have done, of course. But the squirrel seemed to maintain his equanimity. He sniffed for a few minutes and then climbed back up into the tree, giving up for the time being. 

Later, my husband drilled a hole into an old frisbee and attached it to the feeder to serve as an anti-squirrel barrier. It’ll probably work. The squirrel couldn’t get past a single obstacle between himself and the seed, let alone two. Some seed will fall out of the feeder, dropped by the careless birds who can have as much as they want, as often as they want, so maybe that’s the best the squirrel can hope for. But I’m rooting for him. Why should the birds get everything handed to them? 

Everybody agrees

I have so many drafts in various stages of completion or lack of, so what am I doing writing something new? Writing a new essay is like buying a new jacket. I have too many of both. I need to just wear what I have. 

But even though I have a ton of jackets (so many jackets), I can always find a hole in my jacket wardrobe, some jacket use case that I cannot address with existing resources. And because I tend to write about the same things over and over again (books, swimming, handbags; and of course, jackets) there are also lots of everyday life situations about which I have not ever written so much as a word. 

Like songs. I write about music a little bit here and there, but not very often. And one day last week as I listened to my new favorite song for the fourth consecutive time, I thought that I should write about falling in love with a song. 

Songs usually have to sneak up on me. I like to sing along with music, and so I tend to listen to songs that I already know and love. There are a lot of them, and it’s a pretty odd collection. Eclectic as it is, though, my favorite songs list is well established. It’s a comfortable little clique. It’s not easy for a new song to break in. 

But it happens. Sometimes, I fall in love with an old song that I’d never thought much about when it was a new song. A few years ago, for example, I happened upon the Richie Havens recording of “Here Comes the Sun,” and it became an instant top ten favorite song for me. I can listen to that song any time. Just a few days ago, I was driving home from work and heard the Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” a song that was on the radio all the time when I was a little girl, and it threw me for a loop. That song is so great, and so radically different from the Temptations’ earlier work. That ominous bass line, the gradual build-up, the syncopated hand-clapping, the alternating solo vocals (especially the falsetto) - it’s all so brilliant. Seeing that my own papa was also a rolling stone, I didn’t like that song at all when I was young. Even at age 7 or so, I knew all about men who spent most of their time chasin’ women and drinkin’. I didn’t need to hear the Temptations sing about it. When I heard it last week, it didn’t seem like a throwback. It seemed brand-new

Other songs grow on me. When I was young, I worked for a self-important, pretentious little chain of stores. This little company was so full of itself that we, the ignorant and provincial staff, were not allowed to change the music selection dictated by the “creative director.” (But we did it anyway, all the time). I could tell you some stories about that place, but I won’t, because it still exists and it’s still full of itself. I have to admit, though, that if it weren’t for that stupid store and its stupid artsy pretension, I might never have heard Erasure and The Sundays. Erasure, in particular, drew me in slowly but surely. It’s been almost 30 years, but “Hallowed Ground” and “Heart of Stone” remain among my very favorite songs ever. 

*****

“At teatime, everybody agrees,” OR “at tee time, everybody agrees?”

It could be either, right? I drink a lot of tea and so in my life, any time could be teatime. And I wouldn’t set foot on a golf course unless you paid me, and you’d have to pay me a lot. So for my purposes, it would always be the former. But I looked it up, just to be sure.

*****

Then there are those songs that take many years - decades, even - to worm their way into my affections. I am not an Eric Clapton fan, and will pretty much fling myself at the radio to turn off “Lay Down, Sally.” But “Promises,” which was on the radio all the time when I was a little girl, and which I ignored because it wasn’t the Carpenters or John Denver or Fleetwood Mac or Olivia Newton-John, is actually a great song. After forty or so years, I’m a “Promises” fan, and will always stop what I’m doing to sing along with that song. Same for Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s “Southern Cross,” and Chicago’s “Searching.” Actually, I’ve come to love almost all 1970s Chicago, almost as much as I hate 1980s Chicago. This is a point of contention between my husband and me. He likes the garbage Peter Cetera “Glory of Love” years. There is no accounting for taste. 

