#FallBreak

Posted on October 26, 2025 by Steph

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North came home for fall break and stayed eight and a half days. It went by fast, but we packed a lot into that time.

First Saturday: No Kings

North got home late Friday evening. Noah was up to greet them, but we’d gone to bed and we didn’t see them until the next morning. I did tag my Facebook post about anticipating their arrival #FallBreak, and it became a theme I kept up in my posts all week.

We ended up leaving North home alone for most of their first day home because it was No Kings 2.0 and they thought a long rally would be too strenuous. Noah was coming along this time, and we split up almost immediately so he could wander around the crowd filming the protest. He’d met with Mike recently for job-hunting advice and Mike said he should have a website of his work and suggested this would be a good place to film.

There were many signs on the No Kings theme (I reused mine from June), including one with a sad T-Rex that said, “No Rex.” There were many people in inflatable unicorn, dinosaur, and frog costumes. I heard one man tell someone with a microphone who asked why he was dressed as a unicorn, “They were sold out of frog costumes.” I wasn’t sure if it was a joke or true, but it was funny either way. On the frog theme, there was a sign that said, “Amphifa: Amphibians Against Fascism.” I also saw two women in handmaid’s costumes.

I can only report on signs and costumes because we were too far from the stage to hear anything, except when Bernie Sanders spoke, and even then, I only caught about a quarter of what he said. I clapped anyway when other people clapped, because it seemed unlikely that he was saying anything objectionable.

Organizers are estimating seven million people attended nationwide in thousands of locations. Even if that was optimistic, independent estimates are at least five million and that it was probably the largest single-day protest in U.S. history.

First Sunday: Picking Pumpkins

Our civic duty done, we were able to turn our attention to seasonal fun the next day. We went to Northern Virginia to get our pumpkins. We used to do this because there was a specific farm stand that we liked to patronize, as it belongs to the family of a friend from college. That stand doesn’t sell pumpkins anymore, as of last year. However, over the years we built up a whole routine of activities in the neighborhood, so we keep going there.

We headed first for Meadowlark Botanical Gardens, listening to an Apple Halloween playlist and critiquing the choices. Then we took our late afternoon stroll, passing the pond, the Korean Bell Garden, and other familiar sights. Noah took a lot of pictures of lichen on benches. We saw a couple and a larger group posing for wedding photos, but fewer Homecoming photo shoots than we usually see.

We went to our new farm stand, and got pumpkins, pumpkin butter, and decorative gourds, and posed in the pumpkin arbor. We got a feast of Chinese food from our favorite vegetarian Chinese restaurant (which is one of the main reasons we keep trekking out to Northern Virginia for pumpkins) to eat at the picnic tables at Nottoway Park. We couldn’t order the food ahead because of a problem with the online ordering system so our timing was thrown off, and it was getting dark by the time we’d finished dinner and began our after-dinner stroll in the community garden plots, but we could make out some tomatoes and collards and flowers. Our last stop was ice cream at Toby’s. I got half pumpkin and half apple pie with whipped cream and Beth correctly guessed I had the whipped cream to complete the pie theme.

Monday to Wednesday: Berkely Springs

Monday morning, we left for a quick trip to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. Beth, North, and I haven’t been there since President’s Day weekend 2020, less than a month before the world shut down. This timing caused all three of us to look back on the trip nostalgically during the time when weekend trips were not on the table. We hadn’t been as a foursome since the kids’ spring break in 2016. North is very fond of Berkeley Springs. I think that’s why when during a low period, they needed to draw a pen-and-ink street scene in their eleventh-grade painting class, they choose a block in Berkeley Springs.

As you can probably guess from the name, there are mineral springs in town that were used by Native Americans, George Washington, and continually ever since. The site of the historic baths is a state park, and you can reserve time in the private baths. The other main attractions in town are restaurants, shops, and a cat café.

We visited all these, but on our first evening, we decided to stay in at our rental house in the woods. This was no hardship as the house had a view of a ridge decked out in fall colors and was equipped with a skee ball machine, a Pac-Man machine, a hammock, and fire pit. We used them all, after a brief walk in the woods. I lay in the hammock for a while, looking up into the yellow and green leaves and watching squirrels in the branches and hawks circle above the trees. I made broccoli melts for dinner, and we made S’mores at the firepit.

The next morning, we browsed in the shops and North bought a pair of colorful wooden parrot earrings in a shop of Himalayan handicrafts and then we soaked in the Roman Baths. The water is heated to 104 degrees and it’s very pleasant and relaxing.

We went back to the house for lunch, and then to the cat café, where we pet and played with many of the cats who are awaiting adoption in the cozy two-story house, equipped with structures to climb on, private dens for sleeping, and many toys. It’s a much nicer place than the shelter where we adopted Matthew and Xander. (We adopted Walter and Willow from a foster home.) It must be good for their socialization, too. There are separate rooms for shy cats and one for kittens. The two smallest kittens were being segregated from the rest because a cold had gone around the place the week before. One of them, a long-haired black kitten named Odessa, who looked like a tiny version of Xander, climbed up on Beth’s lap and fell asleep and she was trapped there a long time. Noah and I spent most of our time in the main kitten room. There was a mama cat there with three nursing kittens and many other kittens who wanted to play with their toys and our shoelaces. By the time Beth made it to the room, they had collectively decided it was nap time and collapsed in piles to sleep.

Our next stop was the Paw Paw tunnel, where a towpath from the C&O canal goes through a rocky ridge. It’s a fifteen-minute walk on a damp, dark path, and it’s suitably spooky. We were told at a coffee shop we’d frequented earlier to “look out for ghosts.” We did not see any, or any bats, which we have seen in the past, but we did see a lot of white mushrooms growing where the path meets the brick wall. Beth lit the path with her cell phone light so we wouldn’t step into any puddles. I always enjoy this hike, which starts and ends with a walk through the woods between the Potomac River and the canal. You can also climb up the ridge afterward if you want, but we didn’t do it this time. Noah and I climbed up the stairs outside the tunnel to look out at the canal from above. When we emerged from the tunnel, I could smell the fallen leaves along the path. The scent reminded me of old paperback books.

We ordered dinner from the parking lot and picked up pizza, stromboli, and salad to eat back at the house. North tried pickles on their pizza and approved of the selection (which was called the Princess Brine).

Wednesday morning we were going to take a hike in Cacapon State Park, and we did start, but pretty soon into it, North decided hiking up to the top of the ridge was going to be too much for them, and we headed back into town, where we browsed the shops again and they got a jar of garlic-stuffed olives from an olive shop before we had lunch and hit the road for home.

Thursday to Friday: Baking and Coffee

Thursday and Friday Beth and I were back to work. North had invited me to go for coffee after their Friday morning psychiatrist appointment at the coffee shop in Takoma DC where we’ve always gone after their appointments and at first, I said yes, but then I remembered I had a mammogram that same morning, so North proposed that we go the day before and we did. We got coffee at Lost Sock and pumpkin and apple pastries at Donut Run. When I took North’s photo, I instructed them to “look autumnal,” which made them laugh.

That afternoon Noah made a baked lemon-blueberry pudding (apologizing before I said anything: “I know it’s not seasonal”) and North made toffee to use in chocolate chunk cookies they made the next day. They thought the cookies were too crispy but no one else had any complaints.

Second Saturday: Halloween Parade and Carving Pumpkins

North’s last full day at home was full of seasonal activity. We went to the Halloween parade in the early afternoon. I still enjoy watching other people’s kids in their costumes, even though my kids don’t participate any more. And we all enjoy judging the costumes ourselves. In the four-and-under section of the parade, there were two separate women dressed as flowers carrying their babies who were dressed as bees. I was amused because when I saw the first one, I thought “that’s original,” but I guess it wasn’t. Anyway, one of the flower-bee groups also had a beekeeper and they won. I can’t remember the category, but I it might have been Cutest, though come to think of it, that might have been a ladybug.

There was a well-executed astronaut with a homemade cardboard rocket affixed to his scooter and a truly impressive owl with many feathers and expressive papier mache eyes and a beak that both won in five to eight. There was an elaborate jellyfish; two girls, one dressed as a peasant and one as an aristocrat holding a bloody guillotine between them; and a tornado with little houses, vehicles, and trees attached to her in nine to twelve. Groups dressed as characters from the Chronicles of Narnia and Aladin also won.

In terms of trends, there were more inflatable costumes than usual, probably repurposed from protests. Beth noted that Harry Potter costumes are evergreen and there were also quite a lot of zombies. The only costume I saw that I thought deserved a prize that didn’t get one was a detailed, homemade Edward Scissorshands. But the boy was probably nine to twelve years old and the competition in that age group was strong this year.

When we got home, we carved our pumpkins. I’d been feeling under the weather all day, and I still had a lot on my list for the day (cooking, menu planning for the next week, doing dishes) so I found a simple moon-and-stars stencil so I could finish quickly. Although we didn’t plan it this way, everyone had one to two of the following elements on our pumpkins: cats, stars, and pumpkins. Beth said the thematic continuity was satisfying.

