About Steph

Your author, part-time, work-at-home writer.

Still Cute, Just Bigger

Posted on March 18, 2025 by Steph

A couple months ago I was on my walk, and I saw a real estate sign in front of a house that was getting an addition. It said, “Still Cute, Just Bigger.” It made me think of the kittens. They are undeniably bigger. Willow, who was just two pounds when we got them in late May now weighs almost ten pounds, and Walter, who weighed two and a half pounds, now tips the scales at twelve and a half pounds. And I can say with complete objectivity that they are still cute.

Games

But they are no longer kittens. They turned one on Monday (if the date the shelter gave us was accurate and not an estimate). Because they do not need any more toys, for their birthday I decided to give them the experience each one wants most.

For Walter, that’s to go outside. He is always trying (and often succeeding at) running out the door when anyone opens it, but we are trying to keep him an inside cat for his own health and so he doesn’t catch birds. When I’m doing yardwork, I often glance back at the house and see him watching me wistfully from the window and he will sit by the door and meow, hoping we will let him out. We had a similar situation when Xander was young, and we eventually gave in and let him come and go as he pleased. (He was never much interested in hunting anyway. Matthew, who was more of a homebody, was the mouser in that pair.)

I took Walter with me when I went out to hang laundry on the line Monday morning and then when I was done, I sat on the back steps with toast and a cup of tea and kept an eye on him. He went all over our big back yard, watched birds in the sky and chased a bug in the grass. He crawled under the kids’ old wagon, sniffed the daffodils, and explored the weedy area at the very back of the yard. I had to go join him then because it turns out his black-on-brown stripes are good camouflage in March-brown vegetation, and I wanted to make sure he didn’t try to slip under the fence and escape the yard. He was outside for twenty-five minutes with me and then in the afternoon, Noah took him out again.

Willow doesn’t care to go outside, but what she loves most is the elusive red dot of the laser pointer. She loves it so much we don’t let her play with it very often because if we do it too often, she becomes obsessed and doesn’t want to play with anything else. North has also speculated that spending so much time chasing something she can’t catch cannot be good for her mental health. But I got out the laser pointer that morning and then again in the afternoon for about five minutes each time. If she plays with it longer than that she will wear herself out and she starts to pant with exhaustion. Walter likes the red dot, too, (though he seems equally happy with other playthings, like the worm-on-a-string or the mouse-on-a-string), so he joined in with her. They both like to dash after the dot if it’s on the floor, but Willow also likes to leap up in pursuit of it, if it’s on the wall. She particularly likes it in corners of rooms and will stand there sometimes, hoping for it to appear. She did that a few times the day after their birthday, but not for as long as I’d feared she would.

Names

When we named the kittens, I gave them middle names after Matthew and Xander—Walter Matthias and Willow Alexandra, but as they grew, I started to think I’d gotten it backwards. Of course, no cat is exactly like any other, but Walter’s sweet, friendly nature paired with his intense desire to go outside reminds me of Xander and Willow’s more high-strung temperament and her deep suspicion of any strangers who come in the house (though she is very affectionate with us) is more reminiscent of Matthew. So, this is my official announcement—they are now Walter Alexander and Willow Matilda.

These are deeply upsetting times, but whether these two are chasing images on the television screen or upsetting the paper recycling bin and scattering its contents all the way down the hall or curling up to sleep in our laps, they brighten every single day. I am looking forward to many more years with them.

Shame

I sometimes think one of the nicest things about being a cat might be not knowing anything about the political state of our country. But we know, so we keep going to protests. Beth went to a general purpose one on the lawn on the Capitol about a week ago and all three of us went to protest at Tesla dealership in Rockville last Saturday morning. It’s a weekly event if you’re local and want to go. (If you’re not local, there may be something similar near you. They are happening all over.)

Three hundred and seventy-two people were there toward the end, when one of the organizers did a head count. Because everyone was standing on the sidewalk berm on both sides of Rockville Pike, we must have been easy to count. We stood facing the six-lane street with our signs—my favorite was “OMG GOP WTF”—rang cowbells and occasionally chanted. “Hey hey, ho ho, Elon Musk has got to go” was the only one that ever caught on. Response from drivers was very encouraging. There were near constant honks of support from cars, and delivery trucks, and even a Metro bus. People waved and stuck their raised fists out their car windows and yelled in agreement. In the not quite an hour we were there, I only saw one thumbs down, and Beth saw one person give us the finger. (Some of the people yelling their support were even driving Teslas.) It was quite heartening and as a bonus, one of the protesters was handing out homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Afterward we had lunch at Busboys and Poets, which was a nice treat. Like cats, people need those too.

Five Years Out: Coronavirus Chronicles, Part 84

Posted on March 16, 2025 by Steph

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Five years out, what is covid now?

Something We Catch

Well, it’s an illness people still get. Our last brush with covid as family was last March when Noah and I both got it. It was my second time and his first. Then in August, Beth and I somehow dodged it, despite being at a family reunion where there was an outbreak. (And other people, including more famous people, got it as well.)

4/2/2024

But we didn’t take this delightful-sounding outing. Remember how I said only two posts ago that I might not write about covid again? Silly me. Noah had started to feel mildly ill on Sunday, the day after North’s birthday, and I did, too, a day after that. I had a sore throat and some congestion. I might have had a slight fever on Tuesday—I don’t know because I didn’t take my temperature. The worst day was Wednesday, mainly because of intense fatigue. But I tested negative for covid Wednesday morning. We went ahead and went to family therapy, and when we mentioned both Noah and I had upper respiratory symptoms, the therapist immediately sent us home (per office policy, which we didn’t remember from our intake paperwork). I was already starting to feel better by Thursday.

On Friday morning, shortly before we were going to leave for St. Michael’s, North said if we were going to eat in an indoor restaurant, Noah should really test for covid, so he did… and he was positive. I followed suit and I was positive, too. Beth and North were negative. By this point, none of us was feeling very sick, but we decided to ditch the St. Michael’s trip and take our germs somewhere that was likely to be less crowded…

Over the next several days, we didn’t strictly isolate, but we tried to stay away from each other more than usual. Well, not all of us. Noah and I hung out in his room reading and we cooked a stir-fry together on Saturday, since we couldn’t infect each other. Also, as Beth and I were sharing a bedroom and breathing the same air all night long, I wasn’t that careful around her either. But we opened windows for air circulation and ate in separate rooms or outside. We masked on the occasions when all four of us came together to watch tv or to dye Easter eggs in the back yard.

7/23/2024

President Biden was in Rehoboth at the same time we were, recovering from covid and contemplating his political future. It makes me a little sad to think about that.

8/13/2024

We learned soon after waking that Jenny had tested positive for covid. That was sad because she’d have to stay at home for the rest of the reunion (she lives in town) and she really likes organizing activities…

The next morning, we found out another member of our party had covid. This time it was Gina, who’s the sister of Aine, Sean’s ex-wife. Gina had traveled from Ireland and couldn’t go home, so a couple people who were staying at the cabin decamped for Carole’s house so bedrooms could be re-arranged to allow Gina her own room where she would isolate. I did wonder at this point if a sing-along in a group of covid-exposed people had been the best idea, even in a spacious, high-ceilinged room, but what was done was done. From then on, I started spending a lot of time outside or in our room. I didn’t avoid other people completely— after all, seeing people is the point of a reunion—but I did try to avoid large groups inside and ate most of my meals outside…

As I was falling asleep, I noticed my throat was sore, but I was too sleepy to get up and take a covid test. I took a test on waking—negative…

We got back to the cabin and headed to the pool for a quick, last swim. We ran into Michael and Orla and their girls there and learned that Marjorie was the latest of us to fall ill with covid. I was mentally crossing my fingers that we could escape infection in day and a half we had left in Wheeling…

On Wednesday, four days after we got home, we learned that Carole and Santino both had covid, bringing the total to five attendees of the reunion.

Something to Prevent

Admittedly, we were not as cautious as we could have been at that reunion, but we do take steps to prevent covid or to make sure we don’t spread it, by testing when we feel ill, or in North’s case, by continuing to mask.

10/29/2024

In a less recreational but important errand, Beth, North, and I all got flu and covid shots on Thursday morning.

1/6/2025

The first two days we were home from the beach North was wiped out by a cold—they tested for covid, and it was negative—and they spent those days mostly in bed.

North is the only one of us who still masks regularly. We all masked at the performance of Deficiency last month because it was required, but it was the first time I’d worn a mask in many months. When we were coming home from some protest or another recently and the Metro was packed, Beth said we probably should have masked, but it’s just not something we think to do anymore.

Something to Remember

Covid has shaped our memories of the past half decade. It’s impossible to look back without considering its impact.

4/10/2024

That drove home how little of North’s time in high school is left (six and a half weeks because the seniors get out three weeks before everyone else). It started with covid and virtual school, and if you’ve been reading here a while you know all the twists and turns there have been along the way.

6/9/2024

Beth predicted ahead of time that covid would feature prominently in the speeches since this class had their first year of high school almost completely online. The principal spoke about that and about how their first year was his first year as principal of the school, and how it took a while for him to get to know their class. The student speaker quoted the song “Life is a Highway” and used it as a metaphor for their trip through their high school years, from the online ninth grade year through the masks, distancing, and limited extracurriculars of their sophomore year to the more open last two years.

7/9/2024

Noah and I went to Takoma’s Fourth of July parade. We used to go almost every year, but between covid cancellations (2020 and 2021) and travels (2022 and 2023) we haven’t been since 2019.

9/27/2024

We’ve been going to this music festival since Noah was a toddler, and we’ve been almost every year it’s been held since then, rain or shine. In fact, it was rainy the past two years (and cancelled for covid the two years before that) so we all appreciated that the weather was perfect—sunny, in the mid-seventies, and not a trace of humidity.

11/29/2024

Beth’s mom asked us to recount our most memorable Thanksgivings… Beth mentioned that she had a gallbladder attack, and we’ve had lice and covid on or very near Thanksgiving.

Something That Changed Us

Covid has also changed our rituals and the daily rhythm of our lives in big and small ways. First, it altered one of our yearly traditions.

