About Steph

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

Rise Again

Posted on April 23, 2025 by Steph

Rise again, rise again!
Though your heart it be broken, and life about to end
No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again!

From “The Mary Ellen Carter,” by Stan Rogers

I first heard of the song “The Mary Ellen Carter” when a friend posted it on Facebook on Easter about a year into the pandemic. It’s not literally about Easter, but about a shipwreck, and more broadly, resilience and not giving up on valuable things when others have. Because of when John posted it, I often think of it at Easter now. Though I haven’t lost life, home, love, or friends, some people already have, so the song’s message is certainly needed now.

Here are a few things we are not giving up on:

Wednesday: Justice

A week ago today, Beth, Noah, and I went to protest for Kilmar Abrego Garcia in front of the Civic Center in Silver Spring. Seeing the plaza fill up with people reminded me of this protest, almost five years ago. There was a group of people in pink, fluorescent vests that read “Rapid Response Choir” on the back, which made Beth laugh and say, “Everyone has to have their thing.” The choir was practicing “We Shall Not Be Moved,” and accompanying themselves with bongo drums and a tambourine.

We had responded rapidly as well, only hearing of the protest that morning. Beth made a sign that said, “Stop the Abductions Now” on one side and “Bring Them Home” on the other. Mine said, “No Concentration Camps” on one side and was blank on the other because I forgot to do both sides. We were there early, so we paced back and forth across the plaza to get some steps.

When the program of speakers began in the area where there’s a skating rink in the winter, people moved in closer to hear. It was mostly state and local elected officials and people from non-profits. Being packed in, I could see a lot of signs. Of course, there were signs that went right to the point, saying things like “Bring Kilmar Home,” “Detention without Due Process is Kidnapping.”

There was someone holding a sign that quoted the Emma Lazarus poem from the Statue of Liberty “Give me your tired, your poor…The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” There were a lot of signs that said things like “Due Process,” “Rule of Law,” or “No Kings.” These are the things we want these days—it’s that basic.

Signs thanking Senator Van Hollen were among the most common because the day of the protest was the day our senator was flying to El Salvador to visit Abrego Garcia. Most of the speakers cited his visit and people clapped enthusiastically each time. It’s interesting that Van Hollen was the one to step up because he’s the more moderate of our senators. He’s on the Foreign Relations Committee, though, so maybe that’s why. Or maybe this was just his moment to rise to the occasion.

Toward the end of protest, I dropped my phone on the hard cement that’s under the ice rink part of the year. The screen didn’t just crack, a small piece of it fell out and you could glimpse the inside of the phone through the hole. Surprisingly, it didn’t immediately stop working, but fairly soon it had stopped responding to touch, even though I could still see messages flashing across the screen.

To make a long story short, it took three days to get it fixed and for someone who didn’t even get a smartphone until 2015, I had an embarrassingly hard time living without one for that long. I missed my podcasts the most. It was difficult to motivate myself to take walks or do outside chores without them. I also felt as if I was wasting the glucose monitor on my arm (which is read with my phone). They only last two weeks and my insurance has decided to stop covering them and I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do about that, so missing three days’ use of what could be one of the last ones was disheartening.

Friday: Art

Beth had the day off for Good Friday. She worked on our fence in the morning. We’ve been scraping off the loose paint, sanding it, washing it, and rubbing it down with vinegar to halt the growth of mildew in preparation for re-painting it. We’ve been at this for a couple weeks. It’s a big project (and not one we chose—the city cited us for peeling paint).

That afternoon, at Noah’s suggestion, we visited the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. DOGE had already been to The National Gallery of Art, so it’s clear the Smithsonian and art in general are in the crosshairs. It seemed like a good idea to see uncensored art for free, while we still can.