*****

And speaking of the 80s - throughout that whole decade, I avoided hair band metal. Everything from Van Halen to Def Leppard to Whitesnake - especially Whitesnake. What kind of name is that, anyway? I hated all of those bands and all of their music. Until suddenly, I didn’t. Sometime around 2007 or so, I was driving somewhere with my then-little children, who were strapped in their car seats in the back seat of my Honda, and Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” came on the radio. And instead of reflexively hitting a preset button to switch to something else - anything else - I turned it up a little and sang along. I still sing along with that song. That song is awesome. Van Halen, Guns n Roses, even Def Leppard - I love them all now. Not every song, and not all the time, but 80s hair metal has finally, after 40 years, earned a place in my stone cold heart. 

*****

But the best thing is when I fall in love with a brand-new song when it’s still actually brand-new and not just new to me. When you turn on a radio and hear a song that you’ve never heard before and it just speaks to you, it feels like the world is wide open. It feels like anything is possible. 

It begins with a catchy melody, the kind that gets into your head so quickly that you’re singing along the second time you hear the chorus. Then a lyric, a turn of phrase that speaks to you for whatever reason - it’s funny, it’s beautiful or relatable, or maybe a little of all of those things. There’s that moment when the right melody and the right lyrics hit me at just the right time, and I know that a never-before-heard song will instantly be my jam. This is what happened to me the first time I heard Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero.” The first time, I tell you!

“I have this thing where I grow older but just never wiser.” Yes, Taylor - I know exactly what you mean, because I have that very same thing! Witness - remember when I said that I have too many jackets? Well I do but I just bought another one. Older but never wiser. 

The house dance beat and that opening line drew me in, and then the hook: “It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero.” Oh my gosh, it totally is - you have no idea. 

The lyrics so beautifully capture the rueful self-awareness (it takes real self-awareness to admit to your own “narcissism disguised as altruism”), the growing dismay as a still-young but maturing woman realizes that she is no longer the ingenue, no longer the “sexy baby.” She cleverly uses a young woman’s language (“It’s me, hi, I’m the problem”) even as she skips ahead 30 years to imagine herself as a rich old woman with a scheming, murderous daughter-in-law. It’s a brilliant song, and only Taylor Swift could have written it; not because there are no other brilliant songwriters but because it’s about her own particular peculiar preoccupations, which she’s unafraid to admit to and even sing about. It’s about her life, past, present, and future - the girl who was once the sexy baby pop star and who is now the “monster on the hill,” a star so big that she has distant admirers rather than friends; a woman so rich that someone is probably already scheming to separate her from her money - maybe a crooked agent or accountant or manager, or maybe a greedy future daughter-in-law. 

I liked Taylor Swift very much already, but this is the song that made me love her. Her earlier music, while often lyrically and musically brilliant, always seemed to belong exclusively to the young. I could hum along with “Blank Space” or “We Are Never Ever Ever Getting Back Together” but I couldn’t claim them as my own. I’m way past the break up with a bad boyfriend stage, and I was never the romantic drama girl, never a nightmare dressed like a daydream. But the woman who will stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror? The person whose depression works the graveyard shift? Yeah, that’s me. I’m the problem. It’s me. Taylor knows. 

Current(ish) events

It’s been a while since I wrote about a book (really it’s been a while since I wrote about anything other than high school swimming and the cluttered inside of my own brain). It’s the day after the Trump indictment and I’m reading Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler: A Memoir. It seems appropriate. 

Defying Hitler is very much unlike any other first-person account of life in Nazi Germany that I’ve read, and I’ve read a lot of them. Haffner (born Raimund Pretzel) was just one of many educated, middle-class Germans who were first disgusted and then horrified by the Nazis; but unlike many of his compatriots, he not only left Germany, but spent much of his life afterward thinking and writing and speaking about what happened in Germany, and why, and what could and should have been done to stop the Nazis.  

