Author Archives: Steph

About Steph

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

Taking the Waters

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Saturday

The day after Valentine’s Day we drove out to Berkeley Springs, where we were spending the long weekend. We arrived around noon and had just enough time to get lunch—vegetarian sliders for Beth and me and naan pizza for North—before our one o’clock appointment at the state park spa. 

There’s a warm spring in the park, which was used first by Native Americans, then colonists, including George Washington, who visited as a teenager and then returned throughout his life. You can see the outdoor tub he used. The spring water is tepid, a constant 74.3 degrees, and runs through a series of little canals in the park. There’s also a water fountain where you can fill bottles for free.

Inside the spa buildings, you can get various treatments, but we were there to take a Roman bath in a big, private, tiled bathtub filled with heated spring water. There’s a bench on one of the short sides and there was plenty of room for the three of us. We visited Berkeley Springs on the kids’ spring break several years ago and I remember it was a little crowded with four, but that could have been because the kids kept splashing each other. North said the water was hotter than they remembered, but it was about how I remembered it. You do feel very relaxed when you get out.

After our bath we browsed the shops in downtown Berkeley Springs. North, who has become a Wiccan—did I mention that? I don’t think I did—was particularly interested in checking out the crystal shop, but didn’t want to buy anything on our first day. We also wandered around an antique mall, where I found the issue of Life magazine from the week my mother was born and took a picture of it for her. It had a photograph of a young woman in short braids and a flight suit on the cover, with the caption “Air Force Pilot.” It was cool to see. There were also some non-antique things for sale, including Trump 2020 socks—less cool.

After window shopping, we checked into our room at the Capacon State Park lodge. Beth and I read for a while and North amused themselves with their phone until it was time to leave for dinner. The restaurant was still decorated for Valentine’s Day. There were heart-shaped balloons and a scattering of rose petals on every table and we were given three red roses. We had a very nice meal—starting with warm brie with apple slices, apple butter, and walnuts. I had a vegetable-pasta dish with smoked mushrooms and a creamy sauce made of pureed squash and crème brule for dessert. I was really pleased to see that on the menu because I had actually been thinking I was in the mood for crème brule as we were driving to Berkeley Springs.

Back in our room, we watched half of To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You to follow up on having just watched To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before on Valentine’s Day at home. (North thought we should watch a romantic movie, so we let them choose one.) Then we went to bed, but we didn’t sleep well, at least Beth and I didn’t, because the people in the room next door were conversing loudly into the wee hours. (They were square dancers staying at the lodge for an event and I’d said to Beth earlier that surely they’d go to bed early because they were an elderly bunch for the most part—but apparently we go to bed earlier than elderly square dancers.) This was unfortunate because I also had trouble getting to sleep at home on Friday night and after two consecutive nights of suboptimal sleep, I was really tired the next day.

Sunday

But I soldiered on. We had breakfast in the lodge restaurant and then we headed out for a hike along the C & O Canal and through the Paw Paw tunnel. This tunnel was bored through a ridge  in the nineteenth century to allow the canal to bypass a series of bends in the Potomac. It’s over three thousand feet long and very dark inside. There’s a muddy path—the ceiling drips—with a railing and it takes about fifteen minutes to walk from end to end. Beth lit the way in front of us so we could avoid stepping in puddles.

When you emerge the towpath continues beside the canal which has a steep rocky slope on either side. It’s made of shale, and there are frequent landslides, so there are nets to protect you from falling rock and in some places, the park service has scaled off loose rock and screwed metal plates into the rockface. (Someone had scratched Trump 2020 onto one of these. But it was not completely Trump country. We saw a Tulsi Gabbard lawn sign, of all things, one day.)

It was a mild, sunny day, probably in the forties, and there were a lot of rapidly melting icicles covering the rock and more or less continuously breaking off and shattering on the rocks or slipping into the water. If you looked closely you could see water running under the sheets of ice or in some cases inside hollowed out icicles. There was a place where the water splashing from a little waterfall had coated dried grass with a what looked like a spiky crown of ice. The last time we walked this path was in the spring, so I’d never seen all the different ice formations before. It was kind of magical.  A little further down the canal, there was open water and we saw a bunch of salamanders wriggling in it. 

Heading back toward the tunnel, North gathered up a bunch of shale shards and we threw them into the canal, trying to break the ice. It took a while to get one to go through, but eventually we both sunk some to the bottom of the canal. Back in the tunnel, North had the flashlight and they shone it on the opposite wall to reveal a lot of sleeping bats.

We returned to Berkeley Springs and had a late lunch at a café with really good coffee. I later said to Beth it tasted like the coffee at Mayorga, a coffee company that used to have a coffeeshop in our neck of the woods. Beth exclaimed that it was Mayorga coffee. She’d seen the bags of coffee beans. She then pronounced me a “coffee savant.”

After lunch we visited Give Purrs a Chance, a cat café and adoption center. Actually, we went right before lunch to see if there was food there, but it was heavy on the cats and light on the café, with no food on offer, so we left to eat and returned. I’d never been to a cat café before. This one is in a Victorian house. The cats have the run of the place, with one room reserved for shy cats and another one for kittens. We visited all the rooms. When the staff person asked us, “Do you want to see the kittens?” and we said yes, she said, “No one ever says, ‘No, I don’t want to see the kittens.’” We spent a lot of time in that room. North particularly liked a tiny, feisty, black kitten named Agnes. There was a staff person in the kitten room who asked everyone who came in “Do you have cats at home?” and then, “How many?” and no matter what you said, he’d answer, “That’s not enough.”

The whole house was furnished with cats in mind. There were pillows on the floors and upholstered chairs, and a castle made of cardboard with a lot of little rooms with pillows or cat beds inside. It was like a big dollhouse, full of cats. There were also a lot of empty shelves on the walls, spaced so that a reasonably good jumper could go from one to the other, all the way across the wall and we saw a cat named Connie do just that. Overall, I was impressed with what a nice place it would be for a cat who likes (or tolerates) strange people to live. Much nicer than the cage in a shelter where we got our cats. 

Before we left, North selected two balls to buy for our cats, who turned seventeen sometime this week. (We don’t know their exact birthday—the shelter said mid-February when we adopted them, so North assigned them Valentine’s Day and sometimes we remember to get them gifts on or around that day.)

We went back to the hotel and watched the rest of our movie. I had a headache that had gotten worse over the course of the afternoon and was starting to make me sick to my stomach. I almost stayed behind when Beth and North went for Chinese because I wasn’t sure if I could eat, but I’d just taken a painkiller and I thought my appetite might return when it kicked in, but it never really kicked in, so I just sat with them and didn’t order any food.

We went back to the hotel and I went straight to bed. It was 8:15 when my head hit the pillow and I was asleep not much later than that. North had the idea for me to sleep in the twin bed so Beth and North could watch something on the laptop on the queen bed. It worked out pretty well. Beth says the square dancers were at it again, but my body was determined to sleep and only heard them briefly around 10:45. I slept almost eleven hours. I can’t remember the last time I got so much sleep in one night, maybe before kids. Beth also got a better night’s sleep, thanks to earplugs.

Monday

I woke up feeling a lot better. We had breakfast at the same café so I had another fabulous latte, along with a breakfast sandwich on a biscuit. Then we went to Coolfont Resort, where we swam in the salt water pool and soaked in the hot tub. There was a nice view in the hot tub room, a couple evergreen trees right outside the window, with a ridge in the background.

We went back into Berkeley Springs one last time, North made a lot of purchases at the crystal shop, including a crystal apiece for Beth and me. I got clear quartz, which is supposed to help me be productive and self-aware. Beth got rainbow moonstone which is supposed to help with stress. While we were there, I picked up a birthday present for my niece—a wooden magic wand with a woman’s face at the top with crystals emerging from her head. The crystals look like icicles, my sister thought, when I texted her a photo, and she thought Lily-Mei would like it because she’s obsessed with Frozen. From there we went to a cheesemonger’s and bought some local mozzarella, some Manchego, and some amazing Dutch aged Gouda.

We picked up some other foodstuffs on the road and found some tables along the canal where we had a picnic lunch. After we ate, North threw rocks at the ice on the canal again, and then we drove home.

Beth said afterward that it was strange to be on a road trip without Noah. I felt the same way. It wasn’t our first weekend getaway without him, but I doubt he would have come on the church retreat we attended in September, so we both missed him more on this one. But at the same time, it was also nice to have a little trip as a threesome. 

We’ve been home and back to work and school for a few days. Beth’s been to the dentist, North goes to the orthodontist tomorrow, and we’ve all been to a trans kids’ and trans kids’ parents’ support group. North tried out for a part in the spring school play. Life rolls on. But I often find myself thinking about the waters of Berkeley Springs and its environs, in Roman baths, in canals little and big, in the Potomac River, and in swimming pools and hot tubs. 

Happy in Winter

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Imbolc and Groundhog’s Day

Saturday morning Beth, North, and I were talking about the collection of early February holidays that fell that weekend: Imbolc (Wiccan), Candlemas (Catholic), and Groundhog’s Day (secular) and about how they are all related to each other and mark the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It’s not spring, but a time to look forward to spring.

North was supposed to have Jade sleep over on Friday night but she was sick and had to cancel. (All three of us have been sick, too, with different symptoms, united only by a cough.) North and Jade had been planning an Imbolc ceremony, so North asked if Beth would do it with them. (On that particular day I was the sickest of the family and had retreated to bed.) There was music involved and maybe some kind of craft, though I never saw evidence of it. Finally, they left an offering of juice, milk, honey, grains, nuts, and bread on the porch.