We started in the Portrait Gallery and since I didn’t have my phone, I asked Beth to take pictures of Toni Morrison and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Moving at different speeds, we kept drifting apart and reuniting so I didn’t remember to ask her to take any more, but I was particularly drawn to paintings and sculptures of writers—Sappho, Edgar Alan Poe, Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, etc. Speaking of writers, we caught the James Baldwin exhibit which was days from the end of its run. Afterward, I wished I had lingered longer there, but I found the photos of Baldwin with Nina Simone particularly joyful.

We also went through an exhibit of portraits all the U.S. Presidents in order, including this one of Barack Obama. His was the most recent one. There are placeholder photographs of President Biden and Trump who have not had their portraits done yet. I saw a preschooler in a MAGA hat lingering with his parents near the Trump photo, which was upsetting, but I suppose we were lucky to see only one such hat in the roughly three hours we were there. But still, on an innocent child…

We left the museum and got pizza at Wiseguy and ice cream at Haägen-Dazs, went home, and watched the first two-thirds of The Last Showgirl, too tired to finish it.

Saturday: Rest

There were big protests all over the country on Saturday, and millions attended. There were at least three separate events in D.C. to choose from. Beth went to another march for Abrego Garcia, this one starting at the Washington Monument and proceeding to the White House. I thought about going, but I didn’t. I had not slept well the night before and I was feeling fatigued and generally burned out. I felt a little guilty about skipping the protest, but Maya reminded me that self-care is important, too.

Beth dropped me off at the mailing center where my phone was being fixed on her way to the Metro, and I picked it up. Within ten minutes of getting it back, I texted Beth to demonstrate that it was indeed fixed, checked my blood sugar, and restarted a podcast that had been in progress when the phone broke three days earlier. I walked for almost an hour and when I got home, my mood was much improved, and I had a big appetite. I had a veggie burger, broccoli, carrot sticks, and a half dozen tater tots for lunch and I was surprised how good the food tasted.

Over the course of the day, I read six chapters of Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (for book club), Noah and I read from Norwegian Wood and watched an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale and later we made crispy gnocchi with roasted asparagus and leeks for dinner and then all three of us watched the end of The Last Showgirl. It was just the kind of day I needed.

Easter: Tradition

We don’t usually have big plans for Easter, but I’d sent North a care package—a box full of Easter candy, packed with Easter grass—and they’d received it the weekend before Easter. “It’s good to know the Easter Bunny delivers,” they said when we spoke to them that morning.

We had candy, here, too. I put Noah’s in a basket, but I didn’t hide it, just left it on the kitchen counter, and Noah commented the Bunny “didn’t do a very good job” hiding the goods.

Beth and I had been going back and forth about whether to dye eggs this year. I wondered if it was a strange thing to do with no minors in the house (though I announced I will carve pumpkins at Halloween for the rest of my life and then Beth said she was visualizing me carving a pumpkin on my death bed).

Anyway, I asked Noah if he was interested the day before Easter and he said yes, so Beth bought extra eggs when she did the grocery shopping on Sunday morning and after Noah watched a Formula One race and Beth and I washed part of the fence, we gathered to dye the eggs. We did two each. Beth’s are on either end of the line, including the red egg holding a protest sign. Mine are the red and purple one covered in stickers and the green and yellow one that says “Resist” in white crayon (the whole word isn’t visible in the photo). Noah made the blue smiling one and the pink and teal one with the white zigzag. It was fun. I was glad we did it.

Easter Monday: Memories

The next day, Beth and I were back at work and Noah worked on treating a stretch of the fence with a vinegar solution. I made egg salad out four of our Easter eggs and served it on toast with crudites for dinner. It seemed a shame to peel off their colorful shells just a day after dyeing them, but I was storing them in the fridge, so no one was seeing them anyway.

Earlier in the day I was walking through the living room, and I caught sight of another Easter egg, a pale green wooden one from the 2014 White House Easter Egg Roll, with Barack and Michelle Obama’s signatures printed on the back. And it occurred to me that this year’s Easter Egg Roll, sullied with corporate sponsors who seem to be trying to buy their way out of federal lawsuits, was underway right then. That was a depressing thought. But I took the wooden egg off the mantle and set it next to my computer to keep me company for a few hours while I worked. Every time I looked at it I remember taking my eight-year-old child to have an iconic Washington experience, in brighter days.