Noah and I made roasted white beans, cherry tomatoes and halloumi for dinner and then I roasted the pumpkin seeds so North could have some to take with them to school the next day. When all the chores were done, we all settled in to watch the end of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which we’d started the night before, and then Beth and I went to bed early because I was exhausted.

Second Sunday

A little before ten a.m., North’s friend Jayden picked them up and we said our goodbyes. Beth will see them in less than a week because North is getting an endoscopy on Halloween and Beth is going to stay with them overnight to make sure that they’re okay. They are already planning what movie to watch, and they bought an extra bag of candy in case trick-or-treaters come to the rental house. I will have to wait until Thanksgiving to see them, but that’s only about a month.

Did you go to No Kings? What kind of fall activities have you been enjoying?

Goodbye, Sophomore

Posted on August 29, 2025 by Steph

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Saturday: Takoma Park to Oberlin

We left the house for Oberlin (for the first time) a little before nine a.m. last Saturday. Our first stop was Mike and Sara’s house because Rose’s boyfriend John, who goes to Oberlin, had spent the summer with Rose’s family and we were giving him a ride back to school. We chatted with Mike and Sara, who were about to leave for a Tesla takedown protest (they are regulars) while John loaded his bags into our car and said goodbye to their little white dog. John and Shorty had bonded over the summer, Sara said, while John lingered on the porch with the dog. (Rose had already left for school a couple days earlier.)

When we got into the car, I remembered I had failed to take a leaving-for-college photo at our front gate and Beth said she’d indulge me by going back home. As North stood in front of the gate where they’d had a back-to-school photo snapped every year since they were two (except 2020), I said “Hello, sophomore!” to make them smile.

And then we drove to Ohio, with many stops along the way. We got snacks at Blue Goose Market in Hancock, Maryland, and lunch at Next Door in Bedford, Pennsylvania. Blue Goose is a regular stopping place for us and Next Door is on its way to becoming one. We listened to music and podcasts to pass the time. For the first hour or so, North and John were very chatty, mostly talking about mutual acquaintances from both high school and college. (They did not go to the same high school, but he’s from the area and high school theater circles are small.)

We arrived in Oberlin around six o’clock and dropped John off at his dorm. Next, we went to Keep and carried North’s things into their room. It’s the same one they had last spring, a first-floor single. They prefer a first-floor room because of their chronic pain, but they only found out recently they’d gotten into it off the wait list. The room was familiar to me, not only because I had been in it last year, but also quite often during the 1986-1987 school year, when a close friend of mine lived there. We didn’t linger because it was almost dinner time and Tank was only dining co-op that was open before the semester started, so we needed to scoot.

At Tank there was a bountiful buffet of chickpeas in tomato sauce, roasted potatoes, pancakes, cornbread, and brownies. I had to think about what carbs I most wanted, and I decided on a small serving of potatoes and a brownie. We ate on the steps of the wraparound porch, also familiar because I ate at Tank my first year of college. It felt good to be back in Oberlin and eating OSCA food.

After dinner we tried to get some groceries for breakfast, but first the IGA and then the Aldi’s we tried were closed, so we ended up picking up a few things at a Sheetz to supplement the food we’d brought from home. The search for an open grocery store was a little frustrating, but we were rewarded with a beautiful sunset as we drove around Lorain County.

The rental house where we were staying had two cats in the driveway who were quite insistent that they wanted to come inside with us, but when the owner showed up to help us with the keypad, he said they were not supposed to go in the second-floor apartment where we were staying. The place was notable for its religious décor. There was a Bible quote framed at the top of the stairs outside the entrance, another one on a mug in the kitchen, religious books placed on the bedside table, and a tiny Jesus figurine in the glass jar of makeup wipes in the bathroom. It looked like he was floating on a cloud in there.

The space was one big room with a kitchen and bathroom off to the side. North was staying with us that night so we could get an early start the next morning and they slept on a pullout couch in the living room area. At bedtime I was dismayed to find out I’d left my sleep mask at home, so I didn’t sleep well. Neither did North because apparently one of us was snoring. (They opted to sleep in Keep the next night.)

Sunday: Oberlin to Wheeling and Back Again

Why did we need to get an early start? We were driving to Wheeling to see Beth’s mom Sunday. It’s a three-hour drive each way, so it was going to be another long day on the road (the second of three), but North hadn’t seen YaYa since Thanksgiving and really wanted to go, so we did.

We arrived at YaYa’s house at 11:40 and soon after Beth’s aunt Carole and cousin Holly (who live two doors down) came over for a visit. As we left the house, we admired the flourishing Rose of Sharon in front of Carole’s house before we went to have lunch at the bistro at Oglebay resort. We ate on the patio, and the restaurant is on a hill, so we had a nice view of the park. We got a feast that started with a butter board with various compounded butters, fresh bread, and olives. I got a slice of quiche and a salad as well. Next, we went to the lodge and got coffee, chai, and a slice of lemon cheesecake.

Back at YaYa’s house we socialized some more, and I went for a short walk in her neighborhood. At 4:40, we said our goodbyes and drove back to Ohio. We drove mostly along rural roads and saw a lot of Amish people. There was another beautiful sunset. They are easier to see when there aren’t many hills or buildings. We had dinner at a Panera and then stopped in Wooster for ice cream and frozen custard at the dairy where OSCA gets its milk. It was fun to have a connection to the place.

Monday: Oberlin to Takoma Park

We picked North up at Keep the next morning and walked to Slow Train Café for coffee and pastries. From there we went to Ben Franklin, where we got clothes hangers and other sundries for North. (At home they had divided their hangers into a bag to take and hangers for children’s clothes to donate. Can you guess which bag they packed?) It was eleven o’clock by the time we said our goodbyes and got in the car again. When took pictures on the Keep steps, I said, “Goodbye, sophomore.” And it was time to go.

Our drive featured another stop at Blue Goose with a longer than planned stop to walk along the nearby C&O canal. We just kept finding interesting things, like a feral cat colony and water lotuses in bloom. It was a welcome distraction from the growing number of miles between us and our youngest child.

Tuesday through Friday: Takoma Park and Oberlin

Until recently, I thought this drop-off would be easy (if not objectively, then comparatively). It wasn’t anyone’s first year of college, it wasn’t the first drop-off after a year and a half at home due to a global pandemic, no one was going halfway across the world. But the fact that North’s multi-day migraine hadn’t gone away and their digestive woes were still unresolved made it harder to leave them. Right before we left home, we’d found out through the portal that their H. pylori test came back negative, so it’s more likely gastroenteritis than an ulcer. They got an appointment at the Cleveland Clinic, but it’s not until late September. Even though I am sorry they are dealing with these health problems, I am proud of them for taking steps to manage them. They are growing into quite the capable young adult. But of course, we are here to help if they need it.

On the positive side, they have a lot to look forward to this semester. They like their class schedule—two theater classes, one psychology class, a sociology class, and they will be on production crew for a show (which one TBD). They are one of two food coordinators for all OSCA, serving as a liaison to the wholesalers that supply the co-ops with food. It’s a paid position. They are now three days into the semester. Good luck, sophomore!

(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…

The Three Rs: Four Rallies, A Road Trip, and a Little Romance

Posted on February 16, 2025 by Steph

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The first half of February was crazy busy. In different combinations, the three of us went to four protests, all of us took a road trip to Oberlin to see North perform in a play, and we celebrated Valentine’s Day. Settle in, this is a long one.

Rallies 1 and 2: Treasury and Department of Labor

The first Tuesday in February, Beth, Noah, and I all went to a protest outside the Treasury Department. That was when Musk and his youthful minions were rummaging around your personal financial information at that department. It was a much bigger rally than the one outside the White House the week before. I’m no good at estimating crowd sizes, but it filled the street and sidewalks for a long block in front of the Treasury Building and we were packed in tightly. I later learned a lot of people I know were there, but I didn’t see them at the time.

A lot of members of Congress spoke, but I couldn’t always hear the introductions. You could tell when Representative Jamie Raskin and Senator Elizabeth Warren were about to speak, though, because people chanted their names enthusiastically. I thought the best line was about the government being run by a “billionaire boy band,” but I’m not sure who said it, possibly Senator Chris Van Hollen, which was interesting because I don’t think of him as a wit.

There were a lot of American flags in the crowd. This has been true at nearly every protest so far. I like the idea of not ceding symbols of patriotism to the right. We could see workers inside the building, watching us from various windows. A woman near me gave them the finger emphatically and repeatedly, and I wished she hadn’t because there are still career civil servants who haven’t been fired yet working there and who knows what they were thinking? In fact, at one point, a woman in the window waved at the crowd.