And then two days later, the Groundhog predicted an early spring. My daffodils seem to agree. They are poking out of the ground and some of them have yellow-green heads formed. Now they sometimes stay stalled like that just a couple inches above the ground for several weeks at a time, but I’d welcome spring, whenever it wants to come. Still, I am also sorry for Beth, who loves snow and has had to make do with two measly snowfalls, both a half-inch or less. There was some patchy snow on the ground at Blackwater Falls State Park when we were there at Christmas, but it didn’t snow while we were there either. But here’s the thing—those tiny snowfalls resulted in one snow day, one early dismissal, and one two-hour delay, so I can’t quite find it in my heart to wish for any amount of snow. Still, as I reminded Beth, we’ve probably got a month and a half left in the snow danger opportunity season.

As we were discussing the dearth of snow at dinner Saturday night, North said it must make me happy and I said, “Can I really be happy when Beth is unhappy?”

And then North, who can sometimes get right to the point, said, “So you can’t be happy in winter no matter what?”

I hadn’t thought of it that way and I said, “Maybe not.” But on further thought I decided it wasn’t true. After all, I’m not always thinking about the weather. And even with a number of challenges to happiness (being sick, missing Noah, the continuing erosion of democracy exposed by the toothless impeachment trial), we still had some nice moments over the past couple weeks.

Lunar New Year and Winter Greenhouse

This past weekend I was mostly taking it easy and trying to recover from my flu-like illness. You can put that squarely in the not-happy-in-winter column. But the weekend before that, after North’s cold was mostly better and before Beth and I were felled, we did a lot of fun things. We welcomed the Year of the Rat by going to see Winter Lanterns, a celebration of the Lunar New Year outside the Kennedy Center. It featured a collection of over one hundred large colored lanterns in various shapes—traditional Chinese symbols like a dragon and pandas, all the signs of the Chinese zodiac, plus other animals, flowers, and mushrooms. It was gorgeous and we all enjoyed walking through the display. And Beth only said, “This would be better if there were snow,” once.

In addition to the lanterns, there were white lights outlining the branches of the willow trees that grow outside the Kennedy Center, and an art installation of metal poles with lights on them. If you connect two of them by touching both, they light up more brightly. It also works if two people each touch a pole and then hold hands. That was very cool. Plus there were food trucks, and we got a funnel cake for North and a Nutella-banana crepe, which Beth and I shared.

Saturday we went to see A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and on Sunday we went to Brookside Gardens, where we explored the warm and colorful conservatory, and then wandered on the outside paths. The landscape was mostly winter-bare, but I did spot snowdrops and some yellow acony. We walked through the labyrinth and tried to meditate, as the sign recommends, but the three little girls tearing through it soon after we started made that somewhat difficult. How can you be mad in a situation like that, though, when you’ve had your own small children? You can’t.

High School Update

I wasn’t going to say anything about where North’s going to high school until it was settled, but it may not be settled for a while, so here’s an update, which goes in the ambiguous column. Those of you who don’t live in Montgomery County, Maryland probably need a refresher about this whole complicated process: There’s a lottery to determine which high school you’ll attend if you don’t end up in an application program. Everybody enters this, ranking five possible schools. If you choose your home school as your first choice, you are guaranteed a spot, but they still make you fill out the form. Then if you want to apply to a magnet, you do that, too. If you get in and accept, your lottery results are moot. North had entered the lottery and applied to the Visual Arts Center magnet last fall.

Sometime in early January, North got their lottery results and they got into their second choice school. They were a little disappointed but within a few hours they had started to convince themselves of the good points of this school, principally that it’s one of two high schools that their middle school feeds into (assuming you go to your home school) so they would be more likely to know people than at their first-choice school. Since they seemed to be talking themselves into being happy about this outcome I decided not to say anything about the second chance lottery. Yes, there’s a second chance lottery. Students who don’t get their first choice are allowed to throw their hats back into the ring after all the application program spots are filled and there are some vacancies at all the schools. But after several days of mulling it over, North decided they did want to enter the second chance lottery and they did. We’re supposed to hear back sometime in late March. 

So then, on Friday, North heard from the Visual Arts Center magnet and they are waitlisted. The VAC expects to finalize the class by late April, so it could be almost three months before we know for sure where North is headed. But North’s genuinely happy to be on the waitlist because it’s very competitive and they didn’t expect to get in at all.

Crocuses and Poohsticks

Monday I was still sick and I had a scattered, unproductive day. As a result, when North got home from school, I hadn’t taken my daily walk yet, so I asked if they’d like to take one with me. They said the crocuses were in bloom down by the creek and we should go there. Usually I’m the one who notices that and takes them there. Ever since North was tiny they’ve loved to walk on the muddy path by the creek when it’s lined on both sides with thousands of tiny purple flowers. It was kind of a sweet role reversal to have them take me. We even played Poohsticks after I mentioned how the little wooden bridge reminds me of that doing that when they were little. They did not actually remember playing this game, but once I explained it, they said, “Let’s play.”

So for a little while, instead of looking forward, to spring or to high school, we looked back.

Hitting the Road

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We have pizza every Friday night—we either go out, get delivery, or heat up frozen pizza. Because Noah came home from school on a Friday night and he had not eaten much all day, we got him Sbarro at Union Station, and after that I started measuring his time at home in pizza. Pizza #2 was at the lodge at Blackwater Falls State Park two days after Christmas; pizza #3 was frozen pizza at home I dressed up a bit with parsley from my winter herb garden, vegetarian sausage, and some veggies we had on hand; pizza #4 was delivery; and the fifth and final pizza was frozen again. This seemed kind of anti-climactic and I considered suggesting we go out, but Beth was having a busy week at work and she’d come home early the day before to go see the school play at North’s school—North was not in it, but some of their friends were—so I didn’t. It was after we’d eaten that last pizza and then settled in for our last Friday night family television night that it began to seem like he really would leave in a few days. (We watched three episodes of Speechless and finished the first season, which we’ve been watching for about two years. It only ran for three seasons so I joked we might finish it in another four years.)

I know most of you with kids in college didn’t have yours home for a whole month, so I should not complain. He had a nice stay and I got to spend more time with him that anyone else because for the last two and a half weeks, Beth and North were at work and school and he and I were at home together. Of course I was working, too, but we found time to watch television, read, take walks, and run errands together. He was useful around the house, too, cooking, cleaning, folding laundry, and doing a little yard work. Thanks to him, the digital clock in the dining room that runs slow now displays the correct time, the blades of the ceiling fan in our bedroom are clean, and the air-conditioning units are out of the windows and down in the basement.

Because he doesn’t volunteer a lot, a month was about how long it took to get some minimal information about his classes and his social life out of him, but it seems like he had a good first semester. He has a couple friends, he enjoyed his classes, and his grades were good. (About a week and a half ago, I had coffee with a mom of one of Noah’s preschool classmates and while we were talking the mom of one of his best friends from kindergarten saw us and came over and we all talked about our brand new college students. All three kids seems to have adjusted well to college life and all three brought home dirty laundry. It was good to hear about his long-ago friends and how they’re doing.)

Saturday was the fourth annual Women’s March, so Noah also got to attend a protest in D.C. before he left. Beth had asked him to come film the CWA contingent, and I came along, too. North was not interested in marching on a day with sleet in the forecast, so they spent the morning at their friend Norma’s apartment and roaming around downtown Silver Spring together. 

After we dropped North off at Norma’s building, we drove to the Metro and took it to the city. I saw women with pussy hats approaching the station at Brookland and there was a group of women sitting behind us talking about picketing Mike Pence’s house who I thought were almost surely headed where we were headed. Another group of women holding hand-made signs but piled up in a way you couldn’t read them were probably also headed to the march either to participate or possibly counter protest—the annual March for Life is on Friday, and there are some early arrivals around town.

At Beth’s office building, people were gathering in the lobby, making signs, and partaking of hot drinks, juice, and snacks. It was not as big a crowd as CWA had at the first Women’s March, but there was a decent turnout, especially from one New York local. They were easy to identify because they all had matching jackets. They’d been on the road since six a.m. and seemed energetic and happy to be there. Several of them had brought their kids.

We socialized with people Beth knew, especially Mike who’s married to the CWA Secretary-Treasurer and is a photographer who’s mentored Noah from time to time. Mike and Sara’s oldest daughter Rose applied to the Visual Arts Center (where North also applied) for high school, so we talked about that and how Noah’s first semester of college went. When it was time to get going, Sara gave a short speech about what it meant to her to be at the march with her three girls, who stood with her, displaying their signs. June, the middle daughter, is ten years old and running for President in 2048. She has professional-looking buttons made already. I look forward to voting for her.

Then we set off for Freedom Plaza, as snowflakes sailed lazily through the air around us and then melted on the sidewalk. Shortly after we arrived, the snow turned to freezing rain, as predicted, but it was more like freezing drizzle, so we didn’t get soaked. There were speeches, but we were too far away from the stage to hear much, except for Las Tesis singing “El violador eres tú”, so we people-watched and read signs instead. I have to say “Any Non-Criminal 2020,” was my favorite because it matched my feelings about this Presidential race. There are some candidates I like more than others, but my bar is pretty low. (Noah and I watched the debate on Tuesday and I thought everyone came off pretty well, though he and I had similar reactions to the Warren-Sanders spat. It’s puzzling to try to imagine what actually happened because it doesn’t sound like something he’d say and she doesn’t seem like one to flat-out lie.) As always, there were also a lot of pussy hats and baby Trump balloons and someone had made a MAGA cap out of an umbrella by covering it with red cloth and attaching a bill, but instead of MAGA, it said, “IMPEACHED.” To make things complete, there were also some anti-abortion protesters with bloody fetus posters and a man with a bullhorn who got right up into Beth’s face, yelling about abortion.