*****

Jumping ahead a bit, Haffner escaped the Nazis and went to England, where he was promptly clapped into an enemy alien internment camp in Devon. He was eventually moved to the Isle of Man. In England, Haffner wrote about Nazi Germany, emphasizing not just crimes against Jews and political opponents, but what he saw as flaws in the German character that made Germans particularly susceptible to Nazism. Not just the things that we usually associate with “German-ness,” like discipline and organization and hyper-competence, but attraction to what Haffner calls “comradeship.” 

You would think that “comradeship” would be a good thing, wouldn’t you? But it’s not, not as Haffner describes it. Writing about his experience in a compulsory training camp for aspiring lawyers, he explains that by militarizing everything (including preparing for the German equivalent of the bar exam), the Nazis exploited the feeling of ride-or-die camaraderie experienced only by soldiers in battle. He further asserts that this experience - this comradeship under fire that exempts individuals from all individual responsibility and independence - is good and in fact indispensable in war, but inherently evil and corrupting in all other circumstances. Reflecting on his own experience in a Nazi training camp, Haffner writes that after a few weeks of training in quasi-military conditions, he and his comrades were no longer educated young men, but an “unthinking, indifferent, irresponsible mass.”

I’d never heard of Haffner until I found this book but according to the afterword written by his son, Oliver Pretzel, he was very prolific and very well known in both England and Germany, especially in the immediate post-war years. The manuscript for Defying Hitler was found among Haffner’s papers after his death, and his son published it, minus two missing sections, in 2000. It became an immediate best seller, much to Pretzel’s surprise. As Pretzel suggests, its success was partly attributable to its focus on answering, and not just asking the question “How could this have happened?” Haffner breaks it down in practical and philosophical terms, explaining exactly how and why a movement that was not universally popular and that was in fact repellent to many Germans, could still completely upend and destroy the country in practically no time. It is instructive and maddening and terrifying. 

*****

In less than 24 hours, the former President of the United States will face arraignment in a courtroom in New York City. As much as I loathe him and as much as I hated everything about his misbegotten presidency, I’m not looking forward to this, neither the arraignment itself nor the likely chaotic and violent aftermath. I think that Donald Trump is more than willing to upend and destroy the country to save himself or to enrich himself at the expense of his foolish supporters. 

*****

No, Trump isn’t Hitler, and 2023 America is not 1933 Germany. But it feels like everything could change in an instant, and if feels like we could all, a year from now, be asking ourselves how it happened, how it could possibly have happened, and so fast, too.   

Capsule

It’s about ten days into a new season, meteorologically speaking. Whenever the season changes, I find myself thinking about outfits and jackets and dresses that will somehow transform me, or I start looking for that one handbag that will fulfill every requirement that I have for a handbag, making all others unnecessary and obsolete. I’m not going to buy any handbags, or any clothes (except maybe a dress) but I’m noticing them. I’m thinking about them. 

*****

Merino wool dresses, for example. You’ve seen these dresses, right? The 100-day challenge dress, a simple merino wool shift that is allegedly resistant to microbes and so will supposedly be as clean and fresh and free from odors on day 99 as on day one, assuming that you want to wear the same dress every day for three months. And I find that I do, actually. 

Until recently, it had never occurred to me to shop for dresses in merino wool knit. I must have clicked on an ad for merino wool clothing at some point; or maybe I just whispered the words “merino wool” in the middle of the night when I was off in the woods somewhere, all by myself. (That’s metaphorical speech. I’d never be in the woods all by myself, much less at night.) Either way, my social media feeds are now filled - filled, I tell you - with merino wool clothing ads. 