The next day Beth went to another protest at the Department of Labor. I couldn’t make that one, as I had a work deadline, or I thought I couldn’t. The FAQs I was writing for a supplement company didn’t take as long as I thought they would, but by the time I knew that it was too late.

Where it Stands: A federal judge has blocked DOGE access at Treasury and then extended the block, but another judge allowed access at Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Road Trip: Friday

Two days later, on the first Friday in February, Beth, Noah, and I drove to Oberlin for a quick weekend trip. The play North had been rehearsing all Winter Term was being performed that weekend—five shows from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. We had tickets for the Saturday evening performance. And because North would be also performing at a matinee that afternoon, they encouraged us to go see another play, one they’d auditioned for and could not attend because it had the exact same performance schedule as theirs. So, the plan was to drive up Friday, see the two plays Saturday, visit with North during the little slices of time they had between performances, and to drive back on Sunday.

It took us nine hours to drive to Oberlin, with frequent stops, including one for lunch at a very nice vegetarian-friendly restaurant in Bedford, Pennsylvania, which we hope to visit again. Early in the drive we listened to music, jazz I think, and talked about the sad state of our country, just long enough to get it out of our systems before we switched over to vacation mode. We listened to podcasts for the rest of the drive, alternating between Let’s Make A Sci Fi, which is about three writers collaborating on a science fiction television series pilot, and two different podcasts about Severance, which the three of us are watching together. These were good, diverting choices, if you have a road trip coming up and they sound up your alley.

There weren’t a lot of Trump signs in Western Maryland, even though that part of the state did go for him, or in Ohio, which also did, but Western Pennsylvania was awash in them, both billboards and yard signs. (Last week I ran into my friend Becky, who was about to take a trip to her hometown in North Carolina, and she and I talked about how it’s in some ways a relief to drive away from the D.C. area where the horrors are taking place and in some ways it’s not, because, depending on your route, you may see ample evidence that people voted for those horrors, whereas in D.C. and its suburbs, few people did.)

We arrived in Oberlin about six-thirty, which was after North’s call time, so we didn’t see them that night. We got pizza from Lorenzo’s, the only restaurant in Oberlin from Beth’s and my era that’s still open, and we ate in our rental house and watched Severance. It was the fourth episode, the very dramatic one that takes place at the company’s outdoor retreat.

Road Trip: Saturday

We met North for breakfast at the Feve, which is famous for its pancakes. I’d eaten an egg and some vegetarian sausage at the house, so I took a risk on a chocolate-strawberry pancake. It was huge and my blood sugar went a bit higher than I would have liked, but we were on vacation.

At the table, we presented North with two tote bags, full of gifts—dried mango, white chocolate-strawberry truffles (an early Valentine’s present), and Valentines from all of us and the cats—plus several boxes of tea we were donating to Keep after a cabinet re-organization Noah recently undertook. I think they were most excited about the mango. They ate nearly the whole bag over the course of the day. We also had two slices of anniversary cake we’d frozen for them, but we didn’t give them those until later.

We stopped at the mail room to get some medications that had arrived and then took them back to the house to hang out until their call-time. They ate leftover cheesy garlic bread and some apple. After we dropped them off at the student union, where the play was being performed, Beth and I went to find a bouquet for them. There was a gift shop downtown that sold flowers, and we got them six purple roses.

We had leftover pizza for lunch, and we read (me and Noah) and worked (Beth), and I took a walk down a bike path in the neighborhood where Beth had walked before breakfast and recommended. There were woods, a park, and houses’ back yards on either side, and it was a pleasant place to walk.

Later that afternoon we went to see Wolf Play, which won a prize (confusingly called an Obie) for off-Broadway performances in 2023. It’s about a lesbian couple who informally adopt a six-year-old Korean boy whose first set of adoptive parents relinquish him and then there’s a custody battle when the first adoptive couple splits, and the father decides he wants the boy back. The boy believes he is a wolf (or maybe just pretends to be) and is played by an adult actor who is manipulating a child-sized puppet and who speaks both his thoughts and his words. It was very well done.

We re-united with North after their performance. Beth picked them up and they got a noodle bowl at the student union, which they ate at the house, along with more mango. After we dropped them off at the student union, we got takeout Middle Eastern food for dinner and ate it before going to see North’s play.

Deficiency was student written and this was its debut. It’s about three brothers (two in high school and one in college) who are at their alcoholic father’s house for spring break. Unbeknownst to each other, all the brothers are all taking testosterone for different reasons and there is confusion and conflict when a package containing some arrives from their mother’s house. North was playing the middle brother, a trans boy, and their performance was comic, serious, and tender in turn. It was wonderful to see them on stage and in a more substantial role than they’ve had for a long time.

Road Trip: Sunday

There was snow and an ice storm overnight and Sunday morning freezing rain was falling and it was extremely slippery outside. We had breakfast, packed up the house, and then I went for a rather treacherous and much shorter walk down the same path where I’d walked the day before. We picked North up at Keep and dropped off the cake. The Christmas tree was still up in the lounge. I was charmed by paper snowflakes in the windows surrounding a “Free Palestine” sign, I think because it made me think about what it’s like to be in college, close enough to your childhood to make paper snowflakes, but old enough to be politically engaged.

We went to Slow Train, which is North’s favorite place to get coffee in Oberlin, to get coffee, hot chocolate, and pastries (I got a spinach-cheese croissant). We lingered because it was hard to leave after such a short and fragmented visit, but eventually we said our goodbyes and dropped North off at Keep just in time for a lunch cooking shift before their last show, and hit the road.

The trip back was a little faster partly because we had lunch at a Noodles & Company, with a stop at The Milkshake Factory, instead of a sit-down restaurant. We listened to the same podcasts as on the way out, and got home around dinner time, so we picked up Indian to take home.

Rallies 3 and 4: Capitol and D.C. Attorney General’s Office

Two days after we got back, there was a rally in front of the Capitol, organized by the American Federation of Government Employees, which was holding its annual conference in D.C., so the focus of this one was to support federal employees. I met Beth at her office and walked down to the Capitol with about a dozen of her co-workers. As at Treasury, there were a lot of speeches by members of Congress (including both our senators) and a lot of American flags. I was given a small one, which I put in the buttonhole of my coat, along with a button that said, “Public Workers Work for Me!”

Where it Stands: Mass layoffs are in progress.

That week I was writing a one-thousand-word article on arnica, due Thursday afternoon, so I thought the AFGE rally would be my only outing into the city, but on Thursday morning around 9:20, Beth texted me to say there was a rally in support of trans youth at noon. Sara had already told me that if I really needed more time, I could send the article to her Friday morning and just I couldn’t skip that one, so I decided to go.

The rally was to urge the D.C. Attorney General to direct hospitals in the city not to deny gender-affirming care to trans youth. States attorneys general and hospitals across the country that provide this kind of care have had different interpretations of the executive order and different responses. In short, it’s not clear if it’s binding or even legal.

Disappointingly, Children’s National Medical Center, where North has received care, decided to stop prescribing puberty blockers and hormones (they never did surgeries on minors) but to continue with psychological and psychiatric care. Since appointments with a psychiatrist are the only kind of gender-related care North currently receives there, they are not directly affected, but it hits close to home anyway. (For a while, they were taking birth control to suppress their period, partly for dysphoria reasons, but there were other medical reasons, so it’s unclear if they still had the prescription if it would have been cut off, but it’s possible it would have been if the words “gender” or “dysphoria” were anywhere in the paperwork.)

I met Beth at her office, and we walked to the A.G.’s office. This was a smaller protest, because it’s a niche issue, compared to some of the others, but it was quite spirited. There were speakers (the mother of a trans girl, someone from an organization that works with trans youth, a doctor from George Washington Hospital who provides trans health care and who threw some shade at Children’s, etc.). Between speeches, we marched in a picket-style oval in front of the building and chanted. “A.G. Schwalb, do your job!” was the most common one. A reporter from the Washington Post talked to Beth and me, but I didn’t get the impression she was going to quote us because we don’t have a kid who is currently being denied care. Anyway, she didn’t take our names.

The rally got started late and Beth had to leave about a half hour after it did, but I stuck around for another forty minutes or so. Someone else who had to leave gave me her hand-painted “Protect Trans Futures” sign, which I decided to keep, as I may need it again. As always, a lot of people had homemade signs. I thought “Trans Kids Deserve to Be Trans Adults” was the most moving. I also liked the one that said, “Trans Rights. Trans Joy. All Day. Every Day” with what looked like blue and pink conversation hearts in the background. I thought that was a nice, seasonal touch.

Where It Stands: A federal judge has temporarily blocked the order restricting gender-affirming care for trans youth. And then another one did the same thing.

It’s important to note, there are losses in this round-up, but there are also wins. If you are going to protests or calling your representatives or giving money to organizations fighting for our democracy, please keep it up. It can feel overwhelming and hopeless at times, but I am trying hard to believe that it’s not.