Once the marching started, there were the usual chants. I always like “Tell me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like.” Based on when I could hear his voice, Noah seemed to like “Say it loud, say it clear. Refugees are welcome here” best. (Sometimes it was “immigrants are welcome here.”) People were also chanting, “We need a leader, not a creepy tweeter,” and “Hey, hey. Hey ho, patriarchy has got to go.” Beth said she thought that seemed like a tall order, and she’d settle for getting rid of the current President as a start.

After a while, a group started to sing, “This Little Light of Mine,” and then “We Will Overcome” and it was nice to sing something uplifting after all the chanting. The march couldn’t go in front of the White House, because Pennsylvania Ave. was blocked off and we’d gotten separated from the CWA contingent, so we abandoned plans to have Noah film the group in front of the White House and we split off from the march before it was quite done. We ducked into a Potbelly where I waited in line for almost twenty minutes to use the restroom and then we found a nearby Noodles and Company where we enjoyed a hot lunch. (I got tomato soup and mac-n-cheese with broccoli and it was quite restorative after a couple hours in the cold and wet.)

We came home and Noah and I finished the fifth and final season of Orphan Black, and North’s friend Jade came over, and after she left we all went out to dinner at Vicino, Noah’s favorite Italian restaurant and he got baked ziti, which is his favorite dish there. After North went to bed, the rest of us watched an episode of Dickinson. We’d decided we were all about finishing series or at least seasons of series before Noah left.

Sunday after various people went grocery shopping, swimming, and to the library, we continued our binge-watching. The four of us knocked out the last three episodes of the first season of Blackish, which we’ve also been watching for years. This show is in its sixth season, plus there are two spinoffs, so chances are we will never finish that one. But we were undaunted and after North went to bed, we watched the last two episodes of Dickinson.

Monday morning, Beth made a send-off breakfast of banana-chocolate chip pancakes. As we ate, we decided to skip our annual MLK day service project because the timing of Noah’s bus which left at eleven made it difficult, as most organized projects take place in the morning. North suggested we give money to an anti-racist organization in lieu of direct service and we decided on the Southern Poverty Law Center.

After breakfast, I folded the last load of laundry with Noah’s clothes in it and handed him a stack of clothes. I also prepared a bag of snacks for the bus ride to Ithaca, since there’s not always time for meals when the bus stops at rest stops. I sliced apples and carrot sticks, and put tortilla chips and walnuts in bags.

“Steph made you healthy snacks and I got you a candy bar,” Beth observed to Noah. “Who loves you more?”

At ten a.m., we left for Union Station and dropped Noah off at the bus bay thirty-five minutes later. There were a lot of parents hugging their college-aged kids and one mom trying to get on the bus with something her son forgot. We got drinks at one of the Starbucks inside the station afterward and while we were sitting just off the ornate lobby partaking of them, Noah texted to say he’d forgotten his brown bag of food. My impulse was to rush to the car and get it, but it was the exact time the bus was supposed to leave and when we got back to the car it wasn’t there anyway. He’d left it in his room. Well, so much for providing him with something healthy… I ate the apple slices and carrot sticks with my own lunch.

So, as I write, Noah’s on a bus, speeding toward Ithaca and his second semester of college. He’ll be playing percussion in the non-music majors band, which means he’ll have a musical outlet, which makes me happy. He’s also taking a computer science class, an environmental science class, Intro to Audio, and Intro to Media Industries (which is about the ethical, legal,  technological, economic and creative issues raised by new media). We’ll see him in early March when he comes home for spring break. As I told him as he got on the bus, I’ll miss him but I’m proud of him.

28/7

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Noah’s still home and as a result, we’ve been trying to watch all the things with him, in different combinations. We all went to see Little Women last weekend (four thumbs up), and he and I went to see Parasite a few days ago (thought-provoking and recommended if you’ve got the stomach for some violence—the end is a bit of a bloodbath). On the small screen, the four of us continue to make incremental progress on the first seasons of both Speechless and Blackish, both of which we’ve been watching for years; Beth, Noah, and I have started Dickinson (which is very strange and very good); and Noah and I are nearing the end of the fifth and final season of the crazy complicated and addictive drama Orphan Black, which we started last summer. Noah and I are reading, too. We finished American War and we’re more than halfway through The Testaments. I think we’ll manage to finish it before he goes back to school on MLK day.

We had a little snow in the middle of last week, about a half inch, that resulted in an early dismissal and a two-hour delay, but North went to school for at least part of the day every day, which I count as a win this time of the year. Plus, it was the kind of snow that clings prettily to tree branches, and turns lawns white, but doesn’t stick to the sidewalks, so there was nothing to shovel. Noah and I took a lovely walk through the falling snow on Tuesday afternoon and ended up at Starbucks, where I got a mocha and he got his standard winter drink—the caramel apple spice. He enjoys the idea of hot apple juice with whipped cream (and the reality, too).

And speaking of things that happen in January, Beth and I had an anniversary this weekend. On Saturday it was the twenty-eighth anniversary of our commitment ceremony and the seventh anniversary of our legal wedding. This means we’ve now been married for a quarter of the time we wanted to be. I am looking forward to watching that fraction get bigger with time.

Beth was awake and looking at her phone before I woke up on Saturday and when I started stirring she told me Facebook had made us an anniversary video, which means it wished us a happy anniversary before either of us had wished to each other. Ah, modern life…

Beth took North to therapy and then they ran some errands while Noah and I watched Orphan Black. In the late morning, I started making our anniversary cake, which we served at our commitment ceremony and I’ve made on almost all our anniversaries since then. (In the early years I forgot once or twice.) It’s a spice cake, with a lemon glaze. Last year I mixed things up by making an orange glaze and there were protests. North went over to Zoë’s house around noon and after the remaining three of us had lunch and Beth did a little work, we watched three episodes of Dickinson, then Noah and I read a couple sections of The Testaments and I frosted the cake, adding some red sugar, leftover from Christmas baking.

Beth and I left around four o’clock to go on our anniversary date—Harriet and dinner at a Burmese restaurant. It was interesting to see this movie when we did because on New Year’s Day, Beth, Noah, and I went on a first day hike on an Underground Railroad trail at Woodlawn Manor Cultural Park. It’s a guided hike, with two interpreters providing background about the Underground Railroad in Montgomery County as you walk through the woods. I recommend the hike, if you’re local. It’s usually not done in the winter, though—they added a New Year’s Day hike this year—so you’ll have to wait until spring if you want to do it. It’s not dramatized, but it’s full of interesting stories and it really makes you think about what it would be like when you’re walking in the very place escaped enslaved people once did. I also enjoyed the film, despite some hokey moments. Harriet Tubman’s story is a truly amazing and inspiring one. (Beth said it made her annoyed all over again that she’s not on the twenty-dollar bill yet.)

After the film we went to dinner at Mandalay, which is one of our stand-by restaurants. There was a surprisingly long wait, but once the food came it was delicious, as usual, and the wait gave us time to talk. It was a very nice date.

We returned to the house to find Noah, North, and Zoë (who was sleeping over at our house) watching a movie in the living room. It had fifteen minutes left, so Beth and I exchanged cards and gifts while we waited for the teens to be available to eat cake. I got Beth a new wallet, and she got me two books, The Girls and My Sister, the Serial Killer, both of which look good, plus a roll of postcard stamps. I asked for these, to help me get back on track writing for Postcards to Voters. I imagine it’s going to be a busy year for that. When I opened my card from Beth, she asked me if she’d gotten it for me before. I said yes, that I’d kept it on the windowsill near my desk for a long time.

It wasn’t until the next morning, when I opened the old card that I noticed that inside she’d written:

Happy 26/5
Beth

And in the new card, she’d written:

Happy 28/7
Love,
Beth

When I showed it to Beth and North, North said “You’re so basic.”

Beth protested she wasn’t basic, she was “unchanging, like a rock.”

“You’re my rock,” I told her, giving her a hug. And then she said she supposed this was going in my blog, and of course, she was right.

At dinner that night, I showed the cards to Noah and the teasing began anew. I noted she had changed a word, adding “love” in this year’s card. Beth said it was evidence that her “ardor has increased.” And then she predicted, “Two years from now it will be “lots of love.”

Stay tuned to see if that’s how it turns out. I’m pretty sure we’ll be eating the same cake.

Walkin’ Around the Christmas Trees

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Friday-Sunday: Before Blackwater 

North’s last day of school before winter break was the Friday before Christmas. This was also the day Noah was returning from college and we had a party to attend, so it was a big day.

The party was for the family of a preschool classmate of North’s. They moved to Switzerland three years ago (around the time we were all wishing we could move to Switzerland) and they come back to the States for visits occasionally. When they’re in the D.C. area, someone from the Purple School will host a party so they can see as many people as possible in a limited period of time. It was good to see the family of honor and a few of North’s old classmates, all teenagers now, and their families. The hosts made an excellent squash and black bean chili and the expats brought Swiss chocolate and there was a gingerbread cookie decorating station and a charming five year old who wanted to decorate more cookies than she was allowed to eat so she started circulating through the room offering thickly frosted cookies. It was a fun party. Unfortunately, Beth didn’t get to stay long because she was coming from work and by that time North and I had been there an hour and a half and North was impatient to get to their next social engagement, a sleepover at Zoë’s, plus we had stuff to do at home before Noah’s bus arrived, so she couldn’t stay long.

