#SpringBreak

Posted on March 31, 2026 by Steph

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

First Saturday: Hugs and Heights

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First Sunday: Flora and Fauna

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday: Coffee, California Tortilla, and Clothes

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

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

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

Wednesday: Swimming and Cinema

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

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

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

Thursday: Trip to Tattoo

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

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

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

Friday: Chilly Cherries

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

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

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

Saturday: Democracy and Death

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday: Goodies and Goodbye

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

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

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

Snow and Ice

Posted on January 26, 2026 by Steph

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DC: Protests
After only a little over a week at home after our New Year’s trip, Beth and I hit the road again for the same two places we’d just been. The reason was North’s gallbladder surgery (which we hoped would resolve the daily nausea, abdominal pain, and other digestive issues they’d been having since summer) was the Friday before MLK weekend, and we were going to look after them as they recovered. We left Wednesday morning, headed for Wheeling first to break up the drive. The day before that Beth, who now has time to go to as many protests as she wants, went to two. In the morning, she was outside the Supreme Court as they heard arguments about trans secondary school athletes and in the afternoon, she was outside Customs and Border Protection protesting ICE’s overreach and brutality.

I would have liked to go to both protests, but especially the second one. As I told Beth, at the beginning of this administration I had identified trans rights as one of the most important issues to me, and I still care, deeply, but now there are so many things to protest that I sometimes have to ask myself, “Is this an existential threat to democracy?” when deciding whether to get out the markers and posterboard and take some time off work.

Well, the way the government is treating undocumented people, black and brown people who it thinks (with or without proof) could possibly be undocumented, and people who don’t think immigrants and/or citizens of color should be routinely abducted, physically attacked, or killed seems like the one of the most existential threats to democracy currently. Nevertheless, I sat this one out because I knew I would be working only sporadically on the road so I thought I should put in two solids days on Monday and Tuesday. Beth reports that Senator Chris Van Hollen gave a good speech. You may have seen it online. It was the one about the immigrant mother in detention who was not released to be at her teenage son’s side as he died of cancer. This is the level of cruelty we are seeing these days.

Takoma Park, MD to Wheeling, WV: Traveling

We got a later start Wednesday morning than intended because I realized a half hour into the drive that I’d left my diabetes medications at home, so we had to turn around. We arrived in Wheeling in the late afternoon. It was cold and raining, but I hadn’t been able to walk as much as I would have liked that day, so I went for a short walk through the neighborhood, during which the rain turned to snow flurries. For dinner Beth’s mom had made a vegetable-barley soup that was warming after a damp, chilly walk. We watched part of the Ken Burns American Revolution documentary before bed.

In the morning, I worked a little reviewing background materials for web copy for a curcumin extract and took another walk, this one mostly in Wheeling Park. There was about an inch of snow, making the walk pretty. We left for Oberlin shortly after lunch, aiming to arrive after North’s afternoon rehearsal.

Wheeling to Oberlin, OH and Westlake, OH: Traveling

There was a lot more snow in Oberlin than in Wheeling. It had snowed hard for twenty hours and they had ten inches. During much of the day there were white-out conditions. North’s morning rehearsal was cancelled and their afternoon one moved to Zoom. They kept texting Beth about weather conditions and seemed worried about our drive. But it was lake effect snow, so the roads were clear until we were about a half hour from Oberlin, where they were imperfectly cleared. It had stopped snowing by that point, and the sun was even out for parts of the drive. We didn’t have any real trouble getting to Oberlin.

We arrived at Keep and North came out to the porch to greet us with kisses and hugs. We hung out with them in the lounge until the laundry they were doing was ready to move to the dryer and then we left to get coffee at Slow Train. North wanted one last coffee with whole milk before they had to go on a low-fat diet, post-surgery. I got coffee, too, and a chocolate chip cookie because on the drive over the past two days we’d been listening to a six-part podcast about the life of Famous Amos and it’s hard to listen to so many mentions of cookies before you start to want one. I asked for the coffee decaf but given how long it took me to fall asleep that night, I don’t think that’s what I got.

We’d been planning to eat dinner at the co-op where North is eating over Winter Term (Keep is housing only until spring semester) but North checked the menu on their phone and wasn’t that enthusiastic about lentil shepherd’s pie as their last pre-surgery meal so they suggested we eat out. They’d been meaning to get the fried pickles at the Feve before the surgery and hadn’t gotten around to it, which was probably their main motivation. They got the pickles, plus grilled cheese and tater tots, which is a meal they won’t be able to eat for a while.