10/29/2024

We have been going to the same farm stand since before the kids were born because it’s owned by the family of a friend of ours from college. Over the years we’ve added required stops to the itinerary—we’ve been eating dinner at the same restaurant since 2016 and we added two different parks during covid when we were all looking for outdoor activities. One is for strolling before dinner and the other is for eating dinner at the picnic tables.

I know I watch a lot more tv than I did pre-covid. I used to hardly watch it at all, and now I do almost every night. I always have several different shows going in combination with different family members. This has been fun, and I enjoy the family (or mother-child or couple) togetherness, but recently I’ve been wondering if I should cut back a little so I can read more.

Also, in terms of daily routines, Beth and I are both religious about taking a walk every day. I think she started in the summer or fall of 2020. I was already in the habit of a daily walk before covid hit, but it got longer (and then longer still when I was diagnosed with diabetes in the late summer of 2021). What had been a fifteen-minute stroll to make sure I got out of the house every day gradually stretched to about an hour. It’s something I enjoy and on days when it’s hard to get a walk in (because we’re traveling or something) I feel antsy not moving as much.

Beth also took up kayaking in the spring of 2021 and it’s become a hobby she really enjoys. She’s waiting for this year’s kayaking season to begin so she can try out her new fold-up kayak.

Probably the biggest change in our day-to-day life is that Beth and most of her co-workers still work remotely most of the time. She goes into the office roughly once a week these days, though it varies from week to week. This past week she went in two days in a row, and it felt strange not to have her in the house, which is funny because in the early days of covid, I had a lot of trouble adjusting to not having the house to myself five days a week while everyone else was at work or school. I don’t even want that anymore.

What is covid for you these days?

Protests and Dentists

Posted on March 9, 2025 by Steph

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I recently sent my sister an email with the subject line “my life is all protests and dentists.” It’s true. A little over a month ago, I wrote here that there were fewer protests to attend than in the first Trump administration. This is no longer true. It took a little while to ramp up, but now there are many more than last time. I can’t go to all that I’d like to and hold down even my part-time, flexible job. In the email above, I was giving Sara a heads-up about which days I’d be unavailable to work because I’d be trying to save democracy or my teeth. After the root canal in late February, I lost a crown, and between those two issues, I’ve had five visits to a dentist or endodontist this year so far. I haven’t kept track of Beth’s dentist visits this year, but she’s on her own dental journey, which is eventually going to lead to a bridge. She has an appointment for that next week.

Dentist Visits #3-4

I had the root canal on President’s Day, after two consultations (one with my regular dentist and one with the endodontist who performed the procedure). That same day Beth went to one of the Not My President rallies that took place all over the country. Maybe some of you, did, too. I know my West coast family members were at the one in Sacramento.

Because the endodontist drilled through a crown to do the root canal, I needed to go to my regular dentist to get a permanent filling in the crown four days later. The most notable thing about the actual procedure was that because all the nerves had been removed from that tooth, she didn’t use any anesthesia when she drilled into it to remove the temporary filling. And it was fine. Just as she assured me, I didn’t feel anything. But it was kind of terrifying anyway, to let someone drill into your tooth with no painkiller. So, I’m telling you this in case you ever need to do it. It’s fine, really.

J6 Rally

Here’s something that’s not fine. My dentist is on Capitol Hill, and you may remember the last time I went, the day after the inauguration (for dentist visit #1), the neighborhood was swarming with people in MAGA gear. This time, as I walked by the Supreme Court, I could see a group of people on the Capitol lawn. They were chanting something, but it was across the street, and they were too far away for me to hear them. They didn’t seem to have any signs either. I didn’t have time to stop to investigate, but I decided I would on the way back if they were still there in case it was a protest I’d like to join. But once I returned, they were gone. I didn’t find out until two days later that it was the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, celebrating the pardons of the J6 insurrectionists. It made me feel a little sick I’d been so close to them.

Post Office and Health and Human Services Rallies

The last Monday in February, Beth and I went to a rally in support of the post office with a few of her colleagues. It seems incredible we need to protest for the post office, but that’s where we are. This protest was held in a little park just across from the Capitol, in front of the Robert A. Taft Memorial. In case you’re wondering—who was Robert A. Taft?—I didn’t know either. Turns out, he was the Majority Leader of the Senate in the fifties and before that, as a Senator, was part of coalition that blocked a lot of New Deal legislation, so maybe not the most inspiring place for a labor-related action. It’s a pretty little park, though. Anyway, it was mostly people from various postal unions there, and the President of Beth’s union spoke. The sound system was terrible, so I didn’t hear most of the speeches, but President Cummings projected well, so I could hear him speak about the importance of the post office continuing to exist and remaining unionized.

The next day, Beth went to a rally for Health and Human Services. In the words of a family friend who attended and posted pictures to Facebook, this one featured “Scientists, researchers, educators and union leaders speaking out against illegal cuts to life-saving research and healthcare.”

Trans Passport Webinar

Two days later, Beth and I watched a webinar run by Lambda Legal about passports for trans people. To make a long story short, we missed our window of opportunity to get North’s passport renewed with an X gender marker last summer. That is not possible now, even though current passports with the X marker are still valid (for now). There’s an ACLU lawsuit in progress which could restore the X marker option. So, it seems like the best thing is to wait and see how it shakes out since North doesn’t have any imminent international travel. They are hoping to study abroad at some point in college, though—possibly in Italy, possibly in Ireland—so it will be relevant sometime in the next few years.

Trans Unity Rally and March

The first Saturday in March, Beth, Noah, and I all went to a rally in support of trans people. We weren’t sure what to expect, as it was kind of hastily put together, but there was a decent turnout (big enough so we never saw two lesbian moms with a trans kid we know who were there). And the sound system worked, so we could hear the speeches. It was a long event, five hours, and we didn’t think we needed to be there that long, so we arrived what we thought would be a couple hours into it, but I heard from someone in line for the porta-potty that it had started an hour late because of problems with…the sound system. Resistance problems…

Even though they had to compress their schedule, the speeches were longer than they generally are at this kind of event, but most of them were heartfelt, moving, and to the point. There were many rainbow and trans flags. Someone was carrying the Virginia state flag, I guess to represent their home state, and I also saw the Ukrainian flag (it was the day after that shameful meeting with Zelensky at the White House). There were a lot of hand-lettered signs. I re-used my “Defend Trans Futures” sign from the trans youth rally and Beth had made one that read “Defend Trans Rights.” I liked “Freedom Has No Gender” and “Fight Like a Mother for Trans Rights,” held presumably by the mother of a trans person. Someone was dressed like the Statue of Liberty, complete with a torch she kept having to re-light because the wind kept blowing it out. A lot of people were in rainbow or pastel blue-and-pink garb and several people had hair dyed in the colors of the trans flag. I must report, sadly, that the two trans rallies we’ve attended have also been the only two without any Democratic elected officials at them.

Eventually, we marched down Constitution Avenue to a field within (distant) view of the roof of the White House. I liked marching because it was good to be in movement after standing so long and we encountered a lot more pedestrians, some of whom looked curious, and some of whom cheered us on. I didn’t see any negative reactions. I think there might have been more speeches, but we were tired and hungry, so we left and went to Union Station for a late lunch of crepes and ice cream.

Trans Parents and Allies Zoom Meeting

The next Monday there was a Zoom meeting for parents and allies of trans people in the DC area. The group was small, just over a dozen people, mostly mothers of trans teens and young adults. Several had been at the rally and march. It wasn’t clear what the focus of the group will be—it was more of a introductions and brainstorming session, but we’ll see what comes of it. There’s another meeting in a couple weeks.

NLRB Rally/Dentist Visit #5

On Wednesday, Beth went to a rally outside a courthouse in support of Gynne Wilcox, a senior member of the National Labor Relations Board who was fired and was suing for her job back. She won. You can see Beth several times in this local news footage of the rally. She’s in a red hoodie standing in the second row back.

That same day, I went to the dentist to have my crown re-attached. I was worried beforehand that they would not be able to get it back on because the gum around it had gotten swollen in the five days since it popped off. (I lost the crown to some pecan toffee brownies Noah made. My mom asked me if it was worth it and I said, maybe, if it was about to come off anyway. They were really good brownies.)

It was a pleasantly uneventful visit, other than getting soaking wet from my mid-thighs down on my walk from the Metro and back due to driving rain—my umbrella and rain jacket could do only so much. But more importantly, the dentist got the crown back on with no problem and I did not encounter anyone in MAGA gear or any identifiable Proud Boys or Oath Keepers. Even so, walking through the streets of Capitol Hill doesn’t feel the same. I look at all the federal buildings I used to think of as a pretty backdrop and think about what’s going on inside. I see all the professionally dressed people coming in and out of them and wonder what they’re up to, whether they are tearing down the government or desperately trying to shore it up.

Standup for Science/NIH Rally

Because I write about nutrition and health for a living, Stand Up for Science rally was very tempting. I regularly use sources from the CDC, EPA, NIH, and other government websites. Some of you may also remember that from the spring of 2019 until the winter of 2021, I had a side gig working for a small organization that subcontracted to write reports and made infographics for the EPA. I was working on documents about water quality in the Great Lakes.

On Tuesday I learned that the group lost its contract with the EPA, after twelve years. Mike, my former boss (and North’s former basketball coach), was given just hours notice to turn over all his and his employees’ work in progress. The EPA was his main client, his wife is a public middle school teacher, and they have a kid at DePaul. The human cost—both to the public losing the benefit of accurate and accessible information about the environment, and to the skilled and dedicated people doing the work—is enormous and infuriating.

However, despite all this, Stand Up for Science was four hours long, on a workday, and being held at the Lincoln Memorial, which is not very close to a Metro stop. So, with some regret, we decided to go to the NIH rally the following day instead as our way to stand up for science. NIH is important to me because, aside from the lifesaving research it funds, it publishes PubMed, a research database without which my work would be much more difficult. I worry about studies being censored from the site.