The photos and stories are very appealing; women take the same simple dress and style it differently every day; some days with a turtleneck or t-shirt underneath, sometimes with a jacket or sweater over top. Dressy with stockings and heels; casual with leggings and flats or sneakers. Jewelry, scarves, bags, jackets - combinations of all of these make the same dress look different, look 100 different ways. Or maybe 20 different ways, but that’s still a lot of outfits based on just one dress. If you have 20 different outfits to cover 100 days, you’re only on repeat about once every three weeks. That’s just math. I’m probably going to buy one of these dresses but I’m paralyzed by indecision - it’s down to one of three possible styles and 3 or 4 possible colors. 

*****

Here’s another thing I’m noticing, though I’ve never seen an ad for one - yet. The Marc Jacobs Tote Bag (capitalized because the bag is printed with the words “The Tote Bag”) seems to be all over the place now. On Friday night alone, I saw three of these bags, all carried by millennial women, who are young women as far as I’m concerned. That’s the thing about being my age. Everyone is young.

These bags do not appeal to me, for several reasons. First of all, I don’t like the imprint. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be funny or ironic or what - I just don’t get it. Even worse, one of the bags that I saw on Friday wasn’t even really a tote bag. It was a messenger bag, emblazoned with the bold and erroneous claim that it was a tote bag. I’d feel silly carrying a tote bag that screamed to the world “Hey, look at me - I’m a tote bag!” I’d feel like a gosh-darn idiot carrying a messenger bag that calls itself a tote bag. 

And even if I liked these bags, I can easily imagine buying one and carrying it and growing tired of it within days. There is no possibility that this bag could ever become THE bag, the one that I’m always looking for, the bag to end all bags. It’s a flash in the pan, that self-proclaimed Tote Bag. 

*****

There’s this sweater, too. I can’t stop thinking about this sweater that looks like it could solve several of my sweater problems. It’s a cardigan, open front, but not too long. That’s the mistake I’ve been making with cardigans. I buy them too long and I look unbalanced. The length on this cardigan is just right and it has pockets, outside AND INSIDE. On the other hand, it only comes in gray, and I’m not a huge fan of gray. But the shape is just right and those pockets keep calling me. I imagine slipping my phone into one of the inside pockets and then shoving my hands into the outside pockets and going about my business. 

The thing is, though, that I can also go about my business without that sweater. Witness - I’m doing it right now. 

*****

Not long ago, I was part of a conversation about work clothes. One of us said that she needed skirts and pants for the office. Another person had plenty of work clothes but she needed workout wear. Yet another person was searching for a perfect rain jacket. The oldest woman in the group waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, I have enough clothes. I just need to repair a few things." This woman is probably about 70 or so and it occurred to me that when she said that she had enough clothes, she meant forever. Is that not a thing to aspire to? Is that not #goals, as they say on the social media? When I’m 70 or so, I hope to be in a similar conversation with young (or at least younger) women, and then to drop the mic with a casual “Oh, I have enough clothes. Forever.” 

And that woman was right, by the way - she really doesn’t need any clothes. I see her almost every day, and she always looks nice. 

*****

The thing about early spring, much like early fall, is that the weather is much more changeable and less predictable than usual, even for Maryland. And that is why I couldn’t figure out what to pack for a weekend trip last week. We went to Virginia Tech to see my son swim in a big-deal swim meet, and I drove myself darn-near crazy with t-shirts and leggings and shorts and pants and a nice top and a sweater and jeans and maybe a dress and one pair of sneakers or two and flip flops or not and a rain jacket for sure because it was supposed to rain all weekend (it didn’t) but what about another jacket? Do I need another jacket? I didn’t bring another non-rain jacket - a mistake - and I also brought clothes that were almost 100 percent wrong. I was unhappy with almost every single possible outfit combination that I could possibly assemble from the collection of way too darn much stuff that I brought with me, except for one dress and sweater, and a pair of shorts and a long-sleeved t-shirt. I should have brought those things and only those things.