We dropped North off at Keep and drove to Beth’s friend and former colleague Jeff’s house outside Cleveland, where we were staying the night. Jeff and his wife Karen were leaving the next morning hours before dawn for a trip to Disney World with two of their grandkids, so we didn’t socialize for long before they went to bed. Beth and I are early-to-bed types, so it’s unusual for anyone we stay with to go to bed before us.

Avon, OH: Surgery

The next morning, we left Jeff and Karen’s house, picked North up at Keep, and drove to Avon Hospital. They had a ten-a.m. check-in time and were told to expect to be there for three hours, though it ended up being more like five. They were in an exam room for an hour and a half before surgery, being hooked up to an IV and EKG stickers, and being informed about the procedure by various medical professionals, but as is usually the case in hospitals, mostly waiting. The most interesting thing that happened was that when one of the nurses couldn’t get a vein for the IV, another one performed an ultrasound on North’s arm, and we got to see the inside of their arm and watch as the needle penetrated the vein. At one point shortly before the surgery, North said, “There’s an organ in my body that won’t be there in an hour. It’s been there my whole life. It was once in you.” Here they gestured to me. This seemed to be blowing their mind a bit.

After North was wheeled into surgery, we went to the cafeteria for lunch. I decided to stay there because I’d been hoping to squeeze in a little work at the hospital and there were tables there, which made it a better workspace than the waiting room. Beth went back up to the waiting room and texted me when North was out of surgery and had been taken to recovery. The view from the window in this waiting room, of an overcast sky, a parking lot, a snow-covered quad cut into triangles by shoveled paths, and some bare trees, reminded me of something from Severance.

We eventually got to rejoin North in another exam room. Everything had gone well, but they’d taken longer than expected to come out of the anesthesia. Even when we got there, they were still very sleepy. We got post-surgical instructions and waited for North to wake up enough for the nurses to assess their pain level and decide they were ready to leave.

Oberlin: Convalescence

We drove to the rental house where we were staying and got North settled into bed for a nap. Beth went out for groceries while I stayed with them and when she got back, I went for a walk. It was almost dark when I left and only some of the sidewalks were shoveled, but I am devoted to my daily walk and didn’t want to skip it. For dinner, Beth and I ordered pizza from Lorenzo’s, the only restaurant in Oberlin from our college days that’s still open. I wondered if it was mean to have pizza when North was having broth and vegetarian strawberry Jello for dinner, but North said it helped we got spinach on it, because they don’t like spinach. We watched The Devil Wears Prada after dinner. North and I have been watching Emily in Paris, and I didn’t realize how much the show draws on the film, even though it’s a kinder, gentler echo of it.

Saturday was a quiet day of convalescence for North. I went out for a morning walk, admiring the deep snow and huge icicles, and then after lunch Beth went out to take her own walk and fetched some forgotten items from North’s room in Keep. While she was gone, I read a half dozen chapters from The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and then worked a little more on the curcumin web site. When Beth got home, we thought we might watch Gilmore Girls, but North had fallen asleep waiting for us to be ready, so I blogged instead. We watched a couple episodes once they woke up, had dinner (North had managed pretzels and yogurt earlier in the day so they had miso soup with tofu and noodles, while Beth and I had a couple prepared curries on quinoa) and then we watched People We Meet on Vacation.

Sunday was much like Saturday. It was sunny and as I sipped my herbal tea in the kitchen I looked out at the snow on the lawn—sparkly and touched in places with the palest pink from the newly risen sun—and the icicles, some maybe as long as a foot and a half long, translucent and glowing, hanging from the eaves. On my only outing of the day, I went to Slow Train to drink coffee, eat half a bagel, and read three chapters of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, admiring some creative snow creatures on the way, and picking up a coffee to bring home to North, who was trying it with skim milk that day. They were still in pain and easily fatigued, but their appetite was good.

