Re-entry

This weekend I read an article about Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and his recent return to earth after spending five months aboard the International Space Station. Hadfield is an Internet celebrity because of the Twitter account he maintained while in space, and he became a virtual rock star after sharing on YouTube a video of himself performing a version of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in zero-gravity. What I found most interesting about the article describing Hadfield’s homecoming, however, was his description of the intensive rehabilitation he and other returning astronauts have to undergo upon re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere, their bodies having become unaccustomed to the incessant pull of gravity:

“Right after I landed I could feel the weight of my lips and tongue … I hadn’t realized that I had learned to talk with a weightless tongue,” he said.

He is suffering overall body soreness, particularly in his neck and back which are again having to support his head after months in weightlessness.

These details about an otherwise healthy man having to relearn the basic mechanics of life on earth—like how to shower without fainting or how to walk on feet that are no longer toughened with protective calluses—is fascinating enough, but I found them even more interesting since I’m still reading Mary Roach’s Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, which also provides fascinating insight into life after zero-gravity. (If Roach’s book sounds familiar, it might be because I blogged it back in April.) What is it like to return to the familiar weighted existence of “home” after having floated rootless in space for so long?

I’ve previously used the term “Re-entry” to describe my own experience of coming back to my mundane life at the end of the academic year, after having spent too much time buckled down and focused on the minutiae of end-term grading. In many ways, my experience feels like the opposite of Hadfield’s: all those paper-piles and an accumulation of end-term tasks were oppressively weighty, and now I’ve been freed to float in the relative tranquility of summer, with “only” my online classes to tether me to earth.

But even so, the end of every academic year requires more than a bit of rehabilitation. While I was laden with papers and projects, I fell behind with other obligations and am now slowly digging my way out, taking my car for a long-overdue oil change on Friday, for instance, while slowly re-introducing myself to friends who don’t see much of me during the school year. I still need a haircut, which is something I never seem to find time for during a busy academic term; I still need to clean the bathroom. The dusty bookshelves and piles of unsorted junk in the basement—tasks I’d optimistically thought I’d tackle over winter break—are still staring me in the face, silently asking me “If not now, when?”

Before I devote myself to such weighty projects, however, I want to take a few days to enjoy the (relative) weightlessness of summer; before I devote myself to my summer checklist of projects, I want to spend some time doing as close to “nothing” as I can get away with. A couple times this past week, for instance, I found myself puttering around our backyard with a camera, simply content to spend time enjoying the scenery. Chris Hadfield has also been enjoying the earthly (and entirely grounding) art of puttering, noting that he and his NASA colleague Thomas Marshburn have been “sort of tottering around like two old duffers in an old folks home” while rehabilitating in Houston. It sounds like re-entry is the same regardless of where you’re returning from.

Click here for more photos of rain-bejeweled greenery, shot during this morning’s stint of backyard-puttering. Enjoy!

 

Transitional

Every April-into-May while I’m preoccupied with the long, uphill push that invariably marks the end of the semester, something sly and subtle happens. While I’m busy with paper-piles and end-term grading, Spring somehow slips into Summer.

I know that the summer solstice doesn’t come until June, but I’m never fooled by what the calendar says. Something has shifted in the last week or so, with spring-green leaves ripening into a darker summer hue. The nights are warm rather than chilly now, and we sleep with the windows open. Already the leaves on our backyard hostas are tattered where rabbits have nibbled them, and our backyard tulips have dropped their petals, spent.

Already, in an instant, the neighborhood wisteria are hanging heavy with an abundance of blossoms, and the year no longer feels like a coil that is tightly wound, ready to spring. Instead, the season has sprung, and only a ripening of days stands between us and the fullness of summer: a transition so subtle, you’ll miss it if you blink.

 

Preparing a canvas

Painters know that before you get down to work, you have to prepare your canvas. If you’re a street artist, this means painting over the work of those who preceded you, creating an empty space for your own design. Although graffiti might seem to be a hurried medium, creating a multicolored design takes time. Each layer of paint has to dry before you apply the next, so you can’t hurry the process. First you have to prepare your canvas, then you have to work through each stage to complete your work-in-progress.

This week is finals week at Framingham State, so I’m busy with end-term grading. I have two classes’ worth of essay portfolios and final exams to read along with quiz averages and participation grades to calculate. Every term, I tell myself I’ll finish these grading tasks early, keeping well ahead of my paper-piles, and every term, things go more slowly than I’d anticipated. It takes a while for layers of paint to dry, and it takes a while to read through a thick paper-pile.

