Another Stop in the Journey

Posted on May 13, 2026 by Steph

Mother’s Day

It was a strange Mother’s Day and birthday. North’s still at school and Beth’s in Wheeling with her mom, who has not been doing well. And then on Mother’s Day Noah and I were only awake and in the same place for a couple hours. I returned from a mostly unsuccessful trip to the farmers’ market around eleven-twenty. I’d failed to find strawberries, which they’ve had the past two weeks, and which were my main reason for going. I did buy a little basil plant and got a latte from Takoma Beverage Company, so the trip was not completely in vain.

At eleven-thirty we had a three-way video call with participants in Oberlin (North), Wheeling (Beth and her mom), and Takoma Park (Noah and me). Beth and I opened our Mother’s Day presents from the kids. I opened one of Beth’s for her because it had not arrived when she left. I got two jars of fancy nut butters and Beth got some dark chocolate bars and drinking chocolate.

Noah left for his games gathering shortly after one, and I went grocery shopping, first at the co-op and then at the grocery store. Because I don’t drive and a week’s shopping is a lot of food to carry on foot or on the bus, I came home between legs of the trip to drop off my purchases (and to grab a quick, late lunch of apple slices with my new honey-peanut butter and Babybel). I was tired when I got home from the final leg and I felt a little sick, like I might be having a blood sugar crash, but I checked and I wasn’t. I lay down for a while and eventually felt better.

Early in the day I’d been wondering what to eat for dinner. Sunday is normally a leftovers night for us, but I was tired of the leftovers we had (having eaten both the lentil soup and the white bean-cheddar-broccoli casserole multiple times for lunch during the week before) and I wanted a treat. So, when I was at the co-op, I looked for something that would pair well with one of those dishes and I brought home bake-at-home spanakopita and pistachio shortbread cookies to have with the last of the lentil soup. It made a nice meal. After dinner, I talked to my mom on the phone and then read a few chapters of Julia for book club.

It wasn’t a bad day, and I did get to touch base with my wife, kids, and mom, but it made me think how a day mostly to myself seemed the height of luxury when the kids were small and I was a stay-at-home mom, but now it’s not as precious.

Birthday

My birthday was the next day, and it was less solitary. We had another video call for me to open birthday presents in the morning, I had lunch with my friends Megan and Becky, and Noah was home all day and made me a birthday cake.

On the call, I opened more nut butters, gift cards to two different coffeehouses in Takoma Park, a book, and new bath towels. (I had recently decided my towel, which is older than Noah and is ripped in two places, needed to be retired.) It was a pretty good haul.

On my way to lunch with Megan and Becky, I stopped at Starbucks and picked up my free birthday drink, a half-sweet coconut latte. I am still (mostly) boycotting Starbucks, but a free drink is a free drink and puts no money in their coffers.

Megan and Becky are both friends who date back to North’s preschool days. Megan’s daughter Talia was in North’s class and Becky taught both of our kids in Kindermusik and music classes at the Purple School, so they know each other, but they hadn’t seen each other in years, and they both seemed excited about the gathering.

We ate at the covered tables on Laurel Avenue because it’s less than two weeks until I will see North so we’re in the masking-and-not-eating-inside-restaurants window. The day was damp and cool, but not too cold for outdoor dining. Also, the arrangement allowed us to order from different establishments. Megan got a salad from Takoma Beverage Company, and Becky and I got Thai from Kin-Da (which I later realized was exactly what she and I had done for my forty-ninth birthday). We covered a lot of ground but talked mainly about our kids (who range in age from Becky’s twenty-eight-year-old daughter Eleanor to Megan’s sixteen-year-old son Nate) and about our aging parents and in-laws.

I’d taken the day off work so in the afternoon I spent hours reading Julia and finished it. I highly recommend it and I also recommend re-reading 1984 beforehand if you do. The plot fits very intricately inside the plot of 1984 in a delightful way. While I was reading, Noah was making my birthday cake—chocolate with strawberry frosting. Beth had entrusted him with the recipe and some tips for making it.

Noah and I ordered Indian takeout for dinner, ate the delicious cake, and then we watched an episode of The Testaments. I was glad about this because we were not making as quick progress through this series as I thought we would with Beth out of town (we were only up to the second episode that night—but now we’ve watched four).

I started blogging in 2007, the year I turned forty, so I have now blogged about every birthday in my forties and fifties. Instead of a toddler and kindergartener, I now have two grown kids. My wife has retired and turns sixty in the fall. Time marches on. Thanks for sharing the journey with me, whether you’ve been reading for years, or just joined.

The Boy Who Was Born That Day

Posted on May 6, 2026 by Steph

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Beth, Noah, and I spent a lot of time together the past two weekends, leading up to his birthday. We went to a film festival and a music festival, and we ate out four times. (And in between, Beth took a whirlwind trip to Chicago and she and I went to a poetry reading together.)

On the last Saturday of April, we took an expedition into the city to attend Filmfest DC and to have dinner at China Chilcano. We did the same thing (same festival, same restaurant) last year, on Noah’s birthday. This year the festival ended before his birthday, so we went the weekend before.

Film

We saw a film from Argentina, Risa and the Wind Phone, which takes place in a town in Tierra del Fuego that is still recovering from a catastrophic fire ten years earlier. Many of the characters lost relatives in the fire. There’s an out of commission phone booth where people go to talk to their dead family members. The protagonist, a ten-year-old girl, while using the phone to speak to her father, discovers that unlike other people who are using the phone as a therapeutic device, she can actually talk to the dead and the dead have requests—a lot of requests—and messages they want her to deliver. This becomes her summer project, in which she is accompanied by her babysitter and a hamster. Over the course of the film, she develops a father-daughter-like relationship with the babysitter and learns some unexpected things about her own father. It was magical and not just in a magical realism way. I highly recommend it, if it becomes available to stream.

China Chilcano is a Chinese-Japanese-Peruvian fusion restaurant. We got a lot of the same dishes we got last year, starting with yucca fries and cilantro-squash dumplings. I got Brussels sprouts with chili glaze, peanuts, and a fried egg. Beth got a cauliflower dish, and Noah got a vegetable-noodle bowl. I had a condensed milk custard with meringue and passionfruit sorbet for dessert. It was a fun outing, movie and meal both.

Theater and Novels

Sunday morning Beth left the house at dawn to fly to Chicago to see her high school friend Michelle act in Follies that afternoon. She only decided to go a few days ahead of time and stayed just one night. It was an unusually spontaneous decision for her (she kept exclaiming about it), but she was able to fly with miles, so it felt affordable.

That morning since she wouldn’t be going to the farmers’ market, I delivered baked goods (almond flour banana-chocolate chip muffins and matzoh toffee bark) to a bake sale there to benefit the Montgomery County Immigrant Rights Collective, where Beth has been volunteering since retiring. They were so grateful for the donation (which almost doubled their stock) that I felt I was getting undue credit (having only baked the muffins—Beth made the toffee bark) and I had to keep saying it was from her, too.

I spent much of the rest of the day reading, first Charterhouse of Parma (still slow going) and then 1984, finishing the second half of the latter pretty much in one sitting. I rarely read in long chunks like that anymore and it was nice.

Poetry

Tuesday evening Beth and I went to Favorite Poem Night at the library. Usually I read a poem, but I decided to just go and listen this year because I couldn’t manage to pick one; nothing was speaking to me. I think it was because two years ago I read “Hope is the Thing with Feathers,” with hope in my heart for the election and last year I read “The Mary Ellen Carter,” inspired by its message about rising up in the face of challenges, but this year I am just tired, not as fired up as I was a year ago.

I realized later this was the poem I should have read. It’s by Langston Hughes.

I am so tired of waiting.
Aren’t you,
for the world to become good
and beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
and cut the world in two—
and see what worms are eating
at the rind.

I enjoyed the event, but I was hoping there would be a poem that would make me feel better about the power of the human spirit and that didn’t really happen. “That’s a heavy lift,” Beth said when I mentioned it in the car on the way home. Poetry does sometimes do that, though, I said. It just didn’t happen to do it for me that night.

Birthday Dinner #1

Noah turned twenty-five on Sunday. We celebrated by going out to dinner three nights in a row. We started Friday with pizza at Roscoe’s. We go out for pizza or get takeout pizza every other Friday (making it at home on the alternate Fridays), so it wasn’t unusual, but we did let him choose where to go. Earlier in the day Beth went to a May Day rally in the city, which I considered attending, but I skipped because I still had a lot of reading for book club, and I knew I wouldn’t get much of it done over the weekend because we had plans. (As it turned out I ended up taking Tuesday off work because that was the only way I was going to finish The Charterhouse of Parma in time, I had sunk way too much time into this book not to finish it, and it was looking like a slow work week anyway).

Music Festival

Saturday afternoon, we went to Porchfest in Adams Morgan. I found it a little ironic that Takoma Park has its own Porchfest we’ve never attended, and we went for the first time to a different one, but Noah wanted to go to this bigger one and we weren’t all going to be in the same place on the weekend of Takoma’s Porchfest anyway. Some of the bands do play on porches or stoops on residential blocks; others play on the sidewalk in front of retail spaces. A jazz group was playing on the balcony of Madam’s Organ.

