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

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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

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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.

Nine Days, Nineteen Years

Posted on March 30, 2025 by Steph

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

Day 1: Saturday, Arrival

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

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

Day 2: Sunday, Birthday Party

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 6: Thursday, In the Heights

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 7: Friday, Cherry Blossoms

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

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

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

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

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

Days 8-9: Saturday to Sunday, Goodbyes

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

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

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

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

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

Winter Wonderland

Posted on January 12, 2025 by Steph

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get the Party Started

Posted on November 26, 2024 by Steph

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Beth turned fifty-eight the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Her birthday is usually before Thanksgiving and when it is, it’s what gets the holiday festivities underway for us. She had a busy, pleasant day. She was out of the house most of the morning and part of the afternoon. The skating rink in Downtown Silver Spring had opened for the season, so she went skating and then to pick up her birthday reward pastry at Starbucks and a large quantity of apples at the farmers’ market so North could make an apple pie for Thanksgiving, and then on series of errands.

Back at the house, I wrapped her presents and baked a cake, the one I most often make for her birthday, dark chocolate with coffee frosting. We had a video call with North in the mid-afternoon, during which North showed Beth a pair of mittens they had knitted for her, and she unwrapped gifts from Noah (a salad dressing shaker from her wish list) and me (a dark chocolate bar and a sampler pack of four Spanish cheeses).

Noah and I made vegetarian crab cakes for dinner, at her request, and then we had birthday cake and watched the last episode of season 3 of Ghosts UK. We are whizzing through this series, which we only started watching right after the election, but between several different travel plans, it will probably go onto the back burner for a while. Speaking of family travel, after we watched tv, we started to pack for our Thanksgiving trip. We are currently in Wheeling, where we are spending a week with Beth’s mom.

We left the following morning. Truth be told, I was melancholy for much of the drive, because there was time for my mind to wander and I’ve been trying to avoid letting it do that. Thankfully, though, there weren’t nearly as many Trump signs as I expected in Western Maryland, Western Pennsylvania, or West Virginia. (I’d braced myself.) The leaves were mostly past peak, but there were parts of the drive with some muted fall color left and at the higher elevations, there was snow on the ground. At a rest stop as we walked back to the car, Beth swerved off the sidewalk to step in it and then she smiled.

We arrived in Wheeling at 4:15 and after chatting with Beth’s mom, Beth, Noah, and I went for a short walk because we’d been cooped up in the car for most of the day. Some people had Christmas lights up and there were some lingering Halloween decorations, too, but I most appreciated the seasonal touch of the house with two inflatable turkeys.

Back at the house, Noah told Beth’s mom about his plans for his upcoming trip to London. (I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, but he’s taking a week-long solo trip to London in early December.) Beth made ravioli for dinner and then we watched Picnic at Hanging Rock, which I had not seen since college, but remains as artsy and atmospheric as I remembered.

North was originally supposed to join us on Wednesday, but the friend giving them a ride to a nearby town kept changing the day of their departure, first back to Tuesday and then to Monday. I was a little concerned about North missing so much class. We’d decided to have Thanksgiving in Wheeling (rather than coming for Christmas) partly because Oberlin’s Thanksgiving break is so short (they only had Thursday and Friday off) and we could reduce travel for North in what’s essentially a long weekend. But the decision was in the driver’s hands and of course, we were also happy to have more time with North. I got some texts from them about their change of plans Monday morning while I was taking a walk in Wheeling Park.

Late that afternoon, Beth and I drove to Cambridge, Ohio to pick North up at a Starbucks. Our car pulled into the lot probably less than two minutes before Levi’s car did. North emerged, we thanked him and wished him a safe drive—he was going all the way to North Carolina in one shot. We proceeded inside where North picked up one of the cranberry-coconut milk refreshers they’ve been wanting to try and a cranberry bliss bar. (There are no Starbucks within walking distance of campus, so North has been impatient to try the new items and old favorites on the holiday menu.) From there we proceeded to Taco Bell for dinner and then drove back to Wheeling, where North was reunited with their brother and grandmother and our Thanksgiving party was now complete.