Every finals week, I find myself checking off a whole list of tasks before I get settled down to the business of grading. On Monday, I balanced the checkbook and paid bills; yesterday, I went grocery-shopping and led practice at the Zen Center; today, I did laundry and caught up with my two online classes, which are at the start and middle-point of their respective terms. Just because I have a huge grading pile doesn’t mean the other aspects of my life grind to a halt: the dogs still need to go out, the dishes still need to be washed, and I still need (or at least prefer) to wear clean clothes.

When I first started teaching, I thought this urge to check off tasks before settling down to grade was pure procrastination: surely I was looking to keep myself busing doing anything but grading. Now, though, I’m not so sure. Just as it’s easier to paint a new work if you start with a fresh, empty canvas, it’s easier to focus on grading if you aren’t wondering whether the bills are overdue, the refrigerator is empty, or your students are filling your email inbox with confused queries.

These last few days, in other words, I’ve been preparing my canvas, creating a clean, clear space where I can concentrate on the task at hand. Today, I had a long to-do list; tomorrow, all that’s on my list is “grade.” Now that I can scratch “Feed the blog” off today’s list, I can focus without distraction on that looming paper-pile. Like the street artist who signed his work-in-progress “Will finish on Sunday,” I know the task at hand will be done in due time.

 

Off season

Yesterday J and I made our more-or-less yearly pilgrimage to Revere Beach, where we followed our established tradition of taking the T to Wonderland, eating seafood in the shady pavilion across the street from Kelly’s Roast Beef, then walking the beach back to the bathhouse, where we catch the T for home. We take this same trip strolling this same stretch of shore every year or so, usually in the off-season, when the beach is empty save for other walkers. Revere Beach has become a place J and I go to stroll rather than swim, counting ourselves among the long-sleeve beachcombers rather than the swimsuit-clad sunbathers.

Yesterday was a bright but brisk day, so there were few waders and even fewer sunbathers at Revere Beach. Instead, there were dog-walkers, seashell-seekers, kite-flyers, cyclists, parents puttering around with kids, guys kicking soccer balls, and guys playing volleyball. It was a shorts-and-sweatshirt kind of day—perfect for walking—and the ubiquitous seagulls seemed resigned to the fact that few folks were picnicking, so they had to forage food from the surf rather than begging handouts from humans. Without the distraction of beach blankets, beach umbrellas, beach balls, and an endless ocean of beach bodies, J and I enjoyed the relative solitude of a low-tide shoreline strewn with seaweed and seashells.

If J and I were tourists visiting from afar, we might have been disappointed by a beach day that was too cold for wading, much less swimming. But since Revere Beach is an easy T-ride away, we don’t have to hope for perfect beach weather to go stroll the shore. Any day, it turns out, is a good day to walk the beach, at least if you remember to bring a sweatshirt. Any day, it turns out, is a good day to take a good long walk on the sun-kissed edge of sea and sky.

Click here for more photos from yesterday’s stroll at Revere Beach. Enjoy!

 

Sparkling pink lemonade

One surefire sign of spring in the Boston suburbs is the emergence of curbside lemonade stands: something straight out of Norman Rockwell. Earlier today, J and I drove past a couple of kids who were trying to wave down passing cars on a busy street. One of them was wearing a rainbow-colored clown wig and waving a sign, but we were driving the wrong way and traffic was too heavy for us to stop. Last week I’d seen a different set of kids selling lemonade on this same busy street, but they were lucky enough to have set up their stand before a stop sign at rush hour, so they had a captive audience. But in that case, too, I was going the wrong way and wasn’t able to stop.

When we’re exploring our neighborhood on foot, though, J and I make a point to stop at lemonade stands: how can you walk past cute kids trying to sell something? Parents in our neighborhood tend to be civic-minded, so most of the kids we’ve encountered sell lemonade to raise money for charity. Over the years, we’ve sipped lemonade to raise money for the earthquakes in Haiti, the tsunami in Japan, and endangered tigers in Asia. At each makeshift stand, I can imagine the conversation that led to its creation, with a kid asking Mom or Dad what they can do to help some horrible situation they’ve seen on TV, and Mom or Dad suggesting a lemonade stand as a worthwhile pursuit. Think globally, sell lemonade locally.

So this afternoon when J and I were out walking and saw a couple of kids selling sparkling pink lemonade to raise money for tomorrow’s Walk for Hunger, we couldn’t say no. Instead, we bought a couple cups, helped the kids met their fundraising goal, and walked on, the ice-cold pink beverage in our cups matching the bright flowering hue of the Boston suburbs in May.