So, I stayed home Friday, worked, looked at my friends’ Facebook pictures of probably thousands of people at the Lincoln Memorial, and wrote get-out-the-vote postcards for Josh Weil. That night Beth, Noah, and I went out for pizza and then to see a local ska band play at the community center because life can’t be all protests and dentists. We need a little fun.

Saturday morning Beth and I drove to the Metro Stop right before Medical Center (because there’s no parking there) and then took the Metro to NIH. This stop lets you out just steps from one of NIH’s many buildings. Because there was a narrow space between the Metro escalator and the building and because there were hundreds of people there, we were really packed in there, with some people standing to the sides of the Metro exit or sitting on top of the bike lockers. My favorite sign was one I didn’t photograph, “Girls Just Want Funding for Scientific Research,” held by an elementary school-aged girl. I wondered if she had an unusual familiarity with 80s pop music or her parents helped word the sign. She’d adorned it with anthropomorphic hearts. My sign said “Science Saves Lives. Save Science,” while Beth’s said, “Fund Healthcare, Not Billionaires.” I found the one with a Pete Buttigieg quote: “You Are Not Powerless And He is Not Unstoppable” bolstering.

The sound system wasn’t great. I didn’t hear much that our county or state-level representatives said, but the union leader was more audible. “Unions know how to yell,” Beth told me. Another person who knows how to project is our Congressional representative Jamie Raskin, and as usual when he shows up at this kind of thing—he said it was his eleventh rally of this administration—people lose their minds and chant his name. Our Senator Chris Van Hollen was there, too, and we heard from people who work at NIH and the wife of someone who participated in a clinical trial there. It lasted about an hour and a half, which is a good length for this sort of thing. We left the rally for a long series of errands and then a late lunch at MOM’s Organic Market.

I’m thinking of sitting out protests this week at least until next weekend because my sister and her family are going on a two-week trip to China to see the area where Lily-Mei was born, and I think it could be useful for me to be available at short notice to finish up projects before they leave.

I am going to give the last word to my friend Megan, whose husband works at the Department of Justice. She posted this on Facebook on Thursday:

Hi friends! Just checking in from Our Nation’s Capital, where every day a friend or neighbor of mine is watching their life’s work being destroyed, breaking down in sobs, being taunted and belittled at work to the point of needing sick leave, just being indiscriminately fired altogether, or feeling the stress and strain of trying to stay afloat amidst the chaos and void. It’s REALLY REALLY bad, and if you personally have not felt the ripple effects yet, well, it’s coming for you. Maybe you’ll even remember this post on the day you find yourself saying “Oh no… I didn’t realize THIS would happen…” (when your Social Security or tax refund check doesn’t arrive? When you visit a national park and find overflowing toilets and trash bins? When you are stunned to see how much your groceries cost?) I am asking you to please call your congressional representatives and tell them to grow a damn backbone. https://5calls.org is a good tool. Government reform is one thing. This is vandalism.

The Three Rs: Four Rallies, A Road Trip, and a Little Romance

Posted on February 16, 2025 by Steph

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The first half of February was crazy busy. In different combinations, the three of us went to four protests, all of us took a road trip to Oberlin to see North perform in a play, and we celebrated Valentine’s Day. Settle in, this is a long one.

Rallies 1 and 2: Treasury and Department of Labor

The first Tuesday in February, Beth, Noah, and I all went to a protest outside the Treasury Department. That was when Musk and his youthful minions were rummaging around your personal financial information at that department. It was a much bigger rally than the one outside the White House the week before. I’m no good at estimating crowd sizes, but it filled the street and sidewalks for a long block in front of the Treasury Building and we were packed in tightly. I later learned a lot of people I know were there, but I didn’t see them at the time.

A lot of members of Congress spoke, but I couldn’t always hear the introductions. You could tell when Representative Jamie Raskin and Senator Elizabeth Warren were about to speak, though, because people chanted their names enthusiastically. I thought the best line was about the government being run by a “billionaire boy band,” but I’m not sure who said it, possibly Senator Chris Van Hollen, which was interesting because I don’t think of him as a wit.

There were a lot of American flags in the crowd. This has been true at nearly every protest so far. I like the idea of not ceding symbols of patriotism to the right. We could see workers inside the building, watching us from various windows. A woman near me gave them the finger emphatically and repeatedly, and I wished she hadn’t because there are still career civil servants who haven’t been fired yet working there and who knows what they were thinking? In fact, at one point, a woman in the window waved at the crowd.

The next day Beth went to another protest at the Department of Labor. I couldn’t make that one, as I had a work deadline, or I thought I couldn’t. The FAQs I was writing for a supplement company didn’t take as long as I thought they would, but by the time I knew that it was too late.

Where it Stands: A federal judge has blocked DOGE access at Treasury and then extended the block, but another judge allowed access at Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Road Trip: Friday

Two days later, on the first Friday in February, Beth, Noah, and I drove to Oberlin for a quick weekend trip. The play North had been rehearsing all Winter Term was being performed that weekend—five shows from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. We had tickets for the Saturday evening performance. And because North would be also performing at a matinee that afternoon, they encouraged us to go see another play, one they’d auditioned for and could not attend because it had the exact same performance schedule as theirs. So, the plan was to drive up Friday, see the two plays Saturday, visit with North during the little slices of time they had between performances, and to drive back on Sunday.

It took us nine hours to drive to Oberlin, with frequent stops, including one for lunch at a very nice vegetarian-friendly restaurant in Bedford, Pennsylvania, which we hope to visit again. Early in the drive we listened to music, jazz I think, and talked about the sad state of our country, just long enough to get it out of our systems before we switched over to vacation mode. We listened to podcasts for the rest of the drive, alternating between Let’s Make A Sci Fi, which is about three writers collaborating on a science fiction television series pilot, and two different podcasts about Severance, which the three of us are watching together. These were good, diverting choices, if you have a road trip coming up and they sound up your alley.

There weren’t a lot of Trump signs in Western Maryland, even though that part of the state did go for him, or in Ohio, which also did, but Western Pennsylvania was awash in them, both billboards and yard signs. (Last week I ran into my friend Becky, who was about to take a trip to her hometown in North Carolina, and she and I talked about how it’s in some ways a relief to drive away from the D.C. area where the horrors are taking place and in some ways it’s not, because, depending on your route, you may see ample evidence that people voted for those horrors, whereas in D.C. and its suburbs, few people did.)

We arrived in Oberlin about six-thirty, which was after North’s call time, so we didn’t see them that night. We got pizza from Lorenzo’s, the only restaurant in Oberlin from Beth’s and my era that’s still open, and we ate in our rental house and watched Severance. It was the fourth episode, the very dramatic one that takes place at the company’s outdoor retreat.

Road Trip: Saturday

We met North for breakfast at the Feve, which is famous for its pancakes. I’d eaten an egg and some vegetarian sausage at the house, so I took a risk on a chocolate-strawberry pancake. It was huge and my blood sugar went a bit higher than I would have liked, but we were on vacation.

At the table, we presented North with two tote bags, full of gifts—dried mango, white chocolate-strawberry truffles (an early Valentine’s present), and Valentines from all of us and the cats—plus several boxes of tea we were donating to Keep after a cabinet re-organization Noah recently undertook. I think they were most excited about the mango. They ate nearly the whole bag over the course of the day. We also had two slices of anniversary cake we’d frozen for them, but we didn’t give them those until later.

We stopped at the mail room to get some medications that had arrived and then took them back to the house to hang out until their call-time. They ate leftover cheesy garlic bread and some apple. After we dropped them off at the student union, where the play was being performed, Beth and I went to find a bouquet for them. There was a gift shop downtown that sold flowers, and we got them six purple roses.

We had leftover pizza for lunch, and we read (me and Noah) and worked (Beth), and I took a walk down a bike path in the neighborhood where Beth had walked before breakfast and recommended. There were woods, a park, and houses’ back yards on either side, and it was a pleasant place to walk.

Later that afternoon we went to see Wolf Play, which won a prize (confusingly called an Obie) for off-Broadway performances in 2023. It’s about a lesbian couple who informally adopt a six-year-old Korean boy whose first set of adoptive parents relinquish him and then there’s a custody battle when the first adoptive couple splits, and the father decides he wants the boy back. The boy believes he is a wolf (or maybe just pretends to be) and is played by an adult actor who is manipulating a child-sized puppet and who speaks both his thoughts and his words. It was very well done.

We re-united with North after their performance. Beth picked them up and they got a noodle bowl at the student union, which they ate at the house, along with more mango. After we dropped them off at the student union, we got takeout Middle Eastern food for dinner and ate it before going to see North’s play.

Deficiency was student written and this was its debut. It’s about three brothers (two in high school and one in college) who are at their alcoholic father’s house for spring break. Unbeknownst to each other, all the brothers are all taking testosterone for different reasons and there is confusion and conflict when a package containing some arrives from their mother’s house. North was playing the middle brother, a trans boy, and their performance was comic, serious, and tender in turn. It was wonderful to see them on stage and in a more substantial role than they’ve had for a long time.

Road Trip: Sunday

There was snow and an ice storm overnight and Sunday morning freezing rain was falling and it was extremely slippery outside. We had breakfast, packed up the house, and then I went for a rather treacherous and much shorter walk down the same path where I’d walked the day before. We picked North up at Keep and dropped off the cake. The Christmas tree was still up in the lounge. I was charmed by paper snowflakes in the windows surrounding a “Free Palestine” sign, I think because it made me think about what it’s like to be in college, close enough to your childhood to make paper snowflakes, but old enough to be politically engaged.

We went to Slow Train, which is North’s favorite place to get coffee in Oberlin, to get coffee, hot chocolate, and pastries (I got a spinach-cheese croissant). We lingered because it was hard to leave after such a short and fragmented visit, but eventually we said our goodbyes and dropped North off at Keep just in time for a lunch cooking shift before their last show, and hit the road.

The trip back was a little faster partly because we had lunch at a Noodles & Company, with a stop at The Milkshake Factory, instead of a sit-down restaurant. We listened to the same podcasts as on the way out, and got home around dinner time, so we picked up Indian to take home.