Beth and I arrived at Union Station around 9:25 and had about a half hour wait for the bus. We got Noah some pizza and a chocolate milk at Sbarro, because we knew he probably hadn’t had time to procure himself much food for the ride. Sure enough, all he’d had since breakfast was a rest stop soft pretzel. The reason for his hasty departure was that he had an unfinished, overdue paper he’d been working on until he left (and on the bus and for two days after he got home). The paper was for his ideologies class and he said he’d been reading Mein Kampf on the bus and hoping no one thought he was a Nazi. He ate his pizza in the car and drank “this mysterious liquid,” a comment that made me hope he’s not drinking soda every day at school. When we got home, Beth and I went to bed while he did whatever it is college students do at night.

The next morning at 11:30, when Beth and I set out to get a Christmas tree, he was still in bed, though he answered the text Beth sent to say we were leaving. We drove to Butler’s Orchard, where we go berry picking in the summer. We’ve never gotten a tree there, maybe because it’s forty-five minutes away, but they had a much nicer selection than Christmas tree lots generally do four days before Christmas, so we may make it our go-to place. We browsed in the farm market, got some apple cider and garlic dip mix, and then picked out a tree. We found one we liked a lot—six feet tall and very full and bushy.

Our next stop was Wegman’s, where we intended to buy eggnog and mushroom ravioli for dinner and where we checked out with $55 worth of groceries. We don’t live near a Wegman’s so we succumbed to the temptation to splurge on several kinds of fake meat they don’t carry at the co-op, cranberry stilton, pomegranate kernels, and lunch at the deli. I got a slice of mushroom-truffle pizza and a pomegranate soda and it was very good.

North came home from Zoë’s in the late afternoon and we all had dinner around the same table, which was nice. Then we opened presents from my mom and Sara because there’s never room in the car for all the presents and it made a nice little solstice celebration. We capped it off with a viewing of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Sunday Noah emerged from his room shortly before eleven, and spent most of the day working on his paper. At dinner he said he was stuck, so I read his draft and gave him some ideas. We were all hoping he’d finish it that night, so he didn’t have to work at Blackwater. He’s already done that enough times. I told him he should have a college student’s break and not a high school student’s break. Meanwhile I did three loads of laundry (a lot of which was his) and swam and packed.

Monday and Tuesday: Blackwater, Before Christmas

Hike: Pendleton Overlook and Pendleton Lake

Monday morning brought us the happy news that Noah had turned in his paper the previous night while the rest of us slept. It was three days late and shorter than it was supposed to be, but as I often used to tell him in high school (and middle school and elementary school), “Done is beautiful.” We packed up the car and hit the road for West Virginia around 10:15. There wasn’t much traffic and even with a stop for lunch, we arrived at 2:30. We waited in the lodge for YaYa and when she arrived, we checked into our cabin.

We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and for dinner we had takeout from Panera—vegetable soup, bread, and mac-n-cheese that YaYa had picked up on the road. Then we watched Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town. We’d saved all our Christmas specials except those we’d watched over Thanksgiving break until Noah was home again (at his request), so we had a lot. During the song, “First Toymaker to the King,” both kids sang along with brio. They knew every word.

On the morning of our first full day at Blackwater, North and I took the first of many walks while Beth and YaYa went grocery shopping. North took me to a path they’d found another year we’d stayed in a cabin nearby. It goes to a rocky outcropping with a view of the river canyon, dense with evergreens. It’s similar to the other overlooks, but smaller, more private, and without a protective railing. It was a little scary watching them stand closer than I would to the edge, but I stopped myself from saying anything because they weren’t really that close. Next we proceeded to an official overlook and North put a quarter into the swiveling binoculars to better view the lodge across the canyon and the narrow waterfall going down the canyon side. Then we took a path to Pendleton Lake, which was almost completely frozen, despite the current mild temperatures. North slid on the ice near the edge of the lake, and I watched from the earthen dam between the lake and the creek that empties out of it. There were some interesting ice formations on the creek side, near the culvert where the water comes out of the dam.

Back at the house, we decorated the tree with our ornaments and YaYa’s, too. It was like decorating a tree always is, with everyone exclaiming over ornaments that remind us of years, or decades past, and getting all nostalgic in a Christmassy way over them.

After lunch, the kids and I made gingerbread from the dough I’d made at home and transported with us. This is another nostalgic activity as the recipe is my mom’s and I’ve been making it first with my sister and mother and then with my kids since I was old enough to handle dough. We go different directions with the decorations from year to year, though. This year we used dried fruit, nuts, seeds, and hard candy. I discovered pepitas make good eyes and a cashew is just the right shape for a smile. North made a very satisfactory turtle shell out of green hard candies that melted into an approximation of a diamondback pattern. And as we always do, we made initial cookies for everyone. YaYa got two, an A for her real name and a Y.

Next North and I went swimming and hot-tubbing at the lodge. The hot tub was more of a tepid tub, but it was still relaxing. There was no one else there and the tub was big enough for me to float on my back.

Before our dinner of chili and corn bread (cooked by Beth), we watched A Miracle on 34th Street and afterward we watched The Year Without a Santa Claus. It was nice to watch something we don’t watch every year (the former) and something we do (the latter).  In between viewings, the kids opened a pair of new Christmas pajamas each, green and white stripes with a red collar for Noah and red and white stripes with a green collar for North. (I feel lucky that at thirteen and eighteen they still go along with this.) Just before bed, Noah treated us to a very dramatic reading of “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” and YaYa said he really should take an acting class in college someday.

Wednesday: Christmas Day 

Hike: Lindy Point

Christmas morning, as we woke singly and in pairs, we emptied our stockings of oranges, candied nuts, and other treats. Everyone was up by eight and we ate the lemon-cranberry muffins North had made for breakfast and then opened presents. A great many books, mugs, packages of tea, socks, and bars of soap were exchanged. Noah’s big present was an Apple watch. He was pleased with it and over the course of the next several days kept using it to check the temperature, note his movement goals, or dictate texts. He said it made him feel like Dick Tracy, though further questioning revealed he wasn’t actually sure who Dick Tracy was. North’s big presents were a papasan chair (which was actually at home because it was too big to bring with us, but we gave them a photo of it) and a weighted blanket, which they immediately and happily threw over themselves. “I will never need another blanket,” they said. YaYa especially liked the calendar Beth made of pictures of the kids, but what grandmother wouldn’t?

Around noon everyone but North left for a hike to Lindy Point. The day was lovely, sunny and cool but not cold—Noah and I didn’t even wear jackets. It was in the fifties most days we were there, actually, and there was not much snow, just the patchy remains of a past snowfall on the ground when we arrived, and that was all but gone when we left. Everyone was a little disappointed not to have a white Christmas, but the upside was pleasant temperatures for hiking and we did take walks every day. The year before had been snowy but bitter cold, which limited our outdoor time.

The trail to the overlook was narrow and lined with towering rhododendrons. It took us to a wooden platform on a rock outcropping that affords more views of the river canyon. Noah gave all his womenfolk a scare edging around the outside of railing to get photos from the angle he wanted. YaYa couldn’t watch. But he didn’t plummet down into the canyon, and we went home and had lunch and started one of the book he got for Christmas, American War. It’s set in the future during the second American Civil War and the plague years afterward. Then I read one of my Christmas books, Stephen King’s latest, The Institute.

Christmas dinner was YaYa’s signature spinach lasagna—she and Beth cooked every dinner we didn’t have takeout or eat out and that was a nice treat for me, as the primary cook in my family. We intended to watch Christmas is Here Again after dinner, but the internet was spotty in the cabin and it wouldn’t download, so we watched It’s a Wonderful Life instead because it was already downloaded and it was a more than adequate substitute. We haven’t been doing nightly poems since Noah left for college, but we are making an exception for Winter Poems, a book we’ve been reading read every winter for many years. We read the first five poems that night, including this one by Rachel Field I’ve always liked, which begins:

Something told the wild geese
            It was time to go
Though the fields lay golden
            Something whispered,– “Snow.”

And ends…

Something told the wild geese
            It was time to fly,–
Summer sun was on their wings
            Winter in their cry

 And then Christmas was over.

Thursday to Saturday: Blackwater, After Christmas

Hikes: Pendleton Overlook and Pendleton Lake (new route), Blackwater Falls

The day after Christmas I did three loads of laundry in the cabin’s tiny washing machine. Noah and I read some more of American War and I read some more of The Institute. Everyone but Noah had lunch at the White Grass Café and the kids went sledding on artificial snow in 56-degree weather while the mothers and grandmother watched from the bottom of the hill. They each went down four times. One the second run, they shared a sled to see if they’d go faster that way, but they concluded, in Noah’s words, that it was easier to steer, “when there’s one consciousness,” so they went back to separate sleds after that.

After sledding, Noah and I went back to the cabin and everyone else went to browse in the shops of  Davis, a nearby town. When they came home, we all did our own thing in the house for a while until Noah and YaYa went for a walk in the sunset before our dinner, which was a vegetable-white bean-quinoa soup. Christmas is Here Again had successfully downloaded so we watched our final Christmas movie.

Friday we went to the lodge for a late breakfast and from there Beth, North, and I proceeded to the pool, while Noah hung out in the lounge with his laptop editing the many pictures he’d taken so far on our trip and YaYa went back and forth from the pool deck to the lounge. I’d forgotten my goggles so I did backstroke for a half hour. I would have swum longer but it gets boring doing just one kind of stroke, so I went over to the hot tub, slipped on the steps, and fell into it. Luckily, I wasn’t really hurt, but it did give me a little scare.

Later Noah and YaYa retraced the steps of their walk from the day before because Noah wanted better light for pictures and for the rest of the afternoon some people read and some people watched Solo, and some did both and North did neither because they were having a long phone conversation with Jade in their room, as they did many days of the trip. (The two have become quite close recently.)