We saw a few acts. We caught the tail end of a group called Freezer Burn playing classic rock (Beatles and the Romantics) on a stoop, before moving on to Indie band called Staring in Spaces, playing in front of a bookstore. There was a beer pong table set up in front of the tent where the band was playing. It was quite crowded and I couldn’t see very well. I could actually see the beer pong game better. But the next singer we saw, Bryce Bowyn (synth pop), was playing in a plaza in front of a bank, which was more spacious. Also, we found a concrete rectangle where we could sit and I could see, so that was nice. The singer had good stage presence and was quite the energetic dancer.

On our way to the final band that we wanted to see, La Unica (Latin-Irish), we ran into some trouble. Between people watching the band playing at Madam’s Organ and people trying to get in or out of a bar across the street or people trying to walk from point A to B (or B to A), the street and sidewalks were a total logjam. It was almost impossible to move in any direction. I have to say most people were considerate, even solicitous, but there were a lot of people and most people doesn’t translate to all people, so there was pushing and yelling. I got yelled at for not moving and for trying to move. The three of us tried to stick together but we all got separated. I finally got out of the crowd by getting into the slipstream of a big man who was managing to part the crowd. Almost immediately, I found Noah, who was waiting at the edge of the scrum, but Beth was nowhere to be seen.

Because of the size of the crowd, our phones were useless for texting, so after waiting a little while we decided to proceed to the next stage that we’d agreed upon in hopes of finding Beth there. It was in a plaza in front of an elementary school. We tried to text every now and then, but the texts would not go through. I had Noah stay in one spot in front of the stage, so I could find him, while I wandered through the crowd (looking for Beth) and then waited in a long line for the porta potties.

Through all this, I was also listening to the band, which was more Latin than Irish. There was a fiddle, but more Latin instruments. They were singing Celia Cruz and Harry Belafonte songs, among others. People in the audience did a conga line. When they finished, we waited for the crowd to clear out so we could see if Beth had been there all along, but she wasn’t. Noah finally got her on the phone, and we managed to meet up on our way to the restaurant where we’d planned to have dinner. Poor Beth had the worst of it, being more freaked out by the crush of the crowd than either Noah or me—she’d turned back, which is why she didn’t make it to the next stage—and then being alone for at least an hour while we were all trying to contact each other.

Birthday Dinner #2

It was a relief to be reunited. We had a relaxing dinner at Bua, a Thai restaurant in Dupont Circle, near the apartment where we lived from 1991 to 2002, the last year with an infant Noah. We picked it because we’d eaten dinner on the balcony of this establishment the night before Noah was born (on the day my obstetrician told me—“This baby isn’t coming any time soon”). I used to maintain it was the strong Thai iced tea that put me into labor. As a result, we have an on-and-off tradition of having Thai food the night before Noah’s birthday. We managed to get a table on the same balcony where we ate that fateful night twenty-five years ago, which made me happy. From Bua, we headed to Kramerbooks for dessert, another nostalgic spot for us. Even though Noah does not remember living in this neighborhood, it still evokes his baby year for me, so it was fun to be there on his birthday weekend.

Presents, Cake, and Birthday Dinner #3

On Noah’s actual birthday, we had a video call with North, and he opened his presents on the call. He got two gift cards to Panera, one Apple gift card from my mom, a check from YaYa, a new mouse and keyboard, and three books. It was a pretty good haul and he seemed pleased. After lunch we had his birthday cake, a strawberry lemonade cake Beth made.

In the afternoon he went out shopping for presents for Mother’s Day and my birthday and we met up in the city for dinner at an Italian restaurant we’d never tried near Union Station. It was a little higher end than our usual spots, the kind of place where they replace the silverware and wipe down the table between courses. We had focaccia, arancini, and pasta. Noah and I got the same dish, a ricotta-goat cheese ravioli in a lemon-cream sauce with spinach. While we were eating, we saw a couple tables get a flaming chocolate dessert that intrigued us. Turns out it was a piece of tiramisu enclosed in a globe of chocolate. When the server sets it on fire, the chocolate melts and reveals the tiramisu. Of course, we got it, along with a rice pudding brulée with edible flowers, and they also brought a tiny slice of complimentary chocolate cake with a candle and a birthday card for Noah. I thought the card was a nice touch.

This is what Beth posted on Facebook on Noah’s birthday:

A quarter century ago, on May 3, I ate dinner alone at a restaurant across the street from the Columbia Hospital for Women. I had a window table and I will never forget looking out onto M Street and feeling like the whole world was entirely different. And it was. I had become a parent.

Tonight I had dinner with the boy who was born that day, who has grown into a kind and thoughtful young man, and with Steph, who was recovering from an emergency c-section 25 years ago. We capped off a lovely meal with a flaming tiramisu.

So much has changed during Noah’s lifetime. In 2001 I was not his parent in the eyes of the law. But the fierceness of my love for him is the same today as it was on that very first day.

Beth left for Wheeling yesterday, two days after Noah’s birthday, and she’ll be gone a while, so it was nice to spend the last two weekends with the boy who was born that day.

#SpringBreak

Posted on March 31, 2026 by Steph

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North was home for spring break and returned to school two days ago. If you follow me on Facebook, you’ve seen a lot of what we did, tagged #SpringBreak, but here’s more detail about how it all went down:

First Saturday: Hugs and Heights

“Hug again,” I instructed Beth and North. We were in the parking lot of the Shady Grove Metro station where Jaden, their ride from school, had dropped them off. I’d hugged them when we met and then Beth hugged them and I tried to get a picture, but I wasn’t quick enough, so they reenacted it.

Later that evening they were teasing me about the posed photo and I protested, saying the original hug was spontaneous. It wasn’t as if I’d forced them to do it for a picture. And then Noah said it wasn’t as if I’d created an AI image of the two of them hugging. North said that would be surprising, first if I did it and second if I knew how to do it.

When this conversation took place, we were in another parking lot, this one at North’s high school. We were walking toward the building to see the closing night of the spring musical, In the Heights. North didn’t expect to see too many people they knew on stage as it’s been almost two years since they graduated—and they said it felt strange to walk into the building— but they like the show and they were curious to see it.

It was an ambitious production, with hundreds of students involved, between the large cast, the crew, and the pit orchestra. There’s a new theater director and by choosing a play with mostly Latino characters, she brought in a lot of students who haven’t been in the theater program previously. (The school is about half Latino.) She also took advantage of the fact that the school has a large and well-regarded salsa dancing club. The club did all the choreography, and it was fabulous. Unfortunately, the sound system wasn’t the best and it was often hard to hear the dialogue, especially from the boy playing Usnavi. So, it was lucky that three of the four of us saw this play just a year ago on North’s last spring break and were familiar with the plot. And North did end up seeing some people they know—a few on stage and some fellow STAGE alums in the audience. They met up with Rowen (who came with us to In the Heights last year) and Arwen in the lobby during intermission.

We got home late for us, around ten-thirty. I pointed out it was the second night we’d been out in the evening because the night before Beth and I had gone to see a performance of music and poetry on the theme of sanctuary (performed largely though not entirely by immigrants) at the community center.

Beth said, “We like the night life, baby.”

“But we really don’t,” I said. Noah’s the only one of us who likes to stay up late. Even the college student wanted to go straight to bed, after a long day featuring a drive from Ohio and a show.

First Sunday: Flora and Fauna

On Sunday afternoon, while Noah was at his weekly games gathering, Beth, North and I went to Brookside Gardens. It was one of the warmest days of their break, a beautiful day with highs in the low eighties and no humidity and it seemed incumbent on us to get outside. We saw daffodils and flowering trees, turtles sunning on a log, and sculpture in the shape of a crow, ginkgo leaves, and a frog.

Once we got home, we started watching shows we hadn’t watched since we were with North in Oberlin for their surgery in January (North and I watched one episode of Emily in Paris and Beth, North, and I watched two of Gilmore Girls). Over the course of North’s break, we finished the current season of Emily in Paris (which North thinks has gone on longer than it needed to, but they want to see it through to the end to see if Emily and Gabriel end up together.) I am wondering if we can finish Gilmore Girls, which we started the summer North was fourteen, this summer.

Monday: Birthday, Blossoms, Banana Cold Foam, and Beyond

When North came into our bedroom on Monday morning, Beth and I sang “Happy Birthday” to them. We discovered that morning that the cherry trees that line the street that runs along our back yard had burst into bloom overnight, as if to mark the birthday of our cherry blossom baby. Cherry trees have a wide range of bloom periods, but the ones on our block track well with the ones at the Tidal Basin. We thought from the original prediction of peak bloom that North might miss it, but now everything looked good for a Friday expedition. This was cheering.

After a discussion about the moral implications of picking up their birthday reward drink from Starbucks when we have all been boycotting it since the strike started last fall, I confessed I had just been there the day before for the first time in over four months to claim a reward for expiring stars. North decided it was okay if they didn’t spend any money, just took a free drink. (My calculation had been the same when I got a free slice of strawberry-matcha loaf.) So that morning North and I took a bus to downtown Takoma, got a free venti iced latte with banana cold foam from Starbucks, then went to Takoma Beverage Company, where I got a latte for myself and a chocolate croissant to split.