Rallies 3 and 4: Capitol and D.C. Attorney General’s Office

Two days after we got back, there was a rally in front of the Capitol, organized by the American Federation of Government Employees, which was holding its annual conference in D.C., so the focus of this one was to support federal employees. I met Beth at her office and walked down to the Capitol with about a dozen of her co-workers. As at Treasury, there were a lot of speeches by members of Congress (including both our senators) and a lot of American flags. I was given a small one, which I put in the buttonhole of my coat, along with a button that said, “Public Workers Work for Me!”

Where it Stands: Mass layoffs are in progress.

That week I was writing a one-thousand-word article on arnica, due Thursday afternoon, so I thought the AFGE rally would be my only outing into the city, but on Thursday morning around 9:20, Beth texted me to say there was a rally in support of trans youth at noon. Sara had already told me that if I really needed more time, I could send the article to her Friday morning and just I couldn’t skip that one, so I decided to go.

The rally was to urge the D.C. Attorney General to direct hospitals in the city not to deny gender-affirming care to trans youth. States attorneys general and hospitals across the country that provide this kind of care have had different interpretations of the executive order and different responses. In short, it’s not clear if it’s binding or even legal.

Disappointingly, Children’s National Medical Center, where North has received care, decided to stop prescribing puberty blockers and hormones (they never did surgeries on minors) but to continue with psychological and psychiatric care. Since appointments with a psychiatrist are the only kind of gender-related care North currently receives there, they are not directly affected, but it hits close to home anyway. (For a while, they were taking birth control to suppress their period, partly for dysphoria reasons, but there were other medical reasons, so it’s unclear if they still had the prescription if it would have been cut off, but it’s possible it would have been if the words “gender” or “dysphoria” were anywhere in the paperwork.)

I met Beth at her office, and we walked to the A.G.’s office. This was a smaller protest, because it’s a niche issue, compared to some of the others, but it was quite spirited. There were speakers (the mother of a trans girl, someone from an organization that works with trans youth, a doctor from George Washington Hospital who provides trans health care and who threw some shade at Children’s, etc.). Between speeches, we marched in a picket-style oval in front of the building and chanted. “A.G. Schwalb, do your job!” was the most common one. A reporter from the Washington Post talked to Beth and me, but I didn’t get the impression she was going to quote us because we don’t have a kid who is currently being denied care. Anyway, she didn’t take our names.

The rally got started late and Beth had to leave about a half hour after it did, but I stuck around for another forty minutes or so. Someone else who had to leave gave me her hand-painted “Protect Trans Futures” sign, which I decided to keep, as I may need it again. As always, a lot of people had homemade signs. I thought “Trans Kids Deserve to Be Trans Adults” was the most moving. I also liked the one that said, “Trans Rights. Trans Joy. All Day. Every Day” with what looked like blue and pink conversation hearts in the background. I thought that was a nice, seasonal touch.

Where It Stands: A federal judge has temporarily blocked the order restricting gender-affirming care for trans youth. And then another one did the same thing.

It’s important to note, there are losses in this round-up, but there are also wins. If you are going to protests or calling your representatives or giving money to organizations fighting for our democracy, please keep it up. It can feel overwhelming and hopeless at times, but I am trying hard to believe that it’s not.

Romance

Life does go on, outside politics. Our Valentine’s Day was low-key, but we did celebrate. Noah made a chocolate banana bread, with vertical slices of banana baked into the top. The banana strips were pleasingly sweet and chewy. Meanwhile, I fashioned our regular Friday night pizza into a rough heart shape, and we exchanged small gifts, all food. Beth got me a very thoughtful little bag of diabetes-friendly treats—some single-serve nut butters (walnut and pecan), an unsweetened raspberry-cashew dark chocolate bar, and some tiny paleo pies (lemon and key lime with coconut-nut crusts). Noah got dark chocolate caramel hearts, and Beth got dark chocolate hearts and dark chocolate-covered orange peel sticks.

I picked up that last item at a fancy chocolate store in Union Station on the way home from the AFSGE rally. Even as we are focused on justice, we can’t forget to take time for our little joys along the way.

Enough to Start

Posted on February 3, 2025 by Steph

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Where did we leave off? It was nine days before the inauguration, and I was wondering if there was any chance that my marriage could be legally undone during the next four years. Well, about a week ago, the Idaho state House petitioned the Supreme Court to reconsider Obergefell v. Hodges, so that’s on the table now. This doesn’t seem to be where the administration’s immediate attention lies, however. It’s more interested in firing as many federal employees as possible, giving Elon Musk access to your personal financial information, persecuting trans people and immigrants, and starting trade wars. (Sorry, Canadian friends!). This isn’t to say it won’t get around to it eventually. After all, it’s only been two weeks.

Meanwhile, as of several days ago, you can’t get a passport with an X (non-binary) gender marker anymore. This directly affects North because they need to renew their passport. It may be complicated to get a passport at all now because their Maryland state identification and their reissued birth certificate both have an X marker, and according to what North’s heard, it might be necessary to change one or both back to F to proceed with the passport. We are all upset about this.

Despite the gravity of the political situation, I have not been as active in protesting as I was this time eight years ago. By early February 2017, I’d been to about a half dozen protests. This year I’ve been to one (more about that later). There have been fewer to attend, but I didn’t go to the ACLU’s People’s March two days before the inauguration, didn’t even think seriously about going, even though I donate to the ACLU. It’s hard not to feel discouraged and like your actions don’t matter.

Sometimes I feel guilty about this. But sometimes I think I’m just pacing myself. We protested all through the first Trump administration, but never at the rate that we did between November 2016 and February 2017. This is a marathon, not a sprint. I know that. Being more selective doesn’t have to mean we’re giving up.

Inauguration/MLK Weekend

Speaking of slogs, the weekend of the inauguration already feels like a very long time ago, but I feel the need to mention how we spent it, in case I wonder later. This nicest thing about it was that Beth and I spent time together each of the three days. Saturday, we had a mini date and got coffee, hot chocolate, and chocolate chip cookies at Koma. Sunday, we hung around the house together while Noah was at his weekly game event, talking a lot, and Monday we went to see the Dylan biopic. I’d hoped to time it so that we were in the theater during the exact moment of transfer of power, but there was no convenient showing for that. Still, it was surprising how successfully I managed to block what was happening from my thoughts. (Mind you, this was temporary. It’s never far from my mind now.)

That was also MLK weekend, as I’m sure you remember. We’d been thinking of doing a service project, but more than one local creek cleanup (our default MLK day project) was cancelled because of cold and icy conditions. (January was unusually cold this year. It took until the very end of the month for the snow that fell the first week to mostly melt.) On Monday, when it became clear we weren’t doing the creek clean-up, I looked into a multi-organization service event at the Silver Spring Civic Center where we gave blood one year but discovered it had already happened the two days previous. Next, I went to the website of a food bank where we’d volunteered many years ago, but it was closed for the holiday, and I don’t think you can’t show up without registering ahead of time anyway. So, we did not volunteer that day. I still consider the weekend well spent and a kind of self-care.

(Does baking count as self-care? In addition to our anniversary cake, in the past few weeks I’ve made almond flour-banana walnut muffins and a poppyseed loaf. Plus, Noah and I collaborated on rye muffins and he’s planning to make a chocolate sour cream Bundt cake today.)

The Day After

I had a dentist appointment the day after the inauguration. It wasn’t a routine visit; I was having pain in one of my molars. My dentist’s office is on Capitol Hill, and I hadn’t fully considered what it would be like to be down there on that particular Tuesday morning.

The first thing I noticed on exiting the Metro at Union Station was that the flags were back at half-mast for President Carter after Trump’s tantrum led them to be raised the day before. The second thing I noticed was fencing and barriers everywhere. It turned my normally straightforward route to the dentist into a frustrating series of detours and retracing of steps. The third thing I noticed was the presence of swarms of people in MAGA and commemorative inauguration gear. Of course, it made sense out-of-towners would stick around for a few days and do some sightseeing. But the first few times I saw them, I felt a visceral recoiling, like someone had kicked me in the gut. It was as if they were signaling with their stupid hats, scarves, and sweatshirts that they did not mean my family, and especially my youngest child, well. That’s not a good feeling.

Anyway, turns out I need a root canal.

Demonstration

Last Tuesday, Beth and I went to the White House to protest the freeze on federal grants. The protest was very last minute—the call went out only a few hours before five p.m. when the freeze was scheduled to take effect. We left the house around 4:15, drove to the Metro, and we were at the meeting stop, about a block from the White House, in front of the Eisenhower Building just before five. It was a small but spirited group, probably about fifty people when we got there, but it grew to about a hundred over the course of an hour or so. I am in this photo on the PBS website. I’m in the red hoodie. You can’t read it, but I was holding a sign about clean air someone from an environmental group gave me.

Other people had hand-lettered signs reading: “The Felon is Stealing Our Science Grants,” “Release Federal Funds. Keep America Safe and Healthy,” “Unfreeze the Federal Funds Now,” and a good general purpose one: “Stand Up. Fight Back.” At least a dozen people had American flags. There were two speakers who talked about the impact of the federal freeze on the environment, health and science, education, poverty, and more issues than I can remember because that’s the point. Federal grants are far-reaching. They affect nearly everything.

We moved about a half block closer the White House, as close as you can get with the barriers. The same two speakers spoke again. One told us not to be discouraged by the modest size of the crowd because it was impressive for a hasty effort and he said, “This is enough to start.”

There was a lot of chanting. Beth said that was why she wanted to go—she thought it might be cathartic. There was my old favorite, the call and response “Tell me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like.” (It has a nice rhythm.) But apparently now at these kinds of events we now also yell, “No kings!” and “Rule of law!” This is the current baseline. There were also a few rounds of “F—- Trump!” I said later I would have preferred a more policy-based chant, but Beth said she found it satisfying.

While most of the Secret Service agents who were standing by the barriers looked stoic, I noticed a couple were smiling. I could not tell if they were genuine smiles of support or smirks. I suppose it could have been either (or one of each). They are government employees, too, after all.