In the late afternoon I took a walk along the cross-country ski trail that runs behind the cabins. The grass was wet and muddy and I fell, soaking the knees of my jeans twice in quick succession, but I discovered a new route to the lake, which was still mostly frozen and quite scenic in the dusk. I was near the Nature Center and behind it I discovered two little skulls, one white and one green, wrapped in shrouds and mounted on sticks. I wasn’t sure if they were leftover Halloween decorations someone failed to remove. Or perhaps they were the ghosts of Christmas future.

When I got back to the cabin, Noah, Beth, and YaYa had finished watching Solo, and Noah was dragging the denuded Christmas tree back to the woods behind the house. We set out for a pizza place nearby, but there was a forty-minute wait so we went back to the park and had dinner in the lodge restaurant where we had breakfast.

There was a reading at the lodge by Ann Pancake, a West Virginian writer, starting shortly after we finished dinner, so we stayed for that, or the oldest three of us did, while the teens stayed in the lobby playing games on their phones. Pancake read three autobiographical essays, one about her childhood, one about visiting home as an adult, and one about her father’s dementia. I haven’t been to a reading in a long while, and I’d forgotten how much I enjoy them.

Saturday morning we packed up the house, checked out, and went for our last hike of the trip, down to Blackwater Falls, the majestic waterfall that gives the park its name. You descend down a wooden staircase with several viewing platforms along the way. As we progressed, we tried to remember which was the platform where North lost a croc over the edge when they were very little and which was the one where Noah and YaYa sat on a bench and played his West Virginia-opoly game, a board game he made in fifth grade. (All the properties are places in West Virginia and he and YaYa were trying to play it in all of those locations, mostly during his summer visits to her. I don’t know if they ever completed this quest.)

About halfway down, North (who had twisted an ankle a couple days earlier), Noah (who’d slipped on the wet boards, gone down and hurt his leg), and YaYa (who’d been hesitant about the hike to start with) all decided to stay where they were and view the falls from there. Beth and I went all the way to the bottom, where the boards were coated with slush and ice. There were big icicles hanging from the lower rockface as well and the boulders in the river below the falls were all encased in ice. It all looked impressively wintry given that daytime temperatures had been in the fifties for at least several days.

Around eleven we said our goodbyes to YaYa in the parking lot and drove back to Maryland. Noah will be home for another three weeks, and Beth and North go back to work and school on Thursday. I have to work starting today, but I’m planning to meet an out-of-town friend for coffee this afternoon, attend the neighbors’ annual New Year’s Eve party tomorrow, and go for another hike, this one along the Underground Railroad trail with Beth and Noah, on New Year’s Day, so there’s still a little time for celebration left.

All is Calm, All is Bright

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It’s been pleasantly festive around here lately, especially the last two weekends. The first week after we got back from our Thanksgiving trip to the beach, I was really not in the holiday spirit, but I decided to see if I could force it and while this usually doesn’t work for me, this time it did.

Weekend 1

Friday evening we watched The Princess Switch, which is not a Hallmark Christmas movie, but it might as well be. Beth said it was “perfectly itself.” It’s not normally her type of movie, or mine, but somehow that night it seemed just right and a good way to usher in a Christmassy weekend.

Saturday afternoon we went to the U.S. Botanical Gardens to see the holiday display. Beth was already in the city for a Philippines human rights protest she had to attend for work. The protest was right outside Union Station, so North, North’s friend Lyn, and I met Beth inside the station by the big Christmas tree Norway donates each year. We picked up some coffee, tea, and hot chocolate, admired the model trains, and walked a few blocks to the Botanical Gardens.

The theme of the display this year was botanical gardens around the country, so there were many little buildings made of natural materials, with a model train running on elevated tracks through the room where they were housed. I was especially taken with the model of the flamingo topiary from Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus, Ohio. Its body was made of pine cones. We were all impressed with the incredibly detailed miniature Biltmore mansion, as we visited there several years ago when YaYa was living part-time in Asheville, North Carolina. As always, there were also versions of various Washington monuments made of plant materials in the room where you enter the conservatory, and poinsettias everywhere. After seeing all that, we wandered through the regular exhibits—Mediterranean plants, desert plants, medicinal plants, as well as the main atrium. It’s so peaceful in there. I wonder why we don’t go more often.

We dropped Lyn off at home and then took North to Jade’s house where they were sleeping over. Beth and I took the opportunity to have a dinner date at Kin Da, a Thai/Japanese restaurant in downtown Takoma. Then we went home and cleaned out the refrigerator because we had to defrost it in preparation for a repair Monday. (Never say we don’t know how to have fun when we’ve got the house to ourselves.)

Sunday I made peanut butter cookies with Hershey’s kisses stuck in them to mail to Noah in the Last Care Package of the Fall Semester. I included a Pez dispenser in the shape of polar bear with a Santa hat—we have a big collection of these from when the kids were younger and really into Pez. I ordered some Pez online in lemon, orange, and pineapple and had them mailed to him. It occurred to me later that some healthy snacks would have been a good idea for finals. Maybe next spring, I’ll remember to send those.

Weekend 2

That weekend was so thoroughly satisfactory that I tried to replicate the one movie-one outing-one baking project formula the next weekend. I was thinking of suggesting we watch It’s a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street on Friday, but then North wanted to see a movie in a theater and Beth had read good reviews of Knives Out, so we decided to go see it. We met up at Mod where had pizza before the movie.

When I was about North’s age I went through a big Agatha Christie phase—I have about thirty of her paperbacks to show for it. (I haven’t managed to entice North to read any of them yet, but they did see a production of And Then There Were None last summer because a friend was acting in it, so they have a general sense of the genre.) As soon as I saw that familiar font that graces so many mystery novel covers on the screen, I knew the film would be good. It’s not entirely an homage to Christie—some other authors and genres get shout outs, too—but it’s well done, fun, and also has something to say about class, race, and the political moment we’re in. It got three thumbs up from us.

On Saturday morning, North had a portfolio review at the Visual Arts Center, where they’re applying for high school. The review was a two-hour session during which applicants wrote a paragraph about why they were applying and presented a portfolio of work to a teacher, who asked questions about it. But the bulk of the time was spent drawing a still life from an assortment of objects provided. We’ll find out in February if they got in or not.

North was putting the finishing touches on their portfolio right up until the morning of the review. The middle picture is what their desk looked like after they left. Right before it was time to go, North asked for something nicer than a backpack to carry their art in and Beth dug around in her closet and found her father’s old leather briefcase, which the teacher who interviewed them admired and called “vintage.” I wonder what Beth’s dad would have thought of that. He was kind of vintage himself.

After the portfolio review, Beth and North made a big batch of pizzelles. Well, two batches actually, one vanilla and one chocolate. Beth had made a lot of dough because she wanted enough to take to two work-related potlucks, plus some for home consumption, some to take to Blackwater when we travel there for Christmas, and some to take to our family friend Becky, who we were visiting that afternoon. I hadn’t seen Becky (who was North’s preschool music teacher) or her daughter Eleanor (who used to babysit for us and was home from college) in a while, probably over a year, so it was fun to catch up, meet a friend and bandmate of Eleanor’s who was staying with them, and eat Becky’s tasty homemade cardamom bread.

After a short interlude of Christmas card addressing and other Christmas chores, we drove to Brookside Gardens to see the light display. This is a big deal around here, but we’d never been, so we weren’t sure exactly when to arrive for prime viewing and ease of parking. We settled on forty-five minutes before the lights came on at 5:30. We didn’t have to wait in a line for parking—and there was a long line of cars waiting when we left—so it seems to have been a good strategy. We killed the time until the lights came on, ten minutes earlier than scheduled, wandering around the gift shop and listening to a choir sing Christmas songs.

The early crowd was full of families with small kids and when everyone was released into the gardens at the same time it was crowded and loud. “I thought this would be more peaceful,” Beth said. But as people dispersed along different paths, it got less congested and calmer. Calm and bright, actually, because of the lights.

It’s a lovely display. As befits a garden, there were a lot of plants and animals. You could buy your own hyacinth lights in the gift shop and they were out in the garden as well, along with sunflowers, mushrooms, and cacti. From the animal kingdom, there was a fox, a beehive, the Loch Ness monster (my personal favorite), a giraffe, a lion, a frog, a heron, turtles, a dolphin, dragonflies with flapping wings, something we thought might be a cicada because it was winged and had red eyes, a bear, a wolf, and more. There was a pond with lights strung along poles, which were reflected in the water. Trees had their limbs outlined in every color of the rainbow and there was a rainbow, too, with clouds and a lightning bolt that flashed on and off overhead. It was a lot of fun to walk around and see what was around each turn in the path. I would definitely go again.

North was sleeping over at Zoë’s but we hadn’t had dinner yet, so we swung by Zoë’s house, picked her up and had dinner at Cava and then got coffee and pastries at Peet’s, before dropping both kids back at Zoë’s house. (I’d been on the lookout for a replacement for Starbucks’ gingerbread latte, which they’re not selling this year and if you are, too, Peet’s holiday spice latte isn’t quite the same, but it’s as good, so I was happy.) It was nice listening to the kids, who’ve known each other since kindergarten, joking around in the back seat of the car and reminiscing about elementary school.

Back at the house, I resumed addressing Christmas cards and finished the stack. Sunday North attended the Christmas pageant at Zoë’s church to see Zoë play an angel in it, Beth finished the pizzelles, North and I finished our wrapping, and I went swimming, and started this blog post.