Earth Day: The Environment

I had hoped to plant some sunflower and zinnia seeds on Earth Day, but I didn’t get around to it. My only observations of the day were making a cream of spinach soup for dinner (because it was a vibrant green color) and writing a check to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. I’d read about how federal cuts and a budget shortfall in Maryland will endanger the decades-long cleanup efforts that have been moving in the right direction but are not finished. This breaks my heart because I love the bay.

But I haven’t given up on the Earth, its large ecosystems or our tiny corner of it, so I will eventually plant those seeds. Keep planting yours, too.

Hands Off

Posted on April 10, 2025 by Steph

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When we had our weekly video call with North on Sunday morning, Beth commented that it seemed like more than a week since we’d seen them. North pointed out it had been almost exactly a week, as we’d dropped them off at the Frederick park-and-ride at 11:30 the previous Sunday and it was currently 11:15 a.m. But it was an eventful week, wasn’t it? Trans Day of Visibility on Monday, Senator Cory Booker’s historic speech from Monday through Tuesday, the encouraging results of the Wisconsin Supreme Court election on Tuesday, the tariffs being announced, also on Tuesday, and the stock market tanking over the following few days, and Hands Off rallies at 1,400 separate locations nationwide on Saturday. Plus, a small, happy thing happened on our porch on Wednesday.

Monday: Trans Day of Visibility

On the last day of March, just a day after North left for school, Beth and I went to a Trans Day of Visibility rally. On my way to meet Beth at her office, I spotted a woman with a sign that said, “You’re Worried About the Wrong 1%” on the Takoma Metro platform and I knew she was going to the same place I was.

It made me think how differently that 1% estimate of the trans population is used rhetorically than the 10% estimate of the whole LGBTQ+ community was used back in the 80s, 90s, and beyond. People used to imply that 10% was a sizable minority, one big enough to be considered mainstream and to deserve rights we didn’t currently have (like marriage equality or employment nondiscrimination). Now the 1% statistic is used to imply that the trans community is so tiny that it won’t bother anyone and should not have any rights it currently has—in some places—taken away (like using public restrooms or playing school sports or getting accurate identification). It’s a disheartening difference. The ask is just “please leave us alone” or to phrase it a different way, “hands off.”

I met up with Beth at her office and we walked to the rally, which was at the very edge of the mall, right across the street from the Capitol. It was a warm, overcast afternoon, with rain forecast, and we’d both forgotten to bring a rain jacket or an umbrella. But the atmosphere was festive, and the crowd was the biggest of the three trans rallies I’ve been to since February, despite the threat of a storm. There was music playing when we arrived, and I commented to Beth that we shouldn’t have any trouble hearing when the speakers, as they had a good sound system. We sat on the grass near the stage with our signs—Beth’s made by North—and waited and people watched, which is always fun in a queer crowd.

The music played through the whole event in between the speakers. Some was probably chosen because of the artist (Kim Petras) and others because of the lyrics (Kacy Musgraves’ “High Horse.”) It kept the mood energetic. I also liked that each speaker introduced the next one, which kept things moving along without longer breaks between each person.

And speaking of the speakers, I mentioned when I wrote about the last trans rally that we attended that these are the only ones with no elected officials. Well, I need to take that back. There was elected official after elected official, a lot of Congressional representatives and some state-level officials as well. In fact, there might have been too many of them. Their speeches started to run together after a while, though Representatives Summer Lee and Maxwell Frost were particularly forceful. I noticed almost all of them mentioned a trans relative, which made me wonder, is that what takes for elected officials to be brave enough to speak up for trans folks?