When it was over, we took Metro home. The Red Line was single-tracking and we had to wait so long for a train that I had time to read one of Allison’s very comprehensive Year in Review book review posts (4-star horror) on the train platform. When we got home, Noah had made the kidney bean, cheese, apple, and tomato casserole I’d been planning to make. It was good to come home to hot food.

We found out later that night that a federal judge had blocked the freeze. After a second one did the same thing, the White House rescinded the order. They may try it again later, with a less scattershot approach, but for now we will take the win.

The next day and rest of the week, we were back at work. I’ve been working on a long-term project about household toxins and I was starting to write the chapter on water pollution. I used a lot of government sources for this—the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Geological Survey. It occurred to me to wonder if these sources will still be available online when I finish, at the rate information is already disappearing from government websites. Like gay marriage, environmental reports don’t seem to be a first-priority target, but it’s going to be a long four years. We need to be prepared for anything.

And Tuesday afternoon, Beth and I will be back in D.C., protesting outside the Treasury building.

Winter Wonderland

Posted on January 12, 2025 by Steph

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To face unafraid
The plans that we’ve made
Walking in a winter wonderland

From “Winter Wonderland,” by Felix Bernard and Richard B. Smith

We got home from Wheeling right ahead of the biggest snowstorm we’ve had in a couple years. The first Monday in January we awoke to four or five inches of snow. Beth shoveled the walk in the morning and then Noah did it in the afternoon and again the following morning. It snowed most of the day, and we eventually got eight inches. I went for a walk by the creek that morning and it was very pretty.

Schools were closed from Monday to Wednesday and finally opened two hours late on Thursday. Not that this affected me in any way. I mostly heard about it from a friend who teaches middle school. She has a daughter in North’s grade (they went to preschool together), also newly away at college. The mom said it on Facebook that it felt strange to have her first snow day with no kids at home. She made a little snowman by herself in her yard and posted its picture. (I did not make a snowman, but I did photograph them all over the neighborhood over the course of the next week.) I knew what she meant and replied that in North’s absence I was forced to do my own snow day baking—almond flour banana-walnut muffins.

I couldn’t make them on Monday, though, because by Monday afternoon it was clear that both Beth and I had caught the stomach bug her brother and sister-in-law had, even though we never saw them and even though Beth’s mom had disinfected the house with bleach wipes before we got there. Luckily, she never got sick herself. My theory is that our resistance was lowered because we were already sick with, or just recovered from, colds when we got there.

So, that was unpleasant, but it was over quickly for me. It was worst late Monday afternoon and evening, but I took Tuesday off for the most part (the only work I did was reading a trade magazine while lying on the couch) because I felt weak and tired. Noah read The Last Continent aloud to me two days in a row while I continued to lay on the couch. I did manage to rouse myself to make the muffins and omelets for dinner Tuesday night and after that I was mainly back to normal. Beth’s fatigue and loss of appetite lasted all week, however.

It snowed again Friday night, probably less than an inch. Saturday morning, I took a turn with the shoveling. It wasn’t a hard job. In some places, the slushy snow just needed to be scraped to the edge of the sidewalk.

After shoveling, I made a cake because it was Beth’s and my anniversary. It’s been thirty-three years since our commitment ceremony and twelve since we were legally married. Every year I make the spice cake we had at both events. We ate it in the afternoon and exchanged cards. We both got each other gift certificates (I got her one for e-books and she got me one for Koma, a neighborhood coffeehouse.) But the funny thing was that I also wrote in her card I would take her out for hot chocolate (she doesn’t drink coffee or tea) at Koma or wherever she liked.

“We’ve got a ‘Gift of the Magi’ situation here,” she said because if I used the gift certificate for the outing, she’d be paying for her own gift. So, I think when we go, I won’t use it, and I’ll save it for another time.

Speaking of gift certificates, Beth had a Fandango one that was about to expire so that evening all three of us went to see The Room Next Door. Nothing says date night like taking your son with you to see a movie about a woman dying of cancer.

The venue is the kind of theater where you can order food brought to your seat. There are menus, pads of paper to write your order, pens, and call buttons at every seat, plus a little table that swings around in front of your seat so you can eat. We’d never been there, or anywhere like it, so it was a novel experience. I got a Caesar salad and mozzarella sticks. It was necessary to cover my whole torso with napkins while eating salad in the dark, but I got the hang of it eventually.

The movie was intense, as you might expect, and the acting was good. Noah says the quality of the projection was higher than in the average movie theater. I wasn’t surprised because the whole place had a cinephile vibe. There were vintage movie posters lining the corridors and there are strict warnings about talking or texting during the movie—you can be ejected from the theater without refund if you do. You can even report other people talking or texting with your call button. Also, no minors are allowed without adults accompanying them. And the film was preceded by clips of other films that are referenced in the film and an interview with one of the actors. It was a very integrated experience. It also kept us out later than usual. Well, not the twenty-something, but his moms, so we went to bed soon after getting home.

Throughout the day I was thinking about the two events we were commemorating, the commitment ceremony in 1992 and the legal wedding in 2013. I fear sometimes that we could be unmarried during the next administration. Sometimes it seems far-fetched, but sometimes it doesn’t. People who want it to happen have the incoming President’s ear and he will likely be even less restrained this term than the last one. So, it could happen, at least on the federal level. I am not worried about Maryland, but if we were no longer married in the eyes of the federal government, we’d owe more in taxes, and I would not have access to Beth’s social security if she predeceased me.

But we’ve lived most of our relationship without those legal protections. We can do it again if we must. We will face unafraid the plans that we made, back when we were twenty-somethings ourselves. Those cannot be undone by any government.

First Steps

Posted on January 6, 2025 by Steph

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North is back at school. While I was cooking dinner on New Year’s Eve and listening to Roseanne Cash sing “Everyone But Me,” the line “It goes by real fast” jumped out at me. I thought of the kids’ childhoods, of course, but more immediately, North’s three-week break.

The first two days we were home from the beach North was wiped out by a cold—they tested for covid, and it was negative—and they spent those days mostly in bed. By Monday they’d recovered enough to take a short walk with me to Koma and get a chai (them) and a latte (me). On Tuesday, they delivered a tin of homemade Christmas sweets to Maddie and Miles and spent most of the afternoon at the twins’ house. Then Noah and North stayed up to see in the New Year, finishing a season of Queen’s Gambit, and consuming a lot of snacks while they waited for midnight. Meanwhile, I’d caught North’s cold, and Beth and I were abed by 9:45. If I could have roused myself from the couch—where I was feeling sick and listless—I would have gone to bed earlier.

New Year’s Day: First Hike

On New Year’s Day Beth and I went on a Maryland State Parks First Day hike, as we often do. I was quiet in the car on the way to Merkle Natural Resources Management Area. I was still sick and fatigued. Also, the persistent dread I’d been feeling since the election, which lessened a little over the holidays, was settling back down around me, if anything worse than before because it was finally 2025. After hearing so much about Project 2025 for so long, the very name of the year sounds menacing and dystopian. Is that going to wear off?

But we got there, and we took the hike, and it was nice to be walking outdoors, and it lifted my spirits a little. It almost always does. The park is a Canada goose sanctuary. Some geese live there year-round, but most of them winter there from October to March. We saw a lot of geese on the drive to the parking lot and hundreds more in the fields surrounding the visitors’ center, but we didn’t see any on the actual hike, because it was mostly on a wooded trail, and they prefer water and open fields.

The ranger pointed out a beaver dam and beaver-gnawed trees and identified tree species as we walked past streams and ponds and a heap of garbage that he said was eighty to a hundred years old. There was an upside-down car, what looked like an oil tank, some appliances, something made of porcelain that might have been part of a sink or a toilet, and what I think was the torso of a rocking horse. There was also the rusted frame of a banana-seat bike, which made Beth speculate some of the trash was from after the 1940s. After the hike we went into the visitors’ center and watched turtles swimming in a tank. It was the first day I was wearing my new Fitbit, and it was novel and interesting to have something counting my steps and zone minutes again after an almost six-month break from that.

Back at home, we had a lunch of fancy cheeses, crackers, fruit, and sparkling juice. This is another New Year’s tradition for us. And I made black-eyed peas for dinner because there is no way I am skimping on luck this year.

Thursday to Sunday: First Road Trip

Thursday morning, we hit the road for Oberlin. The drive took eight and half hours and we passed the time with music and podcasts (a couple episodes of Handsome and one each of Normal Gossip and Where Should We Begin). Somewhere in Western Pennsylvania I fell asleep and when I opened my eyes the first thing that I saw was a sign that said, “Trump. Fuck Your Feelings,” so that was a rude awakening… literally.

We arrived in Oberlin around six. We dropped North’s things off at their new, possibly temporary, first-floor single room in Keep, which they requested because it was empty for Winter Term and it’s easier for them not to have to climb two flights of stairs. We helped them move some of their stuff down from their third-floor room into the first-floor room.

It’s still trippy for me to be in Keep, where I lived for a year and a half. To intensify that feeling, North’s new room used to belong to my sophomore year boyfriend, so I once spent a lot of time in it. I also spied a picture of myself North added to the “Keeple of the Past” display, a collage of photos of people who once lived in Keep. Can you spot me? The Christmas tree was still up in the lounge, and we noticed the ornaments we gave North over Thanksgiving on it.

We went out for Thai at a very festive-looking restaurant, all strung with colored lights. I got a green curry the waitress warned me was hot and she did not lie. I ate all the tofu and vegetables, but I had to leave half the broth, and it got my nose running and knocked all my congestion loose. Beth said that was good for me and maybe it was because the next day my cold was almost gone.

North came back with us to our Air BnB, took a shower, and hung out for a little while and then Beth drove them back to Keep for their first night in their new room.

Friday morning, we woke to a couple inches of snow on the ground and snow falling through the air. It wasn’t a surprise, it had been forecast, but Beth was delighted anyway (even though now she had the cold we were all passing around). We’d had flurries a few times at home and a dusting of snow over Thanksgiving weekend in Wheeling, but no accumulation anywhere we’ve been this fall and winter so far. After breakfast we walked through the snow to CVS to get a comb since Beth had forgotten hers and vitamin D and magnesium because I’d forgotten mine. Then we met up with North for warm beverages and pastry at their favorite coffeeshop in Oberlin.