Later that afternoon, I did laundry for everyone so North would have a good supply of clean clothes when they returned to Keep, and North and I watched a couple episodes of Emily in Paris Rome. I wondered if it was a good idea to start a new season when we won’t be able to watch it again until spring break, but that kind of thinking might mean we never start it, so we did. North napped in the mid-afternoon and I finished The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Later we played Sleeping Queens and watched Gilmore Girls and ate an improvised breakfast-for-dinner meal with food we had on hand (air-fried tofu, scrambled eggs, vegetarian sausage, toast, and fruit salad) and watched Murder Mystery. North wrote a review on Letterbox: “Exactly what you think a murder mystery starring Adam Sandler would be like.” They also said it hurt their incisions to laugh, but despite this they chose to watch the sequel the next night.

That afternoon we’d talked to North about if they felt ready for us to leave the next morning and they said no—partly for practical reasons but also “because I still feel like I’m sick and I want my parents”—so we extended the rental house by a day.

Monday was the coldest day so far, with a wind chill of -3, which may be nothing to my tougher Canadian readers, but is unusual for us Marylanders. I braved the elements to go to Slow Train again to get coffee and a scone and bring an iced coffee back to North. On my way, I stopped to take pictures of Underground Railroad-related sculpture (tracks rising out of the ground) and plaques because it was MLK day. When I got back, there were newly formed ice crystals attached the underside of the coffee cup lid. I found Beth and North playing Spelling Bee in bed. “We are currently Amazing, but we want to be Geniuses,” North told me and soon they were.

Because we were staying an extra day, I decided I needed to get more serious about working, so I holed up in the house’s little office and got back to work on the curcumin web site copy, taking a break to watch a couple episodes of Emily on Paris Rome with North while Beth was out buying groceries, mostly for North to have after we left. I think it was the first day North didn’t need an afternoon nap.

Later that afternoon Beth boiled a bunch of noodles and air-fried tofu to send back to Keep with North the next day. Beth made a stir-fry for dinner, and we watched Murder Mystery 2. North’s review: ““Exactly what you think the sequel to a murder mystery starring Adam Sandler would be like.”

The next morning was even colder, with a wind chill of -7. I packed, took a short walk, packed some more, and then we checked out of the rental house, unloaded copious groceries into the lounge fridge in Keep, took North out for lunch at a sushi place in Elyria and then hit the road. They were complaining of nausea, and it was hard to leave them, still recovering, but at least they were well provisioned.

Oberlin to Wheeling and Wheeling to Takoma Park: Traveling

We arrived in Wheeling a little after five. The drive was uneventful. The temperature rose into the twenties and we could see the snow gradually lessening as we neared Wheeling, where there were only patchy remnants of the snow that fell when we were there almost a week earlier. Beth’s mom defrosted the vegetable lasagna we had over New Year’s and we watched more of the American Revolution documentary. In the morning, we had a video call with North who said the nausea of the day before had been short-lived. They seemed in good spirits. I took a walk in Wheeling Park (where Good Lake was frozen solid) and we visited with Beth’s aunt Carole, leaving shortly after lunch for home.

It was snowing as we drove home, more than was predicted, and the drive ended up being tricky, but we got home in six hours, which was not bad, considering.

Takoma Park and Minneapolis, MN: Snow and ICE and Border Patrol

We’ve been home four and a half days now. I went back to work Thursday and Friday. We got almost seven inches of compacted snow and sleet that fell Saturday night and all day Sunday. Beth, Noah, and I took turns shoveling and re-shoveling the sidewalk in front of the house and around the side. We have a corner lot, and our back yard is big so there is a long stretch of sidewalk to shovel. Between the three of us, we did the section in front of the house four times—because it’s the more traveled street of the two at our intersection— but by Sunday evening it was covered again. But the power didn’t go out and Beth made pumpkin brownies, two pluses for an inclement winter day.

Sunday morning, we had a video call with North. They hadn’t left Keep since we left them there five days earlier, but their friends are hanging out in their room and getting their mail from the mail room and doing their laundry for them (the washer and dryer are one floor up from their room and they can’t carry loads upstairs). They made a crochet snail from a kit one of their friends got them, they haven’t run out of food, they joined the rehearsals for their winter term project last week by Zoom and they hope to go in person this week. Best of all, they say since the surgery, the digestive problems they’ve been having since summer do seem to be clearing up. We are all gratified by that.