Romance

Life does go on, outside politics. Our Valentine’s Day was low-key, but we did celebrate. Noah made a chocolate banana bread, with vertical slices of banana baked into the top. The banana strips were pleasingly sweet and chewy. Meanwhile, I fashioned our regular Friday night pizza into a rough heart shape, and we exchanged small gifts, all food. Beth got me a very thoughtful little bag of diabetes-friendly treats—some single-serve nut butters (walnut and pecan), an unsweetened raspberry-cashew dark chocolate bar, and some tiny paleo pies (lemon and key lime with coconut-nut crusts). Noah got dark chocolate caramel hearts, and Beth got dark chocolate hearts and dark chocolate-covered orange peel sticks.

I picked up that last item at a fancy chocolate store in Union Station on the way home from the AFSGE rally. Even as we are focused on justice, we can’t forget to take time for our little joys along the way.

First Steps

Posted on January 6, 2025 by Steph

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North is back at school. While I was cooking dinner on New Year’s Eve and listening to Roseanne Cash sing “Everyone But Me,” the line “It goes by real fast” jumped out at me. I thought of the kids’ childhoods, of course, but more immediately, North’s three-week break.

The first two days we were home from the beach North was wiped out by a cold—they tested for covid, and it was negative—and they spent those days mostly in bed. By Monday they’d recovered enough to take a short walk with me to Koma and get a chai (them) and a latte (me). On Tuesday, they delivered a tin of homemade Christmas sweets to Maddie and Miles and spent most of the afternoon at the twins’ house. Then Noah and North stayed up to see in the New Year, finishing a season of Queen’s Gambit, and consuming a lot of snacks while they waited for midnight. Meanwhile, I’d caught North’s cold, and Beth and I were abed by 9:45. If I could have roused myself from the couch—where I was feeling sick and listless—I would have gone to bed earlier.

New Year’s Day: First Hike

On New Year’s Day Beth and I went on a Maryland State Parks First Day hike, as we often do. I was quiet in the car on the way to Merkle Natural Resources Management Area. I was still sick and fatigued. Also, the persistent dread I’d been feeling since the election, which lessened a little over the holidays, was settling back down around me, if anything worse than before because it was finally 2025. After hearing so much about Project 2025 for so long, the very name of the year sounds menacing and dystopian. Is that going to wear off?

But we got there, and we took the hike, and it was nice to be walking outdoors, and it lifted my spirits a little. It almost always does. The park is a Canada goose sanctuary. Some geese live there year-round, but most of them winter there from October to March. We saw a lot of geese on the drive to the parking lot and hundreds more in the fields surrounding the visitors’ center, but we didn’t see any on the actual hike, because it was mostly on a wooded trail, and they prefer water and open fields.

The ranger pointed out a beaver dam and beaver-gnawed trees and identified tree species as we walked past streams and ponds and a heap of garbage that he said was eighty to a hundred years old. There was an upside-down car, what looked like an oil tank, some appliances, something made of porcelain that might have been part of a sink or a toilet, and what I think was the torso of a rocking horse. There was also the rusted frame of a banana-seat bike, which made Beth speculate some of the trash was from after the 1940s. After the hike we went into the visitors’ center and watched turtles swimming in a tank. It was the first day I was wearing my new Fitbit, and it was novel and interesting to have something counting my steps and zone minutes again after an almost six-month break from that.

Back at home, we had a lunch of fancy cheeses, crackers, fruit, and sparkling juice. This is another New Year’s tradition for us. And I made black-eyed peas for dinner because there is no way I am skimping on luck this year.

Thursday to Sunday: First Road Trip

Thursday morning, we hit the road for Oberlin. The drive took eight and half hours and we passed the time with music and podcasts (a couple episodes of Handsome and one each of Normal Gossip and Where Should We Begin). Somewhere in Western Pennsylvania I fell asleep and when I opened my eyes the first thing that I saw was a sign that said, “Trump. Fuck Your Feelings,” so that was a rude awakening… literally.

We arrived in Oberlin around six. We dropped North’s things off at their new, possibly temporary, first-floor single room in Keep, which they requested because it was empty for Winter Term and it’s easier for them not to have to climb two flights of stairs. We helped them move some of their stuff down from their third-floor room into the first-floor room.

It’s still trippy for me to be in Keep, where I lived for a year and a half. To intensify that feeling, North’s new room used to belong to my sophomore year boyfriend, so I once spent a lot of time in it. I also spied a picture of myself North added to the “Keeple of the Past” display, a collage of photos of people who once lived in Keep. Can you spot me? The Christmas tree was still up in the lounge, and we noticed the ornaments we gave North over Thanksgiving on it.

We went out for Thai at a very festive-looking restaurant, all strung with colored lights. I got a green curry the waitress warned me was hot and she did not lie. I ate all the tofu and vegetables, but I had to leave half the broth, and it got my nose running and knocked all my congestion loose. Beth said that was good for me and maybe it was because the next day my cold was almost gone.

North came back with us to our Air BnB, took a shower, and hung out for a little while and then Beth drove them back to Keep for their first night in their new room.

Friday morning, we woke to a couple inches of snow on the ground and snow falling through the air. It wasn’t a surprise, it had been forecast, but Beth was delighted anyway (even though now she had the cold we were all passing around). We’d had flurries a few times at home and a dusting of snow over Thanksgiving weekend in Wheeling, but no accumulation anywhere we’ve been this fall and winter so far. After breakfast we walked through the snow to CVS to get a comb since Beth had forgotten hers and vitamin D and magnesium because I’d forgotten mine. Then we met up with North for warm beverages and pastry at their favorite coffeeshop in Oberlin.

We had a busy morning and early afternoon. We took North to two different grocery stores to stock up on fresh and dried fruit, olives, bagels, cream cheese, yogurt, cereal, milk, and frozen foods. Keep’s kitchen will be closed over Winter Term so North will be living there but eating in a different co-op and it seemed like a good idea to have some food on hand where they live. This was in addition to the tote bag full of instant oatmeal, hot chocolate mix, toaster pastries, and popcorn we had presented them with before we left home. I don’t think they will starve, even though their play rehearsal schedule may cause them to miss meals sometimes. After the first grocery store, it was snowing so hard there were almost white-out conditions, and we had to stop at Keep so we could wait out the squall before proceeding to the second store.

Next, we took a walk in the arboretum. I promised Beth I would not break up with her there. It’s an old joke—I once took a “yes, we are really breaking up” letter from a quite recent ex-boyfriend there to read and I broke up with two other boyfriends there in person, so it does have a break-up vibe for me, but it’s a pretty place and I do have other memories associated with it. The reservoirs were partly frozen, and the snow was lovely on the tree branches and cattails. We were all rather cold after that walk, though, so it was nice to warm up with a tasty lunch of Mexican food.

We picked up some medications that had arrived at the mail room for North. Beth and I walked a little more on campus after that, passing by Noah Hall—it wouldn’t be a trip to Oberlin without at least walking by the dorm where we met—and then we picked North up at Keep and drove the building where their first rehearsal was starting at two, and we hit the road for Wheeling.

It was sad to leave North, of course, but happy at the same time because I think they’re going to have a good Winter Term. I always loved Winter Term, being able to focus on one intensive class or project for four weeks before the spring semester. Rehearsing a play seems like a perfect project and we’ll be back in Oberlin in a month to see it performed.

The snow was heavy and blowing across the road at the beginning of the drive, but it cleared up, and we got to Wheeling around 5:15. We were staying at a hotel that night because Beth’s brother and his wife were at her mom’s house. They’d been there for Christmas and had gotten sick with norovirus and had to extend their stay because they were too sick to fly. They had since recovered and were leaving early the next morning. After Beth and John consulted with each other on the phone they decided not to visit with each other, just in case John and Abby were still contagious. Beth and I brought pizza back to the hotel room and had a quiet evening—she read, and I wrote much of this.

Saturday morning, it was quite cold, in the teens, so Beth didn’t want to go out with wet hair, and we stayed in the hotel room until it was dry. We ran some errands and then arrived at her mom’s house in the late morning. We all sat in her mom’s bedroom, and she caught us up on various members of the extended family, who was doing well and who wasn’t. It made me think how people’s lives are kind of like a microcosm of a family’s or even a nation’s life, alternating good times and bad times, always a mix of both, even as the ratio shifts.

Beth and I went to Oglebay Park to walk in the snow. When we set out the wind was blowing hard and it was so cold my face ached and I thought I’d made a mistake coming along, but it died down and then I was fine. I had on a new pair of boot socks we’d purchased that morning because my feet had been cold in the arboretum, and they helped. It was quiet in the park other than occasional honking geese. You know how smell travels farther when it’s very cold? Even when I was walking a few feet behind Beth, I could smell the cherry cough drops she was sucking.

We walked from the lodge to the mansion and around Shenck Lake and saw a big flock of geese hunkered down, motionless on a snowy hillside. Afterward we got coffee and hot chocolate in the lodge. I stared out the window watching the falling snow, still feeling pensive and a little melancholy.