We walked home and took a detour to the hospital parking lot where there are still scattered remnants of the glacier-like ice pile that has been there since late January. I have been fascinated by its slow melting and wanted to show it to North, and they were polite enough to indulge me by going to look at several two-month-old, four-foot-tall mounds of dirty ice. (It used to be twelve feet high and at least eighty feet long.) Next, we walked down the length of the block of Garland that has a couple dozen blooming cherry trees. It was as if we were performing a symbolic walk from winter to spring.

When we got back home, there was a chocolate cake cooling on the dining room table, and Beth was getting started on the strawberry-cream cheese frosting.

Around lunchtime, North got a call from my mom and sister, who were on a layover in Seattle on their way to Alaska, where they (and Dave and Lily-Mei) were taking a trip to celebrate Sara’s fifty-fifth birthday and see the Northern Lights. They sang “Happy Birthday” to North and they must have failed to confer with each other ahead of time because they both sang the harmony part. Apparently, Dave and Lily-Mei did not care to sing in the airport. It was a short call because they were in a hurry, but it was nice of them to think of North.

That evening, after North’s requested dinner of mushroom ravioli and vegetarian sausage, we had cake and ice cream and North opened presents. Our main present to them was to pay for a second tattoo, but they also had checks from the grandmothers, gift certificates to the closest coffeeshop to our house and the closest book store, maple sugar candy, a box of caramels with a cherry blossom pattern on them, and two crochet kits (one to make an apple and one to make Snoopy). We let them choose the evening entertainment. They chose Juno, which we all enjoyed.

I had been a little sad that this was North’s first birthday without a celebration with friends because none of their closest friends from high school was home for break the same week as them, but then I found out their college friends are throwing them a party after break, so I was less sad.

Tuesday: Coffee, California Tortilla, and Clothes

North had a psychiatrist appointment in the morning, so I met up with them afterward for coffee and tea at Lost Sock, which is on the same block in Takoma, DC. Then Beth swung by to pick us up, drop me at home, and take North shopping for clothes with their birthday money.

They came home in the mid-afternoon with leftovers from their lunch at California Tortilla, rave reviews for the new quinoa base there, a pair of embroidered jeggings and a yellow high-waisted bikini for North and a pair of striped grey and white pants for Beth.

I made breaded tofu sticks, carrots, and strawberry-applesauce for dinner. North said, “Thank you for making tofu sticks when I was home because you love me.” This meal is a favorite of theirs. That night we watched a couple episodes of Grownish. The shows in the Blackish universe (Blackish, Mixedish, and Grownish) are another longstanding family viewing commitment (since North was eleven!) and we were close to finishing. (We finally did several days later.)

Wednesday: Swimming and Cinema

What spurred North to buy a bathing suit was that I’d asked if they wanted to go swimming while they were home. (They hadn’t brought one home and needed a new one for summer anyway.) So, with the new suit procured, North and I went to the new recreation center in Silver Spring, where Beth goes frequently since retiring, but where I’ve only been once before (last month). Beth couldn’t go with us because she had an appointment to take her car to the shop. There’s a café in the lobby, which we patronized before swimming and soaking in the hot tub.

From there we proceeded to Panera where we had lunch, and then to a movie theater where we saw undertone. This is not Beth’s kind of movie, but we think Noah, as the family’s cinephile would have had interesting things to say about its innovative use of sound. Unfortunately, he couldn’t come. For the past several weeks, he’s been working two to three days a week editing a series of short videos for the National Association of Letter Carriers and he never knows until right before the work comes in when he will have to work, as the project is passing back and forth between several people. Anyway, because of this, thinking he might have work we ended up not going one the one day all three of us could have gone (Tuesday). I was bummed about that.

That night North made a cucumber salad with vegetarian chicken and a topping made of smashed tater tots and I went to book club to listen to the opening lecture on The Charterhouse of Parma. I’d stopped reading it after three chapters because I thought I needed the historical background on the Napoleonic wars and other cultural factors before I continued with it and the lecture was clarifying. While I was gone, everyone else watched Twinless.

Thursday: Trip to Tattoo

This was the day North got their tattoo (of a branch of cherry blossoms) under their collarbone. They’d selected a studio in Southern Maryland, near St. Mary’s, which is two and half hours away, so we made a day trip out of it. While they were getting the tattoo, Beth and I took a pretty hike on a trail that was mostly in the woods with occasional views of the St. Mary’s River.

Later North told us that the tattoo artist and the receptionist were a lesbian couple who want to raise kids, and they were full of questions about having lesbian moms. From their curiosity, North concluded that having lesbian parents is not as common in Southern Maryland as it is in Takoma Park or Oberlin.

Afterward we picked them up, we had a late lunch at Noodles & Company and got frozen custard at Rita’s. There was a lot of traffic coming home, so by the time we got home, Noah, who’d been working that day, was making dinner (gnocchi with fresh mozzarella and cherry tomatoes).

Friday: Chilly Cherries

Friday morning, North wanted to go to Koma to use their gift certificate. If you’re counting, this was the sixth coffeehouse we patronized together in the first seven days of their break. We swung by the hospital parking lot ice piles on the way home and found them smaller than four days earlier but still there. North and I finished our season of Emily in Paris and Beth helped them do their taxes and in the early afternoon all four of us set out to see the cherry blossoms.

It was a chilly, gray day, in the low fifties with intermittent rain, but we had plans for the next day, so it was this day or never and never wasn’t really an option. We had pretty good luck in that the rain mostly held off while we were at the Tidal Basin, and the blossoms were perfect puffs of pale pink and white. North posed, pulling the collar of their sweater down to show off their cherry blossom tattoo. A couple saw Noah taking pictures with a real camera and must have sized him up as a good photographer and asked him to take their picture (with their phone). We finished up with visits to the MLK and FDR Monuments, as those are our favorites. It was a nice expedition, marred only slightly by seeing at least a half dozen National Guardsmen near the MLK Memorial. And honestly, nowadays, when I see them, I think at least it’s not ICE.

On the way home, we picked up North’s favorite pizza (from Roscoe’s) and then watched A Date for Mad Mary, which Beth had put in the movie pool around St. Patrick’s Day because it’s Irish. (The random drawing part of our movie selection process means seasonal picks are often watched early or late.)

Saturday: Democracy and Death

Beth and I went to No Kings 3 on Saturday. In the driveway, before I got in the car, I stopped for a minute to pet UNO because he was approaching me and meowing. (I was glad later that I did that and didn’t hurry into the car.)

We could have walked to a No Kings action from our house, as we did in June, or go to a big one in D.C., as we did in October, but instead we drove an hour and a half west to Hagerstown, where an ICE detention facility is planned. On the way, we saw people crowded onto at least six Beltway overpasses with signs. One of my favorites was “No Kings, Only Queen,” with a picture of Freddie Mercury.

We’d packed lunch and ate in in the parking garage, then we proceeded to No Kings. People were spread out along four blocks radiating from an intersection, about a quarter to a half block in each direction, several rows deep near the middle and sparser at the ends. There were columns of balloons in each of the colors of the Maryland flag (red, gold, black, and white) with a No Kings crossed out crown on top at each of the corners.

There was a stage with someone leading chants and a few speakers. I often couldn’t hear who they were, but one was the comptroller of Maryland, who apparently has some role in authorizing the facility, and is against it. A lot of local officials are for it, thinking it may bring economic development. Western Maryland one of the more conservative parts of the state. Hagerstown went for Trump by about 60%.

That’s why I was surprised that the reaction from passing cars was so overwhelmingly positive. There was only car from which people yelled out obscenities. Some drivers had no reaction, but around half were honking, smiling, waving, and giving thumbs up. Some cars were circling around repeatedly, though, presumably to increase support. I have no idea how much of the crowd was, like us, outside agitators from more liberal parts of the state.

After standing awhile, I wandered through the crowds to get a look at the signs. I liked “Grantifa: Grandmas Against Fascism,” and “Salt the Roads: Keep ICE off Our Streets,” but the best one was held by a Latino family whose members were taking turns holding it: “We Are Not Animals & You Are Not King.” There weren’t a lot of Latinos in the crowd, and I thought they were brave to be there.

I ducked into a coffeehouse to use the bathroom and get a coffee and a dark chocolate bar. When I exited, I saw two twelve- or thirteen-year-old white boys go by on scooters. One said to the other, “Are they against ICE?” and the second one said yes and the first one said, “I support that,” which I took to mean they supported the protest, but I was wrong. Later I saw the same two boys had gone to the sign making station and gotten supplies to make “Trump is King. Support ICE” signs and then aggressively positioned themselves in front of a woman with a camera.

We stayed almost two hours and drove home. Shortly after we got back, we got a group text from Rose, one of UNO’s people, letting us know that in the few hours we were gone, he’d been seriously injured and they had to put him down. It was a shock because I’d just seen him and he’d been fine. It feels so strange not to have to check for him in the driveway before we pull out, or to think the next time I take Walter outside, he won’t be able to eagerly follow an utterly uninterested UNO around the yard. He was old for an outside cat, at least fifteen, and as Beth said, “he lived his best life.” Still, we are very sad and we will miss him.