But like all of you, we were horrified, when earlier this weekend, a second protestor was executed in Minneapolis. Between the kidnapped preschooler used as bait and the other abducted or tear-gassed children, the elderly man (a citizen, not that it matters) dragged out of his house wearing just underwear and a blanket in the bitter cold, and these terrible deaths, things just keep getting worse and worse in that besieged city. The massive protests and the way people are organizing to protect their neighbors at considerable risk to themselves is truly inspiring and I hope this will be a turning point, but I don’t know if it will be. Like much of the country, I feel like I’m holding my breath and waiting to see.

Happy New Year, Happy Retirement

Posted on January 6, 2026 by Steph

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The Week Between

There was almost a week between Christmas and our departure for Wheeling. Beth worked at least a few hours most of these days, tying up loose ends because—and I don’t believe I have mentioned this up to now—she has retired. The last day she worked was second to last day of December. She was at CWA for twenty-six years, so it’s a big deal.

While Beth worked, the rest of us were at leisure. The kids and I binged all the available episodes of Stranger Things Season 5 over the course of four days. One morning Beth took off, all four of us went to Brookside Conservatory to see the hothouse plants and the model trolley and train exhibit. The trolley runs past models of historic Maryland and DC buildings that stand (or stood) on a real trolley line, including the Cabin John mansion in the process of burning down, the Arcade Building at Glen Echo Park, and the trolley barn in Georgetown (pictured). The train tracks pass by the very conservatory that houses the exhibit. If you look inside the greenhouse, you can see a tiny model train track. It’s very meta.

For several day starting on Christmas day North was cat-sitting UNO*, the next-door neighbors’ half-blind, mostly outdoor cat, who spends a lot of time in our yard. Some of you may remember that when I was still grieving Xander and thought I couldn’t bear to get another cat, UNO melted my heart. He’s the reason we got kittens when we did, two springs ago. Anyway, there was a problem with the keypad on the neighbors’ back door and North could not get into the house. As UNO was outside when his people left, that meant he was locked out for several days. He had a lot to say about this whenever North went to fill his food and water bowls on the deck of his house or when any of us would leave our house and he’d see us.

We had food to give him (and he seemed fine with our cats’ food), but the first night, Christmas night, it was supposed to go below freezing and UNO is about fifteen years old and getting thin, so we were all worried for him. If it wasn’t for our cats, particularly Willow who does not care for any cats who are not Walter, we might have brought him inside our house. Walter, who has been engaged in longstanding and unsuccessful campaign to befriend UNO whenever they meet in our yard, might have been game for a sleepover. It’s hard to say how UNO would have reacted. He used to pay us inside visits before we got Walter and Willow, but now other, annoying young cats live here so he does not.

North tried setting up a space heater with a cushion in front of it on our porch, but UNO wouldn’t go near it, despite our encouragement. Since he never sets foot on our porch, but frequents our garage, it seemed like that would be the better space to heat, so Beth set up a propane heater in there, with a towel-lined bin nearby. He would not go in the makeshift bed, but he did sleep on the ground near the heater and the following night, Beth put another towel down in that spot. We were all relieved when UNO’s people came home and texted us their thanks and a picture of him asleep under their Christmas tree.

One last thing we had hoped for before leaving town was a get-together with our family friend Becky because we often met and exchange baked goods at Christmastime, but her family went to Montreal for Christmas and in the brief overlap we had in Takoma she was not feeling well, so I delivered a plate of cookies and buckeyes to her doorstep late Tuesday afternoon. That night we took down the tree and most of the decorations from the living room.

New Year’s Eve

The next day, the last day of the year, we drove to Wheeling. A winter storm was predicted to hit Western Maryland in the late afternoon, so we drove through more quickly than usual, with fewer and shorter stops. We made it to Beth’s mom’s house a little after four and the roads were clear all the way there. There was snow on the ground and the hills, though, so it was a pretty drive.

I took a walk about a half hour after we arrived because I hadn’t had a chance to move much that day. There was snow on the ground, and I admired the Christmas lights I saw as I meandered through the neighborhood in the gathering dusk. Toward the end of the walk, new snow started to fall, just scattered flurries, but later in the evening it started to snow in earnest.

That afternoon, Beth’s boss texted her and she thought it could be work-related as she wouldn’t be officially retired for a few hours and he is in the habit of texting her on vacation—most recently on Thanksgiving Day—but he was just wishing her a happy retirement. Beth was half-expecting calls from colleagues either on or after her last day, but there were no work requests, just more well wishes.