We had a busy morning and early afternoon. We took North to two different grocery stores to stock up on fresh and dried fruit, olives, bagels, cream cheese, yogurt, cereal, milk, and frozen foods. Keep’s kitchen will be closed over Winter Term so North will be living there but eating in a different co-op and it seemed like a good idea to have some food on hand where they live. This was in addition to the tote bag full of instant oatmeal, hot chocolate mix, toaster pastries, and popcorn we had presented them with before we left home. I don’t think they will starve, even though their play rehearsal schedule may cause them to miss meals sometimes. After the first grocery store, it was snowing so hard there were almost white-out conditions, and we had to stop at Keep so we could wait out the squall before proceeding to the second store.

Next, we took a walk in the arboretum. I promised Beth I would not break up with her there. It’s an old joke—I once took a “yes, we are really breaking up” letter from a quite recent ex-boyfriend there to read and I broke up with two other boyfriends there in person, so it does have a break-up vibe for me, but it’s a pretty place and I do have other memories associated with it. The reservoirs were partly frozen, and the snow was lovely on the tree branches and cattails. We were all rather cold after that walk, though, so it was nice to warm up with a tasty lunch of Mexican food.

We picked up some medications that had arrived at the mail room for North. Beth and I walked a little more on campus after that, passing by Noah Hall—it wouldn’t be a trip to Oberlin without at least walking by the dorm where we met—and then we picked North up at Keep and drove the building where their first rehearsal was starting at two, and we hit the road for Wheeling.

It was sad to leave North, of course, but happy at the same time because I think they’re going to have a good Winter Term. I always loved Winter Term, being able to focus on one intensive class or project for four weeks before the spring semester. Rehearsing a play seems like a perfect project and we’ll be back in Oberlin in a month to see it performed.

The snow was heavy and blowing across the road at the beginning of the drive, but it cleared up, and we got to Wheeling around 5:15. We were staying at a hotel that night because Beth’s brother and his wife were at her mom’s house. They’d been there for Christmas and had gotten sick with norovirus and had to extend their stay because they were too sick to fly. They had since recovered and were leaving early the next morning. After Beth and John consulted with each other on the phone they decided not to visit with each other, just in case John and Abby were still contagious. Beth and I brought pizza back to the hotel room and had a quiet evening—she read, and I wrote much of this.

Saturday morning, it was quite cold, in the teens, so Beth didn’t want to go out with wet hair, and we stayed in the hotel room until it was dry. We ran some errands and then arrived at her mom’s house in the late morning. We all sat in her mom’s bedroom, and she caught us up on various members of the extended family, who was doing well and who wasn’t. It made me think how people’s lives are kind of like a microcosm of a family’s or even a nation’s life, alternating good times and bad times, always a mix of both, even as the ratio shifts.

Beth and I went to Oglebay Park to walk in the snow. When we set out the wind was blowing hard and it was so cold my face ached and I thought I’d made a mistake coming along, but it died down and then I was fine. I had on a new pair of boot socks we’d purchased that morning because my feet had been cold in the arboretum, and they helped. It was quiet in the park other than occasional honking geese. You know how smell travels farther when it’s very cold? Even when I was walking a few feet behind Beth, I could smell the cherry cough drops she was sucking.

We walked from the lodge to the mansion and around Shenck Lake and saw a big flock of geese hunkered down, motionless on a snowy hillside. Afterward we got coffee and hot chocolate in the lodge. I stared out the window watching the falling snow, still feeling pensive and a little melancholy.

When we got back, we went to visit Beth’s aunt Carole, who lives two doors down, and Carole’s son Sean, who was visiting from Ireland, and shared more news of family. Then we had a late lunch and settled in for a quiet afternoon of reading and writing and watching the falling snow.

Sunday morning, we ran some more errands and hit the road for home a little before ten. We took our time on the drive. We stopped for lunch at a café in Cumberland—where I got a cozy meal of tomato soup, grilled cheese, and chocolate-peppermint tea—and for a walk in Rocky Gap State Park. There wasn’t much snow there on the ground there, or anywhere after Cumberland, but Lake Habeeb was partly frozen. There were ducks on the water and a couple beaver-felled trees.

In the first five days of the new year, we walked in four different parks in three different states. I don’t know where the year will take us as a family or as a country, but for better or for worse, we have taken our first steps.

Seaside Christmas

Posted on December 28, 2024 by Steph

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Arrival

I set foot on the beach late Monday afternoon just as the sun was setting, after an uneventful drive to the beach. Based on the vibrant pink clouds I could see in the sky as I walked toward the beach, I may have missed the most dramatic part of it, but it was still beautiful down there, with a band of coral-colored clouds right over the horizon and puffy pale pink ones higher in the sky.

I walked up and down the boardwalk for twenty minutes or so, not lingering because it was about a mile from the boardwalk to the house and it would be cold and dark soon. The colored lights on the bandstand, on the giant Christmas tree, and all along Rehoboth Avenue had come on while I was on the beach, and it warmed my heart to see them.

Back at the rental house, we ordered takeout Japanese from a restaurant just around the corner. They didn’t have any reservations available for that night or we would have eaten there. It’s lovely inside, with koi ponds built into the floor and a lot of greenery and fairy lights. Beth and I went to pick up the food and brought it back home.

After dinner, the kids and I decorated the tree that Beth had set up and strung with lights. We have a large and eclectic collection of decorations, and it always seems as if they can’t possibly fit, but they always do. It’s our annual Christmas miracle.

Christmas Eve

I was up at six o’ clock—I often wake early at the beach. I wanted to go to see the sun rise, but I couldn’t quite rouse myself. It was cold out, just a little below freezing, plus I am not a morning person and I would have liked more sleep, but after dozing for forty-five minutes, I got up and dressed and was out of the house by seven and on the beach at seven-fifteen, just as the edge of the sun was peeping out from behind dark clouds. Then it rose and cast a line of molten gold across the silver sea. I walked along the beach and boardwalk, noting how the early morning sun turned the dry dune grass a reddish-brown color. Right before I left, I saw a huge flock of white birds, probably snow geese, flying from over the ocean, toward the land. It had been well worth getting out of bed.

We were planning to eat breakfast at Egg, but we hadn’t set a time and neither of the kids was up when I got back to the house at eight, so I had some yogurt with almond butter and banana to tide me over. We didn’t end up leaving the house until around ten, so it was a good thing I ate.

After breakfast, Beth braved the grocery store on Christmas Eve (she said it wasn’t too bad) and the kids and I started on the first baking project of the day, making cookies out of the gingerbread dough I’d made at home. We cut them into various shapes, trees and hearts being the most popular, and made four initials (B, S, and two Ns) and decorated the cookies with colored sugar, hard candies, pecans, pepitas, raisins, and dried cranberries.

Later Beth set out on a walk, and the kids and I had lunch at Grotto. We usually have our weekly Friday night pizza there when we’re at the beach, but this trip would not include a Friday night, so the kids thought we needed to have lunch there. I suggested Friday lunch right before we left town and that we not have pizza for dinner that night, but this blasphemous idea was summarily rejected. I didn’t want to spend the carbs on pizza when there were so many sweets in the house, so I had a salad and a couple mozzarella sticks. North had pizza and Noah had stromboli.

After lunch, North and I went for a walk on the boardwalk, stopping to see the Christmas decorations in the Victorian-themed Boardwalk Plaza hotel. There are a lot of nativity scenes, but we are especially fond of village with the train and little merry-go-round that Santa rides. There is also a little ballroom in which tiny mechanical figures dance. Next, I accompanied North on some last-minute Christmas shopping for Beth and Noah at two candy shops, and then we got tea and coffee at Café a-Go-Go.

At the house, Noah and I read two chapters of Dracula with breaks for me to trade texts with the property manager of the house about the non-functioning gas fireplace. (This troubleshooting exchange had begun the night before and never did result in a fire, but did net us in a $100 apology Visa gift card when we finally gave up. We ended up making do with a fireplace video that we played over and over on the tv.) Meanwhile, North made chocolate-peppermint cookies. Beth made chili and almond flour cornbread for dinner, and we watched Christmas is Here Again and Noah read “The Night Before Christmas” to us, a Christmas Eve tradition.

Christmas

North was the first one up on Christmas morning. After they emptied their stocking, they started making Christmas breakfast: an orange-cranberry loaf, eggs scrambled or fried to order, vegetarian breakfast meats, and fruit salad. It was delightful.

While North was cooking, I wrote a small batch of postcards for a special election in the Virginia Senate and took a short walk down to the post office to drop them in a mailbox.

We opened presents after breakfast. We had not really consulted with each other about what we were getting Beth, and we all went heavy on chocolate, possibly for the comfort value. She got seven dark chocolate bars and one disk, two dark chocolate barks (almond and orange) and two hot chocolate mixes (dark and caramel). When we were laughing about it, she said she did not mind at all. “I am a simple woman,” she said. She is serious about chocolate at any rate, and she did get other presents (peppermint foot lotion, a wallet, a gift certificate for e-books, etc.)

My biggest present was a new Fitbit from Beth to replace the one that broke last summer, but I also got a lot of tea. North got me my favorites from the tea shop in Rehoboth and Noah got me something called “A Feast of Tea,” a tower-shaped box with eight kinds of tea he bought in London. He also got me a book. I started to read the blurb on the back out loud but when it turned out to be about a dystopian cannibalistic future, I decided to spare my squeamish wife the description. North got both of us of a white squirrel ornament, because I’d said it would be nice to have an Oberlin ornament. Beth also got me a foot file, which I thought was kind of funny since I got her foot lotion. We both battle prickly heels in the winter and have been married long enough to get each other this kind of gift.