I read this French fashion book once, a long time ago, when I was young and thought that the French knew everything. I remember almost nothing about this book except for its distinctly bossy and dictatorial French tone, and a quote: “You can’t dress well if you have too many clothes.” I have too many clothes. This is why I feel like I never have anything to wear. This is why I can never figure out what to pack for a 2-night trip and so I pack it all, ending up with too many clothes and nothing to wear. To a swim meet, for crying out loud! 

*****

Seasonal changes and packing for a trip - those are the two situations that always make me want to replace everything I own, and just start the heck over. During these wardrobe crises,  I’m very susceptible to marketing pitches. 

The “capsule wardrobe,” for example. If you're on the internet at all, then you have heard of this new idea, which is first of all completely bogus and second of all not even remotely new. Back in the 80s and 90s, fashion magazines ran pictorial spreads of "mix and match wardrobe essentials" or whatever they called them. It was always a jacket and pants and skirt with a sweater or two, a blouse or two and maybe a t-shirt. By mixing and matching these key pieces you were supposed to be able to assemble an almost limitless number of outfits. The difference between those magazine spreads and the capsule wardrobe (why “capsule"? I don't know) is that the items in the magazines were from lots of different labels. The 2023 internet capsule wardrobe consists of a single label's pieces. Buy them all with one click, and you’re done. 

So why is this bogus? Setting aside the sustainability issue and the sheer ridiculousness of simplifying your life by BUYING MORE STUFF, it’s just impossible for one small collection of clothes - 15 pieces or so - to fulfill every clothing need a person could have, even a normal person who can get through the day without overthinking every conceivable course of action (and by the way, it’s also ridiculous to even think about weaning the same gosh-darn dress for 100 straight days). But wouldn’t it be nice if you could find the ONE perfect dress, the ONE perfect sweater and shirt and t-shirt and pants, and then just maybe buy a few of each in different colors and then never buy anything again? 

*****

I didn’t buy the merino dress but I bought another dress from a company whose dresses I really like, and I wasn’t disappointed. I now have three of these dresses, all very similar in cut and fabrication, in three different patterns. I’m probably set for dresses for the summer. Those three dresses will form the core of my summer work wardrobe. People will get sick of seeing me in those dresses. “There she goes again,” they’ll say. “Didn’t she just wear that one two days ago?” Count your blessings, imaginary colleagues - at least I’m not wearing the same merino wool dress every day for three months. 

And I kept checking on that gray sweater, too. I put it into my virtual cart a few times, and then closed the browser tab and walked away. Then the silly thing went on sale, so I just went ahead and bought it. Now I just have to plan another weekend trip. This time, I’ll know exactly what to pack. Or maybe I’ll just never leave the house again. 

Sectionals

It's Sunday morning and I suppose I should write about what's happening this weekend. I'm sitting in the stands at the Christiansburg Aquatic Center, home of Virginia Tech swimming and venue for the Speedo Eastern Zone Sectional Championship swim meet. 

Although he's been swimming his whole life, my son came to club swimming late. Baseball was his priority until just last summer, when he decided that he wanted to swim in college. Most potential college swimmers begin year-round swimming at age 7 or so and have already committed to a college team by junior year. My son joined a club team just last September at the start of his senior year and made the PVS and Eastern Zone cuts his first year. I'm given to understand that this is a big deal. 

He's been here since Wednesday (again with the craziness of kids missing school to compete in a swim meet) and we drove down on Friday afternoon, 4.5 hours of mostly very pleasant driving through scenic central and southwestern Virginia. It's pretty here, mountains and valleys and clean fresh air. 

*****

Blacksburg, where we are staying, is a small college town. Virginia Tech drives the economy. I don't know how many people work at Tech but the hotels and restaurants and stores serve the Virginia Tech community and its guests, all of the alumni who attend sports events, all of the high school kids who come to visit the campus and the families who come to visit their children. I hate to boil people down to sociological and political ideas but it's hard to be here and not see that there are a lot of poor and working class people working very hard to take care of a lot of middle class and rich people. 