Sunday: Goodies and Goodbye

Sunday morning, North was in the living room watching television, Noah had yet to get up, and Beth was gathering tote bags to go shopping. I came into the room holding something behind my back. And told North, “I just saw a big rabbit leave your room.” Their eyebrows shot up and I brought the Easter basket forward and they laughed.

It was a week before Easter, but it seemed nicer to give it to them in person rather than mailing the candy. They dug in immediately.

Shortly after lunch, we all got in the car to take North back to the Shady Grove Metro parking lot, where we met Jaden. After we were all surprised by seeing someone in a Santa suit entering the station, we said our goodbyes, dropped Noah off at Panera for his Sunday games, and then headed home for an afternoon and evening alone in our suddenly emptier nest. It won’t be long until we see North again, though, as a road trip to see them act in a play in mid-April is in the works.

Every Phase of Us

Posted on January 11, 2026 by Steph

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Fire and Ice

My first work week of the year was a short one. I didn’t start to work until Wednesday and then I took off early on Friday to go to a protest. Between the kidnapping of the President of Venezuela and the killing of a protestor in Minneapolis, the year had gotten off to a dismal and dismaying start. There were nationwide protests planned for the weekend, but Beth had a prior engagement, so we decided to go to a Friday afternoon roadside protest in Silver Spring. I made my sign the night before; the side I meant to face the street had just the words “Fire Ice” in letters I hoped would be big enough to read from the road, with accompanying sketches of fire and ice. (I think if I use it again, I will make the letters thicker, so they are more legible from a distance.)

This recurring protest happens every week at 4 p.m. on 16^th Street, a six-lane thoroughfare. The weather was not inviting, in the forties and drizzling when we arrived, but there was a moderate turnout, several dozen people. I’m not a regular at this one, so I’m not sure how that compares to an average week. People’s signs were about various issues, but anti-ICE ones were popular and two people in the median held signs that said, “No Blood for Oil” and “No War.” Someone on the other side of the street had an upside-down American flag. My favorite sign might have been the one that said, “Alexa… change the President.” If only it were that simple…

As usual at these types of protests, there was a lot of positive engagement from passing traffic, near constant honking, waving, and thumbs up from drivers. I most appreciated honks from a school bus driver and a contractor’s truck with a Spanish surname in the name of the company. There was also an elementary school age child (perhaps Latino—it was hard to tell at a distance) who leaned out a rolled down window and yelled “Thank you!” repeatedly across several lanes of traffic. Another driver yelled to us, echoing “No Blood for Oil” and then wished us “a blessed weekend.” This isn’t something I’d say myself, not being religious, but I appreciated the sentiment.

A Ceremony to Prove It

Friday night after a dinner of homemade pizza we watched Train Dreams. In the scene in which the protagonist proposes to his wife, she says they are already married, they just need “a ceremony to prove it.” That line struck me because the anniversary of the two times Beth and I had a ceremony to prove it was in two days. Each one was a different kind of proof. As of today, it’s now been thirty-four years since our commitment ceremony with friends and family in one living room and thirteen since our legal wedding in another living room, with just the two of us, the kids, and an officiant.

On Saturday afternoon I made the spice cake I made for the first time for the commitment ceremony, and I have made almost every year since then. While it was in the oven I read a few chapters of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, which I’m reading because my book club is reading the modern re-reading Pym in February. Earlier that day Beth got a long-delayed haircut. In her first week of retirement, she also paid a visit to the dentist (also delayed) and attended the first meeting of her new Quigong class. She was happy to report she was not the youngest person there.

We had the cake Sunday afternoon, after a video call with North and before Noah left for his game club. It’s a comfortingly familiar cake by this point, dense, sweet, and moist. This year as most years I make a lemon frosting for it—the one year I made orange instead, North was quite put out.

We also exchanged cards and gifts. My card had a botanical illustration of a passionflower on the front. I circled the name of the flower, even though I know from writing about it—it’s a common ingredient in herbal sleep aides—that its name refers to the passion of Christ, not the other kind. Beth’s had pictures of the phases of the moon on it and said, “I love every phase of us” on the front.

One of the advantages of having an anniversary two and a half weeks after Christmas (other than relieving post-holiday letdown) is that we usually have leftover items on our Christmas lists and that makes gift-buying easy. This year we ended up with a reverse “Gift of the Magi” situation, in that without or planning it our gifts improved each other. Beth got me three kinds of nut butter—fancy nut butters being a diabetic-friendly treat—and I got her a nut butter mixer. It’s a lid with an attached crank that allows you to mix separated oil back into natural nut butters without splashing it out of the jar. We haven’t tried it out yet because while I opened one of the nut butters later in the afternoon, it was the pistachio-cocoa butter, which was creamy and didn’t need any mixing.

Happy anniversary, sweetheart. Even though I wish this phase of our lives did not involve the need for quite so many protests, I think we improve each other and this was a blessed weekend.

A Very Nice Birthday

Posted on November 27, 2025 by Steph

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Early Celebration

On Thursday, three days before Beth’s birthday, I made stuffed eggplant with vegetarian ground beef and tomato sauce for dinner because she loves eggplant and it was the last day I was choosing the menu before her birthday. She was quite appreciative of the dinner as well as the dessert, chocolate-covered pumpkin spice truffles I’d made the day before, not for her birthday per se, but more of an autumnal treat. The insides are made of crushed graham crackers mixed with pumpkin puree and they have the texture of the inside of a cake pop.

Pizza and Protest

Friday night we went to Red Hound, which is Beth’s favorite pizza place. A lot of their business is takeout and there are only three tables inside (plus some outside tables) so we were gambling an inside one would be free and the gamble paid off. We got pizza with goat cheese and all three of us got maple soft serve with caramel-apple cider sauce. They always have interesting flavors there.

Part of the reason I suggested we go to Red Hound was that it’s just a few blocks from the ongoing Free DC protest just over the DC line. People gather with pots and pans and percussion instruments every evening and make noise for five minutes. It was at eight o’clock in the summer but now it’s at seven. We got there a little early as Beth’s former colleague Sara who organizes the protest was setting up her bin of noisemakers. A thirty-something woman was telling her that she lives in the apartment building just across the street and watching the protest has become part of her six-month-old baby’s bedtime routine.

Indeed, once it had started, I looked up and she was at the window holding the baby and waving. Beth said it will be a fun story to tell him when he’s older and wants to know what life was like during that perilous time during his infancy when the country was teetering on the edge of dictatorship. In Beth’s version of this scenario democracy is saved.

We’d brought instruments with us since Noah still has some from his days playing percussion in middle and high school band. Beth took the tambourine and he had a cowbell. We’d only brought those two, so I picked a maraca from the bin and at seven sharp we all started to play. Pedestrians and people in passing cars honked or shouted encouragement. A Metro bus driver also honked in support. A man in front of the CVS across the street did a little dance and yelled, “You guys are the greatest.”

There were eight people there, counting us, and I knew two of the other five, Sara of course, and Jim from my book club. Jim told Noah to be careful hanging out with “this troublemaker,” gesturing to me. Sara, who has been doing this almost every night since August, says it still cheers her up every time. It was only my third time attending, but I am inspired to go again some time.

A Very Nice Birthday

On Beth’s birthday we had our usual Sunday morning video call with North, but it was somewhat unusual because we sang “Happy Birthday” and Beth opened her presents on camera. I got her Alison Bechdel’s Spent and some orange chocolates she likes. The kids got her two different graters (a garlic grater and a micro plane grater) that had been on her wish list. She also opened a pile of dark chocolate bars from my mom.

After lunch, we sang “Happy Birthday” again and had the cake I’d made the day before—dark chocolate with coffee frosting. It’s the cake I make most often for Beth’s birthday and I need to read the recipe through a patina of brown cocoa powder spills.

Noah left for his weekly board game group in Rockville, and Beth and I went for a walk in Brookside Gardens and Wheaton Regional Park (these parks are adjacent and you can easily cross from one to the other). We spent most of the hour-long walk on a series of interconnected wooded trails. We were usually alone but every so often we’d cross paths with other people, dogs, and horses. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing at home.

We had Burmese takeout for dinner and Noah came home early from his games to eat with us. (He’s usually out until after we’ve gone to bed.) We ordered a feast that lasted for days afterward, but the most popular dish (based on order of disappearance) was the eggplant fritters. After dinner we had more cake and watched a couple episodes of Man on the Inside. Beth declared it had been “a very nice birthday.”

Afterward

By Monday it was already time to start thinking about the next holiday. That afternoon, Noah chopped up onions, celery, and mushrooms for Thanksgiving gravy and stuffing at the dining room table. While he was doing that, I was chopping vegetables (including some of the same ones) in the kitchen for the soup we were having for dinner that night. This felt like a kind of cheering, festive parallel play. And that night Beth used the mushrooms and some of the onions to make gravy.

But even though we had turned our attention to Thanksgiving, her birthday wasn’t quite over. On Tuesday she got a card from her brother and a present from my sister (reusable cloth produce bags she’d requested) in the mail.