It made me think how nice it had been that at the second trans rally we went to, several weeks earlier, nearly all the speakers were trans. That was more of an in-group gathering, and this was more of an expression of allyship. But both are necessary, and I was glad to see both, and for elected officials to see that people will turn out for trans folks, in case they need that encouragement to do the right thing.

At one point one of the speakers noted that the crowd on the mall was sitting in the sun while the Capitol behind the stage was in shadow. Eventually, though, it did rain, not for long, but hard. Not too many people left, though. Folks held their signs above their heads (I did this) or draped themselves in their pride flags. Another speaker noted that you need rain and sun to make a rainbow.

We got home on the late side, so it was nice to be able to dig into the grilled cheese sandwiches and soup Noah had made for our dinner while we were on the bus coming home.

Wednesday: Fledglings

If you’ve been reading here long, you may know we get mourning doves nesting on a ledge on our porch every spring. Occasionally, there’s more than one nest a year, but the predictable one happens in March through April. The nest does not always result in fledglings. Sometimes the eggs fail to hatch, sometimes the nest is attacked by predators. So, I try not to get attached. Guess how well that goes? But in attempt not to break other people’s hearts, I’ve stopped posting much about the chicks on Facebook or here until I know whether there’s a happy ending. Well, this year we had a happy ending.

The dove parents had been sitting on the nest for a few weeks when North was home. (Mourning doves are egalitarian parents, the mother and father take turns on the nest.) I told North I thought maybe the eggs wouldn’t hatch. Late March was colder than usual, and I thought the mother may have laid the eggs too early. But a day or two before North went back to school, I caught a glimpse of one of the parents feeding a chick. It wasn’t tiny either, so I guess the parents did a good job hiding them after they hatched, and they continued to hide them. It wasn’t until after North was gone that I spied two good-sized chicks alone in the nest. They looked almost ready to fledge.

Sure enough, on Wednesday, around lunch time, I spotted them out of the nest, sitting together on a pile of sandbags on the porch wall. Noah came out to get some photos. The dove chicks stayed there all the rest of the day, not taking any of the little test flights across the porch young doves often take. When one of the parents came back to the nest and called to them, they ignored it and stuck to their post. (“Hands off, Mom and Dad,” I imagined them saying.) I wondered if they’d ever leave the porch wall. But the next morning, they were gone. Beth has since spotted one of them perching on the hammock in the side yard.

It always makes me happy when the dove chicks survive and leave the porch for the outside world, but this year it made me even happier than usual. I think I desperately needed a win, even if that win is as small as two more live birds living in my yard.

Saturday: Hands Off

Saturday morning Beth and I went to the Hands Off rally by the Washington Monument. I know a lot of you went to these events in your hometowns. I saw pictures on Facebook from all over. Both of our mothers went, mine in Sacramento and Beth’s in Wheeling. I’ve heard the total number of participants was in the hundreds of thousands, or two million, or three million, or five million. It’s hard to say. I can say, though, that the D.C. crowd was the largest protest I’ve seen since the original Women’s March in 2017.

We met up with people from various unions at the AFL-CIO building. I’d never been in that lobby before, and I was taken with the beautiful mural. I’d been in a rush to leave that morning and hadn’t had time to make a sign, but they had sign-making materials, so I customized a Hands Off sign by adding a list of causes and vulnerable populations: Foreign Aid, Free Press, Canada, Greenland, Panama, NATO, Science, Trans People, Federal Workers, Unions, Immigrants. It was what I came up with off the top of my head. I wondered later if I should have left NATO off the list, since what we truly want is more of a hands-on approach to the alliance.

The AFL-CIO building is a couple blocks from the White House so after taking pictures of the labor delegation, we walked the half hour or so to the Washington Monument, chanting all the way. When we chanted, “What’s disgusting? Union busting!” I said to Beth it was really kind of an open-ended question to get just one answer, especially these days.