When we got back, we went to visit Beth’s aunt Carole, who lives two doors down, and Carole’s son Sean, who was visiting from Ireland, and shared more news of family. Then we had a late lunch and settled in for a quiet afternoon of reading and writing and watching the falling snow.

Sunday morning, we ran some more errands and hit the road for home a little before ten. We took our time on the drive. We stopped for lunch at a café in Cumberland—where I got a cozy meal of tomato soup, grilled cheese, and chocolate-peppermint tea—and for a walk in Rocky Gap State Park. There wasn’t much snow there on the ground there, or anywhere after Cumberland, but Lake Habeeb was partly frozen. There were ducks on the water and a couple beaver-felled trees.

In the first five days of the new year, we walked in four different parks in three different states. I don’t know where the year will take us as a family or as a country, but for better or for worse, we have taken our first steps.

Welcome Christmas

Posted on December 22, 2024 by Steph

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Christmas Day is in our grasp,
So long as we have hands to clasp.
Christmas Day will always be,
Just so long as we have we.
Welcome Christmas as we stand,
Heart to heart and hand in hand.

From How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Return to the Nest

Noah came home from his week in London on the second Wednesday in December. He’d been to a concert and a play (it was a play about a play, an ill-fated production of A Christmas Carol). He visited the British Library and the British Museum, Big Ben, and the Tower of London. Beth and I went to meet him at the airport. BWI was all decked out for Christmas, “merry and bright,” I said. There was a big tree where you wait for international arrivals with flags from all the states, so Beth had to go inspect it to find the West Virginia flag. We had to wait there a while as Noah went through customs, but finally he emerged. It was the wee hours of the morning London time, but he was hungry, so we took him to eat dinner at Chipotle (we’d already eaten).

North flew home from Cleveland the next day, and we went from a week-long empty nest to a full one in the space of less than a day. I couldn’t go to the airport this time because I had book club that night—we were discussing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight—and I needed to get dinner on the table in time to leave for that. But we were able to have dinner all together. I made black bean tostadas and put red and green salsa on the table so people could make them Christmassy if they were so inclined and I put on the Roches’ We Three Kings, in an attempt to make the dinner festive. Beth had finished the outside lights a few days before North got home and we had the Christmas cards we’d received on a string in the living room, with a garland of pine rope and a string of colored light above them. We never did any more inside decorating than that. There are whole unopened boxes in the basement. I feel a little bad about that, but there’s always next year.

Second to Last Weekend Before Christmas

North had left school right after classes ended and had three short papers to write at home, for Psychology, Sociology, and Nutrition. They did one a day until they finished on Sunday, four days before the last one was due. In between finals, they found time to go to Butler’s with us on Saturday to get a Christmas tree. We took pictures of ourselves in different combinations with the 5-to-6-foot sign because we are all between five and six feet tall. Around the field were decorations made from a wagon wheel and a tractor wheel (wreaths), and piles of tires painted green to form a Christmas tree, plus wooden cutouts of penguins and gingerbread men. (At the market later, we saw a snowman made of hay bales and a wooden sleigh.) It was very festive and whimsical.

After we picked out a Frasier fir from the 7-to-8-foot section of the field, we visited the snack bar where we got hot chocolate, hot cider, and two apple hand pies to share, and then the farm market where we got smoked cheddar, pasta, and some treats (chocolate-covered cherries, candied pecans, orange-cranberry bread). I picked up ginger cookies for my friend Megan (whom I was going to see the next day), because I know she likes molasses cookies, and they looked similar. We browsed the market’s selection of ornaments, even though we’d decided we really didn’t need any more. We stayed strong and did not buy any.

I met Megan the next morning for coffee. Megan and I have been friends since her oldest and my youngest were in preschool together and we have not seen each other in ages, probably over a year. We talked for two hours and managed to touch on all eight members of our two families, and work, and the dark political times in which we find ourselves, all the important things. I felt like we could have talked another two hours.

While I was gone, Noah raked leaves for the leaf truck that was due to come the next day, Beth did a big grocery shop for the now full house and made black bean soup for dinner. Noah went out to his weekly Sunday afternoon board game group and the rest of us addressed nearly all the Christmas cards and then watched Last Exmas. We’d been watching Christmas specials (Charlie Brown, The Grinch, Frosty, and several Rankin-Bass specials) prior to this and after this, but we thought we’d watch something Noah wouldn’t mind missing. To clarify, he’s not opposed to watching bad gay and lesbian Christmas romances (and in fact he would the following weekend) but he does not feel left out if we do it without him.

Last Work Week

Beth and I were working and North’s friends from high school (who are mostly a year younger) were still in school, so during the week they had plenty of time to bake. They made an apple crumb cheesecake with homemade caramel sauce, almond butter chocolate chip cookies, and pinwheels. We got this recipe from the program at the White House Christmas tour last year and they made them, and they were a big hit. So, I found the recipe and left it at their place at the dining room table and they got the hint and made another batch.

North and I went out for coffee twice that week. They had a psychiatrist appointment one day and I met them at a coffeeshop we like near there and then another day I had to get yard waste bags at the hardware store and I hadn’t had a gingerbread latte at Starbucks even though they brought them back this year after a hiatus of several years and they were always a favorite of mine, so we walked down there together.

On Friday afternoon North met up at a mall with several of their high school friends who were fresh out of school for winter break, and they had a not-so-secret-Santa gift exchange. They drew names and then went around the mall buying presents for each other right in front of each other. North came home with a smiling plush jar of strawberry jam and a small, round stuffed T-Rex. That night we watched Season’s Greeting from Cherry Lane.

Solstice/Last Weekend Before Christmas

This weekend was really packed. We went to see an early afternoon showing of The Muppet Christmas Carol at the American Film Institute. It’s fun to see a movie like that on a big screen, with an audience laughing at the funny parts. Noah objected to the applause at the end “because the people who made the movie are not there” but despite that, it was a very satisfactory outing.

As we left, I opined to the family that the movie is “a masterpiece” and no one contradicted me.

Later that afternoon Beth made buckeyes, and Noah and I made white beans in a tomato-cream sauce with arugula for dinner and afterward we opened presents from my extended family and Beth’s mom. We do this when we’re traveling over Christmas to make room in the car and to have a little Solstice celebration. Often, it’s a little more ceremonial. We’ll light candles and I might buy cookies in snowflake or tree shapes to go with the nature theme. But we had so many sweets in the house that seemed unnecessary this year. I ate a buckeye and told Beth it was “a religious experience.”

“Well, then I’m glad I made them,” she said. We each read a poem about winter from this book. Then we called my mom and sister and niece to thank them for the gifts.

I didn’t even have time to finish the dinner dishes before it was time for our next activity. We had eight p.m. tickets for the Garden of Lights at Brookside Gardens. We didn’t spend as long wandering through the lights as we might have because North had turned their ankle earlier in the weekend and it was quite cold—in the high twenties and windy. (I will pause while my hardy Canadian readers do the temperature conversion and laugh at us.)

We got hot chocolate and funnel cake fries to warm us up before we started and then we walked along the familiar paths. It was mostly the same as always—I saw some of my favorites like the dragon that breathes fog and the frog whose throat lights up when it croaks—but there were some new displays, notably a flamboyance of flamingoes by the pond, reflected in the water. There was also a Christmas tree that for some reason was flashing its lights to the rhythm of “Don’t Stop Believing.” Later we heard “Magic” by the Cars playing. I’m honestly not sure what accounts for these musical selections, but as we left, I said the lights were “magical” and then remembering the song, started to sing it.

That night when we went to bed, I told Beth it had been the happiest day I could remember since the election. So, apparently what I need is multiple outings, a beloved story well told, poetry, pretty lights, presents, and sugar.

Sunday morning Beth made pizzelles in two flavors (vanilla and anise) and then I made gingerbread dough. I saved most of it to take with us on our travels, but I baked a few to put on a cookie plate for Becky. Becky is another family friend. We met when she was North’s Kindermusik teacher and then the music teacher at their preschool and then her daughter babysat for us, and by that point we’d become friends. I piled a plate with pinwheels, pizzelles, gingerbread, and buckeyes, while North filled a tin for their friends Maddie and Miles to deliver after Christmas. Beth, North, and I went to visit with Becky that afternoon. She was delighted to sample a buckeye and served us tea and pepparkakor, her own Christmas specialty. Her daughter Eleanor was driving home from Philadelphia for the holiday, and we hoped to see her, too, but we needed to leave before she arrived.

Beth and I took separate walks, she cooked dinner, I blogged, Noah returned from his games, and we all began packing for our drive tomorrow morning, which will take us to the beach, where we will soon be ensconced in the house where are welcoming Christmas, heart to heart and hand in hand.