Last night we got a quarter inch of slushy snow—yes, I measured it– which switched over to rain in the early morning hours, so naturally school was cancelled and for North, the weekend was extended by a day. They went over to Zoë’s after they’d finished some chores I assigned them. I thought a little bitterly as they waited at the bus stop in front of our house that the whole reason they were off school was that it was supposedly too dangerous to ride in a bus. It’s no longer a disruption to my work day when they’re off school, but blowing through half our snow days for a minor snow event in mid-December just makes it more likely we’ll go over the limit and there will be makeup days at some point, which makes the school calendar uncertain. North told me I shouldn’t stress about things I can’t control, and this would be excellent advice if I were capable of taking it.

Anyway, the snow had all melted by the time I left the house for a walk around noon during a break in the precipitation, so we didn’t even get to see it lit by our candy cane lights this evening, which I thought would be pretty. Oh well. Noah will be home Friday night and he’s staying for a whole month and on Sunday we leave for West Virginia, where we’re spending Christmas with Beth’s mom in a cabin in a beautiful state park, so I really should not complain about anything.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Eat, Shop, Sing

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Wednesday

It was surprisingly easy to get to Rehoboth on the busiest travel day of the year. We’ve always driven on Thanksgiving to avoid the traffic, transporting our mostly cooked-at-home dinner with us. But this year we were planning to leave the beach on Saturday afternoon rather than Sunday, so Noah could catch his bus from D.C. to Ithaca on Sunday morning, so we pushed up our arrival by a day.

North had an early dismissal and got home at 12:50. We were on our way about an hour later. It took four hours to get there, even with a snack stop at the Taco Bell and Dairy Queen near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. That’s about how long it would take on a summer Saturday, and now as then, the main backup was before the bridge.

When we got to the house, we initially couldn’t find the key box and then Noah found it in a flowerpot, disassembled and empty. This was puzzling, but we continued to poke around the porch and the side of the house. Shortly after Beth had called and texted the owner, Noah looked under the doormat and found a key there, so we could finally get in the house. We’ve stayed at this one before, three out of the five Thanksgivings we’ve spent in Rehoboth, actually. It’s a cozy, early twentieth-century, two-story house with a roomy kitchen, a fireplace, and a big clawfoot tub.

After getting settled, North and I took a quick walk down to the beach. I was surprised to be able to see so many stars because it had been cloudy the whole ride, but it must have cleared after the sun went down because the sky was sprinkled with pinpricks of light.

There were some off-leash dogs on the beach, too, and this was a problem because North is afraid of dogs. At least we could see where they were because their people had put lights on their collars. Eventually, the people put the dog that was running around in circles and wouldn’t stay with them on its leash and North was able to relax.

We walked back to the house and drove to Grandpa Mac’s for dinner. I got mac and cheese with broccoli, celery, and mushrooms. It’s what I always get, though I do vary the vegetables. From there we went to the grocery store and got necessities like milk, and some not so necessary items from the bakery. Back at the house we split into pairs and Beth and North watched Modern Family while Noah and I watched Orphan Black for the first time in over three months. It was a flashback episode (or maybe all of season 4 is a flashback) taking place shortly before the first episode of season 1 started. The plot of this show is very complicated, so it’s hard to say if looping back in time made it easier or harder to follow, but it was fun and I’m looking forward to picking up the thread over Noah’s winter break.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving morning we woke to find North had set out breakfast for everyone, with cereal for me and Noah and a muffin for Beth and juice for everyone. (Noah came down late so only his place was left and he didn’t realize it was his and he poured himself another bowl of cereal– but when North told him, he agreeably ate the original one, too.)

Meanwhile, North and I took a walk to the beach, boardwalk, and around town. A pool of water had gotten stranded on the sand, and North, remembering how they used to like to play in these temporary pools, said, “This would be great if it was summer and you had a small kid, but it’s not summer and you don’t have any small kids left.”

We found a small crab on its back, weakly waving two of its legs. I wasn’t sure if its habitat was in a burrow under the sand or in the water, so I picked it up, intending to turn it right side up and leave it near the waterline. I got pinched for my trouble and dropped it, but I can’t blame it for assuming I was a predator. I didn’t pick it back up, though.

On the boardwalk, we saw a big inflatable turkey wearing a pilgrim hat and North declined to be photographed with it. “I’m good,” they said, both times I asked. We went into town to see if anywhere that sold hot chocolate or coffee was open. Most places were closed, but we did find what we were looking for eventually at Dunkin’ Donuts and a German-themed coffeeshop staffed by a very talkative and enthusiastic French man. I’ve never frequented it, but it was busy, presumably because not much was open.

We returned home and North wanted to start on the turkey centerpieces we always make out of apples, toothpicks, raisins, cranberries, and green olives. We’d failed to bring enough toothpicks, so we had to improvise. First we tried uncooked angel hair pasta we found in the cabinets, but it was fragile and prone to breakage. Then, when it had been successfully stuck into the apple and threaded with dried fruit, the moisture of the apple would soften the part inside and the rest would snap off under its own weight. When Noah made his turkey later in the day, he used wooden skewers instead of toothpicks for legs, giving his turkey a freakish, mutant appearance. Someone said it was a turkey that had evolved for the post-climate change apocalypse. We eventually got all four of the turkeys constructed/repaired at the same time and quickly took a picture before they fell apart again.

After everyone ate lunch, Noah and I went to his room to read Little Brother for an hour or so and then we came downstairs and did some Thanksgiving k.p. We trimmed Brussels sprouts and then he kept me company while I prepared the brandied sweet potatoes. When we’d finished, Beth and North were watching Modern Family again. I invited Noah to take a walk on the beach and he said yes.

We walked a long time, with the wind to our backs, which is sometimes a mistake, but it was so pleasant on the beach—cool but not cold, with pretty autumnal mid-afternoon light—that I didn’t want to stop. Eventually we turned around and the sand was blowing in our faces, so we had to walk back through town. I always find it sad to walk parallel to the beach and not on the beach or boardwalk. We went by Silver Lake and saw a heron in flight over it, though, so that was nice.

When we got home I put the Brussels sprouts in the oven and tidied up the kitchen for Beth and North who were going to start the cranberry sauce and the mushroom gravy soon. When they were done with those dishes, they put the tofurkey roast in the oven and North split off to listen to an audiobook while Beth started boiling potatoes for mashed potatoes. While things were cooking, we all watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and Mayflower Voyagers. Before we ate, we volunteered what we were thankful for, being together mostly, but also for Noah being happy with his college choice, and for my new job. Then, after our Thanksgiving feast, we watched a couple episodes of Blackish while eating pumpkin and apple pie and then I took a bubble bath in the big tub.

Black Friday 

North and I woke up before Beth and Noah and they wanted a bagel, so we took a walk down the boardwalk to Dave and Skippy’s to get one. On our return, we all drove to Egg, for a more substantial breakfast—I had a hankering for the pumpkin-pecan French toast and Noah wanted the lemon crepes he always gets. There was a wait, so we visited a table across the street where local boosters were giving away hot chocolate, mini muffins, candy canes, and coupons for local businesses. Then we took a walk by the canal and went back to the restaurant. It was ten minutes before the hostess had told us to return, but she’d given away our table. I understood, she had a lot of people waiting. Luckily, we didn’t have to wait long for another one.

After breakfast we split up—Noah with me and North with Beth—and we started our Christmas shopping. Or we tried to split up, but we all went to BrowseAbout Books first, where we carefully avoided each other lest we see someone buying our Christmas presents. Afterward Noah and I visited the Christmas shop and Candy Kitchen. We ran into Beth and North near there and North wanted to switch parents, so we did. We perused the tea and spice shop, made our own visit to the Christmas shop, and finally to the crystal shop. Between these three stores, North bought presents for most of the friends on their gift list and finished up their family shopping, too—all before lunch. They do this almost every year. They’re a shopping machine. I didn’t make as much progress on my list, but I bought a few things. It was good to get the ball rolling, especially with Thanksgiving late this year. Christmas is closer than it feels.

North and I had a late lunch at Greene Turtle. The food was okay; the service poor. None of this was a surprise. I keep going back because it’s on the second floor of a building on the boardwalk and the view is stunning. Beth and Noah won’t set foot in there, being more picky about food and service and less picky about a panoramic seascape, so they went out for Italian instead. Afterward, they met us on the beach where we had our annual Christmas card photo shoot. (I’ve included a couple of the runners-up here.)

That was fun, but we were a little preoccupied because Beth had just received the news that Noah’s bus from D.C. to Ithaca on Sunday morning was “very likely” to be cancelled because of a winter storm due to hit Ithaca and much of upstate New York and New England on Sunday. Back at the house, she investigated flights, but all the routes were circuitous, prohibitively expensive, or both. The closest train goes to Syracuse and that last bit of the trip could be challenging in a storm. So we decided to cut our beach weekend and Noah’s stay with us a little short and drive him up to Ithaca on Saturday morning, so he could arrive before the storm, then turn around and drive as far away as we could before checking into a hotel for the night.

No one liked this plan. We all had things we wanted to do Saturday morning and early afternoon in Rehoboth—more shopping, more beach time, some relaxing at the house—but that would have to be scotched. And North was supposed to sleep over at Jade’s house on Saturday night after we returned to Takoma. But it seemed like the least worst option.

With this settled, I set about doing a load of laundry so everyone would have enough underwear for an unexpected night on the road and organizing and packing up a little. I was sad that Noah and I probably wouldn’t get to read any more of our book in the rush of our abbreviated stay, so Beth kindly said she’d finish the last of the Thanksgiving dinner dishes I’d left to soak in the sink the night before so I could go up to Noah’s room and read a little before we left for the holiday sing-along and tree lighting on Rehoboth Avenue.  (We read two chapters and ended up with four unread that we’d have to finish separately.) We got in the car and made a pit stop at Starbucks for hot chocolate, then I took North to Candy Kitchen, because they hadn’t been there yet, and Beth went to place an order for two pizzas at Grotto, which we’d pick up after the sing-along and take home.