The speakers were on the Sylvan Theater stage, but without jumbotrons (which would have been a good idea) there was no way the vast majority of the people there could get anywhere close enough to hear, so people were wandering around the grounds of the monument or clustering together to listen to drumming and to do their own separate chants in smaller groups. Beth skillfully steered us close enough to the stage that we could hear a lot (but not all) of the speeches. It was packed there and hard to move around, so I could only see signs for one tiny slice of the throng, but even so, I saw a lot.

Several people made signs that made MAGA spell different things. My two favorites were: “Morons Are Governing America” and “Make Authoritarianism Go Away.” Of course, many people went with the rally theme and chose either a single issue or like me, a laundry list. I saw “Hands Off My Future” (held by a teen girl), “Hands Off LGBTQ Rights,” “Hands Off the Constitution,” and “Hands Off Our Medical Care, Unions, Benefits, Bodies, Schools, Parks & Oceans.” I thought “Will Trade Racists for Refugees” was a good one, too. Flags—American, Canadian, Ukrainian, Rainbow, and Trans— fluttered in the breeze.

As I said, from where we were standing, up on a hill closer to the Monument than the stage, we could hear a lot of the speakers. There was a preacher who was very fired up, an undocumented immigrant talking about the threats to her community, and Jamie Raskin was there, because he’s almost always there, but I don’t get tired of hearing my Congressional representative speak. We also heard Maxwell Frost again. We arrived a little after eleven and the program was supposed to go until three-thirty, but we left around two when the speakers became inaudible again and enough people left that it was easy to walk away.

On the way to the Metro, we stopped at an ice cream truck and split a brownie sundae. Then when we got home, Noah and I made a spinach paneer lasagna. I was tired from standing and walking for several hours, so I did all the KP tasks (chopping, grating, etc.) sitting at the dining room table and he did the mixing and sautéing standing in the kitchen.

Post-Rally Pause

That was five days ago. Since then, there’s been chaos in the markets with the tariffs being paused and a bill has passed the House with such stringent voting requirements that it would potentially disenfranchise people without passports and married women who took their husbands’ last names. Plus, more information keeps coming out about the hundreds of mostly Venezuelan immigrants, most with no criminal records, abducted from the U.S. and sent to what can only be called a concentration camp in El Salvador with no due process whatsoever. Just another week in the second Trump administration.

But it’s been relatively quiet on the home front. In her capacity as Communications Director of CWA, Beth has hosted a couple evening Zoom calls for labor activists, one of which Jamie Raskin attended, and she introduced him. I am almost finished with a monograph on household toxins I’ve been writing on and off for a year but working on steadily for the past four weeks. For the first time in a long while, we don’t have any protests on the horizon. I could use a rest. But not too long a rest, because these are terrifying times, and we need to keep making our voices heard.

Nine Days, Nineteen Years

Posted on March 30, 2025 by Steph

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North was home for a little over a week for spring break. During that time, they turned nineteen, had a birthday party, saw a play, and toured the Tidal Basin while the cherry trees were blooming. If you’d like more than that highlight reel, read on.

Day 1: Saturday, Arrival

North got a ride home from school with Ember and Max, friends from their co-op. We and another set of parents met the car with the three Obies in the parking lot of the Shady Grove Metro. Or I should say one of the parking lots at the Shady Grove Metro because that station has a massive complex of lots on both sides of the tracks, and not knowing this, we drove to the wrong side of the tracks and had to cross over to the other side, which was a ten-minute drive and then we went to the wrong lot on that side. The college students had their own adventure getting to the right lot, but eventually we found each other and hugged North and chatted briefly with the other parents and set off for Cava, because it was mid-afternoon, and North hadn’t had lunch or much breakfast. (The young folks drove almost straight through with just one bathroom break.)

Back home, North was reunited with the cats and their brother, in that order. North and I hung out at the dining room table while I wrote postcards for Susan Crawford in Wisconsin because after the first one, it’s just copying, and I can do that and talk at the same time. Then North and Beth hung out in our bedroom while Noah and I made a white bean-tomato-cheese casserole for dinner. After dinner, we watched a couple episodes of Grownish. North went to bed early. They had a cold and they’d been up since 4:30 a.m., so they were wiped out.