Waiting for Joy

Posted on December 7, 2024 by Steph

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We’ve been home from our Thanksgiving week trip for almost a week now, but once I got back into the swing of work and chores, I never did get around to blogging about the last few days, so I thought I’d finish that before switching gears.

Black Friday

On Friday morning Beth and I lingered at the hotel long enough to have a soak in the hot tub after breakfast. It seemed it would be a waste to stay there five days and not use it. We showed up at Beth’s mom house in the late morning and took separate walks in snow flurries that persisted on and off all day and gave the day a festive feel. (The snow never did stick in Beth’s mom’s neighborhood, but when we went back to our hotel that night there was a dusting there. Wheeling is a hilly town and apparently it has microclimates.)

Most of us ate Thanksgiving leftovers for lunch and then Noah and I finished The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires and Beth went ice skating at Wheeling Park. In the mid-afternoon, Beth, North and I left to do a little Christmas shopping. We went to the Artisan Center and Centre Market. We got a few small gifts for my niece Lily-Mei, who at eleven and a half is redecorating her room in a goth theme. This turned out to be the holiday project I didn’t know I needed. Maybe because it seemed more like Halloween than Christmas it was the only gift buying that interested me (and even now it’s the only gift buying I’ve done). We got some little figurines of cats in goth outfits, a painting of a raven, and picked out a wooden statue of another raven (though by the time we returned to that store to buy it, it had closed).

We went into a vintage clothes and record shop to look for a warmer winter coat than North currently owns. Since the thin down coat that served them for a couple winters in Maryland seemed to be about right for November in Ohio, they suspected they will need something heavier for winter, but they couldn’t find anything at this store. Next, we stopped at a coffee kiosk and got a half-sweet gingerbread latte for me and chai for North and headed home.

When we got home, Beth’s mom was watching a WVU-Arizona basketball game (WVU won) and then Beth, North, and I watched an episode of Gilmore Girls. Beth went to pick up pizza for us to eat in front of Hot Frosty, which was Noah’s pick for a Hallmark-type Christmas movie. It was just what you’d expect from this kind of movie. I don’t think I need to say more.

Small Business Saturday

In the morning, Noah and I started Dracula. I taught this book for years in my horror class and I’m deeply gratified to be sharing it with him. We went out for lunch at Later Alligator. (The promise of crepes was how we enticed Noah out of the house for the first time in a few days.) I didn’t read the description of my crepe carefully enough and when it arrived, I was a little dismayed to find it had white rice in it because rice tends to spike my blood sugar and unlike a lot of other things I was eating that week, it wasn’t worth the splurge. I did my best to eat around it.

We met up with Beth’s mom for more Christmas shopping at the Schrader Environmental Center gift shop in Oglebay park. Because of the rice and because I wasn’t really in a good headspace for more Christmas shopping, I decided to take a walk in the park while everyone else shopped. Next, we proceeded to the park lodge coffeeshop for coffee and pastries. Beth and I had noticed lavender lattes there earlier in the week and they are North’s favorite, which was part of the reason we returned. (Thanks to the walk, my blood sugar was low enough so that I was able to have half a slice of gingerbread cake.)

Back at the house I did laundry and made cranberry applesauce out of our apple-turkey centerpieces and some leftover cranberries. But before dinner, we headed out to Oglebay to drive through the light show. We haven’t been to Wheeling for Thanksgiving or Christmas for a long time—this was the last time—because in recent years we’ve been going to Rehoboth for Thanksgiving and Blackwater for Christmas, so we haven’t been to the light show in nine years either, though when the kids were small we went almost every year.

I think a lot of people who live in Wheeling think of the Festival of Lights as a touristy thing, and find the traffic it attracts annoying, but I am quite fond of it. It’s been around for forty years, and I probably went for the first time in the late eighties or early nineties, so I’ve seen it grow bigger and bigger. I like seeing the old familiar lights, like the candles surrounded by poinsettias, and the newer LED displays. I only took one picture and didn’t ask Noah to take any because it’s hard to take pictures from a moving vehicle and I didn’t want ask Beth to stop the car repeatedly. I knew which one I wanted, though.

Back when North was in preschool and knew their letters but couldn’t read, they used to insist every word that started with a J was their name because their birth name started with a J. So, the year they were two and a half, when we drove through the Festival of Lights, they saw the word JOY and got very excited about seeing their name in lights, so to speak. For years afterward it became a family joke to say the sign said North’s old name. But we hadn’t been through since North changed their name and when I said, “Look, it says North,” everyone laughed.

There are several tunnels made of lights along the route, and these fixtures also inspired nostalgia. I reminisced about how the kids used to try to hold their breath in them. The tunnels are not long but when traffic is slow, which it generally is, it takes a long time to get through them. I remembered how this used to lead to conflict and tears. When they were nine and fourteen for instance, when Noah was trying to hold his breath and North wasn’t, he claimed they had “forfeited” and he had won, which made them mad. So, at the next tunnel, North retaliated by breathing as loudly as they could to torment him while he tried to hold his breath. Reminded of this tradition, of course, both of them held their breath and it took so long to get through one of the tunnels I thought they would pass out, but they didn’t. And no one cried, so I guess that’s improvement.

That night after a dinner of leftovers and cranberry applesauce, Carole came over to say goodbye because we were leaving the next morning.

Advent

Even though I am not Catholic, it always pleases me when Advent starts on December 1 and the little chocolate-dispensing calendars are accurate. This was one of those years. We didn’t buy an Advent calendar this year, but I thought of it anyway.

On Sunday we were one the road for fourteen hours, first driving North back to Oberlin, making a lunch stop there, and then driving from Oberlin home. On arriving in Oberlin, we helped North carry their luggage up to their third-floor room and they hung some ornaments they’d asked us to bring from home on the tree in the Keep lounge.

Next, we stopped at a grocery store to get them some food because meals were not starting up at Keep for another day and a half and we had brunch at a restaurant in town. Everyone but me got pancakes—sweet potato-cranberry for Noah, chocolate chip for Beth, and blueberry for North. I had a broccoli-quinoa omelet, salad, half the potatoes that came with my meal, and some hot tea, and I did not feel too deprived. I put this photo of Beth and the kids at the restaurant on Facebook and North saw it and texted me, “I like this picture where none of us are smiling and only Beth is looking at the camera.” Believe it or not it was the best of four pictures I took.

After eating we took North back to Keep and said our goodbyes. It was not nearly as hard as when we left them there in August, partly because we’re getting used to being apart but mostly because we were going to see them again in less than two weeks when they come home for winter break. (And now it’s less than a week.)

If Advent is a time of waiting for joyful things, even in dark days, it truly has begun.

To Be Grateful

Posted on November 29, 2024 by Steph

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Tuesday

Two days before Thanksgiving, on North’s first full day in Wheeling, they did schoolwork for much of the day and I worked on a long-form blog post about nootropics, as I had the day before. Beth’s aunts Susan and Carole dropped by separately. I saw Susan, but missed Carole, as I was out on a walk.

Late that afternoon we did a photo shoot for our Christmas card in Wheeling Park. I wanted to do it that day because it was going to get colder as the week progressed, though as it was it was still kind of chilly to be out without jackets in the late afternoon.

In 2016, I didn’t know what to do about the Christmas card. This is what I said about it:

A few days ago, I told Beth I was thinking of not doing a Christmas card this year. It just seemed like a lot of work and it was hard to imagine putting a smiling picture of us on the front of it or writing a cheerful letter about what we’ve been up to this past year. The annual card means more to me than to her, so I thought she might go along with the idea of taking a pass. Instead she looked surprised.

I said I wasn’t sure if it was just post-election depression and if I’d regret it later if we skipped a year. She asked if I’d thought it was too much work last year. I said no, so clearly it was post-election depression, but that the part I wasn’t sure about was whether I’d regret it or not. She gently suggested we take some pictures at the beach “just in case.” We discussed the possibility of sending a card with no letter, of taking a more pensive looking picture, of putting some political message on the card.

I’m still not sure what we’re going to do, but I think she handled it just right. If she’d said that we should do the card, I might have said it was pointless and started crying. If she’d said sure, let’s skip it this year, I probably would have cried, too, because that would mean it really was pointless.

We ended up doing cards that year. I suggested to the kids that they look pensive, and Noah did, but North didn’t. I can’t remember what we did about the letter, and I can’t find one in the folder where I keep those documents, so it’s possible we skipped it, but my filing is not impeccable and other years are missing, too.

I felt similarly about the card this year, but we couldn’t stare moodily at the ocean on this year’s card because we weren’t at the beach. Before the election, we’d planned to pose by the Christmas decorations at the lodge at Oglebay but I couldn’t imagine doing anything so cheery now. So, instead of our usual red and green color scheme, I asked everyone to dress in muted, nature-evoking colors (blues, greens, and browns) and we posed in the autumnal, less decorated landscape of Wheeling Park. They all indulged me. Beth asked jokingly, if I’d like to take the photo in the cemetery that’s adjacent to the park and the thing is, while we were standing there with the hill of graves in sight, I had actually thought of that, but I didn’t want to go that far. Plus, as North said, it would be disrespectful of the dead to use their gravestones as props.