Nine for November

Posted on November 4, 2024 by Steph

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I am writing on Election Eve. I feel like you probably do, almost unbearably nervous and scared and sometimes half-daring to hope. I thought I’d better post before the election because I do have things to tell you and if it’s possible none of will seem that important in a couple days. So here goes:

1. Early Voting

I voted early, eight days before Election Day. Before I left, I put on the beat up black low top Converse sneakers I got for Christmas in 2020. (I’d asked for a pair because they were Kamala Harris’s signature shoe, and I thought they would remind me pleasantly of the election for years to come. It did pretty much work out that way.) For additional luck, I paired them with blue socks and a blue turtleneck.

It was the middle of the morning on a Monday, and the Civic Center in Silver Spring was not crowded. I was in and out in less than fifteen minutes and that included a visit to the restroom. I made sure to thank the poll workers for volunteering. There was absolutely nothing about democracy I was taking for granted that day.

I stopped for coffee and then to get a spinach-egg-cheese crepe for lunch and I walked almost all the way back to Takoma Park, catching a bus at Maple Avenue for the last leg of the trip. Sometimes voting is emotional for me, sometimes it’s just a dutiful errand. This time wasn’t really either, I think because I was holding myself in check, trying not to feel too deeply. It was just too terrifying to think hard about what could happen. While I ate and walked, I listened to a few election-related podcasts (about the electoral college, voter suppression, etc.) because I thought as we got closer, I might not be able to bear to listen to them.

2. Postcards to Voters

Two days later I sent off my last batch of get-out-the-vote postcards to Georgia, only ten because it was the last day and that’s how many I thought I could finish. That same day I made an apple crisp with some of the apples we’d picked the previous weekend. I made it to welcome Beth back from Wheeling, where she’d stayed a few days after dropping North off at Oberlin. She got home that evening, having managed to come home in time for Halloween after all.

3. Halloween

In the few days leading up to Halloween, Noah and I continued to work on putting up decorations. I was a little sad we had not finished the display in time for North to see it completed, but it’s a big job. In fact, Beth and I were still putting batteries in things on the afternoon of Halloween. She also got the big fog machine and the little one with a skeleton emerging from a coffin working.

Our first trick-or-treater, a preteen girl dressed in a cape (probably a vampire), arrived a little after six. We eventually got twenty or twenty-five trick-or-treaters, a little less than usual, but it got off to a very slow start. After dinner (a pumpkin-cream soup with Swiss cheese and rye breadcrumbs cooked in a pumpkin shell), Beth and I sat on the porch and handed out candy to the trick-or-treaters who did come. It was so warm we were both out there in t-shirts. The best costumes were an Alice in Wonderland group (four teens dressed as Alice, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and something else, maybe the Door Mouse).

I used to get annoyed at teens who came to the door without costumes (I still gave them candy but I did it resentfully). I guess I have mellowed because when the same two teens in street clothes came back for seconds about an hour after they first showed up, I thought, whatever, and gave them more candy. It wasn’t like we were going to run out.

In fact, we had so much left that after I turned off all the battery-operated lights a little after nine, I decided to leave some of it in a bowl on the porch for stragglers. I emptied it out of the ceramic Frankenstein’s monster head that had been holding the candy into a mixing bowl because many years ago when I left extra candy out in different Frankenstein’s monster head (a cardboard one), someone made off with it, head and all, and that’s why we got the one we have now. I didn’t think a mixing bowl would be that tempting but apparently it was, because someone stole it, and now I’m sorry I left it out because I liked that bowl. It was dark brown, medium-sized, ceramic and it had a pleasing weight to it. Plus, it was a birthday gift from Noah to Beth one year when he was in elementary school. I am going to keep my eye out for it on my walks in case the thief abandoned it without breaking it.

Meanwhile, North sent me picture of themselves dressed as a package of Lorna Doone cookies they wore while trick-or-treating in academic department offices. They said it was surprisingly fun, and they got a lot of candy. Afterward they attended a Halloween party at their housing co-op, one of four people dressed as a character from My Little Pony. The holiday felt strange without them, but it was easier to have them away, knowing they were having fun.

4. Pre-election Office Party

On Friday Noah’s office had an all-day pre-election event during which they watched all the ads they’ve made so everyone could see each other’s work. Then they went out for a late lunch, came back to the office and played Cards Against Humanity and other games well into the evening. When he left work, Noah took himself out to dinner because he was hungry, and he has a long commute. He didn’t get home until after we’d gone to bed.

5. Day(s) of the Dead

This isn’t our cultural tradition, but I did take some photos of marigolds and skeletons from neighbors’ yards on my walk on Friday. And Saturday Beth and I went out for Mexican at the relatively new San Pancho. It’s known for its Mission-style burritos, but Beth got a bowl, and I got a quesadilla. (Noah was sick and stayed home.) Apparently, a lot of people wanted Mexican for dinner because it was hopping there, with a long line to order, but we did get a table outside. It was a little cooler than Halloween night, but with Beth in a hoodie and me in a flannel shirt, there was no need to turn on the heaters.

6. Diwali

There was a Day of the Dead pop-up tent selling crafts we passed on the way to dinner, and we also walked past a Diwali party in someone’s porch and front yard. There was orange crepe paper lining their front door and kids running around with sparklers. It was a very festive evening all over Takoma.

7. De-Halloweening

I started taking the Halloween decorations off the lawn on Saturday because I was hoping Noah would feel better and could mow the grass on Sunday, but I left everything on the fence, trees, and porch. I wasn’t in a hurry to take it down, having just finished putting it up. Noah was better the next day, but I ended up having him remove the wax from the withered, mildewed, fruit fly-infested jack-o-lanterns and put them in compost bags.

8. Half-Birthday

Noah’s half-birthday was Sunday. It was considerably easier getting his cupcakes than North’s. That morning before we were out of bed, I mentioned to Beth that I’d meant to check and see if Sticky Fingers was open on Sundays because the bakery closest to us doesn’t usually carry cupcakes and since the Co-op is closed for renovations, we can’t get them there either. The backup would be grocery store cupcakes, which would have been a fine choice, too.

Beth grabbed her phone, looked up the bakery’s hours (open Sunday) and we perused the available choices and decided on apple-cinnamon for the half-birthday boy, sweet potato-maple-marshmallow for me, and double chocolate for Beth. She got them while she was at the farmers’ market nearby.

When Noah saw them on the counter, he said, “There’s cupcakes!” He hadn’t even remembered what day it was. (I guess twenty-three and a half does not seem that momentous.) While we were having a family video call, North said if they’d remembered they would have had a cupcake in his honor, then recalled that there were leftover Halloween cupcakes downstairs in the co-op kitchen. We ate ours after dinner and they were good. I told Noah he was “halfway to forty-seven” and he laughed. The idea of him as a middle-aged man seems far away, but not impossible.

9. The Day Before

On my morning walk, I took Noah’s municipal ballot to the drop-box for him. It was about as low stakes as it gets as there were only two offices, mayor and city council member, both uncontested. (There are some contested races in other wards.) I encouraged him to fill it out anyway because I believe in participatory democracy.

Now we just have wait and see what the outcome of the other, unimaginably high-stakes election will be. Fingers crossed…

Let Them Eat Cupcakes

Posted on September 27, 2024 by Steph

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Every half-birthday and birthday Noah was away at school I had cupcakes from a local bakery delivered to his dorm or apartment. The bakery was one we liked to patronize when we visited him, and it always went smoothly. If you’re ever in Ithaca, I recommend you drop by for bagels or pastry. It’s a lovely place. I liked being able to picture the store when I made the order. So of course, when he graduated, and we needed a cake for the family picnic that’s where I got it.

There is a bakery in Oberlin that’s been there since the nineteenth century and whose orange juice doughnuts, whole-wheat doughnuts, and buckeyes were favorite treats of mine when I was in college. You’d think it would be a shoe-in for our business, but it’s become a controversial place to shop after this happened. It’s complicated, because while there was no question that the students were initially in the wrong, the bakery’s reaction was over the top and cost the school tens of millions of dollars. And the fact that many students of color have reported being racially profiled there puts a different light on it as well. I have made a couple small purchases there since this all happened, for sentimental reasons, but I didn’t feel right making it our go-to source for cupcakes for the next four years. There’s a new bakery in town and campus catering delivers treats to students as well, so I decided to try something new.

I called the new bakery first, thinking it would be nice to support a local business over a big food service corporation. In my first call (a couple weeks before North’s half-birthday) I learned they don’t deliver, so I decided to think it over and call them back. I resolved it wasn’t a big deal for North to pick the cupcakes up themselves because the place is very centrally located and close to buildings where they have class. So, I called back and tried to order three cupcakes (I wanted the numerals 1, 8, and ½ in the frosting) only to learn the minimum order for cupcakes was a dozen. That seemed excessive so I got off the phone again.

At this point, I decided to go with food service. They had what looked like a convenient online order form and their cupcake minimum was four cupcakes, which was closer to what I wanted. I selected a delivery date, a cake flavor (red velvet), a frosting flavor (cream cheese), and described the decoration I wanted: 1, 8, ½, and an exclamation point since I needed to come up with something for the extra cupcake. So far, so good.

However, there was a warning on the website that said it will seem when you order that the order has not gone through but go ahead because the orders are being received. But then there was an email to use if you didn’t hear back in two to three business days. This last bit made me think the orders weren’t all going through, but I decided to see what happened.

When I’d filled out all the boxes and submitted the order, there was no confirmation message from the website, which was not a surprise. What was surprising was there had been no boxes for payment information. I supposed if it worked, I’d hear back, and they’d ask for it then, but I didn’t hear back. Two business days later I tried the email provided. I waited a couple more days. No response. I found another form on the website for “communication” and as that was exactly what I wanted, and wasn’t getting, I wrote the order out again and noted that I had not paid because there was no way to give my payment information. And then without waiting to see if this would work, I also tried texting a number that was also provided in the same place on the website. I got an answer almost immediately (probably from a bot) saying I’d hear back in a few minutes. Reader, can you guess if I heard back? I did not.

By this point, North’s half-birthday was several days away, and I remembered the bakery required a week’s notice for special orders, so it was too late to go that route. So, I called them and purchased a gift certificate for North to pick up at the store. In our weekly family call, I told North the bakery would have something for them on Monday and added, “It wasn’t what I wanted,” and told them I’d explain later.

“Well, I thought it would be cupcakes,” they said, sounding intrigued. They’ve had half-birthday cupcakes every September since they were eighteen months old, and they knew I sent them to Noah at school, so it wasn’t exactly intended to be a surprise.

On Monday morning I got a text from North, who was at the bakery where the cashier was saying they didn’t have anything for them. I instructed them to specify it was a gift certificate and that cleared it up. They purchased two apple cider cupcakes with dried apple in the frosting and sent me photographic proof that I had fulfilled my maternal duty. I was relieved that it had all worked out.

But it wasn’t over… Tuesday, the day after North’s half-birthday, they got a text that said, “Someone has gotten you a sweet treat” and instructed them to go to a dining hall to pick it up. They went and lo and behold, there were four red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting with the numerals 1, 8, and ½ in the frosting. Instead of the exclamation point I asked for, there was a big purple circle on the fourth cupcake. But given that I never paid for them, I can’t really complain.

It’s been three days since the second set of cupcakes arrived, but the whole situation has been so bizarre I wouldn’t be at all surprised to get a bill at some point. I don’t know if I’d be inclined to pay it if I do, though, since I had no way of knowing the order had gone through and I made other arrangements. Plus, they came a day late. I did ask North which cupcakes they liked better, just to help me decide which difficult establishment to start with next September. They said they liked the red velvet ones better. I suppose food service had the advantage in this contest because I could select a flavor that’s a favorite of North’s, while at the bakery they had to select from what was in stock that day. Meanwhile, Beth told me that on the Oberlin parent’s Facebook page, people have been complaining about Sweet Treat orders not going through and apparently, the only thing that works is to call, rather than text, the number it says to text.

When I reported to Beth that North preferred the food service cupcakes, she said, “Free is good.” It is indeed. And I’m pretty sure this was a half-birthday North will remember.

Serial Celebrations

Posted on May 15, 2024 by Steph

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Celebration #1: Birthday

“It’s a good thing you’re coming,” I said to North as we walked out the door Saturday morning. “Because I love you and I enjoy your company, but also because I might need your help.” The point of the outing was to claim my birthday reward at Starbucks, and I sometimes have trouble figuring out how to redeem stars and rewards on the app and one kid or the other has to help me.

This time it was clear what I needed to do, however, so I didn’t need help and soon North and I were enjoying our drinks and pastries. I got a latte and a cake pop. I would have gotten the birthday cake pop because I can be literal like that, but they had a new flavor I wanted to try (orange) so I went with that. North had a nibble and said they liked it better than the pineapple cake they got. I tried North’s berry-flavored bubble tea, and I thought it tasted like cotton candy.

I left North sitting outside Starbucks while I walked several blocks to the library to return The Scarlet Letter, which I had just read for book club, and then I returned. On our way home we dropped off some children’s books at a Little Free Library. I am still distributing the books the kids culled from their rooms back in March. The supply in the cardboard box in the living room is slowly dwindling. It felt like a very productive morning walk.

After lunch, Noah and I read The Interestings, and then we all enjoyed the strawberry cake with lemon frosting Beth made at my request. (I remembered the lemon frosting on North’s birthday cake and how good it was.) It was excellent as Beth’s cakes always are.

I opened a couple presents—two kinds of nut butter from my sister (pistachio and lemon-cashew-coconut) and an Oberlin hoodie from Beth. I’d been saying for about a year that when North chose a college, I would replace the rather worse-for-the-wear WVU hoodie I’d been wearing since North was in kindergarten with one from their new alma mater. (Many members of Beth’s family went to WVU, and it was a present from her mom.) Earlier in the week I’d opened a card from Beth’s mom informing me a tree was being planted in a national forrest in my name. The kids got me one big gift for my birthday and Mother’s Day combined, and I’d elected to open it the next day. My birthday is always near Mother’s Day and this year it was the day before, so my birthday was just the first act of the weekend festivities.

After presents Noah and I watched an episode of Angel and then we surrendered the television to North who needed to watch Thor Ragnarok for their mythology class. They’d missed movies in two classes while taking the AP English exam the week before and they had to complete assignments on both, so we’d all watched The Judge with them the night before. That one was for their law class. You know it’s almost the end of the year when the teachers start showing a lot of movies.

I talked to my mom on the phone, and she told me I had two gifts coming. She didn’t tell me what the first one was because she thought it would come soon, but the second one wasn’t going to arrive until late May. I had a pretty good idea she had pre-ordered the latest Stephen King because I’d asked for it. She confirmed my suspicion.

We went out to dinner at El Golfo. I had the spinach enchiladas, which is what I always get there, and Beth and I split a dish of chocolate mousse. They had a nice set up for people to take Mother’s Day photos. When Noah asked who would be in the picture, I said just Beth and me.

“Are you a mother? No, you are not,” I said, but North pointed out that without the kids we would not be mothers, so we took one without the offspring and one with them.

At home, we watched Grownish and then my sister called shortly before Beth and I went to bed. And the first celebration was a wrap.

Celebration #2: Mother’s Day

North asked us ahead of time if we’d like breakfast in bed for Mother’s Day and we decided to eat it at the table instead, but they did make us both breakfast to order. I had fried eggs, vegetarian sausage patties, strawberries, and Red Zinger tea. It was luxurious to have a meal cooked just for me.

North was going to spend the afternoon and evening at Maddie’s, so they asked if I’d like to watch Emily in Paris in the morning. It seemed a good idea since Noah and I had watched our show the day before. When Beth got back from grocery shopping, we opened our Mother’s Day presents from the kids. Beth got six dark chocolate bars in different flavors from the kids, and I got a new purple backpack. My old backpack, which I think I’ve had since I stopped carrying a diaper bag, is developing a hole in the bottom, so I’d asked for one. (The surprise was the color—I gave the kids several options.) I haven’t actually started using it because I have to clean out the old one and transfer all the things that I carry in it to the new one. It’s kind of a rat’s nest in there, so that will be a project.

The kids’ next project was to start prepping for dinner. I’d asked Noah if he could cook dinner, since Saturday is his night, but we’d gone out to dinner, so he had not cooked, and Sunday is Beth’s night, and it didn’t seem right for her to have to cook. He agreed and asked her what she’d like, as I had chosen the restaurant the night before. She requested the vegetarian crab cakes he’d made once before. (The main ingredients are chickpeas, artichokes, and hearts of palm blended and fried). North volunteered to help even though they wouldn’t be home to eat them, which was just as well because they don’t like them. As it turned out, both kids had evening plans, so Beth would fry the cakes herself and roast asparagus to go with them.

Once the dough was made and stowed in the fridge, and Noah and I had read a half a chapter of The Interestings, Beth and I left to take North to Maddie’s and Noah headed off to his weekly game night at a Panera in Rockville. I went with Beth and North because Beth and I were taking a walk in Brookside Gardens. While we were there, we saw a wedding party, many families on Mother’s Day outings, and group of geese with three adults and a half-dozen or so half-grown goslings.

We came home, relaxed a little, and then Beth finished preparing the not-crab cakes and we had what she deemed “a romantic dinner” for two, before snuggling on the couch to watch Abbott Elementary and The Big Door Prize. It was a nice end to a weekend in which I spent time with the whole family, and alone with my firstborn, my youngest, and with the woman who has been with me for every step of this motherhood journey.

Festive Friday

Posted on May 6, 2024 by Steph

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The night before Noah’s birthday North popped into his room to say good night and to wish him a happy birthday in advance, because they would not see each other on his actual birthday. North would be leaving for school before he got up. From there they would go to El’s house, from there to the prom, and from there to after-prom, and they’d be home after midnight.

North started reporting a few days before prom that their teachers kept saying they didn’t expect any of the seniors to show up at school on Friday and, surprisingly to me and Beth, there was similar sentiment on the parents’ Facebook page for North’s school, with people saying they didn’t see why prom had to be on a Friday and that they wouldn’t make their kids go to school that day. What are we not getting? Does it really take that long to get ready for prom? I wouldn’t know. I didn’t go to my prom and neither did Noah, but Beth went to hers and she seemed just as mystified. Anyway, we made North go to school, though they are angling to stay home on Senior Skip Day later this month, and we’ve said we’ll consider it.

Beth, Noah, and I are all home most weekdays, so we went about our usual business until two p.m. when we took a cake-and-presents break. The cake was chocolate with strawberry frosting, a family favorite. Beth had made it the night before. It was delicious as always. Noah opened cards with checks from both grandmothers, plus new headphones and a few books from Beth and me—Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar, and two books from the Discworld series. Over the course of the day, he talked to my mom on the phone and his boss from his internship in Los Angeles last summer also called to wish him a happy birthday.

Several hours after opening presents we went out for pizza and gelato at Mamma Lucia, at his request, and then we came home and watched the first half of Tetris (we’d finish it the following evening). Beth said it would qualify as a movie North wouldn’t want to watch and when I told them the next day that he’d picked a movie about Tetris they didn’t look impressed. When I qualified that it was actually about the licensing of Tetris, the blank look on the face seemed to convey, “You just made it worse.” It’s more entertaining than it sounds, though.

Beth had an unexpected work crisis and had to work a little after the movie, but we weren’t up much past our bedtime. After I’d fallen asleep, though, I kept waking up, maybe because I knew North wasn’t home yet and except for Cappies’ shows, they don’t often stay out late so I’m not used to it. Then around 1:40 a.m. I could hear them in the hall outside my bedroom door impatiently trying to get Noah out of the bathroom so they could use it and go to bed. It reminded me of how the kids would often wake me arguing over bathroom access when they were little, except then it would have been several hours later, and it would be the beginning of their day and not at the end. But the upside was that I knew North was home safe.

The next morning I asked how the prom went and North said the first couple hours were fun, but it went on too long and it was too loud. Dinner was served buffet style but there wasn’t much for vegetarians, so they ended up eating rice, salad, and cheesecake. Luckily, they’d had pizza at El’s house before arriving at the prom. Apparently, even though North attended school neither of them needed even the few hours available to primp because they found time to watch Scream before leaving. Later North said that was more fun than prom, but they also liked bowling and eating funnel cake fries at after-prom.

Later Saturday North gave Noah a gadget to attach his camera to his camera strap (it was on his list), and we continued to eat the cake. By Sunday night we’d polished it off. So now our eldest is another year older and our youngest has passed another end-of-high-school milestone. In the month and a half since North turned eighteen there have been a few of those, more related to being a legal adult than finishing high school:

They voted in the Maryland primary.
They got a tattoo of a compass on their thigh.
They now call their own Lyfts and ride alone (unless it’s somewhere I need to go with them).
Depending on the appointment, they sometimes go into the doctor’s office without us.
They explored a dating app and have had three dates with someone they found there (Not El. North and El met at school and are not exclusive).

One thing eighteen year olds cannot do, however, is pet a baby goat at a school Earth Day celebration without parental permission. (This was a couple weeks back.) I signed the form, though it seemed kind of funny that I had to do it. Chances are, though, that was my last time signing a school permission form. And that in itself is a kind of milestone.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

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Festive Friday