Day 2: Sunday, Birthday Party

“Happy birthday, early bird,” I greeted North in the kitchen at 7:50 a.m. They protested that it wasn’t that early, but then reconsidered, saying maybe it was early for a nineteen year old.

Not quite two hours later, North and I walked to Starbucks, detouring briefly to see the only cherry tree in bloom around the corner from our house. This tree is at the end of the block and always blooms early. It was already slightly past peak while the other couple dozen trees had just a stray blossom here and there and dark pink, swelling buds. These trees tend to be in sync with the ones at the Tidal Basin and we were hoping for peak bloom before North left the following weekend, but based on their progress it looked iffy to me.

At Starbucks, we each got a birthday cake pop and North got their free birthday drink, an iced cherry chai. I’ve been wanting to try that but decided to wait for a warmer day. It was in the low forties that morning, so I got a warm matcha latte.

Back at home, Beth got home from a bigger than usual grocery shop (including treats for North such as fermented pickles, kalamata olives, dried mango, fresh strawberries, and Takis) and I put the groceries away. Once that was done, North opened their presents from us. Noah got them honey caramels and chocolate-covered toffees from Zingermann’s. Beth and I got them a $19 gift certificate for the closest coffee shop to our house and tickets to see In the Heights at Signature Theater in Arlington, Virginia. They talked to both grandmothers on the phone, both of whom were disappointed their birthday checks had not yet arrived. (The checks were here within a couple days.)

Beth frosted the cake she’d baked the day before. It was a chocolate cake with strawberry-cream cheese frosting, topped with freeze-dried strawberries. North and I watched an episode of Emily in Paris before North’s party guests arrived.

North had invited three high school friends (Maddie, Miles, and Grey—all of whom are currently seniors), a camp friend (Ruby), and a college friend (Cal), both of whom live nearby. It was a nice mix of people from different parts of their life. The guests started on the porch, came inside briefly to see (or meet) the cats and then moved out to the back yard where they stayed for most of the party. It had gotten somewhat warmer, but the temperatures never rose beyond the mid-fifties.

Miles and Maddie had to leave early. They didn’t get any pizza or cake, but they did take some almond butter chocolate chip cookies Cal had brought because that’s North’s favorite cookie. North also got sea dollar earrings and a necklace with sea-green glass beads from Grey.

Beth and I picked up a takeout feast from North’s favorite pizza place, Roscoe’s—two pizzas, a salad, two orders of devilled eggs, marinated olives, and an eggplant sandwich. It was twenty minutes late and the restaurant ended up comping us the whole meal. Beth and I ate inside the house, but when it came time for cake and ice cream, I joined the celebrants outside, as I wanted to get acquainted with Ruby and Cal, whom I’d never met. Cal seemed interested to learn I’d lived in Keep, too, and to talk about that.

Grey left around eight and the party moved inside for another forty-five minutes or so when the last guest left. When it was down to North and Cal, they were talking about co-op matters, specifically the price of eggs, because North is a food buyer and Cal is a head cook so it a concern for both of them. It was kind of funny though, to hear two teens talking about grocery prices like cash-strapped parents trying to make ends meet.

Days 3-5: Monday to Wednesday, The Middle Part

Monday was low-key. Beth and I worked (as we did every day from Monday to Friday), North and I watched another episode of Emily in Paris in the afternoon and we all watched a couple episodes of Grownish in the evening. I’d set a television goal of getting halfway through Emily in Paris season 4 and finishing Grownish, season 3 over the course of North’s break. Yeah, I know I said I was thinking of watching less tv, but I wasn’t going to start while North was home, and probably not week after next when the last season of Handmaid’s Tale starts. I set North to work mending one of Noah’s bottom sheets that had a rip in it because I was hoping it could be salvaged. We’ll see. I’ve had mixed luck mending sheets when I’ve done it myself. For dinner, I made a tater tot-topped vegetarian chicken, carrot, and pea casserole that’s a favorite of North’s.