Noah got a portable charger, some sweets, and a pile of books. North got lavender earrings, lavender lip balm, and a lavender bath bomb, and a lot of gifts designed to keep them warm and dry during an Oberlin winter (long underwear, an umbrella—we also got them a new coat, but didn’t count that as a present). For fun, we got them an Oberlin gift certificate that can be used at a host of businesses in town.

By the time we finished opening gifts it was almost noon, but we’d had a late and large breakfast, so we weren’t hungry for lunch. We all went for a walk on the Gordon’s Pond trail. I’ve never seen as many herons as we did that day and there were also egrets and ducks on the pond and a noisy flock of geese flying overhead, continually breaking out of and reforming their V formations. Noah took a lot of pictures. There were other people on the trail who inevitably said, “Merry Christmas” and it was hard to get irritated about them assuming what holidays we celebrate since Beth was wearing a Santa hat.

There’s a path to beach off the trail parking lot so we rambled on the beach for a while. My mom called from her sister’s house in Boise, and we handed the phone back and forth as we walked around the barnacle-encrusted rocks and the piles of sea foam on the sand.

Back at the house we had lunch. North had spicy ramen noodles and orange sections while I made a board of cheeses (baked Brie and Gouda), crackers, apple slices, olives, and nuts for everyone else. We all looked at the pictures my sister posted on Facebook of all the Goth-themed presents Lily-Mei got and the whole family posed together in skull pajamas. Beth said she thought that when your parents dress up in Goth pajamas it kind of takes the rebellious edge out of it and I said I think that’s the difference between going through a Goth phase at eleven versus at sixteen.

North took a bath with their bath bomb and the rest of us read or watched tv for the rest of the afternoon until it was time to make dinner. Noah and I made spinach lasagna, garlic bread, and vegetarian sausage. We watched the Dr. Who Christmas special and Christmas was over.

Boxing Day

I was up before the sun again and went down to the beach to see another sunrise. I found a little Christmas tree, about two feet high, decorated with ornaments and candy canes, on its side on the beach. I tried to right it, but it wouldn’t stay up.

I came back to the house, ate breakfast, and North and I made plans to go back to the beach mid-morning. I had some retail errands to run on the way (but not returning anything as so many people do on the day after Christmas). My phone screen has been cracked for a year, and I keep putting off getting it repaired, though it makes me nervous whenever I’m out in the rain that moisture will get in and kill it. Anyway, I’d seen a sign in the window of a shop saying they fix phone screens, and I thought I might just get it taken care of, but I wasn’t sure if the store was closed for the season or not because it had not been normal business hours when I passed it. Turned out it was closed, so my phone is still cracked.

Next, we visited the soap shop because I wanted a bar of their pine-scented soap, partly because I like it and partly because I have often read it’s Joe Biden’s favorite from this store and I am feeling sentimental about the end of his term, like many others in town. We kept seeing “Thank You, Joe” signs around. But then to remind me of the limitations of political moderates, North spotted a Blue Lives Matter flag in the store (which Noah had reported seeing earlier and I’d looked for before going in and didn’t see). By the time North saw it, I’d already started my transaction. So, I have my soap, but I might keep away in the future.

We stopped at Café A-Go-Go and got tea and coffee again, before hitting the beach. I tried to find the little tree to show North, but someone had taken it away. We walked and then headed home for lunch, stopping at the Christmas store, not to buy anything for “for the vibes,” as North said.

That afternoon Noah and I read Dracula and then he embarked on a television binge— an episode of Queen’s Gambit with North, two of What We Do in the Shadows with me, and one of the new Star Wars show with Beth. While he and I were watching our show, Beth and North went out for ice cream.

While Noah and Beth were watching their show, I left for my third trip to the beach of the day, just in time to catch the sunset. One advantage of short winter days at the beach is later sunrises and earlier sunsets, making it easy to take in both in one day. While I was walking along the beach some seagulls flew over me and their white bellies were stained a rosy shade of pink. On my way home, I detoured to wander through the neighborhood near our house and admire people’s lights.

Back at the house, it was laundry and a dinner of leftovers and packing and stripping the tree of its ornaments, only three days after we put them on. Beth said that’s always the saddest part of leaving a Christmas vacation house.

Departure

And, sadly, it was time to leave. The next morning, we packed, swept up the needles, and vacated the house. We parked near the boardwalk so the kids and I could say goodbye to the ocean. As we walked down to the sand, Noah wondered if the water would be colder in December than in November (when we more often visit Rehoboth).

Why did the water temperature matter? To say goodbye to the ocean, the kids stand barefoot by the waterline and let twenty-four frigid waves (of whatever number corresponds to the last two digits of the year) run over their feet. When they disagreed about whether a small ripple counted as a wave, North insisted, “We have to do this right,” then wondered if they would still be doing this in the winter of 2075. Noah said it might end in a trip to the emergency room.

I don’t do this barefoot in November or December. I wear rainboots, but as often happens, a rogue wave surprised me and filled them with icy water near the end of the ritual.

We met Beth on the boardwalk where I took my boots off and turned them upside down to empty the seawater out of them and Noah attempted to remove every grain of sand from his feet before putting his shoes and socks back on. Beth asked if we needed warm beverages to warm up and after Noah made a quick stop at Candy Kitchen, we proceeded to the nearest coffeeshop. North actually got their coffee iced because that’s the only way they drink it, but I got a warm latte and Noah got hot chocolate, and then we piled into the car and drove away from the beach.

“Goodbye, see you next summer,” North said, as we drove down Rehoboth Avenue.

Three hours later, just past the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, we stopped for a picnic lunch at Sandy Point State Park. We spied the Sandy Point Shoal Lighthouse in the middle of the bay and watched a container ship clear the bridge. Some hardy paddleboarders were setting out on a chilly adventure. Beth said they were “crazy” and then in her very next sentence wondered if she should get a dry suit to extend the kayaking season.

“The bay is nice, too,” I said as we walked back to the car.

“The bay is great,” she said. “I love the bay.”

So, we will be back to both, paddling in the spring, and swimming in the summer. I hope you get to do some things you love in the coming year as well, whatever it may hold.

Welcome Christmas

Posted on December 22, 2024 by Steph

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Christmas Day is in our grasp,
So long as we have hands to clasp.
Christmas Day will always be,
Just so long as we have we.
Welcome Christmas as we stand,
Heart to heart and hand in hand.

From How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Return to the Nest

Noah came home from his week in London on the second Wednesday in December. He’d been to a concert and a play (it was a play about a play, an ill-fated production of A Christmas Carol). He visited the British Library and the British Museum, Big Ben, and the Tower of London. Beth and I went to meet him at the airport. BWI was all decked out for Christmas, “merry and bright,” I said. There was a big tree where you wait for international arrivals with flags from all the states, so Beth had to go inspect it to find the West Virginia flag. We had to wait there a while as Noah went through customs, but finally he emerged. It was the wee hours of the morning London time, but he was hungry, so we took him to eat dinner at Chipotle (we’d already eaten).

North flew home from Cleveland the next day, and we went from a week-long empty nest to a full one in the space of less than a day. I couldn’t go to the airport this time because I had book club that night—we were discussing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight—and I needed to get dinner on the table in time to leave for that. But we were able to have dinner all together. I made black bean tostadas and put red and green salsa on the table so people could make them Christmassy if they were so inclined and I put on the Roches’ We Three Kings, in an attempt to make the dinner festive. Beth had finished the outside lights a few days before North got home and we had the Christmas cards we’d received on a string in the living room, with a garland of pine rope and a string of colored light above them. We never did any more inside decorating than that. There are whole unopened boxes in the basement. I feel a little bad about that, but there’s always next year.

Second to Last Weekend Before Christmas

North had left school right after classes ended and had three short papers to write at home, for Psychology, Sociology, and Nutrition. They did one a day until they finished on Sunday, four days before the last one was due. In between finals, they found time to go to Butler’s with us on Saturday to get a Christmas tree. We took pictures of ourselves in different combinations with the 5-to-6-foot sign because we are all between five and six feet tall. Around the field were decorations made from a wagon wheel and a tractor wheel (wreaths), and piles of tires painted green to form a Christmas tree, plus wooden cutouts of penguins and gingerbread men. (At the market later, we saw a snowman made of hay bales and a wooden sleigh.) It was very festive and whimsical.

After we picked out a Frasier fir from the 7-to-8-foot section of the field, we visited the snack bar where we got hot chocolate, hot cider, and two apple hand pies to share, and then the farm market where we got smoked cheddar, pasta, and some treats (chocolate-covered cherries, candied pecans, orange-cranberry bread). I picked up ginger cookies for my friend Megan (whom I was going to see the next day), because I know she likes molasses cookies, and they looked similar. We browsed the market’s selection of ornaments, even though we’d decided we really didn’t need any more. We stayed strong and did not buy any.

I met Megan the next morning for coffee. Megan and I have been friends since her oldest and my youngest were in preschool together and we have not seen each other in ages, probably over a year. We talked for two hours and managed to touch on all eight members of our two families, and work, and the dark political times in which we find ourselves, all the important things. I felt like we could have talked another two hours.

While I was gone, Noah raked leaves for the leaf truck that was due to come the next day, Beth did a big grocery shop for the now full house and made black bean soup for dinner. Noah went out to his weekly Sunday afternoon board game group and the rest of us addressed nearly all the Christmas cards and then watched Last Exmas. We’d been watching Christmas specials (Charlie Brown, The Grinch, Frosty, and several Rankin-Bass specials) prior to this and after this, but we thought we’d watch something Noah wouldn’t mind missing. To clarify, he’s not opposed to watching bad gay and lesbian Christmas romances (and in fact he would the following weekend) but he does not feel left out if we do it without him.

Last Work Week

Beth and I were working and North’s friends from high school (who are mostly a year younger) were still in school, so during the week they had plenty of time to bake. They made an apple crumb cheesecake with homemade caramel sauce, almond butter chocolate chip cookies, and pinwheels. We got this recipe from the program at the White House Christmas tour last year and they made them, and they were a big hit. So, I found the recipe and left it at their place at the dining room table and they got the hint and made another batch.