 

Taking back Watertown

Last night A (not her real initial) and I met at Mount Auburn Cemetery to take a quick walk before heading to the Deluxe Town Diner in Watertown for pancakes and conversation: something we’ve done more than a few times in the past. Last night’s cemetery stroll and diner date was more than just another chance to chat over comfort food: it was an intentional act of purification. Ever since Watertown, Massachusetts made the national news a week ago for being the site of the Boston bombing manhunt, I’ve been wanting to reclaim a sleepy little city that’s just one town over from mine: a normally quiet suburb that most folks outside of Boston probably never heard of until the Tsarnaev brothers made it infamous.

Yesterday marked one week since the day-long lockdown that turned the greater Boston area into a ghost town. Lockdown Friday started with emails and recorded phone messages from the mayor telling us to stay indoors, and it ended with us watching televised coverage of people cheering in the streets after the remaining bombing suspect had been captured. In between, J and I did indeed stay inside, remaining glued to CNN and local televised news reports as we waited for some sense of closure to end a truly terrible week.

Lockdown Friday was a gorgeous spring day, which made staying inside that much more difficult; what made the day surreal was watching television coverage of places that are both nearby and familiar. Although I typically describe Mount Auburn Cemetery as being in Cambridge since that’s where the main entrance is, most of the cemetery actually lies in Watertown. To get to Mount Auburn from Cambridge, you take a Watertown bus from Harvard Square; to get to Mount Auburn from Newton, you drive down Watertown Avenue. During last week’s manhunt, local and federal law enforcement used the parking lot at the Watertown Mall as a staging area, and as I watched each televised press conference, I remembered the various times I’d parked there to buy socks, underwear, or other “essentials” at the Watertown Target.

J probably can tell you exactly how many times I said “Look, that’s the diner!” as CNN showed one of their reporters standing on Mount Auburn Street, reporting on every gunshot or dog bark she heard. (Jon Stewart on The Daily Show rightly skewered this same reporter for remarking that the streets of Watertown were eerily quiet, as if someone had dropped a bomb somewhere.) J didn’t need to be told again and again and again that the shiny silver building visible in the background was “the” diner where A and I go for pancakes after our cemetery strolls: he could clearly see that for himself. But I kept pointing it out because I couldn’t quite believe a quiet little neighborhood just one town over from ours was suddenly the site of Breaking News.

Last night A and I went walking at Mount Auburn Cemetery followed by dinner at the Deluxe Town Diner as a way of reclaiming Watertown: now that Suspect One is dead and Suspect Two has been captured, it’s time for Watertown to go back to being a sleepy little suburb about six miles outside of Boston. For the most part, Watertown seems to be returning to normal: last night, Mount Auburn was as lovely as always, and the diner was bustling with Friday night customers. The only indications that Watertown hasn’t completely returned to normal were the “Boston Strong” and “Boston We are One” slogans on MBTA bus marquees and a curious rush-hour traffic jam I experienced near the intersection of Watertown and Galen Streets. From my vantage point near the end of a long queue of cars, I could see flashing lights as several police vehicles escorted something large and white out of Watertown. Only later did I figure out I’d probably witnessed police moving the infamous boat that Suspect Number Two was captured in.

Apart from traffic delays caused by evidence removal, it felt good to return to the familiar calm of Mount Auburn Cemetery, and it felt even better to enjoy comfort food at a diner that was bustling with Friday night customers. Like other businesses in the greater Boston area, the Deluxe Town Diner lost a day’s worth of business on Lockdown Friday, so A and I made a point to leave our waitress an extra-generous tip: a small token of appreciation for a sleepy little suburb that I’m guessing is eager to return to relative obscurity.

Click here for more photos from last night’s purification trip to Mount Auburn Cemetery and the Deluxe Town Diner. Enjoy!

 

Looking up

Once spring decides to arrive in New England, it often does so in a dramatic fashion. Yesterday afternoon was warm and sunny, and today is even lovelier, with temperatures in the 70s and plenty of sun. Yesterday was Opening Day at Fenway Park, and at home we celebrated the occasion by opening our bedroom windows for the first time this year, thereby giving our indoor cats their first sniff of fresh air in months. It’s an annual ritual that’s felt long overdue.

Every spring always features a welcome series of firsts. Yesterday was the first time I wore sandals and capris, for instance, and today is the first time I wore flats rather than knee-high boots to campus. It’s funny how a simple change in shoes is enough to buoy your spirits: after spending months lumbering around in boots and a bulky coat, my body feels significantly lighter and more energetic in sandals and shirtsleeves.

The landscape itself seems lighter and more joyful, a proverbial spring in its step. At Framingham State, the magnolia behind Hemenway Hall is blooming, along with pussy willows and another kind of fuzzy-flowered tree. After waiting so long for spring to finally arrive, it seem we’ve reached the proverbial tipping point, with flowers blooming and students peeling off winter layers. It’s a welcome relief to see flowers, tree buds, and winter-pale skin after so many months of ice, snow, and thick layers of clothing. Once spring finally arrives, you can’t imagine how you ever survived so long without it.