Tuesday morning, North had a psychiatrist appointment, and I met them afterward for coffee at Lost Sock. North was eager to try their jasmine latte and enjoyed it. That evening they went out to dinner at Kin-Da with Anastasia and Ranvita, more high school friends who were unable to come to their party. It’s been kind of lucky for North that they had so many friends in the grade behind them (more than in their own grade) because everyone’s home during their break, at least this year. When they came home from dinner, we watched an episode of Emily in Paris.

Wednesday morning, I had to go to the library to return a book and North tagged along because there’s a Starbucks near there and there are many items on their spring menu they want to try. We took the long way, walking along the creek and enjoyed seeing all the flowers and flowering trees. Both kids did some yardwork in the early afternoon and then Maddie came over and North and Maddie went to Koma. I made tofu sticks and strawberry-applesauce for dinner, another favorite dinner of North’s.

Day 6: Thursday, In the Heights

Thursday North made brownies, their only baking project of break, possibly because we were finishing up the cake the first few days that they were home and we had Cal’s cookies, too. North also made dinner that night, black bean-mushroom quesadillas. That was helpful because I was trying to finish up a work project and we were eating dinner early so we could go to the theater.

We got four tickets to In the Heights, but because of a mix-up in the family calendar, Noah was misinformed about the date, and he bought tickets for a Senses concert on Thursday. He decided to go to the concert, and we had an extra play ticket on our hands, so North invited Rowen, another high school friend. Rowen has an afternoon internship at an elementary school in Bethesda, so we needed to drive from Takoma Park to Bethesda to Arlington, quite the suburban odyssey. We left the house more than two hours before showtime, just to be safe.

The young people were chatty in the car, trading stories about working with kids in school and camp settings. We arrived in plenty of time (allowing me to go back to the car for my phone but not enough time for me to go back a second time for my glasses). I was distracted because I thought I might have skipped my diabetes meds at dinner, and I had some I carry in my backpack, but I wasn’t sure if I’d really skipped it, so I kept going back and forth about whether to take a dose. I decided I was more afraid of a crash than a spike, so I didn’t. And it was the right decision. I’d taken the meds after all, I discovered when we got home.

The show was fun and well done. Did you see the movie? I think it was the first movie we saw in theaters in the immediate post-vaccination phase of covid, in the spring or summer of 2021. It has some joyous associations for me because of that, but there’s joy in the plot, too, which is a tale of immigrant struggles, hopes, and dreams. It seems relevant and honestly bittersweet to watch now, especially the part where everyone is dancing during a street carnival and waving the flags of their homelands.

The play was performed in the round, and we had balcony seats. Beth was worried the view would be party obstructed, but it wasn’t bad at all. We had to lean forward to see the actors when they were right in front of the bodega, but otherwise it was fine.

We were out late. For context, intermission took place at 9:20, when Beth and I are normally getting ready for bed, and it was after midnight by the time we’d dropped Rowen off in Gaithersburg and gotten home. These are the sacrifices we make for art.

Day 7: Friday, Cherry Blossoms

The next day was the day we’d decided to see the cherry blossoms and we picked just right. It was the first day of peak bloom, an overcast day with temperatures in the high sixties. We took the Metro to Smithsonian and walked from there. As we passed between the mall and some grand federal architecture, the Department of Agriculture, I think, North said, “I love D.C.”

I do, too, which makes it so hard to see so many of its important institutions being dismantled. We’d driven by the Kennedy Center on the way back from the play the night before, all lit up and now a melancholy sight, and just that day we’d learned the administration has its sights set on the Smithsonian. We really can’t have nice things any more.

