Early Celebration
On Thursday, three days before Beth’s birthday, I made stuffed eggplant with vegetarian ground beef and tomato sauce for dinner because she loves eggplant and it was the last day I was choosing the menu before her birthday. She was quite appreciative of the dinner as well as the dessert, chocolate-covered pumpkin spice truffles I’d made the day before, not for her birthday per se, but more of an autumnal treat. The insides are made of crushed graham crackers mixed with pumpkin puree and they have the texture of the inside of a cake pop.
Pizza and Protest
Friday night we went to Red Hound, which is Beth’s favorite pizza place. A lot of their business is takeout and there are only three tables inside (plus some outside tables) so we were gambling an inside one would be free and the gamble paid off. We got pizza with goat cheese and all three of us got maple soft serve with caramel-apple cider sauce. They always have interesting flavors there.
Part of the reason I suggested we go to Red Hound was that it’s just a few blocks from the ongoing Free DC protest just over the DC line. People gather with pots and pans and percussion instruments every evening and make noise for five minutes. It was at eight o’clock in the summer but now it’s at seven. We got there a little early as Beth’s former colleague Sara who organizes the protest was setting up her bin of noisemakers. A thirty-something woman was telling her that she lives in the apartment building just across the street and watching the protest has become part of her six-month-old baby’s bedtime routine.
Indeed, once it had started, I looked up and she was at the window holding the baby and waving. Beth said it will be a fun story to tell him when he’s older and wants to know what life was like during that perilous time during his infancy when the country was teetering on the edge of dictatorship. In Beth’s version of this scenario democracy is saved.
We’d brought instruments with us since Noah still has some from his days playing percussion in middle and high school band. Beth took the tambourine and he had a cowbell. We’d only brought those two, so I picked a maraca from the bin and at seven sharp we all started to play. Pedestrians and people in passing cars honked or shouted encouragement. A Metro bus driver also honked in support. A man in front of the CVS across the street did a little dance and yelled, “You guys are the greatest.”
There were eight people there, counting us, and I knew two of the other five, Sara of course, and Jim from my book club. Jim told Noah to be careful hanging out with “this troublemaker,” gesturing to me. Sara, who has been doing this almost every night since August, says it still cheers her up every time. It was only my third time attending, but I am inspired to go again some time.
A Very Nice Birthday
On Beth’s birthday we had our usual Sunday morning video call with North, but it was somewhat unusual because we sang “Happy Birthday” and Beth opened her presents on camera. I got her Alison Bechdel’s Spent and some orange chocolates she likes. The kids got her two different graters (a garlic grater and a micro plane grater) that had been on her wish list. She also opened a pile of dark chocolate bars from my mom.
After lunch, we sang “Happy Birthday” again and had the cake I’d made the day before—dark chocolate with coffee frosting. It’s the cake I make most often for Beth’s birthday and I need to read the recipe through a patina of brown cocoa powder spills.
Noah left for his weekly board game group in Rockville, and Beth and I went for a walk in Brookside Gardens and Wheaton Regional Park (these parks are adjacent and you can easily cross from one to the other). We spent most of the hour-long walk on a series of interconnected wooded trails. We were usually alone but every so often we’d cross paths with other people, dogs, and horses. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing at home.
We had Burmese takeout for dinner and Noah came home early from his games to eat with us. (He’s usually out until after we’ve gone to bed.) We ordered a feast that lasted for days afterward, but the most popular dish (based on order of disappearance) was the eggplant fritters. After dinner we had more cake and watched a couple episodes of Man on the Inside. Beth declared it had been “a very nice birthday.”
Afterward
By Monday it was already time to start thinking about the next holiday. That afternoon, Noah chopped up onions, celery, and mushrooms for Thanksgiving gravy and stuffing at the dining room table. While he was doing that, I was chopping vegetables (including some of the same ones) in the kitchen for the soup we were having for dinner that night. This felt like a kind of cheering, festive parallel play. And that night Beth used the mushrooms and some of the onions to make gravy.
But even though we had turned our attention to Thanksgiving, her birthday wasn’t quite over. On Tuesday she got a card from her brother and a present from my sister (reusable cloth produce bags she’d requested) in the mail.
But the most exciting thing that happened on Tuesday was that North came home. Their flight from Cleveland was delayed, so we didn’t even leave the house to drive to National until ten p.m., a time we are normally in bed. Beth had thought traffic would be light by that time of night and it was until we got close to the airport, where there was quite the backup of cars. Turns out a lot of people are flying or picking people up from the airport two nights before Thanksgiving. It was almost midnight by the time we got home, but Noah and the cats were all up so North got to be reunited with the whole family. And the next morning, we left for the beach.
More on those adventures soon…
Postscript, 11/28
I wondered after posting if it was the wrong day to post a picture of us with Free DC signs, but I do still want the troops out of my occupied city. This is what my friend and former GW colleague Randi had to say about the two soldiers who were tragically shot: