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.

Petals and Parties

Posted on March 27, 2024 by Steph

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Tuesday: Blossom Party

The National Park Service and the Washington Post Capital Weather Gang each make a prediction for the peak bloom of the cherry blossoms every year. This year, the only day of overlap between the two predictions was North’s birthday, so we thought there was a good chance their birthday, a Saturday, would fall during peak bloom. They wanted to go see them on their birthday, after their birthday party the night before. It seemed like a good plan. But then the second week in March it was remarkably warm, over seventy degrees most days, and the blossoms reached peak bloom on the Sunday six days before North’s birthday.

The peak lasts just four to five days on average and North had already convinced me to let them stay home from school Tuesday because the juniors were taking the SAT that day and not much instruction was going to happen. So, afraid we’d miss the blooms if we waited until Saturday, I asked the kids if they’d like to come down to the Tidal Basin with me on Tuesday and they both said yes. (I tried to talk Beth into it, too, but she couldn’t take the time away from work.)

The timing was a little tricky. North had a dentist appointment in the city at 8:30 a.m. and Noah had a concert at 6:00 p.m., also in the city, so North preferred a morning visit, and Noah would have liked an afternoon one, but North also had a virtual therapy appointment at 4:00 p.m. so they needed to be back home for that, and we settled on morning. Then North invited a friend to join us and set the time to meet them at 10:45 at the Smithsonian Metro station. From there they’d go to the MLK Memorial, where Noah and I would meet them.

Beth took North to the dentist and after the appointment left them at a coffeeshop at near the Friendship Heights Metro, as they had some time to kill. Noah and I left the house at 9:35 and arrived at the Smithsonian stop at 10:25. I was thinking we’d meet North and El there instead of the memorial, but once we got above ground it was cold, in the low forties and very windy, and the zipper on my jacket was broken, so suddenly getting warm drinks seemed like a better idea than waiting for twenty minutes, so we went to Starbucks and then walked to the MLK Memorial, where North and El were waiting on a bench, surrounded by puffy pale pink petals.

We walked to the FDR Memorial and then North and El decided to stay there while Noah and I walked the perimeter of the Tidal Basin. We haven’t done the whole loop in a long time, as there was a narrow window between when North was old enough to walk that far (maybe age five) and before they developed mobility issues (around eleven). It was a nice walk. There were a lot of people, but the path wasn’t jam-packed. We saw ducks and geese on the water and the sky was partly blue. It was warmer and less windy among the trees than it had been on the streets walking from the Metro. And the trees were just perfect.

We paid our respects to Stumpy, the famous little cherry tree with a mostly hollow trunk that doesn’t look like it should be able to bloom but does every year. There’s a lesson there, I think. Sadly, Stumpy is among the over 150 trees that are slated to be cut down after the bloom is over this year because the seawall around the Tidal Basin needs to be rebuilt to prevent the frequent floods that endanger all the trees. I understand why it’s necessary, but it’s still sad. A lot of people must feel the same way because there were a lot more people than usual taking Stumpy’s picture.

We met back up with North and El and decided to have lunch at Panera. As we walked, the 12th graders talked about their college plans and compared notes on the cliques in the theater program and the Visual Arts Center (a magnet art program within North’s school that El attends). North was navigating with their phone, and it turned out the Panera they’d found was in the Ronald Reagan Building basement. We had to go through security that was tighter than some airport security—Noah and I had to remove our watches—and then the restaurant, which I thought would be in the food court, was off down a long, empty corridor, and when we finally found it Noah discovered he’d ordered ahead to the wrong Panera, so he peeled off to go get his food. He spent the rest of the afternoon at museums, killing time until his concert. He said later it was a fun day.

Meanwhile, because there were no seats at Panera, North, El and I walked (for the second time) past a big cybersecurity event in the atrium flanked by two menacing, two-story-tall robot statues, and we returned to the food court where we joined the many middle and high school tour groups in matching hoodies or windbreakers. I was tired and hungry, and it was good to eat my grilled cheese and soup. Then we splurged on ice cream before we got on the Metro and headed home.

Friday: Bowling Party

Friday morning North left for school with a container of rainbow-sprinkle blondies. The treats weren’t for their birthday, they were for El, who shares a birthday with North. (They couldn’t come to North’s party because they were having a party of their own the same night.) Our kitchen was a busy place for a few days there because in addition to normal meals and North making blondies Thursday afternoon, Beth started making North’s three-layer lavender cake with lemon frosting on Wednesday (making lavender-infused milk and lavender syrup) and continued with the different steps through Thursday (making the cake and frosting) and Friday (assembly and decoration). North asked for a cake with a lavender plant and a bee in the frosting. Didn’t it come out well?