North was upset about missing their sleepover with Jade, but the sing-along seemed to cheer them up. We ended up in a part of the crowd where not many people were singing but we all sang and Noah was cracking North up by dramatically humming the parts where he didn’t know the words and then very loudly singing the ones he did. During “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” I quietly sang “and a happy new Presidency” instead of “and a happy new year” to Beth and she nodded enthusiastically.

Back at the house, Beth made a fire and we ate pizza and watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Charlie Brown Christmas. I noticed something I haven’t before, which is that the Grinch starts with the Whos singing around a tree and that’s how Charlie Brown ends and it’s also what we’d just done ourselves. I guess there’s something powerful about singing outside in a group.

Saturday

In the morning we got up early, ate breakfast, and packed up the house. The kids and I went down to the ocean and put our feet in the water—theirs were bare, I wore boots—to say goodbye to it. In the car afterward, Noah said, “I can’t feel my feet.”

“Neither can I,” North said.

“You usually can’t feel my feet,” he observed and North half-laughed, half-groaned.

About seven and a half hours later, at five p.m., we carried Noah’s things up to his monkishly austere third-floor dorm room and said goodbye to him, not lingering so we could drive our way out of the storm’s reach. It seemed too soon, but I reminded myself again, Christmas is sooner than it feels.

Celebrations

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Friday: Mothers and Child Reunion

We’ve had a lot to celebrate the past few days because Noah came home for Thanksgiving break on Friday and that was the day before Beth’s birthday. Actually, he got home so late it was almost on her birthday, but I’ll get to that.

That morning was gray and rainy but I was cheerful as I set out for the 7-11 to get a bottle of cranberry juice and a ginger ale. Back when I was teaching, I always used to assign a paper due the class before Thanksgiving break. I’d collect them and take the stack to the snack bar, which was usually deserted so close to break, so it was a nice quiet place to work. I’d get a cranberry juice and a ginger ale and mix them together in a mug I’d bring from my office and I’d drink this concoction as I started to grade the papers. Every now and then I still get a craving for it and it always brings back that feeling of mingled industry and holiday anticipation. Knowing Noah was attending his last class before break and would soon be on a bus heading south put me in the mood for it.

Noah and I exchanged occasional texts throughout the day, but despite the distraction I had a pretty productive day, writing about a third of an article I’d been struggling to research and outline much of the week. North was at a play with Lyn and then sleeping over, so I asked Beth if she’d like to go out for pre-birthday pizza and she said yes. We met at Roscoe’s and discovered there were no free tables and two parties on the waiting list ahead of us. I heard the hostess tell the people in front of us it would be a half hour, so presumably for us it would be longer. This was the first part of the evening to go slightly awry.

After thinking it over a bit on a bench outside the restaurant, we decided to order to go, as that would probably be faster than waiting for a table. Eventually, we were on our way to the bus stop with our eggplant crostini, mushroom pizza, almond brownie, and chocolate-peanut butter cookie. We needed to heat up the crostini and pizza, but as I told Beth as we finished our meal, it wasn’t as fancy as going out but it was more fancy than eating frozen pizza, which was the original plan.

Meanwhile, Noah was having an interesting ride. The bus driver forgot to stop at Philadelphia and had to circle back when some passengers who wanted to disembark there informed him he’d passed the city. While the bus made its way through the City of Brotherly Love, someone threw a rock at it and cracked a window. (Perhaps the bus driver hadn’t forgotten to stop there after all, but had a premonition.) Anyway, that caused another delay while the driver stopped to assess the damage. Eventually he decided it was safe to continue, but the bus, which was due to arrive at Union Station at 9:40, didn’t pull in until 11:10. Fortunately, Noah was keeping us updated with occasional texts and Beth was tracking his phone’s location so we got there just about the right time and didn’t have to hang out in the bus bay for an hour and a half.

It felt strange to be leaving the house at 10:50, a time when we’re usually fast asleep, but as we drove through residential and commercial streets of D.C., I noticed a lot of lights on inside houses and restaurants and the streets were not exactly deserted either, so maybe not everyone goes to bed at ten on a Friday night in the city. Who knew?

We found the bus, with had “Adventure Tours” painted on its side—a little truth in advertising there—and through the open door of the luggage compartment, we could spy Noah bending down to get his bag on the other side of the bus. I refrained from running around the bus and waited until he reached us to hug him.

In the car we told him about the art show we’d attended the previous night and how North’s been completely off crutches and cane for a few weeks now and he talked about school. I asked how an audio project he’d been working on for his cinema production class at Hershey Park turned out. (He’d recorded people screaming on several of the rides as he rode.) He said the professor said it was “epic.”

When we got home, Beth and I went to bed. It was almost midnight, so I told Beth “Happy birthday,” and she noted it was two minutes early, so I waited and said it again a few minutes later. Noah was up a while, until at least 1:15. Every now and then I could hear him opening and closing doors or rummaging around in the kitchen making himself a bowl of cereal. It was comforting hearing him moving around the house and knowing he was home.

Saturday: You Say It’s Your Birthday

Beth had to take North to therapy in the morning and Noah didn’t emerge from his room until just before they got home, around 10:15. The kids greeted each other and pretty soon North was gone again, off to see Frozen II with Zoë and Norma, but we had time to gather around the table and talk a bit while Noah ate his oatmeal.

After North left, Noah wrapped his birthday present for Beth and he and I started to read Little Brother, which he’s reading for Emergent Media. It was published in 2008 and imagines a post-9/11 future in which U.S. citizens are even more surveilled than they currently are. The protagonist is a teen hacker and his friends who are cutting school and find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time when a new terrorist attack occurs and they get swept up into government custody. It’s more like something Noah would choose to read on his own than the novels he reads for school generally are.

Later in the afternoon, I had a nap to recover from my late night and then got up and made Beth’s birthday cake. It’s a dark chocolate cake with coffee frosting and I’ve made it for her birthday so many times the page in the cookbook is stained brown with cocoa powder. When I’d finished that I asked Noah if he’d like to help me make dinner, baked mac-and-cheese from Beth’s mom’s recipe, veggie burgers, and green beans. He said, “I guess it is Saturday,” (his old night to cook dinner) and agreed. He played Lindsey Stirling on his phone while we grated cheese, chopped onions and green beans, and stirred the sauce. It was nice to be reading and cooking with him again.

After dinner, Beth opened her presents. I got her a set of Fiestaware mixing bowls because I’d recently broken one. Ironically, the broken mixing bowl was a birthday present from Noah and me nine years ago when he’d broken a mixing bowl. It made me remember how that same birthday, North got Beth a mug from the same company, and gave her the following hint: “It’s purple, and it has a handle, and you can drink from it, and it’s called a mug.” This has become a family joke.

To go with the new mixing bowls, which are blue and pale green, the kids each got Beth a baking mix with the promise to bake—whoopie pies in North’s case and chocolate doughnuts in Noah’s. When he placed the order he didn’t realize you need a doughnut pan to make them so he ordered one at the last minute, too. I see a lot of doughnuts in our future. Beth seemed pleased with her gifts.

After I finished the dishes, we watched two episodes of Speechless, which we haven’t watched since Noah left for college. North, Beth, and I were all in bed by 9:45, but Noah’s keeping college student hours now. North reported the next day, somewhat indignantly, that when they got up at one a.m. to use the bathroom he was taking a bath.

Come Sunday

North made banana pancakes for everyone for breakfast, but we ate without Noah, who was sleeping in again. Beth was out at the farmers’ market before he got up and when he did, at 11:40, it was only because North set off the smoke detector making a quesadilla roll-up. He had his pancakes then and we read some more Little Brother.

In the afternoon, Beth took North and their friend Jade ice skating and I went swimming. Noah stayed home and when I got home, he was watching CNN impeachment coverage. I warned him against getting his hopes up and after we both talked to my mom on the phone, we read again. (The book is longish and we’re hoping to finish it or come close in a week.) Beth, North, and Jade (who was staying for dinner) came home, and Beth made ravioli and sautéed spinach.

This week North’s got two and a half days of school and Beth’s working from home so we could more easily take North to the pain clinic for a post-physical therapy assessment this afternoon and so we can leave for the beach Wednesday afternoon. I am looking forward to more family togetherness both here and in Rehoboth. I don’t have to wait until Thursday to feel grateful to have everyone under one roof, though. I already am.

Art in Autumn

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I’ve been low in spirits pretty much all month, so it was nice to have two artistic events to look forward to this week. North’s acting class had its showcase on Monday afternoon and they had a piece in a middle school art show we went to see on Thursday evening. (Actually, the whole week was busy—in between the acting showcase and the art show, we had a trans kids’ and parents’ support group on Tuesday and my book club met on Wednesday.)

Acting Showcase

I had a scattered, unproductive work day on Monday, but I finished the Jason section of The Sound and the Fury (my book club book), did two loads of laundry, made a batch of vegetable stock, and got dinner mostly prepped before I left the house at 4:25, so I guess the day wasn’t a total loss. My bus was late, but I’d left plenty of time, so I still arrived at the community center ten minutes early. I waited on a bench outside because I wanted the fresh air, even if it was overcast, chilly day.