On Friday night, we had dinner at a local chain restaurant. Our waitress was lovely, so kind and cheerful, taking care of a ton of tables in a professional and efficient manner.   She was also missing a few front teeth. It made me sad to think that people are probably sometimes unkind to her because of that. And it made me mad to think that someone can work really hard and make a valuable contribution, and still not be able to afford dental care. Welcome to America. Teeth are for rich people. 

*****

Every hotel in the area is filled with swim teams and swim families. There are clubs from Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia and North Carolina. My son's club is staying at a Holiday Inn. Because I am a new club parent and not as tuned in to the meet schedule as more experienced parents, I didn't realize that I should have booked a room the moment he got the qualifying time. Instead, I just waited until he signed up for the meet and then found that almost every hotel room in Blacksburg and Christiansburg was booked. I was finally able to snag a room in a just-barely two-star Comfort Inn. 

This would have been fine, really. I don't care where we stay as long as it's clean and free of vermin. And trust me when I tell you that I checked the beds very carefully when we arrived. It was a simple double room with a decent bathroom, a little refrigerator, a TV so my husband could watch the Sweet 16, and a nice view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Totally fine for a two-day stay. 

We came back to the room after Saturday prelims to change (and I did such a terrible job of packing, but that's a whole other story, which I'll probably tell you at some point). It was 1:30 PM and the room hadn't been touched. I asked about this, thinking that our room had been inadvertently overlooked, and the front desk person told me that room cleaning was sometimes late. Then when we returned from lunch and sightseeing and bookstore shopping, and the room still wasn't clean, he told me that they were short staffed and that they weren't cleaning rooms unless the guest was checking out. Note that we paid surge pricing (230 a night for a room that usually goes for 79).. Here's an idea - if you're charging surge prices then pay surge wages, and then maybe you won't have a hard time keeping your hotel staffed. I shall be making exactly this point when I speak to the hotel's general manager on Monday to request a 50 percent refund. 

*****

Holy cow, the woman sitting in front of me is carrying a giant backpack and she is putting things into it and taking things out of it every 15 seconds. A lip balm out and a sweater in and a wallet out and a bag of snacks back in and a water bottle out and a water bottle back in and the sweater back out. Exhausting. I need a nap after watching this for ten minutes. 

*****

This is a big deal swim meet but it's also pretty much like every other swim meet. Parents in the stands comparing notes, and abruptly dropping out of conversations when their kids' heats are called, swimmers elated after best-ever swims and sad after disappointments in the water. Most of the parents were cool. There were a few of the type who hold forth loudly on qualifying times and college scouts and officials and whatever else that they know more about than anyone else, but only a few. 

*****

On Friday afternoon I spent the first 30 minutes of the drive thinking about everything I needed to do st home and how I wouldn't be able to do any of it from Blacksburg. And then I stopped thinking about that. I looked at trees and mountains. I flopped on the hotel room bed and read my book while my husband watched basketball. On Saturday we took my son for lunch at a deli on the Virginia Tech campus and then took him back to his hotel so he could rest before the evening session, and then we wandered around Barnes and Noble shopping for books and drinking paper cups of tea. We watched a lot of swimming. It was a good weekend. I need to get out of town more often. 

*****

As for the swimming my son was neither elated nor crushed. He did fine, and scored a relay spot on the last day. He enjoyed the camaraderie and the giant catered breakfasts and dinners and the cool sectionals team gear. Meanwhile, I sent a very polite email to the hotel manager, who responded with an even politer email apologizing for the housekeeping situation. She processed a 50 percent refund to my credit card. I didn't even have to fight city hall. Swimmers aren't the only people winning around here, I tell you what. 