 

The cruelest month

Already, less than a full week into it, this April has been odd. It’s unseasonably cold: although the snowdrops, crocuses, and glory-of-the-snow have already appeared, the trees haven’t begun to leaf, and I haven’t dared open the windows much less venture outside in shorts or sandals. The past few nights have been below freezing, we still have piles of snow lingering in shady spots, and the lawn looks like it’s forgotten what it means to be green.

Yesterday, the temperature soared into the 50s—not warm by usual April standards, but warmer than it has been—and at least one pair of intrepid young entrepreneurs set up the first lemonade stand of the season even though a hot chocolate stand would have been more appropriate. Spring might be a long time coming this year, but kids nevertheless will go about the business of being kids, weather anomalies notwithstanding.

Although the temperatures this week have said “March,” the angle and intensity of the sun nevertheless says “April.” In February I lamented the glaringly harsh sunlight of late winter, when white-bright light falls on nothing but gray. Now in April, the sunlight has warmed, mellowed, and yellowed, as if it were intended to fall on tender, spring-green leaf buds and blooming daffodils. In the absence of these, the golden light of an April afternoon falls instead on gilded willow twigs and the almost-blooming buds of forsythia. “Almost, almost, almost” this golden light seems to intimate; “not yet, not yet, not yet” these swelling buds respond.

This year, we’ve not been starved for light, but I do find myself craving color: anything, please, besides this dead, dull gray! “April is the cruelest month,” T.S. Eliot claimed, “breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain.” Right now in this early, odd April, I don’t dare dream of lilacs, only leaves: before we can handle pale purple blooms, let us cut our tender teeth on spring green. Right now in this early, reluctant spring, anything other than gray would be a welcome novelty.

 

Not yet

We’ve reached that time of year when I find myself compulsively checking my photos and blog posts from last year, wondering when spring will really arrive in New England. We’ve had a smattering of signs: snowdrops and crocuses, the first soaring turkey vultures and singing red-winged blackbirds. But the trees haven’t begun to sprout leaves, as they had this time last year, so the landscape is largely gray and barren. Spring is coming, slowly, but it seems to be taking its sweet time.

My body, too, is being uncooperative, last week’s chest cold becoming bronchitis. I’ve faced enough colds-become-bronchitis to know you simply have to wait until your lungs clear, your strength returns, and your ribs stop aching from frequent coughing. But in the meantime, I find myself losing patience: why can’t my body be better, now, and why can’t it also be warmer, greener, and more colorful?

If the name of the month is any indication, March should be a season of motion, the year marching and even springing forward. This year, however, March is more about waiting and lagging, both the landscape and my body reminding me that everything comes in its own due time, and no sooner. I want to be outside and walking, my body light and carefree in short-sleeves and sandals: instead, even modest walks leave me winded, a member (once again) of the walking wounded. I’ll be better—and the landscape will be greener—soon enough. In the meantime, both the earth and my body keep whispering “Not yet.”

 

Over hot beverages

A little over a week ago, I had dinner with Seon Joon, who was in Cambridge on her way to visit friends on the west coast. We went to an Eritrean restaurant in Central Square, sitting at one of the traditional woven-basket tables at the front of the restaurant, where we shared a platter of savory lentils, spinach, and curried vegetables arranged on flat injera bread. Seon Joon and I hadn’t seen each other since June, and before that, we hadn’t seen each other in seven (seven!) years. After lingering long over food and conversation, we ordered hot beverages—ginger coffee for Seon Joon, and cinnamon-spiced tea for me—and talked until we’d sated ourselves on conversation and conviviality.

On Thursday, it was Pica who was briefly in Cambridge, visiting by train from the west coast. I’d seen Pica last spring, when we’d gone on an early morning bird walk at Mount Auburn Cemetery, followed by pancakes and conversation at the Deluxe Town Diner. On Thursday, the weather was unseasonably cold, with sporadic snow showers, so instead of birding and sketching at Mount Auburn, as we’d initially planned, Pica and I met in Harvard Square, where we talked and admired her sketches over steaming cups of Burdick’s famously intense dark hot chocolate.

There’s something magical about spending time over hot beverages with an old friend. Whether it’s been a year or seven since you’ve seen one another, the time gone by seems to melt under the influence of warm caffeine. You pick up old conversations as if they’d never been interrupted, remembering the various milestones that have passed even as your friendship has remained the same. Conversations shared over hot beverages somehow feel timeless, a ritual all their own. You remember the people you were the last time you met over a warm, comforting cup, and you feel inspired to envision who the two of you might be the next time you meet up, where or whenever that might be.