North’s been attending this acting class since mid-September. It’s the same one they’ve taken four times, starting in fifth grade. It’s run by the director of the musical theater camp North attends every summer. When I entered the auditorium, I recognized most of the kids from past classes and camps. It was a small group this year, only six kids. They’d been working in pairs, on three scenes from three different plays.

North and Gretchen’s daughter Grace went first, doing a scene from Leaves, an Irish play about how a family reacts to the attempted suicide of its oldest daughter. North and Grace were playing the two younger sisters, who are discussing their sister’s return home in what starts as a muted, moody exchange that turns emotionally explosive. They both did a very good job, but they’ve been acting together since they met in a preschool drama class when they were both three, so I suppose it’s not surprising they have good onstage chemistry. (I especially liked them together in Into the Woods as Little Red and Jack a couple summers ago.)

The other two scenes were from The Man in the Moon and Dead Poets’ Society and they were also well done. After the scenes were finished, Gretchen had the actors discuss the acting concepts they drew on while they worked on the scenes (substitution, subtext, objectives, obstacles, beat changes, etc.)

Finally, the audience was invited onstage to participate in some improv games with the actors. I declined, even though most of the mothers (and one younger sister) did get up on stage. As I told my exasperated child, it’s their job to act and mine to write about it. That’s our division of labor. The games consisted of a group-written story, constructed by having each person contribute one word at a time, and a game in which you have to create a scene entirely out of questions. That last one looked hard.

North had been on the fence about enrolling in the class this year—it was tiring last year going straight from school to acting class to play rehearsals and they didn’t know they weren’t going to be in the fall musical at Highwood until the theater closed quite suddenly in September.  I’m glad North did take the class because when they didn’t manage to sign up for an audition slot for the school play, it ended up being their only acting activity this fall. We have Grace to thank for it because she’d been cajoling North via text until they finally said yes.

Art Show

Thursday we had an early dinner and drove out to the high school that houses the Visual Arts Center (to which North’s applying) to see a middle school art show featuring pieces from twelve different schools. Art teachers at these schools selected artwork to send and North’s art teacher chose North’s mandala. It was one of only two mandalas she chose.

When we arrived, people were congregated in a hallway in front of a portable screen. The mistress of ceremonies called all the middle school art teachers up front to be recognized, and then explained that a retired middle and high school art teacher had judged the art. There were twelve categories and four to six winners in each category—first place, second place, third place, and one or more honorable mentions. As the winning art appeared on the screen the MC explained what the judge had liked about each piece and then had the artist come up front for a photo. It was interesting to hear the judge’s thought process and very supportive and affirming. North didn’t win a prize, but as they say, it’s an honor to be nominated. (The other mandala from their class won third prize in the Color category.) After all the awards had been given out, we went into the room where the art was displayed. We went to each school’s display and at North’s school, they pointed out a friend’s artwork they wanted us to see.

After the show, we went out for frozen yogurt and I asked North what they’d learned about mandalas before they made them. Nothing, they said. So I looked it up on my phone. I learned they are geometrical configurations used in the Hindu, Buddhist, Jain religions in India, and the Shinto religion in Japan and that they represent variously: balance, unity, harmony, a spiritual journey, or cosmic and psychic order. Thanks, Wikipedia! North’s mandala is full of rainbows. (Look carefully at the spokes.) So I guess they got some of those concepts in, even without detailed cultural instruction.

Art can bring us all the things the mandala symbolizes. Over the course of the past several weeks, I’ve been savoring The Sound and the Fury, a book I haven’t read since I was a first-year college student, thirty-four years ago, and which was a pivotal book for me as a reader in ways I still remember clearly. I’m glad North has artistic outlets, too. While not every book, play, or painting takes us on a spiritual journey, every time we open ourselves up to art, there’s always a chance it will.

Cool As…

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Thursday: Halloween

It was kind of a strange Halloween. We’re missing a kid and the other one went straight to Norma’s apartment after school with Zoë and from there they went to Zoë’s house where they met up with Evie and all four of them trick-or-treated in Zoë’s neighborhood, so I barely saw North all day.

Around 5:15, I started playing my Halloween playlist and went out into the yard, righting fallen tombstones, and turning on the strings of ghost and bat lights and other light-up decorations and lighting candles in our mildewed, squirrel-bitten jack-o-lanterns. It was too light out to really see anything illuminated yet but I was about to start cooking and I thought trick-or-treaters might start to come soon so I wanted to have those tasks out of the way.

I usually make a quick dinner on Halloween so the kids can get out the door, but as there was no one who needed to get out the door, I made one of the more complicated dinners of the week—a vegetable-bean casserole topped with slices of sweet potato and sprigs of rosemary from my new rosemary plant. (I always like to buy some hardy herbs when the rest of the garden is dead or dying.)

The casserole was still in the oven when Beth got home around 6:30. By then we’d had about a half dozen trick-or-treaters, starting with the amusing juxtaposition of Michael Meyers and a cheerleader. I’d guessed correctly people might start coming earlier than usual because a storm with heavy rain and high winds was predicted, though over the course of the day, the storm’s estimated start time got pushed back from eight to nine, a boon for trick-or-treaters. The National Weather Service was advising people to take down their decorations if they didn’t want them blown away, but we decided to leave them up, at least for a while. It takes a long time to get our yard decorated and it was just too sad to think about taking it all down on Halloween. Plus, North was planning to bring Norma, Zoë, and Evie on a tour of our yard when Zoë’s folks brought them home.

While the casserole finished cooking, Beth gathered up the recycling (though she didn’t take it outside because of the wind) and set up the fog machines. The bigger one took some YouTube trouble shooting but she eventually got it going.

Beth and I had been wondering if we’ll tone down the yard display when both kids are gone, but while Beth was outside working on the fog machines, she heard a group of approaching trick-or-treaters say, “This house is cool as shit” and then as they got closer they lamented, “They don’t have smoke this year!” So it seems we might need to keep it up. We have a reputation to uphold after all.

We ended up with about twenty-five or thirty trick-or-treaters, a normal amount, just shifted earlier. The last group, two Hogwarts students and a soccer player, came at 7:45. North was home by 8:35, hungry because they’d applied the layer of latex over their mouth at 4:00 and had skipped dinner so they wouldn’t have to take it off and reapply. They showed their friends around the yard, and shortly after that, around 9:00, we went out into a gentle rain and started bringing in the lightweight decorations, but we left the heavier ones and the ones that were securely attached to something and an hour later we went to bed, hoping for the best.

Friday: Day of the Dead/All Saints’ Day

It did pour rain that night and it was quite windy, but the next morning, nothing seemed to be missing. Beth and North went to work and school. I had a scattered, abbreviated work day because I’d had trouble getting to sleep the night before and I needed to leave the house to take North to physical therapy at 2:25. I didn’t skip my customary morning walk, though, because I wanted to have one last chance to go down some side streets I hadn’t explored recently and check out those neighbors’ Halloween decorations.

North hadn’t had a physical therapy appointment in a few weeks. They’re doing much better, going to school and on outings without crutches or cane more often than not, and we’re wrapping up their treatment. (They have just one more appointment next week.) They were using a cane that day, possibly because they’d walked a lot while trick-or-treating, but they did great in therapy, impressing the therapist with their leg strength. For the first time ever, when the therapist asked them to rate their pain, they said they had none, just a little fatigue. I think the aquatic therapy really helped.

North was a bit agitated during the appointment, though, because they discovered early in the session that their phone wasn’t in their pocket, and using my phone to track it, we learned it was travelling away from the rehab hospital, presumably in the Lyft we’d taken there. I called and texted the driver, but got no response.

While we waited for the Lyft to take us from North’s school to the hospital and then after the appointment while we waited for the hospital shuttle to take us to the Metro, when North wasn’t fretting about the lost phone, we were busy negotiating discussing our evening plans. We’d considered going to a ghost story reading at Rhizome, a local art space (the one where Noah’s film camp met this summer). But looking at the promotional material made me wonder if it was really aimed at adults and older teens, plus there was a “necromancers’ cotillion” and the idea of dancing in public was kind of horrifying. (I probably haven’t done that since North outgrew Circle Time at the library.) The timing was also problematic. There wouldn’t be time to go home, eat dinner, and get there, but too much time to kill if we went straight there from the Metro.

Beth had texted me some information about a possible alternative, a showing of Phantom Carriage, a 1920s silent horror movie at AFI. It would have been right up my alley, since I love vintage horror, (and Noah would have liked it, too, since he has a soft spot for silent film), but it was a non-starter for North.

However, they didn’t seem wed to going to Rhizome, and countered with going to see either the Addams Family or Maleficent: Mistress of Evil. I was tired and thinking if North’s choice was to see a movie that wasn’t a one-time event, we could do it Saturday instead and just go home, eat frozen pizza, and watch something at home that night. But North pleaded successfully for pizza at Mod and a movie out. We texted Beth to invite her and to my surprise, she said yes, but she couldn’t make it to Mod in time to eat with us. So I stashed the leftovers in my backpack for her to reheat and eat at home, and we met at the theater, where we watched The Addams Family.

Saturday: All Souls’ Day

Saturday morning I had a message from Lyft about the lost phone and we made plans to meet up with the driver at a Starbucks to hand it off. Beth and I took down the Halloween decorations and boxed them up in the early afternoon and a little later, Beth and North went to get the phone. They were very happy to get it back and they had seventy-nine text messages to read, not to mention emails and Instagram messages. They were also glad not to have to pay half the cost of a new phone (per a prior agreement if the phone was broken or lost).

Our yard is looking a little sad and lonely now, without all its October playmates, but I have to say giving treats to costumed kids, seeing North get closer and closer to normal mobility, having a family outing, and not having to buy half a new phone is cool as… well, you know.