North and I went out for coffee twice that week. They had a psychiatrist appointment one day and I met them at a coffeeshop we like near there and then another day I had to get yard waste bags at the hardware store and I hadn’t had a gingerbread latte at Starbucks even though they brought them back this year after a hiatus of several years and they were always a favorite of mine, so we walked down there together.

On Friday afternoon North met up at a mall with several of their high school friends who were fresh out of school for winter break, and they had a not-so-secret-Santa gift exchange. They drew names and then went around the mall buying presents for each other right in front of each other. North came home with a smiling plush jar of strawberry jam and a small, round stuffed T-Rex. That night we watched Season’s Greeting from Cherry Lane.

Solstice/Last Weekend Before Christmas

This weekend was really packed. We went to see an early afternoon showing of The Muppet Christmas Carol at the American Film Institute. It’s fun to see a movie like that on a big screen, with an audience laughing at the funny parts. Noah objected to the applause at the end “because the people who made the movie are not there” but despite that, it was a very satisfactory outing.

As we left, I opined to the family that the movie is “a masterpiece” and no one contradicted me.

Later that afternoon Beth made buckeyes, and Noah and I made white beans in a tomato-cream sauce with arugula for dinner and afterward we opened presents from my extended family and Beth’s mom. We do this when we’re traveling over Christmas to make room in the car and to have a little Solstice celebration. Often, it’s a little more ceremonial. We’ll light candles and I might buy cookies in snowflake or tree shapes to go with the nature theme. But we had so many sweets in the house that seemed unnecessary this year. I ate a buckeye and told Beth it was “a religious experience.”

“Well, then I’m glad I made them,” she said. We each read a poem about winter from this book. Then we called my mom and sister and niece to thank them for the gifts.

I didn’t even have time to finish the dinner dishes before it was time for our next activity. We had eight p.m. tickets for the Garden of Lights at Brookside Gardens. We didn’t spend as long wandering through the lights as we might have because North had turned their ankle earlier in the weekend and it was quite cold—in the high twenties and windy. (I will pause while my hardy Canadian readers do the temperature conversion and laugh at us.)

We got hot chocolate and funnel cake fries to warm us up before we started and then we walked along the familiar paths. It was mostly the same as always—I saw some of my favorites like the dragon that breathes fog and the frog whose throat lights up when it croaks—but there were some new displays, notably a flamboyance of flamingoes by the pond, reflected in the water. There was also a Christmas tree that for some reason was flashing its lights to the rhythm of “Don’t Stop Believing.” Later we heard “Magic” by the Cars playing. I’m honestly not sure what accounts for these musical selections, but as we left, I said the lights were “magical” and then remembering the song, started to sing it.

That night when we went to bed, I told Beth it had been the happiest day I could remember since the election. So, apparently what I need is multiple outings, a beloved story well told, poetry, pretty lights, presents, and sugar.

Sunday morning Beth made pizzelles in two flavors (vanilla and anise) and then I made gingerbread dough. I saved most of it to take with us on our travels, but I baked a few to put on a cookie plate for Becky. Becky is another family friend. We met when she was North’s Kindermusik teacher and then the music teacher at their preschool and then her daughter babysat for us, and by that point we’d become friends. I piled a plate with pinwheels, pizzelles, gingerbread, and buckeyes, while North filled a tin for their friends Maddie and Miles to deliver after Christmas. Beth, North, and I went to visit with Becky that afternoon. She was delighted to sample a buckeye and served us tea and pepparkakor, her own Christmas specialty. Her daughter Eleanor was driving home from Philadelphia for the holiday, and we hoped to see her, too, but we needed to leave before she arrived.

Beth and I took separate walks, she cooked dinner, I blogged, Noah returned from his games, and we all began packing for our drive tomorrow morning, which will take us to the beach, where we will soon be ensconced in the house where are welcoming Christmas, heart to heart and hand in hand.

Ten for December

Posted on December 10, 2024 by Steph

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The Trouble with Christmassing

Last week, Swistle wrote a blog post, called “Having Trouble Christmassing” that really hit home with me. A lot of you have already read it, but for those who haven’t, here’s how it starts:

I am having some trouble Christmassing. Which is not surprising, given the state of Everything, and really I am doing better than I did in 2016. But: I am having trouble. I have a to-do list that gets longer every day. I feel as if I might genuinely not be ready in time, and also that I am highly likely to feel regret that I didn’t enjoy this last holiday season enough before it was bleak, bleak, BLEAK late January, which is scheduled to last for many years. I have not started the Christmas cards. I have not been listening to Christmas music. I have not brought down the Christmas dishes, or put up any decorations except for the tree, which I was highly motivated to get up and decorated while the twins were home for Thanksgiving. I have bought very few presents. I am getting that quiet, dazed panicky feeling I get when I seem to Simply Not Be Doing something that needs to be done.

When Swistle posted this, we’d completed our Christmas card photo shoot, Noah had edited the finalists, and I’d written the text, but we had trouble making a final decision about the picture and the project stalled. I had only bought gifts for one person. The only decorations I had up were the few cards we had received so far and a green dish towel with a Christmas tree topped with a sea star on it that I hung from the oven door handle.

I’m thinking we may go minimalist with inside decorations this year, not so much out of political despair but because of the kittens, who knock everything off everything else all day long and who are such good jumpers and climbers (especially Willow) that there’s nowhere we could put anything that they could not reach. I am certainly not setting up the Christmas village I inherited from my mother, which has many small, fragile pieces and is important to me. But here’s what we have done in terms of preparation and celebration:

10 Efforts to Christmas

It took me longer than usual to start listening to Christmas music. Beth and Noah wanted to on the long drive from Oberlin to Takoma Park the Sunday after Thanksgiving and I didn’t mind, but whenever it was my turn to choose the entertainment, I went with podcasts. I eventually started to listen to some at home, but until today when I really dove into it, my ratio of Christmas to non-Christmas music was lower than usual. I listened to a lot of music that’s Christmas-adjacent, like the soundtrack to Rent or albums with one Christmas song on them, like Dar Williams’ Mortal City.
The first day we were home from Wheeling, with grim determination to be festive, I put on a pair of reindeer and holly socks, went on a walk, and took pictures of the neighbors’ Christmas decorations. The two skeletons that change costumes with the seasons are a perennial favorite—one has a Santa hat right now and the other one has a Christmas light headband—but I also like the inflatable Santa riding a shark. Who wouldn’t?
Noah left for London the first Wednesday of December. I asked him to send me at least one photo every day and most days he has. Many of them were of Christmas lights in the city. He attended the lighting of the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square and had this to say about it: “It took forever to get to the tree lighting. People had to sing and play music and give speeches and Jesus and WWII.” If this sounds crabby (especially coming from a musician), it was his first day there and he had barely slept the night before on the plane and because he didn’t check in by the deadline at his hotel, they cancelled his reservation (which was for a whole week!) and gave away his room and he found himself exhausted and without lodging in a strange city. The hotel eventually found him a room in another one of their properties, but he’d had a stressful day.
Before he left, Noah wrapped his present to Lily-Mei, and he found the perfect paper for a preteen Goth—black with gold snowflakes in white circles—in the closet. I wrapped the rest of the gifts in the same paper and mailed them on Thursday. It was pleasing to have one person checked off my list.
Beth and I finally picked a photo for the card—by this point we’d forgotten which ones of the final three the kids preferred, and to make it less complicated, we decided not to ask them to remind us. After all, the four of collaborated in the narrowing down from almost forty to three so everyone had already had a substantial say. Beth designed the card and ordered it.
On the first Saturday of December, Beth and I went to Agricultural History Farm Park. The idea was to take a walk somewhere new and to take in some Christmas cheer. We walked on trails through woods and over a creek and along harvested cornfields in golden late afternoon light. In the barn, there was live music (oddly, someone playing guitar and singing Tears for Fears “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”) and free hot cider and gingersnaps plus more treats for sale. Outside the barn there were people taking a hayride and there were goats in a pen and a man giving a blacksmithing demonstration. (It made me nervous that he was not using any eye protection, and it wasn’t because he was in period costume because he wasn’t.) On the way home, we stopped at a coffeehouse where we got coffee, hot chocolate, and macarons (peppermint for me, chocolate-hazelnut for Beth) and we picked up a wreath at a grocery store. It was a pleasing outing.
That night, Beth and I went over the kids’ lists and decided what to get them and which ideas to farm out to relatives. Over the rest of the weekend, I communicated with my mom and sister about who was getting what. This exchange is still in progress and it’s not Christmas shopping exactly, but it’s a precursor to shopping.
Sunday Beth put up the wreath and started the outside lights, both the candy cane lane and the strings of lights that go in the trees and on the porch. She finished on Monday.
On Monday morning as I was walking in a chilly drizzle, I got a text from North, asking, “Hypothetically, if you were getting an Oberlin ornament,” if I would prefer one of three options. I’d asked for an Oberlin ornament for Christmas, so this was not exactly a surprise, but it was cheering, nonetheless. I chose the white squirrel, which is Oberlin’s unofficial mascot because of its small population of albino squirrels. North had been waiting impatiently to see one and finally did recently. (Before that they saw gray one with a white tail, probably the offspring of a mixed-color squirrel couple.)
Monday evening, in a flurry of focused online activity, I nearly finished my shopping.

So, things are moving along. Cards on are their way to us, most presents have been purchased, decoration is partly complete. When both kids are home later this week, we’ll decide which if any indoor decorations to put out, get a tree, and walk through the lights display at Brookside Gardens.

I’m looking forward having everyone home and to the tree and lights outings. As I prepare for Christmas, I’ve been oscillating between feeling I’m dutifully going through the motions and enjoying the tasks. I think that’s okay. We can’t always feel the same way and sometimes duty slips into merriment when I give it a chance. Either way, we will manage to Christmas.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Author Archives: Steph

About Steph

Still Cute, Just Bigger

Five Years Out: Coronavirus Chronicles, Part 84

Protests and Dentists

The Three Rs: Four Rallies, A Road Trip, and a Little Romance

Enough to Start

Winter Wonderland

First Steps

Seaside Christmas

Welcome Christmas

Ten for December