April, come she will

I’m finished with Edna O’Brien’s Country Girls trilogy, and not a moment too soon. Poor miserable Baba and Kate were getting me down. Now I’m reading Barbara Pym’s An Unsuitable Attachment, which is right up my alley. I read Barbara Pym for the first time last year, when Excellent Women was one of my favorite books of the year. An Unsuitable Attachment is more of the same, really - English clergy families in post-war Britain, women young and middle-aged and old preoccupied with class and busy morning to night with church bazaars and household affairs and - of course - food. Every single English female novelist of the postwar era wrote in great detail about provision gathering and meal preparation and serving. Food was scarce and they probably all thought about eating a lot. 

I was the only person home this morning, so I picked up my book to read as I ate my very Barbara Pym breakfast of soft-boiled eggs and a piece of toast. I was sure that food would appear within a page after I opened the book, and I was not wrong. The young librarian from the good clergy family was taking a Christmas parcel of chocolate, chicken breasts in aspic, and shortbread to the recently retired elderly library secretary. I’ve never understood the whole idea of meat jelly, but at least I’d heard of it. I had to look up fairy cakes, which appear in another scene. They’re basically British cupcakes. I learn something new every time I read Barbara Pym. 

I’m about a third of the way through the book, and the characters - the vicar Mark and his wife Sophia, the canon’s niece and librarian Ianthe, the veterinarian Edwin and his sister Daisy and all of their friends and connections in and around the Anglican church, are preparing for Lent, which they observe with rigor - no meat or sugar or butter, and not just on Fridays but every day. I’m also observing Lent and it’s hard enough just giving up sweets and sugar six days a week and meat on Fridays. Post-war Britons lived an abstemious life already, even without Lent, and a certain moral imperative surrounded their choices regarding what and how much to eat and what clothing to buy and wear and whether or not to turn the heat on. Read Barbara Pym or Muriel Spark or Elizabeth Jane Howard and you’ll find that all of the characters in the books that take place in the immediate post-war years and throughout the 1950s are preoccupied with thoughts of material comfort - not wealth, but comfort, because the moral imperative to live frugally and simply and rather uncomfortably applied even to the rich. 

I thought about this this weekend, the third weekend of my own personal Lent. After an unusually mild winter, it is of course sharply cold and damp, long days of gray dullness and chill, unrelieved by sweetness, not so much as a single Hershey’s Kiss, which would go a long way toward brightening up this rather dreary March. Yesterday was Sunday, so I had some chocolate but it’s Monday again, the Mondayest of leaden gray Mondays. My energy is so low on days like this. I took a walk around the track at the base today. It was more like a trudge. I took a trudge around the track, wrapped up in my coat and scarf, as two young Air Force officers practiced kicking soccer goals. These young people and their energy. 

But just as I’m settling into the cold early spring London gloom of a 1950s Anglican Lent, Mark and Sophia and Edwin and Daisy and Rupert and Ianthe and Penelope are all about to abandon me, flying off to the warmth of Italy where presumably they’ll look at paintings and eat pasta and drink wine and Rupert will probably fall in love with one of the two single women (Ianthe), while the other one (Penelope) falls in love with him and they’ll all revel in a romantic, sun-drenched, wine-soaked holiday and forget about Lent altogether. Protestants, I tell you. But it’s all good because it’s already March 50th, so we’re a third of the way through the third and longest month of the year. 

*****

It’s Tuesday now, just as cold as yesterday - maybe even more so because it’s very blustery today - but at least the sun is shining. I worked from home and now it’s 5:10 pm and I’m looking at a parallelogram of sunlight (that is Ian McEwan’s phrase, not mine, sadly) on the carpet, and rejoicing in the second full day of Daylight Savings, which means that we’ll have daylight until about 7:10 PM. We’re paying for it on the dark black coffee-bitter mornings when my son gets up for swim practice in what seems like (essentially is) the middle of the night, but it’s almost worth it. The days will get longer on both ends, and the warm days will be more frequent, and the figurative postwar gray London of early spring in Maryland will give way to the sunshiny Italy of summer, and I’ll stop complaining for five minutes. But now I’m going to go for a walk. I’ll need to bundle up first. It’s freezing out there.