We met North’s friends at 5:30 at Roscoe’s, where we picked up a bunch of pizzas and other food. We ate at the public picnic tables on Laurel Avenue, with North and their friends at one table and Beth, Noah, and me at another. It was a chilly, windy afternoon and Beth and I were not dressed warmly enough, so once we’d finished eating, we walked around the empty tables under the tent, frequently looping back to ours. I caught bits of the party conversation, which centered on summer plans, jobs, mutual acquaintances, classes, and the theater program at North’s school and Miles and Maddie’s school. Five out of the six kids have just finished a show at one of those schools, either as cast or crew, so they had stories to share with each other. They also talked a bit about college, as all the guests are juniors just beginning their college search and North’s at the end of theirs.

We ate cake next—the lemon frosting was so good it rivals the fresh strawberry frosting Beth often makes and the cake was nice and moist. North opened cards, including a hand-drawn one with bees and flowers that Marisa had made that Miles and Maddie signed, too. Marisa illustrated her own wrapping paper as well. North’s presents included a pair of crocheted sunflower earrings, a journal, and some contributions to their tattoo fund. When all the presents were opened, and North had read all the affectionate messages in the cards aloud, and the cake was eaten, I observed that the bowling alley was probably heated, and everyone gathered up their things and we left.

We went duckpin bowling. This form of bowling is popular in Maryland, and I remember taking Noah to a few birthday parties at these lanes when he was in elementary school (the little balls are great for kids) and then in high school he filmed a short documentary about a bowling league there. However, we are not big bowlers, and we hadn’t been there as a family since the summer North was four, on an outing they do not recall. We got another pizza and pitcher of soda that came free with the lane, and we also ordered fried pickles and tater tots. The kids made short work of the fried treats and ate most of the pizza, too. Everyone seemed to be having a good time and conversation was lively. After our two hours were up, the guests’ parents came to pick them up—Anastasia, who is the only one with a drivers’ license, and who had helped ferry guests to the bowling alley, joked that she didn’t think she’d have to wait long for her ride.

Marisa came home with us because she was sleeping over. Her older brother goes to St. Mary’s, so she and North talked about its pros and cons in the car. Beth and I went to bed soon after we got home, so I don’t know much about what they did, but I heard them making popcorn in the kitchen around one a.m. and North says they watched Bottoms. In the morning after a breakfast of bagels and fruit salad, Marisa’s dad came to get her, and the party was over. I couldn’t help but think in a gently melancholy way of all the birthday parties both kids have had in this house over the years—starting with Noah’s first birthday party—and how this was probably the last one.

Saturday: Blossom After-Party

But I didn’t have much time for nostalgic thoughts on North’s actual birthday. It was a very busy day and it started with a bang. North found out that morning that they got into Oberlin and with more aid than we expected. So now Oberlin is in the mix, much to everyone’s surprise, honestly. We will be headed to Ohio for an admitted students’ day the first week of April. Now North has heard from all six schools where they applied, and they got into five. (Only Mount Holyoke turned them down.)

Later that morning Beth and I went to an appliance store to look at induction stoves and we bought one. We’re doing a mini-kitchen renovation—we’re getting a new stove, new flooring, and a new back door. More on that in a later post perhaps.

In the early afternoon we left for our main outing of the day. We were returning to the Tidal Basin because North wanted to go on their actual birthday and because Beth hadn’t been yet. North wanted to bookend this trip with visits to Starbucks and Baskin-Robbins to collect free coffee and ice cream.

After a warm week caused the blossoms to pop early, we had a rather chilly week and that prolonged the bloom, so the timing wasn’t bad after all. It wasn’t easy getting there, though. There was a lot of traffic and we got diverted away from the road we were intending to take and had to drive over the bridge to Virginia. It was hard to get turned around back in the right direction and then we needed a bathroom break, so we stopped at National Airport, so the detour was a lengthy one.

When we finally got back to the Tidal Basin, we actually found a parking spot in one of the lots not too far from the blossoms and we walked there. There were more blossoms in the air and on the ground than there had been on Tuesday, but there were still plenty on the trees. We walked to the Jefferson Memorial and walked up the stairs to the statue. After that North wanted to rest on a bench, so the rest of us went to the FDR Memorial and then to where the food trucks and stage was. We watched some flamenco dancers and Noah got churros. It was a bit of a rushed visit because it was getting late, but any time I get to go to the Tidal Basin twice in a bloom period, I consider it a bonus.