The Tidal Basin was as crowded as you’d expect on a Friday afternoon during peak bloom. And as always, it was a diverse crowd, people of all ages and races and nationalities. There were people speaking many languages, people in Muslim and Mennonite garb, people in wheelchairs, an Asian or maybe Latino couple posing for wedding pictures, and three separate girls in enormous dresses doing quinceanera photo shoots. People of all sorts were pushing strollers, walking dogs, standing in line for food trucks and listening to music performed on the stage or played by buskers. Everyone was delighting in the puffy profusions of white and pink blossoms and strangers were cheerfully taking each other’s pictures. When I’m in a crowd like this I usually find the display of diversity inspiring, and I still do, but it’s also a little disheartening that so many people can’t see the beauty of it as easily as the beauty of the cherry trees.

And they are beautiful. They always are. We’ve gone almost every year since 1992 for a reason. Three of us got ice cream and North got a smoothie and we took pictures (Noah using a new camera lens that allows for extreme closeups), and we walked until North got tired and decided to wait for us at the MLK Memorial. The rest of us wanted to go as far as the FDR Memorial because we love it and because there are bathrooms there. Beth posed at MLK with a quote that spoke to her, and I did the same at FDR.

It started to drizzle toward the end of our tour and Noah was worried about getting his new lens wet, so he ducked under a food tent to swap it out. We swung back for North and caught a Lyft to Metro Center, where we caught a train home. The driver was listening to the news on the radio, which was mostly about the stock market tanking in expectation of tariffs to take effect next week. It is so hard to disconnect from the news sometimes. It’s just always there.

Days 8-9: Saturday to Sunday, Goodbyes

Saturday Beth went to another Tesla protest, this time in Silver Spring. I would have gone with her, but it was North’s last day at home, so instead I stayed home, and we watched Emily in Paris (reaching the goal of watching half a season) and then we went to Koma. They’d forgotten their gift card when they went with Maddie, but this time they remembered. North got an iced chai; I got peanut butter soft serve because the afternoon was warm, in the high seventies. On the way there we walked down the block right around the corner from our house, where all the cherry trees were in exuberant bloom, just like their Tidal Basin cousins.

North spent some time on their last full day home applying for summer jobs and internships, doing their taxes, and making a sign for Beth take to the trans rally they would miss by just one day. Noah and I made ravioli with rosemary-garlic sauce and broccoli for dinner, then we all watched two episodes of Grownish, successfully finishing season 3 (three more to go!). This season, which takes place in the 2019-2020 school year, was filmed entirely before the pandemic, so there’s an in-person graduation and one of the characters is headed off to compete in the Tokyo Olympics. That was jarring to say the least.

Sunday morning North packed up the chia seeds, matzoh, and more dried mango Beth bought them to take to school, they said their goodbyes to the cats and their brother, and then Beth drove us out to a park-and-ride parking lot near a bus stop in Frederick where Ember was waiting to take them back to Oberlin. We hugged them goodbye until May, when we’ll be back in Ohio to watch their theater class showcase and bring them home for the summer.

Beth and I had lunch in Frederick at a place called Hippy Chick Hummus, which is very much what you’d expect from the name. We got a hummus sampler plate and if you’re ever in Frederick, Maryland, I recommend the olive hummus—the lemon is pretty good, too. We took a stroll through Carroll Creek Park, following a brick path along a canal and admiring the collection of kinetic sculptures in the water. We got ice cream (coffee for Beth, maple walnut for me) and picked up a couple bottles of soda for Noah at a specialty soda shop (cherry and cherry-lime).

Then we drove home. It’s sad to say goodbye to our youngest, but it won’t be too long until they’re home, and I can’t help but think how when their brother came home for his first college spring break (in the 2019-2020 school year), well, you know what happened. He didn’t go back for seventeen and a half months. This is better. They’re where they should be.

Still Cute, Just Bigger

Posted on March 18, 2025 by Steph

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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.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Author Archives: Steph

About Steph

Rise Again

Hands Off

Nine Days, Nineteen Years

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