We had vegetable-gnocchi soup Beth’s mom had picked up for dinner and around eight everyone but North went over to Beth’s aunt Carole’s for a New Year’s Eve gathering. North, who is not a night owl, wanted a disco nap to help them stay up until midnight, plus they’d hurt their knee earlier in the day and wanted to rest it. YaYa’s other two sisters, Susan and Jenny, were there, along with Susan’s husband John, Jenny’s daughter Laura and her boyfriend Nico, and Carole’s son Sean.

There was a nice spread—charcuterie and several kinds of Christmas cookies and other sweets, some of which became the topic of lively dispute. Do you know those peanut butter cookies with Hershey’s kisses stuck in them? Two different bakers had contributed some to the feast and there were some with the points of the chocolate sticking up and some with the points stuck into the cookie, leaving the surface flat. The relative merits of each method were debated with enthusiasm.

The four sisters also considered different trips they could take together, including a silent retreat. This idea was startling, as there’s not a lot of silence when they are all together. Beth, Noah, and I all exchanged amused glances, and Beth said later the sisters would get thrown out in the first five minutes.

Because some people in attendance weren’t keen on staying up until midnight and others were concerned about driving in the snow, we sang “Auld Lange Syne” and toasted with champagne and sparkling cider at 8:45. Jenny wanted to find the full lyrics and sing the whole thing but it turns out there are six verses and no one was up for that. Sean, who is an English professor, was called upon to give us some details about Robert Burns’ life and he obliged. No one actually left until around 9:30, when Beth and I made our departure. Noah stayed a little longer and then he and North and YaYa rang in the new year at her house, eating salty snacks and watching the ball drop. Beth and I were staying at her friend Michelle’s apartment, which was empty because Michelle’s acting in a show in Chicago, so we drove there, met the feral cats she feeds and who hang out on her porch, and we were in bed by a little after ten.

“Good night. Happy New Year. Happy Retirement,” I told her.

New Year’s Day

On New Year’s Day everyone but Noah, who slept until early afternoon, watched the Rose parade. North had never seen it before and was interested in how the floats are made at least partly of natural materials.

Late in the morning I started to make Hoppin’ John for good luck in the new year. I do this every year, but it did not seem like the year to skip it. I don’t want to be the one responsible for the fall of our teetering democracy because I failed to make a black-eyed pea stew. I didn’t start in time to eat it for lunch, so we had it for dinner that night.

That afternoon, Beth and I took a walk in Wheeling Park. It was a sunny day, and the snow was sparkly and crunchy underfoot. I asked her how her first official day of retirement was going. (She’d been on vacation the day before.) She said she was spending it in one of her favorite places with her favorite people and there was snow, so pretty good.

We went to the coffeeshop in the park where I got a latte and she got a hot chocolate. Then we walked past the skating rink, the tennis courts, and the swimming pool and headed back to her mom’s house. It was about forty minutes of walking, broken up with the beverage break, which was probably not as far as we walked at Brookside Garden when we went to see the lights, but still a long walk for Beth, post-accident. When we paused to watch the skaters at the rink, she said she should be on the ice, and I said maybe she’d be skating before the winter was over. She does continue to improve and stopped using the cane some time on the trip.

As Beth and I left for Michelle’s that night, YaYa and the kids were starting to watch Night of the Hunter. Earlier in the visit, YaYa had mentioned in passing what a good film (and novel) it was, so Noah suggested they watch it. He’s thoughtful about what other people would like when it comes to suggesting books and movies. I think it’s one of his love languages. This 1955 film was billed as one of the scariest films ever made. The kids report that it is not, but they liked it.

Two More Days in Wheeling

We stayed in Wheeling two more days after New Year’s. Beth got a maintenance message on the car and had to take it to a mechanic the day after New Year’s, because she didn’t want to take any chances on the drive to Oberlin. Beth and the car being gone for a few hours changed some plans.

The down time gave me the opportunity to finish reading Huckleberry Finn, a relatively short novel which I had been reading for three months. I’d started it because I’d read James over the summer, but I was always reading at least two books at a time, and it kept falling to the bottom of my priority list. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, but it was a third reading for me, and I guess twice is how many times I needed to read this book. Or maybe I would have been better off reading the Twain first, I will say in case you are intending to read both books. (This is how I did it when I read David Copperfield and Demon Copperhead earlier this year and I found that a highly satisfying reading experience.) And once I’d finished Huckleberry Finn, I read the excellent novella Small Things Like These in one sitting. It was a luxurious day of reading, the kind that’s too rare for me. Carole and Sean came over for pizza that night and after they left, we watched the first half of Wake Up, Dead Man.