But the most exciting thing that happened on Tuesday was that North came home. Their flight from Cleveland was delayed, so we didn’t even leave the house to drive to National until ten p.m., a time we are normally in bed. Beth had thought traffic would be light by that time of night and it was until we got close to the airport, where there was quite the backup of cars. Turns out a lot of people are flying or picking people up from the airport two nights before Thanksgiving. It was almost midnight by the time we got home, but Noah and the cats were all up so North got to be reunited with the whole family. And the next morning, we left for the beach.

Social

Posted on August 13, 2025 by Steph

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I am not particularly outgoing. I do have friends, but I don’t see them as often as I’d like. Our family spends a lot of time together and I am an introvert. Because I enjoy my own company and my wife’s and kids’, I often forget to reach out to other people. But I am always glad when I do.

For context, before last week, the last time I got together with a friend was in mid-June when I had lunch with the mother of one of North’s preschool classmates. Before that, it had been six months. In December, I had coffee with the same friend and paid a visit to another one, the music teacher at the same preschool, to deliver holiday cookies (and sample some of hers). So, given this track record, it was rather extraordinary that I had four social events in the space of a week.

Sunday: Oberlin Ice Cream Social

Sunday afternoon Beth, North, and I went to an ice cream social for Oberlin alums and current students in Chevy Chase. It was held on the lawn of the Somerset town hall under stately trees. When we arrived, we signed in at a table of the hall’s porch and a picked up some Oberlin swag. North and Beth got stickers of the unofficial mascot, an albino squirrel, and I got an Oberlin pen.

We stood on the porch for a while, talking to people, and then moved to the chairs arranged in clusters on the lawn, where we chatted with alums from the 1950s to 80s. The most talkative person was from the class of ’84. She was there with her mother, class of ’58, so we weren’t the only parent-child group there. The mother mentioned she lived in Keep before it was a housing co-op, and she told us back then it was “the bad girls’ dorm.” I wished later I had asked a follow-up question to find out what shenanigans she got up to there.

North met some current students, including one who will be living in Keep with them. She’s in North’s class and is also a double major, Psychology and Dance to North’s Psychology and Theater. It seems they have a lot in common. The only person we saw who we already knew was an ex-co-worker of Beth’s (not an alum) whose daughter goes to Oberlin now.

When the ice cream cart opened for business, we lined up. To be precise, it was a gelato and sorbet cart. Between us we sampled the chocolate-hazelnut gelato, pineapple gelato, and raspberry sorbet. North could not finish their sorbet, though, because the stomach pain and nausea I mentioned in my last post has continued, and it’s hard for them to finish anything they start to eat. We left soon after because North wasn’t feeling well and we’d all had about as much socializing as we wanted. I was glad we went, though. I’d do it again.

Monday: Medical Interlude #1

North had started on medication for their stomach pain the previous Thursday and they were originally supposed to give it two weeks to work, but Monday they called their doctor to ask if they could accelerate the diagnostic process because it was only a few days until they were supposed to leave for their sleepaway camp counselor job. They got an appointment for an ultrasound on Wednesday afternoon.

Monday: School Tour with Lesley

That evening we went to the preschool to see renovations in progress. There had been a tour for alumni families while we were at the beach and since we missed it, the school director, Lesley, who taught both kids and became a family friend, offered to give us our own private tour.

By now you may be starting to notice the extent to which my social life revolves around people we met when the kids were in preschool. There’s really nothing like being in the classroom of a co-operative school on a regular basis for a few years to bond with teachers and other parents.

During covid, the school stayed open by becoming an outdoor school and it has stayed that way ever since. But starting this next school year, they are going hybrid, and the inside space has been re-imagined. Most of the interior walls have been knocked out and there are circular windows in some of the remaining walls that let you see from room to room. The whole back wall is sliding glass doors. The idea is to let you see more of the outdoors from any part of the building, which is very much in keeping with the nature-based philosophy of the school.

In another startling change, the school is now painted a muted purplish brown color, rather than the violet shade that has led parents to call it “the Purple School” for decades, although that is not its real name.

It was interesting to see the renovations and nice to talk to Lesley. After preschool both kids stayed involved with the Purple School through its after-school classes (drama) and day camps (science, art, drama, and tinkering) both as campers and later volunteer counselors. Both kids have helped Lesley catalog photos and books in the school’s library for some of the student serving learning hours they needed to graduate. When he was in high school, Noah made a zombie movie with day campers as actors, and he also produced a podcast interviewing several alumni of the school. So, we’ve stayed in touch, but we hadn’t seen Lesley in a while, maybe a couple years. She thinks she might have some website work for Noah. I hope that comes through, because it’s a kind of work that he hasn’t done for pay before and it would help expand his resume.

Wednesday: Medical Interlude #2

North had the ultrasound, or rather ultrasounds, on Wednesday. They were primarlily looking for gallstones, but they looked at all their digestive organs for any problems. We were able to get the results that evening through the patient portal that night. The tests didn’t find anything unusual. So, with no clear way forward and still in daily pain, North decided not to go to camp on Friday. It was the job they were most looking forward to this summer, so we are all bummed about it. We’re hoping that either their symptoms improve so they can go mid-week or that we can get another appointment that might lead to a diagnosis before they leave for school. Right now, their doctor is on vacation and we don’t have contact information for the substitute who is supposed to contact us.

Thursday: Coffee and Tea with Becky

Becky (who was North’s music teacher both at the Purple School and in Kindermusik classes we took through the community center and whose daughter babysat for us for years) has a show on Takoma’s community radio station. Noah and I listen to it on Saturday evenings when we’re cooking dinner and we all listen while we eat dinner. One recent Saturday, listening to her voice, North commented that they’d like see Becky before they go back to school, so I reached out to her and Becky, North, and I met up with her for coffee on Thursday morning.

We got coffee, tea, and pastries and ate outside Takoma Bev Co under the big white tent, as the weather had been unseasonably and delightfully cool for almost a week at this point. North doesn’t have much trouble with beverages, so they got an iced mocha, which they deemed insufficiently chocolaty.

We caught each other up on North’s first year of college, illness in Becky’s family, and all our recent doings. Becky knows so many people that in the hour and a half we spent together, she ran into people she knew twice (well, three times, but two of those times it was the same group of people, an elementary-age former music student and his grandparents). We walked part of the way home together because Becky needed to go to the food co-op and when we parted, we resolved to get together sooner than the last time.

“It’s always nice to see Becky,” North commented as we crossed the street headed for the bus stop. When I was a kid we moved around a lot and it’s been satisfying for me to give the kids a childhood in one place, so that in the space of a week North can see a teacher who has known them since they were born (and made us a baby blanket) and another who has known them since they were a shy two year old who clung to their mother during toddler music class.

Friday: Travel Begun and Not Begun

Beth left on a work trip Friday morning. She’ll be gone a little over a week, attending the CWA convention in Pittsburgh and then swinging over to Wheeling to visit her mom. Originally, she was going to take North to Allentown on the way and drop them off with another counselor who would drive them to camp the following day. It made me doubly sad when she left, first to say goodbye to her and not to say goodbye to North.

That night we ordered cheap pizza and took advantage of the absence of the most squeamish member of our family to watch Sinners. (I let North choose the movie because they were the one missing out on a week at camp.)

Saturday: Coffee and Tea with Maya

Saturday afternoon I met up with someone who has nothing whatsoever to do with the Purple School. If you read my blog, there’s a good chance you read Maya’s, too. She lives in Michigan, so we have never met in person. But she was in D.C. on short visit with some of her family and she ducked out early on a trip to the Portrait Gallery to meet me at the same coffee shop where we met Becky two days earlier.

Maya is just as sweet and warm in person as she is on her blog. She came bearing gifts, baklava and another Middle Eastern pastry with pistachios and rose petals, and a magnet with a Susan B. Anthony quote: “Failure is Impossible.” She said she got it because of all the protests I go to. I only hope Susan B. was right. We had iced coffee and tea. (The weather is getting a little warmer but it was still more pleasant than August in the D.C. area generally is.) We talked about things we’ve read on each other’s blogs–family, work, politics– but in more detail. It was nice to talk in person. When we parted, she urged me to come to Michigan someday.

It’s kind of appropriate that my week as a social butterfly ended with a visit with a blogging friend, because online friends are another important part of my social life. There are about a half dozen blogs I visit and comment on regularly and I have come to consider some of these bloggers friends. It’s unusual to meet one, though. The last time I met a blogger in person was in 2011. (I’d link to Tara’s blog, but she doesn’t write it anymore. We do still keep up with each other on Facebook.) If any of the rest of you are ever in the D.C. area, let me know. I’d love to meet you, too.

Families, Folk, and Flowers

Posted on August 3, 2025 by Steph

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North finished up their day camp job on Wednesday. They originally thought their last day would be a Friday and they’d come up with a plan for us to meet them at work, have our weekly Friday night pizza at Roscoe’s and then go try out the nearby newish Peach Cobbler Factory in Takoma, DC. So, we ended up doing it on their last Friday at work (the last Friday in July) instead of their last day. Dessert was on them. Three of us got cobblers of various flavors (I got blackberry) but they also have other desserts and Beth got chocolate chip banana pudding. It was fun to try a new place.