On the way home, we stopped at Baskin Robbins, where everyone but me got ice cream—it was already six and I thought if I had some my blood sugar would not come down in time for dinner, even if we ate late. North opened some family presents we’d brought with us, a check from Beth’s mom, a pair of cherry blossom earrings, three skeins of lavender yarn, and a brown-sugar cinnamon syrup for coffee. North was pleased with everything.

Back at home Noah and I made a tater tot casserole, which was the birthday dinner North requested. Noah menu plans on Saturdays and he agreed to this dish, even though he doesn’t like vegetarian chicken or peas and he’s not even a big fan of tater tots and he ended up eating leftover pizza for dinner. The rest of us ate the casserole, which is quite good if not low carb—we made one corner of it only half-covered with tots for me. After dinner we ate leftover cake and started to watch See How They Run, which North chose, but we only had time for about half of it.

After the After Party: Sunday to Tuesday

It was just a coincidence that Beth and I undertook this nostalgia-inducing project the day after North turned eighteen, but North is in the process of clearing unwanted possessions out of their room as well as removing things they left behind in Noah’s room the last time that they switched bedrooms (in 2019), and there’s been a steady stream of dolls, stuffed animals, and books exiting both rooms.

On Sunday Beth and I sorted through the toys, and I did the books on Tuesday. I resisted the urge to keep very many toys. Other than a couple that belonged to me as a child, I only kept a rag doll that Noah was devoted to as a toddler. North is keeping a few stuffed animals, so I didn’t save any of theirs. Beth, who is less of a pack rat than me, said she was proud of me. It was a little harder to part with books, but I filled a cardboard box with kids’ books to give away, and only kept about a quarter of what North didn’t want.

We have everything sorted to go to Value Village, the fairy tree (a hollow tree near the playground where people leave trinkets), Little Free Libraries, and the art materials library (think a Little Free Library for art supplies). It will take a while to get rid of everything—I can only carry so much on my walks—but we are freeing up space in both rooms. Noah has a new bookcase he can fit in his room now that the toy box and doll crib are gone, and he’s agreed to house the Harry Potter books and the Series of Unfortunate Events books there. When the question of ultimate ownership of these tomes came up, I said whoever produces grandchildren first gets them. I try not to give the kids the impression I expect them to have kids of their own or that I am owed grandchildren. I don’t want to be that kind of mom, but after the momentous week we’ve had, I must admit the thought of reading those books again to a beloved child, however far in the future, is comforting.

You Across the Table

Posted on January 23, 2024 by Steph

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Cornbread and butterbeans and you across the table
From “Cornbread and Butterbeans” by the Carolina Chocolate Drops

Beth’s home, after nearly three weeks in Wheeling. Her brother has taken over caring for their mom. I think this was the longest we’ve been separated since I went to Spain for the fall semester of my junior year of college in 1987. We all missed her, but we got along okay. The kids pitched in with some extra chores, helping me grocery shop and shovel snow and we all spent a lot of time in Lyfts and buses going to and from extracurricular activities, stores, and medical appointments. On our anniversary, Beth sent a purple African violet to the house because we had potted violets at our commitment ceremony in 1992 instead of cut flowers. It was a sweet gesture.

Nothing as notable as the one-act performance or our anniversary happened in the second half of the time Beth was gone. The main thing she missed was seven inches of snow, after a nearly snowless winter last year. But it snowed in Wheeling, too, so she didn’t really miss it.

She took a lot of long, snowy walks in Wheeling Park, sometimes alone and sometimes with her high school friend Michelle or our college friend Stephanie, who lives in Morgantown and came to visit her.

In Takoma, the snow started with a dusting on MLK day before the big events Monday night into Tuesday morning (4.25 inches on our backyard table) and Thursday night into Friday (3 more inches). School was cancelled Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. This means in the space of four days we blew through all our allotted snow days for the year plus one, which will have to be made up. I hope the district decides how to do so soon, because I’d like to know what the school calendar looks like next semester. I am so very tired of this whole, broken system for dealing with winter weather…but next year it won’t be my problem.

On Tuesday I divided the shoveling into three pieces. I assigned North the smallest stretch, I took the middle one, and Noah did the longest one. (We have a corner lot and a big back yard, so we have a lot of sidewalk to shovel.) After they finished shoveling, North made a snowman. It’s nice they don’t feel too old for that. On Friday, Noah shoveled the whole walk because there were indoor chores that I wanted North to do.

Thursday, the only day North had school, there was an afterschool read-through of Beauty and the Beast. They’re in the ensemble and they have a couple solo singing lines as a washerwoman. Since it’s a small part, they’re going to pitch in with costumes, too.

During this week and a half, North continued to bake, making a pan of brownies as a thank you for a friend who drove their phone back to our house after North left it in her car, and an apple crumb cake. We also continued to watch scary and/or violent movies and television shows, stuff Beth wouldn’t like—we all watched Us and The Terminator, the kids are watching a Korean zombie show, Noah and I finished the fourth and final season of The Strain (which we’ve been watching for years), the kids and I started American Horror Story, and Noah and I started Angel since we finished Buffy last month and I miss that universe. We also watched some tamer fare. We went to see Mean Girls at a theater in Silver Spring over MLK weekend (and to prepare we watched the original version at home).

Saturday I menu planned for the first week Beth would be back and made the cake for our belated anniversary celebration. It’s the cake we had at both our commitment ceremony and our legal wedding, a spice cake with a lemon glaze. Sunday the kids and I did the grocery shopping. I’d been going to the farmers’ market and co-op alone but taking them with me to the supermarket to have extra arms to carry groceries home on the bus (Noah) and for help locating items (North, who after Beth is the most familiar with the grocery store layout because they used to tag along on shopping trips with her until their early teens).

For dinner that night Noah and I made burrito bowls. It was quite the complicated endeavor, involving cooking dry black beans (which I hardly ever do any more), locating the rarely used rice cooker in the basement and figuring out how to use it, making a roasted poblano salsa for tofu sofritas, using a copycat recipe based on Chipotle’s sofritas Noah found online, and preparing many little bowls of different toppings. Beth got home a little after six, while we were still busy in the kitchen. When I heard the car, I hurried outside, slipping on the crocs I keep on the back stoop. The crocs weren’t quite up to the snow in the driveway, and we stood by the car hugging for a long time while snow melted into my socks.

We ate dinner and watched an episode of Mixedish. At the table Beth kept exclaiming how good it was to see us all. Then we had cake, and Beth said it tasted “like love.” I gave her a chocolate tasting kit that Suzanne featured in a Christmas gift post. She seemed delighted with it. In addition to a promise of new headphones (I lost a pair and broke another while she was gone), she gave me a card with rainbow stripes coming out of a heart in which she’d written:

Happy anniversary.

I will forever remember this one as the one where we were away from each other and I was full of longing for you and the life we have built together.

Love you will all my heart.

“What does it say?” North wanted to know after I’d read it, so I handed it to them, and then North gave it to Noah.

“I didn’t know it was going to be so public,” Beth protested, and now it’s even more public because I put it on the Internet. (Don’t worry. I did ask her if it was okay.)

Beth had stayed over at Michelle’s house the night before and they’d stayed up late talking, so she was exhausted and went to bed early. I got into bed to keep her company for a little while, then got up to finish the dishes and to write some of this.

Monday morning before she left for her walk, Beth suggested going away for a weekend to reconnect. I said it sounded like a good idea. We’re still thinking about where and when. That night I made almond flour cornbread and a butterbean stew with kalettes for dinner. I did this because Saturday while I was trying to menu plan and struggling to come up with ideas, I’d heard the Carolina Chocolate Drops song “Cornbread and Butterbeans” and I thought, “That sounds good.”

The first line of the song is “Cornbread and butterbeans and you across the table,” so I sang it to her and said, “Now I have all those things.”

She’s been home a couple days now, but I am still very glad to have her across the table.

Thankful

Posted on November 26, 2023 by Steph

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Before the Beach: Weekend to Tuesday

Three days before Thanksgiving, North got into the baking and pastry arts program at Johnson and Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. This is currently their first-choice school, though they haven’t decided for sure and are keeping their options open until they hear from the rest of their schools.

When they got the notification, they were on their way home from Winter One Act auditions. North will be directing a one-act play in early January as their senior project. There was a flurry of excited texts between North, Beth, and me, but Beth had to wait a day to give North in-person congratulations because she was out of town. She’d taken a four-day trip to visit a friend in Morgantown and her mother, who was turning eighty, in Wheeling.