The next day, Beth and I took another walk in Wheeling Park, and then the kids and I watched the last episode of Stranger Things at Michelle’s apartment. It didn’t seem like a good idea to watch such a loud and frequently violent show on the television in YaYa’s living room, as the first story of her house has an open floor plan. The difficulty in finding a long enough chunk of time when we were all free and could get transportation to Michelle’s place meant we’d delayed watching it until a few days after the finale was released and North had gotten some spoilers on social media, but it was fun, nonetheless.

That evening Beth, the kids, and I drove through the Festival of Lights at Oglebay Park. I generally prefer walk-through light displays to drive-through ones, but I am fond of this one, which we’ve been visiting for decades, since before the kids were born. One benefit of visiting at dusk two days after New Year’s is that it’s not very crowded. The kids held their breath in the tunnels of lights, just as Beth and her younger brother used to do in real tunnels when they were kids. When we went by Santa and his sleigh, there were real deer grazing in the snow in front of the reindeer made of lights. After the lights, we went back to YaYa’s house, had leftovers for dinner, and watched the rest of Wake Up, Dead Man.

Two Days on the Road

We left Wheeling for Oberlin late the next morning. It’s the shortest leg of the journey, so there was time for errands afterward. The only grocery store in walking distance of campus has closed, so we drove to one in Elyria and got some breakfast food for me (in case the hotel breakfast bar was not vegetarian-diabetic-friendly) and groceries for North to have at Keep. They will be eating at another co-op during Winter Term because Keep’s kitchen is closed until spring semester.

Beth, Noah, and I were staying at a hotel and once we got settled there, we ordered Chinese takeout and then went out for ice cream in Vermilion at an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, the kind where ice cream comes in a metal dish and shakes come in glasses with the leftovers in a metal shaker. Vermilion is a pretty town on the shores of Lake Erie and there were still a lot of Christmas lights up on the streets and two lit-up Christmas trees in parks a few blocks apart. (We wondered if there was some kind of Christmas tree schism in town to have two trees in public places so close together.) The ice cream parlor was still offering Christmas-themed treats. Beth got hot chocolate with vanilla ice cream and crushed peppermint candy. Noah got The Santa, a cherry shake with Sprite. I got a dish of peppermint stick ice cream, and North, who is devoted to root beer floats got one. It came in a glass mug, and they said it was the fanciest root beer float they’d ever had.

The next morning, we met North for coffee, hot cider, hot chocolate, and pastries at Slow Train, their favorite coffeeshop in Oberlin. From there we dropped them off at Warner Center, where the Theater and Dance department is housed. For their Winter Term project, they will be writing a play with eight other students. Then over the spring semester they will rehearse and perform it.

After our goodbyes, the three of us took a stroll around Tappan Square and got into the car for the longest drive of the trip, Oberlin to home.

Looking Ahead

It probably won’t be long until I see North and Oberlin again, though, because their gallbladder surgery is scheduled for mid-January, and Beth is going up there to take care of them while they are recovering. I’m probably going, too. I thought I might be superfluous, but when I asked if they’d like me to come, they said yes. My work is flexible and I guess sometimes you can’t have too many mothers.

Our first day home, I took the day off to take care of back-from-a-trip tasks and Beth started to disassemble the workstation that’s been wedged between the bookcase and our bed since March 2020. It’s strange to see it gone, like a visible sign of the transition to retirement.

*We learned through texts with his family that UNO’s name is spelled in all caps, which we did not previously know.

The Rails

Posted on December 14, 2025 by Steph

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On the Rails: Snowfall

The first Friday in December we woke to the first snowfall of the year. It was just about perfect, two inches that didn’t stick to streets or sidewalks, so we didn’t need to shovel, but enough to make the neighborhood Christmas decorations, porch gourds, yellow leaves clinging to trees, winter berries, and creek rocks look festive. The only thing I would have liked was for it to stick around a little longer. Two days after it fell it was all but gone.

Off the Rails: Home Invasion

Five days later we had a less pleasant experience. Beth got up at six, which is her normal weekday time and discovered a stranger in the living room, standing in between my desk and an open window. It wasn’t a thief; it was an elderly man with dementia who thought it was his house. He’d come in and out through the window several times and had been engaged in 1) reorganizing items on the porch (he tied the rainbow flag in a knot) and 2) removing items from my desk and lining them up around the perimeter of the porch when Beth stumbled upon him. Beth called 911 and he was taken away in an ambulance.

When she called, I was still in bed and could hear her talking on the phone with someone, which I thought was odd at that hour, but she sounded so calm I wasn’t worried until she came into the room to tell me what was going on. By that point the dispatcher had told us to stay behind closed doors, so I never even saw the man.

In the end, everyone was fine, nothing was taken. In fact, the man left behind some items (a pillow and a hat) that aren’t ours and we suspect may have come from a neighbor’s porch. (I asked our next-door neighbors and they weren’t missing anything.) Both cats, even Walter who usually likes strangers, were freaked out and hiding in the basement. It was hard to find Willow, who most emphatically does not like strangers, and that was the scariest part, thinking maybe she’d been put outside with my computer monitor and had run away.

Riding the Rails: Travels

The next day Noah set off for Boston. He had some hotel points leftover from his trip to London last year and he’d decided to use them to see a concert. He took an Amtrak train from Union Station to Boston. He was there for two nights and one day. He took a historical walking tour and went to see the electropop band Pvris. I’m glad he got to have a little adventure.

North had an adventure, too. Instead of flying or getting a ride home for winter break, they opted to take the train, too. This was an odd coincidence, as neither of them has taken Amtrak before. Taking the train from northeastern Ohio means boarding a train at a little after one a.m. They got a friend to drive them to the Elyria station and spent the night and the next morning riding the rails. They said they slept “better than I thought I would but not as well as I would have liked.” They enjoyed the scenery, much of which was snowy and hilly, and it was considerably cheaper than flying.

We picked them up at Union Station. Beth and I had eaten lunch, but North hadn’t so they got a felafel sandwich and then we got dessert. Beth and North had ice cream, and I got coffee and a peppermint cookie/brownie mash-up. We admired the big Christmas tree Norway sends every year, which was beautiful as always. I was happy not to see any National Guardsmen or women at Union Station for the first time since late summer. I don’t know if this means they are recalling some of the troops. It would be nice if they were allowed to go home to their families for the holidays and even nicer if they didn’t come back. Standing outside Jersey Mike’s and Insomnia Cookies is probably not what they signed up for when they joined the Guard.

We got back home, North reunited with the cats, and Beth and I did a little work before eating our pizza dinner in front of a silly holiday romance. It was a cozy first night home. North went to bed early and slept for almost eleven hours.

The next afternoon we participated in the Takoma Cocoa Crawl. There were fourteen restaurants and coffeehouses in Takoma Park and Takoma, DC selling cocoa. We made three stops and got one cup at each. North chose Spring Mill Bakery which was offering half-price cocoa with a free gingerbread man. The cocoa was nice and creamy there. Beth’s choice was Red Hound because she remembered the orange-cinnamon cocoa there from last year. It was the highest quality of the three we tried, rich and complex. I chose Takoma Beverage Company because they had a hot chocolate bar where you could add your own toppings and I thought I could adjust the hot chocolate/whipped cream ratio to be more diabetic-friendly. I didn’t quite get it right on that score (I may have added too much crushed candy cane), but there’s always next year. Anway, it was a fun expedition.

Meanwhile, Noah was on a train coming home and he sent me some pictures of the walking tour, Christmas decorations, and the concert. He sent photos of a historic church, two former state houses, a historic cemetery where Sam Adams and other famous people are buried, a statue of Paul Revere, Christmas lights, and a surveillance robot from the hotel. He said at the cemetery, the tour guide pointed out a nearby bar and said it was the only place you could get a cold Sam Adams next to a cold Sam Adams. Not surprisingly, he said the concert, his main reason for going to Boston, was his favorite part. The venue was big, but he had a good seat, near the front. He got home around 9:15 Saturday night so Beth and I were able to chat with him a bit about his trip before going to bed.

It’s nice having North home for break, even if they aren’t quite finished with finals (one paper and one online exam to go) and it’s also nice having everyone under one roof again. This time of year, that makes me feel as if we are on the right track.

#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

[Show as slideshow]

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.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Category Archives: College

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