Now North is in the middle of a week and a half off before leaving for their third and final job of the summer, a week of being a counselor at the sleepaway camp for kids of gay and lesbian parents they attended for five summers, starting when they were twelve.

Families First

That same weekend Beth and I went to the Families First rally on the mall Saturday afternoon. North couldn’t go because they had a five-hour online training for the sleep-away camp job (that on top of an hour and a half of asynchronous modules they had to complete before the training). The stipend for this job is so small that North joked that if they were getting even minimum wage, they would have earned half of it by the time they finished the training.

The protest was not particularly well attended. We didn’t expect it to be, as it didn’t seem to be well publicized and there weren’t any other people with signs on the Takoma metro stop platform. In fact, two curious people at the station asked where we were going with our signs, which means even people who are interested in protests hadn’t heard about it.

When we got there was only a scattering of people in front of the stage, but that was partly because it was a hot, muggy day and a lot of people were off to the side under the shade of trees. There were a lot of amenities, however. There were red-and-white checkered blankets spread out on the grass and various games (giant Jenga blocks, connect four frames, and cornhole) set up on the grass, to make it family friendly, and people were handing out battery-operated fans (the kind that spray water), and free snacks. There was also a water bottle-filling station that dispensed cool water. On its side it said, “You know what else is refreshing? Protecting Medicaid.”

The theme was support for families hurt by cuts to various federal programs. The website cited Medicaid, FEMA, food stamps, school lunches, so put those in lefthand column of my sign under the words “Families Need,” but I filled up another column with other issues that concern me (gender-affirming health care, reproductive rights, action on climate change, and academic freedom). On the flip side of the sign, I wrote Immigrant Families Belong Together, because I thought that was important enough to stand alone. The action was national, so the focus may have differed from location to location, but at this one the spotlight was squarely on Medicaid. There were passionate speeches from people affected by Medicaid cuts, including a man with developmental disabilities and a teen boy with a life-threatening respiratory disability.

There were some nice musical performances by the DC Labor Chorus and the Baltimore Urban Inspiration Choir. Congress had just left on recess (dismissed early so they couldn’t vote on releasing the Epstein files) so there were no politicians who spoke. Beth said the actions were timed to correspond with the beginning of the August recess to get people across the country motivated to visit their representatives and express their concerns. It was a shame there wasn’t a big turnout at this one because it was a good event. Still, we weren’t sorry when it ended early because it the weather was punishing. Many of the speakers thanked people for showing up in the heat.

(Near) Future Plans

On the way home from the rally Beth and I talked about things we’d been saying we should do this summer and have not done. Part of the reason was that our pink resurrection lilies were just starting to bloom, and this always makes me realize while summer break is not over, we can now count what’s left in weeks rather than months. We made plans to visit a sunflower field the next weekend, and I checked on the schedule for outdoor concerts at the National Arboretum (the next one is not until early September, so that won’t be an all-family activity). We also resolved to visit an African ice cream place in Silver Spring we’d heard about but never patronized.

The next day North and I made a kuchen out of the blueberries we’d picked three weeks prior and the two of us looked at a calendar to see if we could reasonably hope to finish season 6 of The Gilmore Girls, Season 5 of Grownish, and season 3 of Ginny & Georgia before North goes back to school in late August. The answer seemed to be a tentative yes.* Finally, North and I made plans to go to the Langley Park farmers’ market for pupusas the first Wednesday of August, the kids decided to collaborate on the long-discussed brownie sundaes (Noah would make the brownies and North would make a sour-cherry peach sauce). I resolved to make a blackberry-peach cobbler after Beth and North return from their travels and the kids and I will probably take our annual creek walk the last week North is home. I felt good about these late summer plans. They seemed do-able and like they would be fun.

Over the next few days, I started to remember other things that wouldn’t be as easy to fit into the time we had left. North had mentioned wanting to take a day trip to the Chesapeake Bay and I’d been thinking about the fact that the four of us haven’t been to the movies together all summer. We had a few weeks but only one weekend left because Beth and North will be travelling for the next two (North to camp, and Beth to her union’s convention and then her mom’s house) and then we leave to take North back to school on a Saturday.

Folk Rock

Thursday morning North had a doctor’s appointment. They’ve been having stomach pain and nausea, and their doctor thinks it might be an ulcer. They got meds for it, with instructions to take them for a couple weeks and see if they help (so far, they haven’t). That afternoon the kids made the components of the sundaes.

Beth and I didn’t have ours until the next day because we had plans that evening. We were going to see Emmylou Harris and Graham Nash at Wolf Trap as a belated anniversary celebration. Getting there turned out to be more of a challenge than we anticipated. On the way back from North’s doctor’s appointment Beth got a flat tire. Someone from road service came to remove it and put the spare tire on, but it wasn’t clear how we were going to get to Wolf Trap (which is in suburban Virginia) because it’s not safe to drive on a donut at high speeds and the Beltway would be the normal route. We considered trying to borrow a car, taking a Lyft, or driving an alternate route. We ended up choosing the alternate route.

Did I mention torrential rain with possible flooding was in the forecast? It had rained intermittently and with varying intensity all afternoon, everything from drizzle to moderately hard. We set out about 5:30 and got there a little before 7:00. The sky was clearing when we arrived and the hour we had before showtime was just long enough to get some food, picnic on the lawn, get some ice cream, eat that, and get to our seats. The food line was short, but the wait was long anyway. They kept apologizing and offering us free drinks or food and we finally accepted a box of popcorn for our trouble. We’d sprung for tickets under the roof and while the lawn would have been fine, we didn’t know the rain would stop right in time, so that was one fewer stressor in a day that had plenty of them.

The concert was fun. Emmylou Harris went on first and she started right on time. She sang “Red Dirt Girl,” the song I most wanted to hear, early in her set, and I learned from her introduction that “Bang the Drum Slowly” is about her father. She had a very talented and versatile group of musicians with her. The fiddle/mandolin player was especially good.

I was looking forward to Harris’s set more, but I ended up enjoying them equally. For one thing, Nash’s sound was better set up, so it was easier to hear the words. But instead of singing mostly from his solo career, which is what I think I expected, he sang a lot of songs from his time in the Hollies; Crosby, Stills, and Nash; and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. It was more nostalgic because I’ve loved a lot of those songs since I was child and while I’ve been listening to Emmylou Harris for decades there’s nothing quite like the music you loved as a kid. I have to say, though, that when you hear him sing them alone, you do miss the harmonies. Though he wasn’t really singing alone. His band sang, audience participation was encouraged, and a lot of the songs (“Marrakesh Expresss,” “Our House”) became sing-alongs. Everyone seemed to know all the words. Finally, based on his stage patter, I’d say he is more invested in being Joni Mitchell’s ex than she is about being his.

It was quite late when we got home, after midnight, and I was wrecked the next day, but it was worth it. While we were at the concert the kids ate defrosted chili North made a while back and watched The Barbarian and Noah had his sundae, but North waited on theirs because they didn’t feel well.

(Where Have All the) Flowers Gone?

The next Saturday morning we were intending to go see the sunflower fields at the McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management Area. But when Beth visited the website that morning, she discovered the bloom was over. This was a surprise as our sunflowers are still going strong. But at least we found out before we left.

I’d been looking forward to this outing, for the family time, and being out in nature, and because I knew Noah would get good pictures. He always does. I floated the idea of going to see a movie instead, but Beth had work to do and there wasn’t anything playing nearby I wanted to see anyway, so I gave up on the idea. And a trip to the Bay would have been too time-consuming so I didn’t even mention it.

What we did do was try out the African ice cream place. It’s in Solare Social, an international food court tucked away in an out of the way street in downtown Silver Spring. There were a lot of interesting stands and Noah is already making plans to go back and have dinner there when he’s in Silver Spring for a concert next week. Beth and Noah sampled the spicy chocolate. It had too much of a kick for her, but he ordered it, with dried plantains. Beth and North got the grape-raspberry-black currant (Beth with cacao nibs and North without) and I got a malted ice cream with cacao nibs. It was fun to try yet another new (to us) dessert place.

We weren’t done with frozen treats, though. There was a meet-and-greet for Oberlin alums, students, and incoming students in Chevy Chase Sunday afternoon. This was the beginning of a remarkably social week for me, which I will report on later…

*We finished season 6 of Gilmore Girls tonight.

The World You Want to Live in

Posted on May 20, 2025 by Steph

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Wednesday

The day after we got back from Oberlin, we had my birthday cake (lemon with strawberry-cream cheese frosting, made by Beth, delicious as always) and Beth and I opened more birthday and Mother’s Day presents, those from Noah and gifts that had arrived in the mail while we were gone. Counting what we opened in Oberlin, Beth got a big pile of dark chocolate, and I got four books, three jars of nut butter, and tickets to see a Bernice Johnson Reagon tribute concert. It was nice to stretch the celebration out a little.

Thursday

The next day Beth and I went to the Supreme Court because they were hearing a case about birthright citizenship. North had to go into the city at the same time because they had an interview for a summer job, canvassing for the Fund for the Public Interest. If they get the job, they’ll be working for most of the summer in the Virginia suburbs on a campaign to get people to support legislation to reduce plastic pellet water pollution.

It was a warm, sunny day and there was a moderate-sized crowd in front of the court, with only one counter protester from a sketchy organization called the European Legal Defense and Education Fund. I hadn’t brought a sign, but I picked up one that said, “American Born Children Are American Children.” I thought that went right to the point. Others I liked said, “Made by Immigrants” (held by a young Asian American woman); “Born Here? Belong Here!”; and “‘All Persons’ Means All Persons.” I mean, really, the Fourteenth Amendment is crystal clear on this point. I can’t believe we even have to protest about this one, but that’s where we are.

The sound system, as is so often the case, was terrible, so I have nothing to report about the speeches. Even Representative Jamie Raskin, who can almost always make himself heard, was only intermittently audible. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi was there, too. In fact, she walked within a few feet of me on her way to the stage. I wished I could have heard her. She is not as often at these events, so I don’t know her talking points as well as some other members of Congress. She got heckled by a young woman in camouflage and a beret for not having done enough when she was Speaker. I get annoyed at woker-than-thou people sometimes, when it would be more helpful to stick together and support people who show up, even those who are more moderate than you’d like. Not that I think this kind of thing probably bothers Pelosi much.

North was thinking of joining us for the end of the rally after their interview, but it was already wrapping up when they finished, so we met at Union Station instead and had lunch. They said they have a second interview on Monday and that they were given to understand most people who get a second interview get a job offer. Still, we are not counting unhatched chickens.

Friday

Late Friday afternoon, Beth and I drove out to a pizzeria in Bethesda, where we got an eggplant parmesan small plate and pizza with arugula and cherry tomatoes. I also had half a slice of tiramisu. It was a pre-concert dinner date. We were going to the Strathmore Music Center and since we got there early, we took a stroll in the sculpture garden and by a couple ponds with fountains and noisy frogs.

We were there to see a tribute concert to Bernice Johnson Reagon, civil rights icon and founding member of Sweet Honey in the Rock, organized by her daughter the singer Toshi Reagon. On entering we were given tote bags emblazoned with a quote from Reagon, “When you begin to imagine and act as if you are living in the world you want to live in you will have company.”

Family members, scholars, and singers sang and spoke about Reagon’s life and work. There were sing-alongs for some of Reagon’s more famous songs (with very precise and pointedly humorous instructions from Toshi about when the audience was to sing and not sing). She also spoke about different political issues between songs, especially environmental ones.

The two surviving members of the original SNCC Freedom Singers sang and though they looked somewhat frail in body, their voices are still strong. Hearing them felt like a brush with history.

Saturday

Saturday morning, Beth, North, and I headed to the mall to see a display of art by trans people on blue, pink, and white panels arranged into the stripes of the trans flag with panels in the middle spelling out “Freedom to Be.” You can see an overhead photo in the link above. The project was sponsored by the ACLU and inspired by the AIDS quilt. The panels were from all over the country, with a surprising number from Idaho and West Virginia. There was supposed to be a rally at noon, but by 12:25 it hadn’t started, and we had decided to leave when there was an announcement that it wouldn’t start for fifteen to twenty minutes.

We decided we’d already seen the most unique facet of the event already and we’d rather have lunch than go to another rally, so we headed for a vegan fast-food place nearby. I got a cheesesteak, and it was quite convincing, though you should bear in mind I haven’t had a real one since the late 80s.

Sunday

We stayed close to home. I was coming down with a cold and spent a lot of the day in bed, reading my book club book and writing much of this post and the previous one. North made almond butter chocolate chip cookies and Beth put a lot of plants in the ground in the garden and built a mesh structure with a gate to enclose them.

Monday

North’s second interview consisted of shadowing a canvasser and then giving the spiel a try themselves. They got people to give money at two houses. They will do this for three more days (Wednesday through Friday)—and be paid for those days—before they find out if they have the job. But they also have an interview at a day camp on Friday morning, so they are keeping their options open.

Today

Meanwhile Noah volunteered to do some extra chores today (scrubbing fans in addition to mowing the lawn) so he could be excused later in the week. He is supposed to have some work from Mike soon, which is good because he hasn’t been working much recently. His last gig was a day of sorting through archival footage for a documentary about a labor union last week. I hope both kids are gainfully employed this summer, with bonus points for the work being enjoyable and/or meaningful. Honestly, I’d be happy with two out of three for each of them.

But beyond the short term, this is the kind of world I want to live in—one full of celebration, one in which newcomers are welcome and valued for their contributions to our country, one in which the heroes of the past are honored and we don’t have to re-litigate all the battles they fought, and one in which people are free to be themselves. Let’s try to imagine it.

(Almost) Perfect Days

Posted on May 18, 2025 by Steph

[Show as slideshow]

Oh, it’s such a perfect day
I’m glad I spend it with you
Oh, such a perfect day

You just keep me hangin’ on
You just keep me hangin’ on

Just a perfect day, problems all left alone
Weekenders on our own, it’s such fun

From “Perfect Day” by Lou Reed

Friday

The night before we left to pick North up from school, I made pizza with broccoli, and we watched Perfect Days. The film tells the story of a middle-aged man who cleans public toilets in Tokyo and his ability to take pleasure in the little things in life. Of course, it’s not that simple. We learn obliquely that he has a traumatic past, which could explain his insistence on order and his ascetic way of life. There’s a lot of American music from the 70s and 80s in the film and it takes its name from the Lou Reed song. I recommend it, if it sounds like your kind of movie.

Saturday

Beth and I set out for Oberlin around 10:15. Noah was staying at home because he was going to attend a town meeting hosted by Zeteo from MSNBC with Senator Chris Van Hollen and others to discuss the current political situation on Monday evening. I was a little sad we were going to be separated on Mother’s Day and my birthday (which fell on the same day this year), but I also didn’t want to discourage him from being politically active, so I didn’t press him to come.

On the drive we started with music and Beth chose Lou Reed’s Transformer (the album with “Perfect Day” on it) because the movie had put her in the mood. We also listened to eight out of the nine episodes of a podcast called Let’s Make a Rom-Com, about writers collaborating on, you guessed it, a rom-com pitch. It was light and more diverting than talking about politics, which is what we might have done left to our own devices. We stopped for a late lunch of salads at Next Door, a vegetarian-friendly restaurant in Bedford, Pennsylvania that may be becoming our go-to lunch-on-the-way-to-Oberlin spot, followed by gelato, and arrived in Oberlin around dinner time.

We found North sitting on the grass in front of Keep with people eating leftover wedding cake from wedding-themed party that had recently happened there. North had skipped dinner to go out for Chinese with us. After dinner we dropped them back off at Keep and settled into our rental house.

Sunday

Sunday was my birthday and Mother’s Day. We’d chosen to take a day trip to Put-in-Bay, an island in Lake Erie Beth and I once visited in college and where she’d also been as a child with her family. It’s a place Beth and I remember fondly.

We’d resolved to try to have a politics-free day, and we mostly did, though we slipped up a few times. This one didn’t count, though, we decided. In the ferry parking lot, the attendant asked us about the message “No Kings. June 14” Beth had written on the back window of the car with washable paint. (She’s been keeping it updated with the names and dates of whatever the next big national protest is.) We’d been a little nervous driving through Western Maryland, Western Pennsylvania, and Ohio with this on the car, but no one said a thing about it up to now. (Interestingly, I’d noticed there were dramatically fewer Trump yard signs, flags, and billboards compared to the last time we made this drive, in early February. The change was especially notable in Pennsylvania.) Beth told the attendant about the protest, and he said, “Is that the day he’s having his stupid parade?” So, that was a satisfying exchange.

You are discouraged from bringing cars on the island and there are golf carts you can rent, so we did that. It was fun riding in an open-sided vehicle along the roads. The day was cool (with highs in the fifties) but sunny so it wasn’t too cold. Our first stop was a short wildflower trail. There was an informative sign at the beginning so we could identify May apples, Jack in the Pulpit, blue phlox, and other blooms.

Next, we had lunch on the patio of a restaurant in town. I got a vegetable crepe for my meal and split a chocolate-peanut butter one with Beth for dessert. The wildflower trail had been both my and Beth’s first priority, so our next stop was North’s—Crystal Cave. We knew the cave purports to have the world’s largest geode, though North looked it up and found a cave in Spain says the same thing, so who knows? In any case, it contains a very large geode. In fact, the whole cave is the geode. A dozen or so people can stand inside it and walk around, and it looks just as you would imagine such a thing would look. It was very cool.

We decided to visit the butterfly house next. It’s a greenhouse filled with hundreds of butterflies, and it had just opened for the season, so there were a lot of butterflies hatching in nursery you could see through a window. North got to release a newly hatched one from a plastic cup. It wasn’t quite ready to fly, so it fell to the ground, but it wasn’t hurt, just sat there, gently stretching its wings. The butterflies were all different colors and sizes and very beautiful.

We took another short trail to a cliff overlook and then went to visit the old lighthouse before we got on the ferry to go back to the mainland.

Right near the ferry, there was a store called Cheese Haven, advertising that it sold 125 kinds of cheese, so we felt obliged to go inside and buy some (a big hunk of Parmesan, brick, and smoked Swiss) and to get some candy and raspberry-cheesecake fudge, too. Beth had been looking for strawberry fudge all day because we both remember having excellent strawberry fudge at Put-in-Bay. On consideration, Beth thought we might have actually gotten it on a different, nearby island. It is difficult to recreate memories from almost forty years ago, but we had a truly lovely day, and we made some new memories with North.

Back in Oberlin, I opened birthday and Mother’s day presents (though I was saving my cake for later at home) and we had Mexican for dinner and then went to Dairy Queen. It was packed and I have never seen so many employees behind a fast-food counter. There were so many they seemed to be trying not to get in each other’s way, but they also seemed quite cheerful. I wondered if the store was training all its new employees for the season. Anyway, the line was long, but it moved quickly, and no one seemed impatient. The atmosphere was more festive than harried.

Monday

Monday morning was North’s acting class showcase. The students were divided into seven groups with two to three actors in each and each group performed a scene from a play. They were all well done. The first one, about a married couple splitting up, seemed like it could have been a one act, but the others were clearly parts of something larger and left you curious about how the play unfolded.

North had a comic role, a thirty-something man high on mushrooms. (I asked if they did any extracurricular research for the part, but they said no.) I always like seeing North on stage and they shone. Afterward, the professor said to us, “Wasn’t North great?” and what parent is going to disagree with that?

North had three take-home finals but they’d finished them early so when the showcase was over, so was their first year of college. We had lunch at Keep (a tasty tofu scramble with sautéed carrots and zucchini, rice, and mini cinnamon muffins) which we ate on the porch. North’s friend Cal came over to eat with us and North asked the assembled diners to sing “Happy Birthday” to me, even though it wasn’t my birthday anymore.

They spent the afternoon packing up and cleaning their room, and after we helped them load everything into the car, we had a picnic dinner on Lake Erie. We got takeout from The Root Café, a hippie sort of vegetarian place. After we ate, we walked on a path near the water. You could see the Cleveland skyline across the lake. There were a lot of people walking on the path and North said they felt like a character in Bridgerton, taking a promenade. From there we got ice cream and drove back to Oberlin. North spent the night in our rental house because their room was vacated and cleaned.

Tuesday

Tuesday morning North attended another acting class showcase to see a friend of their perform in an abbreviated version of Chekhov’s The Seagull. It was a little before lunchtime when we left Oberlin. It was a long, rainy, traffic-stalled ride home. We had lunch at a highway rest stop and dinner at a dinner in Western Maryland. When we got home, North was reunited with the cats—Willow initially ran down to the basement on seeing them but soon remembered who they were—and their brother who had been saving funny memes on his phone to show them.

I had a very nice birthday weekend. I can’t say they were perfect days because I was separated from one of my kids on Mother’s Day, but it was nice to reunite with North in a special place and then it was nice to be back home and all together again for the summer.

Plus, my birthday celebration was not over…

May Days

Posted on May 5, 2025 by Steph

[Show as slideshow]

May Day

Often on May Day I will go to downtown Takoma Park in the morning, get a coffee and a pastry and watch the Morris Dancers usher in the second half of spring. During the first spring of the pandemic, back when North was more actively Wiccan, we built a Maypole and promenaded around it. This year instead of celebrating the pagan aspects of the holiday, we embraced the more political side of May Day and attended not one, but two protests.

The first rally was in support of immigrants. I met Beth at her office, and we took the Metro to Franklin Square where the rally started. It was supposed to go from 11:30 to 3:00, but Beth needed to work before and after, so we showed up at Franklin Square at noon. The sound system (which had been working early on, we learned from one of Beth’s colleagues), had given out and speakers were trying, with limited success, to make themselves heard with bullhorns and microphones.

But it was a warm, sunny day and there were a lot of people Beth knew from work, and interesting people-watching, as there often is at these events. I especially liked a cardboard cutout of Trump labeled “Liar” with flames that emerged from and retracted back into his pants. It was operated with a lever, I think.

I noticed a lot of images of butterflies, abstract purple ones on little hand-held signs and big fabric monarch butterflies that people were carrying. You can see one in the middle ground of the first photo—between me and the White House. I asked one person with a little sign what it meant, and she said she didn’t know, someone had given it to her. Beth guessed that it was probably a symbol for migrants because some species of butterflies migrate and it turned out she was right. (I married a smart cookie.)

Around twelve-thirty, we began a long, round-about march to Lafayette Square in front of the White House. It took an hour and a half to get there, and we walked through our old neighborhood, where we lived from 1991 to 2002, a time span that included the first year of Noah’s life. When we passed within a half-block of our apartment building, we peeled off the march to pay homage to it. Beth noted that in the twenty-three years since we lived there, the gingko trees that line the block have grown taller. It wasn’t the only change—the commercial blocks of 14^th Street have an almost completely different set of businesses than when we lived there. Beth suspected we were walking down 14^th Street so we could chant “What’s disgusting? Union busting” at a restaurant that’s been trying to stops its employees from unionizing.

Once we turned onto R St, the gracious townhouses and old apartment buildings looked more familiar. On 16^th Street we passed NEA and AFL-CIO headquarters, where staff stood outside their buildings with signs. We cheered them, they cheered us, and then they joined the march. (There was support from passers-by along the route, too.)

We didn’t stay long at Lafayette Square once we got there because Beth needed to squeeze in a couple hours of work before the next rally. I had brought my laptop, thinking I might work, too, but I forgot the notes I needed at home, so I ate the lunch I’d packed, read a few sections of the Post I’d brought with me, and started writing this.

By four-twenty, Noah had arrived at the office to accompany us to a labor rally. Beth was in a meeting, but we left as soon as she was ready. We proceeded to Freedom Plaza. As we approached, I noted that there was an ice cream truck and that I had already walked 18,000 steps that day (by bedtime, I was up to 21,000 steps) and according to my monitor, my blood sugar was getting low and falling quickly. “Do you need ice cream?” Beth asked. I said I did, and I got some for myself and Noah, too. Beth had been so busy at her office she had only just eaten lunch, so she abstained.

The sound system was better at this rally so we could hear speakers from various unions and workers who were organizing. We heard from a kindergarten teacher, a bartender, a flight attendant, and others. There most notable Trump cutout at this rally portrayed him as a vampire, with blood running down his face. We left around six, though the event was supposed to continue until eight. We were footsore and my legs had chafed from all the walking, and I needed to get dinner started.

Birthday

Two days later, Noah turned twenty-four. We got the party started a day early by going out for our traditional Friday night pizza at his choice of restaurant—Roscoe’s, followed by gelato, and then we came home and watched La chimera. I’d asked Noah if he wanted to draw a movie from the pile of index cards on which we’ve written the names films we’ve agreed to watch (this would be the normal procedure) or if he’d like to watch the one that he’d contributed. He opted to leave it to chance. Beth said later, “I could have predicted that,” and pleasingly, it turned out he picked his own movie.

Saturday morning Beth made the cake, chocolate with fresh strawberry buttercream, and Noah watched car racing. In the afternoon, Beth and I both painted the fence—this project is ongoing—but we excused him from fence duty since it was his birthday. We took a break in the mid-afternoon to eat the cake and for him to open his presents. He got an upgraded membership to a podcast he likes, a t-shirt from a show he likes, and three books (two from the Discworld series and one from the Murderbot series) with more presents still to arrive. Over the course of the day, he talked and texted with both grandmothers and North.

That evening we set out for the city, to have dinner at a Chinese-Japanese-Peruvian fusion restaurant Noah chose and to the D.C. Film Festival to watch an Icelandic film. (Noah had been to the festival earlier in the week to see a movie, in his words about “a Turkish phone sex operator who has to coordinate a disaster response.”)

At dinner we got several dishes to share—yucca fries, cilantro dumplings filled with squash, Brussels sprouts in a chili glaze, cauliflower, a deep-fried egg (crunchy on the outside and soft inside), and fried rice decorated with watermelon rind cut into the shapes of little airplanes. The dish is called “Aeroporto” (Airport). For dessert, Noah and I tried the national dessert of Peru—a custard made of sweetened condensed milk with passionfruit shaved ice and meringue sticks on top. Everything was very good. If you’re local, it’s worth a visit. Our only complaint was that the fried rice dish was supposed to come with egg noodles and none were in evidence.

The movie was about a middle-aged trans woman, the main cook at a seafood restaurant in a fishing village, and how her relationship with her best friend, the owner of the restaurant, changes when she comes out. The friend is also coming to grips with his own struggling marriage and his relationship with his gay teenage son and the restaurant is undergoing significant changes, too. It was well done, and I recommend it if it’s streaming any time soon.

Beth and I are early-to-bed types, so the movie kept us up past our bedtime, but it was a fun evening and worth it to celebrate the birth of our eldest. And with my birthday and Mother’s Day in less than a week, more celebration is on the horizon.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

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