While Beth was gone, the rest of us watched two horror movies (A Quiet Place 2, and Lights Out), plus Noah and North started a tv series about Korean zombies, Noah attended a cast party for the Scooby Doo movie and North attended and reviewed a production of MacBeth for Cappies. Remembering all the kid-friendly dinners I used to make when the kids were little and Beth was travelling for work, I made dinners I knew would still be popular (vegetarian chicken, broccoli, and spinach fettucine with alfredo sauce one night, causing Noah to exclaim “Pasta!” because I hardly ever make it anymore, and tacos another night because that’s one of North’s favorite dinners.)

On Tuesday, North and I were busy in the kitchen. I made Beth’s birthday cake, chocolate with coffee frosting, which is the cake I most often make for her and which she’d requested this year. North made almond flour cornbread for Beth’s birthday eve dinner, and they also made pumpkin pudding because we had some leftover pumpkin puree from another project they wanted to use up.

Beth returned home Tuesday evening, later than she intended because car trouble kept her in Wheeling until late afternoon. We were all happy and a little keyed up to be re-united and because we were leaving again for the beach the following day for our annual Thanksgiving trip.

Birthday Eve: Wednesday

We arrived at the beach house around 5:15 p.m. the next day. Beth headed right back out to get some groceries, while I put away the groceries we’d brought, distributed linens to all the bedrooms, and made our bed.

We had canned chili with the cornbread for dinner. Because Beth’s birthday was on Thanksgiving this year, we’d decided to have her cake on Wednesday night to space out the festivities. We had it after dinner, but we saved the presents for the real day. We’d picked up a new numeral seven candle at a Dairy Queen on the drive to the beach because when I packed the candles from our (frequently re-used) stash, I noticed the wick on the seven looked broken. We all agreed the new one looked more like a one that a seven, and in fact when I put the photo on Facebook, someone commented “Happy 51^st” and Beth set the record straight and then I commented that she can pass for fifty-one.

After dinner, Beth and I took a walk on the boardwalk. I invited the kids to come with us, and North said, “It’s not going to be romantic?” but they didn’t come, and it was kind of romantic to be walking in the dark, just the two of us, listening to the sound of the waves crashing on the sand.

After our walk, we watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and The Mayflower Voyagers, a re-telling of the Pilgrim story with Peanuts characters. This last one is kind of obscure and getting hard to find online, possibly because it’s a rather outdated, white-washed version of the story. Beth joked that “the woke mob” was conspiring to get rid of it, but we eventually found it.

Birthday/Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a pleasant, low-key day. I went for a solo walk on the beach in the morning and again with North after lunch. In between those walks, as soon as everyone was home and awake at the same time, Beth opened her presents. Even though she’d asked for a gift certificate for a skate shop so she could buy herself new ice skates, she seemed surprised that we’d all pitched in (with assists from my mother and sister) to get one big enough to cover the cost of the skates and not just contribute toward it. The kids and I also got her a high-end hot chocolate mix, some orange-chocolate bark, a box of chocolates, and two dark chocolate bars. (Beth is serious about chocolate.) She was very pleased with everything.

After the presents were opened, we all set to work making our main Thanksgiving dinner table decorations, turkeys made from apples, toothpicks, raisins, dried cranberries, and olives. I have been making these since I was a kid and along with a little glass turkey North bought for Beth’s birthday eight years ago and some gourds leftover from our pumpkin patch expedition, they graced our table another year. I am thankful for the continuity they represent—of family, love, and tradition.

The kids and I are reading The Golden Spoon—a murder mystery that takes place on the set of a baking competition based on The Great British Baking Show—together and I read to them for an hour in the afternoon. Late in the afternoon I laid down to rest and surprised myself by falling asleep almost at once and sleeping deeply for almost an hour. That felt luxurious.

Everyone was responsible for a cooking a dish or two for Thanksgiving dinner, so people were in and out of the kitchen all day—Beth made mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy, I did the Brussels sprouts, Noah assembled the stuffing, and North was responsible for the cranberry sauce, and basting the tofurkey roast. North also whipped cream for the pies. We had six little tarts— three pecan, two apple, and one pumpkin—mostly from the farmers’ market, to give us maximum flavor choices without buying three whole pies. The cream was surprisingly hard to find, we’d struck out at a few stores until it occurred to North that we could try ordering a cup full of heavy cream from the Starbucks around the corner from the house and it worked.