We walked around taking pictures by various bushes and trees, some bare, some evergreen, and some with red berries or leaves. The graveyard did show up in the background of some of them. I told people to smile or not, as they chose. I alternated between small smiles and more somber expressions. Then we approached the lake with its “Danger. Thin Ice” sign and took some pictures there (for Facebook, rather than the card), as it seems to be a good representation of the outlook for 2025.

It turned out to be comforting outing, being outside with the four of us all together, joking a little in a dark sort of way. I asked North if it was nice being back with their “weird family.”

They said, “Yes. Is it nice being back with your weird kid?”

I said, “Yes.” And it was.

When we’d finished the shoot, we went to warm up with coffee, tea, and hot chocolate at the coffeehouse in the park. Then we went back to Beth’s mom’s house and North and I collaborated on an improvised vegetable soup for dinner.

Beth and I checked into a hotel that night. This was the plan all along because her mom’s condo is small for five people. But since North had arrived earlier than expected, we’d managed the night before with Beth, Noah, and me in the guest room (he was on an air bed) and North on another air bed in the living room.

Wednesday

In the breakfast room of the hotel in the morning, I entertained myself by people watching. (Beth and I went down separately because I wasn’t ready when she was.) I heard a little boy complaining that his brother had sausage, and he did not have any. His mother fetched him some sausage and then he exclaimed indignantly, “I didn’t want sausage!”

Next a college-age young man in the same party tucked a few packages of Nutella into his pocket and his father (or maybe stepfather—based on the ages of the four kids it could have been a blended family) said, “What are you doing with your life that you’re stashing Nutella?” It wasn’t said in a joking way either. He seemed to mean it. The young man, undeterred, started putting muffins into his backpack while the (step)father started to mansplain Tik-Tok to a teen girl, opining it was “all about trends.”

Eventually I tore myself away from this fascinating family and Beth and I went for an hour-long walk in Oglebay park. We checked out the site where the winter carnival is running in the afternoons and evenings. There was a tiny skating rink with artificial ice (made of plastic). Beth decided she was not interested in skating in such a small area. We looked at all the Christmas trees decorated in different themes (culinary, floral, animal-themed, patriotic, athletic, and one dedicated to the Oglebay family—iron barons who donated the grounds of the park and its mansion one hundred years ago).

Back at the lodge, we stopped for coffee, a muffin, and biscotti. It was there I heard my first Christmas music in the wild this year (an instrumental version of “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentleman”) and from then on it was full-on Christmas music, which Beth pointed out was not surprising given that the Festival of Lights is in progress.

We went back to Beth’s mom’s house and found North cleaning up from having made pie crust. We stayed long enough for Noah and me to read for a half hour (We were near the end of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires) and then have lunch. Then Beth, the kids, and I went to see Wicked.

The situation in the theater was very strange. In the lobby, there was just one kiosk for tickets and no staff other than those selling concessions. The kiosk was serving both people who needed to buy tickets and those who had bought them online and still needed to print them. The lines for both concessions and the tickets kiosk were quite long, so we split up. The kids got popcorn, pretzel bites, and soda, and Beth stood in the ticket line. She sent me deeper into the building to go look for a ticket taker so we could find out if we really needed to print the tickets (as an email she received indicated) or if the code on Beth’s phone could be scanned, but there was no one anywhere. It turned out we could have waltzed right into the theater with no tickets, and no one would have been the wiser.

But just to be safe, Beth did wait in the line (which stopped for a while when the machine broke down—and one of the two staff people did come over then to fix it). Unbeknownst to us, Beth’s aunt Susan was attending the same screening of the same film with several of her grandkids and great grandkids in tow, so when they arrived Beth bought tickets for them, too, so they wouldn’t have to wait as long in line. Susan said Beth was “an angel.” Anyway, we did pay to see Wicked, because we are law-abiding citizens. It was fun. I recommend it.

Back at Beth’s mom’s house, North made the filling for their pie and put it in the oven, we looked over the almost forty pictures from the park and narrowed it down to three finalists, and we had Chinese takeout for dinner and then watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and Mayflower Voyagers.

Thanksgiving Day

Beth and I returned to the house from our hotel around 9:20. The kids were still asleep, but her mom was watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. Beth and I got started on the mushroom gravy and then I left her to finish it while I folded laundry in the living room while watching the parade.

Later that morning we went for a walk in a cemetery, not the one from the photo shoot, but another one. It’s a big graveyard with winding paths, tall trees, headstones, mausoleums, columns, and obelisks. I saw stones from as long ago as 1875 and as recent as this year. There are still grassy areas to fill in. I saw surnames I would not like to have (Boring) and ones I would (Seabright, not that I’d swap Lovelady for that, but it is an excellent name).

We discussed my ambivalence about what I’d like done with my body after my death. I’ve always liked graveyards, and I like the idea of loved ones visiting my grave or strangers walking by and exclaiming “What a great name” but the idea of my ashes being scattered at sea is also appealing. Of course, I said, Beth would probably rather be scattered at Blackwater. We could have our ashes mixed, she said, after we were both dead, and scattered in both places. It’s not a firm plan, but it’s a possibility. Take note, kids.

We’d been walking a while before Beth happened to mention her maternal grandparents had headstones in this cemetery, but she didn’t remember where. In a book or a movie, we would have stumbled across the graves, and I looked, but we didn’t. On the way home, we detoured to go walk to their two-story brick house. We also walked by Beth’s middle school (which was her mom’s high school back in the 60s) on the way there and from the edge of the cemetery you just barely could see the house where Beth lived during the first half or so of her childhood. I told her I liked knowing what memories I was walking by when I’m in Wheeling. We moved a lot when I was a kid, and though we’ve given our kids a childhood in one place, I have a hard time imagining what that would be like sometimes.

Back at the house we found North making caramel sauce for their apple pie, having finished the cranberry sauce. We had lunch, and Noah and I continued to read our vampire book, and Beth’s aunt Jenny came by for a visit, followed by her aunt Carole, who dropped off a pumpkin chiffon pie. We now had three kinds of pie, because Beth’s mom made a pecan pie the night before after we left for the hotel.

Beth, the kids, and I made our traditional Thanksgiving craft of turkeys made of apples, raisins, dried cranberries, green olives, and toothpicks. They grace our table every year as centerpieces, but this year Noah wanted to take them outside to photograph them. I went with him, and he asked me to arrange them to look “natural… like they’re in their habitat.” You can judge if I did a good job.

Later in the afternoon, North basted the tofurkey roast, Beth’s mom made mashed potatoes, Beth made stuffing, and Noah chopped the green beans, and I steamed them. Various people read and napped. I listened to “Alice’s Restaurant” and a playlist of songs about autumn, since it won’t be autumn for much longer.

Then we ate our feast (joined for pie later by Carole and her granddaughter Holly). Some years at Thanksgiving we go around the table and say what we are thankful for, but we don’t do it every year. I thought about it ahead of time and decided I would not initiate this activity because gratitude is currently a work in progress for me and I didn’t want to put others on the spot if anyone felt the same. I did want to have an answer, though, if asked, because I do want to be grateful. I think it’s important. Beth recently advised me not to let the incoming President take the joy out of my life and it is good advice.

At the table no one asked for examples of gratitude. Instead, Beth’s mom asked us to recount our most memorable Thanksgivings. She told us about the only year she didn’t spend in Wheeling, early in her marriage when she and Beth’s dad were living in Bluefield, WV, and the way she described it sounded a little lonely. I commiserated and mentioned how it strange it was to be in Spain the Thanksgiving I was twenty. My Thanksgiving dinner consisted of a sweet potato boiled on a hot plate in a dorm room. “That is sad,” she said.

Beth mentioned that she had a gallbladder attack, and we’ve had lice and covid on or very near Thanksgiving. Beth’s mom suggested we consider happier Thanksgivings and reminisced about the Thanksgiving Beth was one year old, and they had her birthday cake with Thanksgiving dinner. Beth said she’d be sure to tell her younger brother that their mother’s happiest Thanksgiving was before he was born. I put in that while we’d had many happy Thanksgivings with extended family on both sides, the first year we went to the beach for Thanksgiving was memorable because it was new.

But back to gratitude… If I am being honest, I have been very sad and disappointed and sometimes fearful since the election. It’s not irrational. My family includes a lesbian couple, one of whom works in the labor movement, a young adult who recently worked to elect Democratic political candidates, and another young adult who’s trans. While we are not the most endangered people—that would be immigrants—some or all of us could be in the crosshairs soon. There are some things that make me feel less terrible, though, and each one makes me grateful. Here are the ones that come to mind:

Family, especially my extraordinary wife and kids
The kittens
Nature
Good food and coffee
Books, music, movies, and tv (especially Ghosts UK right now)
All of you who will be fighting the good fight over the next several years

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.

Before Breakfast: A Long Hop

Posted on November 17, 2024 by Steph

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As he came down the hill, Grenfell was chuckling to himself: “Anyhow, when that first amphibious frog-toad found his water-hole dried up behind him, and jumped out to hop along till he could find another—well, he started on a long hop.”

From “Before Breakfast,” by Willa Cather

The Day After

I cried three times before breakfast the day after the election. I had not stayed up to watch the results come in. Because it was projected to be down to the wire and the last time around it was several days before we knew who was going to be President, I really didn’t expect it to be settled that night, and I didn’t see the point of losing sleep. I did watch some MSNBC coverage with Noah, for about an hour and fifteen minutes and went to bed only a little later than usual. No swing states had been called and none of the states that had been called were surprising. Still, I was a little nervous about the granular analysis of results that focused on how Harris wasn’t getting the margins expected in the counties she was winning, and how she was losing by more than expected in the counties she lost. Based on the rate at which he was putting Halloween candy away, I think Noah was nervous, too. Even so, I didn’t have too much trouble getting to sleep.

In the morning, I looked at Facebook before getting out of bed and I learned from a friend’s post what had happened. At first, I did not believe it. I thought maybe the election had not been called and maybe it was looking bad, but perhaps my friend was being hasty. I guess that was the denial part of the five stages of grief, but it only lasted a few seconds until I saw another post and another. I skipped right over bargaining. (How would that even work? With whom would I bargain?) I have felt anger. Mostly, though, in the past twelve days, I have been stuck in depression, with very little acceptance.

Beth, who got up before me, came back into the bedroom, got into bed and gave me a hug and that was when I burst into tears for the first time. The second time was when Noah emerged from his room, and I pulled him into an embrace in the hallway outside the bathroom. The third time was when North answered the text I sent shortly after getting the news. They had not stayed up either and my texts and Beth’s, read on waking, were how they found out.

The day after the election was Noah’s last day at work. From Monday through Wednesday he was working on a montage of clips from election ads his company made for female candidates that would be used to promote the firm to future clients. So, he wasn’t home when we had a video call with North that morning to touch base and share our sadness.

But North also had some good news. The day before they’d learned they had a part, one of the leads, in a student-written play. It means they will be in Oberlin over Winter Term instead of home as they had planned, because they have four weeks of daily rehearsals, starting in early January, and then the play will be performed in early February. Beth and I plan to road trip up there to see it. This was very heartening news as North was never satisfied with the roles they had in high school plays. I am so glad for them that I don’t even mind that they won’t be home for as long as we thought.

Even though before the election I had advised North not to isolate themselves and skip meals or class if things went poorly, I did not take my own advice, at least in one instance. I skipped book club on Wednesday night. In the thirteen years I have been attending this book club, I have never done that unless I had a schedule conflict, or I’d decided ahead of time I was not interested in the book. This was the third of four meetings on Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Children. I’d been to the first two, but I just couldn’t imagine talking about nineteenth-century Russian literature that night or leaving the house.

Instead, Noah, Beth, and I started a new series, Ghosts UK, which I highly recommend if you are looking for something light, funny, and distracting. It has made me laugh more reliably than anything else the past couple weeks. It doesn’t feel like exaggeration to call it a lifeline, which is a little ironic, considering it is about dead people.

The Week After

I muddled through the next few days, doing the things I was supposed to do (work, cooking, housework), operating on autopilot. On Saturday Noah and I made homemade whole-wheat pumpkin ravioli. He’d been wanting to do it for several weeks, and we never seemed to have time. If I’m being honest, I was not initially enthusiastic about the project, because we’ve done at least twice before, and I know it’s a lot of work and I just wanted to phone things in at this point. But he wanted to, and imagining what it might be like to want something someone else could give me, I wanted to do it for him. And it turned out to be kind of therapeutic, to make something difficult and to do it successfully. There are tricky parts rolling out the dough in the machine and not breaking it, and I found myself focused on that and not the potential downfall of democracy for a little while. That was a relief.

Two days later, Beth and I went to Great Falls, on the Maryland side of the park. It was Veteran’s Day so we both had the day off. We went on the theory that getting outside never hurts and sometimes helps. We walked for two hours to various overlooks, along the canal towpath, and on a trail in the woods.

Watching the rushing waters proved mesmerizing and temporarily calming, as did being in movement that long. At one of the overlooks, we watched kayakers paddle in a calm bend of the river and then venture briefly into the white water, going back and forth, occasionally overturning and then righting themselves. It didn’t seem like these forays were meant to go anywhere as they always returned to the same pool. I asked Beth what she thought they were doing, and she said they were practicing paddling in rough waters. My mind tried to make a metaphor about how that’s what we will need to do, rest in the calm waters, dart out into the turbulence, get knocked over and get back up. I told my mind to shut up. I wasn’t ready for motivational speeches, even from myself.

At one point along the trail, we saw a pay phone and as we got closer, I saw it was not operational. Most of the receiver was missing and wires protruded from it. That’s the metaphor, a sulky part of my brain tried to say, but I shushed it, too.

After a picnic lunch eaten on a fallen log, Beth suggested going out for ice cream, so we did. I got chocolate chip, because you don’t see plain chocolate chip very often anymore and it seemed retro in a comforting way. There was a neon sign in the shop that said, “Ice cream solves everything,” which Beth didn’t even notice until I pointed it out. I said I did not believe it. She said it may not, but it “gives you the fortitude” to go about solving things.

We got home and found Noah making a pear crumble. When the kitchen was free, I made eggplant parmesan. Comfort foods were on the menu all week. Beth made a cream of vegetable soup that tasted just like the inside of a pot pie. I made the eggplant for Beth because she loves it, mushroom stroganoff on mashed cauliflower for myself (it would have been on egg noodles if not for diabetes) and a vegetable-tofu stir-fry on soba for Noah (soba is a relatively safe pasta for me).

The Second Week After

Two days later, on the second Wednesday after the election, I woke and realized I had not been jolted from sleep in a panic between four and five in the morning for the first time in a week. I was aware I’d had bad dreams, but I could not remember what they were about, and it seemed like a hopeful sign to me that my brain had switched to a more symbolic form of processing, instead of sheer terror. My mind settled into the familiar early morning routine of remembering the early Trump months, or really the whole god-dammed presidency, and wondering how we could possibly do this again and probably worse this time. And then my mind said, rather firmly, we just will. And I had a flash of acceptance. It lasted about five minutes, but still…

Thursday morning, I remembered my bad dreams, which could be interpreted as another form of progress. There was one in which I was hiding in a kitchen cabinet with a bunch of mothers and children (we somehow all fit) while someone threatening, maybe soldiers, rummaged through the house looking for us. In another, I was shepherding several small children along a street that I used to walk along to get to and from my kids’ preschool and two of them ran away and I ran after them and caught them but then I realized I’d left a boy no older than two alone in the middle of the street a block away. I don’t think I need to analyze these dreams for you.

The second dream woke me up earlier than usual and I couldn’t get back to sleep, so before breakfast I completed my first set of post-election postcards. It was for a Congressional race in California that was too close to call. The postcards were directed to people whose ballots were spoiled and had not been counted, urging them to get in touch with election officials.

This might have been an inspiring end to this post, with me getting back in the saddle, but right after I finished, I looked at the newspaper on the dining room table, which I had not yet read, and discovered that after two races were settled the House had been called for the Republicans. Every branch of government—President, Senate, House, and Supreme Court—would now be in the hands of people with ill intent for at least two years and quite possibly longer.

The House race I’d been writing for did not seem so important now. I reached for the Wite-Out and covered up the optional line in the script about the whole nation waiting to see who would control the House on all fifteen cards. Then I went back to the paper and read further. Learning one of the two races that tipped the House was in California, I got a sinking feeling. I googled the postcard candidate and sure enough, it was his race. I wondered if I should even mail these postcards. I was running low on stamps, and I could probably peel them off. But I’d committed to send them and if my vote had not been counted, I think I’d want to know so I could correct it for the historical record, plus you never know when there could be a recount, so I went ahead and mailed them.

And over the weekend, I finished my book club book with the intention of going to the final meeting on Wednesday, and I completed a new set of postcards for a state Supreme Court runoff in Mississippi. I will hop to the next water hole, paddle into whitewater, try to find a phone that works, or whatever metaphor you prefer. I hope you can, too. Maybe there will be some ice cream along the way to fortify us.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Category Archives: College

#FallBreak

Goodbye, Sophomore

(Almost) Perfect Days

The Three Rs: Four Rallies, A Road Trip, and a Little Romance

First Steps

Welcome Christmas

Waiting for Joy

To Be Grateful

Get the Party Started

Before Breakfast: A Long Hop