After dinner and dishes, we took a family walk on the boardwalk, my third visit to the beach or boardwalk that day, and then we initiated this year’s Christmas specials viewing with A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Black Friday

I was up early Friday morning, and when I looked at my weather app and saw the sun had only risen three minutes earlier, I decided to hurry down to the beach to see if I could catch the tail end of the sunrise. It took twenty-five minutes to get dressed and walk down there (the house was several long blocks from the beach) but when I got there, the sun was still fiery orange and there was a trail of molten gold running down the ocean and wet sand. It only lasted about five minutes, but I stayed another hour, walking and sitting and walking again, and there was still some pink lingering in the clouds when I left. I love the quality of early morning light on the beach in the late fall and early winter, the way there are shadows clearly delineated in each little depression in the sand.

I saw two dolphins making their way north and a surfer. It was a middle-aged man in a wetsuit, and he stood on the beach for a long time before he entered the water. I wondered if he was waiting for the right kind of wave or if he was trying to psych himself up to get in the cold water. Given how quickly he was in and out, I decided it was the latter, but as someone who has never been immersed in the ocean in Delaware in November (and never will be), I give him props for riding even one wave.

Back at the house, I had a small breakfast to tide me over until we went out to Egg. I am largely adjusted to having diabetes—it’s been almost two years and three months since I was diagnosed and I’ve figured out some hacks—but I still have moments of wishing I could eat things I probably shouldn’t and the pumpkin praline French toast at Egg spurs those feelings in me. I had frittata instead and watched sadly as someone at the next table ate what I really wanted.

Christmas shopping was next. When we tell people we go Christmas shopping in Rehoboth over Thanksgiving weekend, people always think we mean the outlets, but we shop downtown, which is busier than an average day, but never mobbed. It’s a very sane Black Friday shopping experience.

The kids and I hit BrowseAbout Books, the Christmas store, the tea and spice shop, Candy Kitchen, and other stores. Beth split off from us, so I don’t know where she went. I was relatively productive, and didn’t do any more shopping after lunch, opting instead for reading with the kids. In the mid-afternoon, we did our Christmas card photo shoot on the beach. On the way back to the car, even though it was cold, we picked up a pumpkin-cinnamon frozen custard and split it four ways. I was craving that flavor and I reasoned it was only going to get colder later in the day.

Our next event was the holiday sing-along and Christmas tree lighting in the early evening. As Beth was parking and the kids and I were approaching the bandstand where a chorus was singing “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” I commented, “It is,” gesturing at all the decorations on Rehoboth Avenue.

Once we’d met up with Beth, we moved through the crowd, relocating a few times, trying to find a space where more people were singing, and fewer people were having loud conversations that made it hard to hear the music. Beth said she thought more people used to sing at this event and I agreed. We all sang, though, “Frosty the Snowman,” “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “All I Want for Christmas,” etc. North even valiantly tried to sing “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas,” even though they don’t know many of the lyrics. (Neither do I.) Right before seven, the countdown began and then the tree lit up, its multicolored lights and big star joining the light of the moon in the night sky.

After it was over, Beth went to fetch the car while the rest of us went to Grotto to pick up the pizza, stromboli, and mozzarella sticks we’d ordered ahead of time. We all met up, drove home, and ate the food in front of the tv. That night we watched The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Frosty the Snowman (the song got me in the mood), and Frosty Returns.

Small Business Saturday

The next morning after we checked out of the house, I did some solo shopping and took a short walk on the boardwalk and beach before we all met up for lunch. The day was cold and windy, and the beach was covered in seafoam. I saw a boy standing on the wet sand shoveling and at first, I thought he was shoveling foam. It was sand, but the foam was so deep, you could have shoveled it.

We tried a new (to us) restaurant that’s in the space where a Greene Turtle used to be. I used to eat at Greene Turtle more for the ocean view than for the food—and Beth and Noah refused to eat there—so we didn’t mind the change in ownership. Overall, it seems to be an improvement it terms of pleasing everyone, though North thought the pizza was too saucy. It was very festively decorated for Christmas, with lights, and presents suspended from the ceiling, elves sitting up on the beams, and a tree near the restrooms. But my favorite part was the Santa hats on the chair backs.

The kids and I went back to the beach after lunch so they could stand barefoot in twenty-three frigid waves. What can I say? It’s a goodbye-to-the-beach tradition. The number of waves is always the last two digits of the year. I don’t do it barefoot in the fall or winter, though. I wear rain boots. A little water went over the tops and my socks got damp and sandy, but I didn’t mind much. It just meant I got to take a little bit of the beach home with me.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Category Archives: Anniversaries, Birthdays and Half-Birthdays

Nine Days, Nineteen Years

Winter Wonderland

Get the Party Started

Nine for November

Let Them Eat Cupcakes

Serial Celebrations

Festive Friday

Petals and Parties

You Across the Table

Thankful