Ten for December

Posted on December 10, 2024 by Steph

The Trouble with Christmassing

Last week, Swistle wrote a blog post, called “Having Trouble Christmassing” that really hit home with me. A lot of you have already read it, but for those who haven’t, here’s how it starts:

I am having some trouble Christmassing. Which is not surprising, given the state of Everything, and really I am doing better than I did in 2016. But: I am having trouble. I have a to-do list that gets longer every day. I feel as if I might genuinely not be ready in time, and also that I am highly likely to feel regret that I didn’t enjoy this last holiday season enough before it was bleak, bleak, BLEAK late January, which is scheduled to last for many years. I have not started the Christmas cards. I have not been listening to Christmas music. I have not brought down the Christmas dishes, or put up any decorations except for the tree, which I was highly motivated to get up and decorated while the twins were home for Thanksgiving. I have bought very few presents. I am getting that quiet, dazed panicky feeling I get when I seem to Simply Not Be Doing something that needs to be done.

When Swistle posted this, we’d completed our Christmas card photo shoot, Noah had edited the finalists, and I’d written the text, but we had trouble making a final decision about the picture and the project stalled. I had only bought gifts for one person. The only decorations I had up were the few cards we had received so far and a green dish towel with a Christmas tree topped with a sea star on it that I hung from the oven door handle.

I’m thinking we may go minimalist with inside decorations this year, not so much out of political despair but because of the kittens, who knock everything off everything else all day long and who are such good jumpers and climbers (especially Willow) that there’s nowhere we could put anything that they could not reach. I am certainly not setting up the Christmas village I inherited from my mother, which has many small, fragile pieces and is important to me. But here’s what we have done in terms of preparation and celebration:

10 Efforts to Christmas

It took me longer than usual to start listening to Christmas music. Beth and Noah wanted to on the long drive from Oberlin to Takoma Park the Sunday after Thanksgiving and I didn’t mind, but whenever it was my turn to choose the entertainment, I went with podcasts. I eventually started to listen to some at home, but until today when I really dove into it, my ratio of Christmas to non-Christmas music was lower than usual. I listened to a lot of music that’s Christmas-adjacent, like the soundtrack to Rent or albums with one Christmas song on them, like Dar Williams’ Mortal City.
The first day we were home from Wheeling, with grim determination to be festive, I put on a pair of reindeer and holly socks, went on a walk, and took pictures of the neighbors’ Christmas decorations. The two skeletons that change costumes with the seasons are a perennial favorite—one has a Santa hat right now and the other one has a Christmas light headband—but I also like the inflatable Santa riding a shark. Who wouldn’t?
Noah left for London the first Wednesday of December. I asked him to send me at least one photo every day and most days he has. Many of them were of Christmas lights in the city. He attended the lighting of the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square and had this to say about it: “It took forever to get to the tree lighting. People had to sing and play music and give speeches and Jesus and WWII.” If this sounds crabby (especially coming from a musician), it was his first day there and he had barely slept the night before on the plane and because he didn’t check in by the deadline at his hotel, they cancelled his reservation (which was for a whole week!) and gave away his room and he found himself exhausted and without lodging in a strange city. The hotel eventually found him a room in another one of their properties, but he’d had a stressful day.
Before he left, Noah wrapped his present to Lily-Mei, and he found the perfect paper for a preteen Goth—black with gold snowflakes in white circles—in the closet. I wrapped the rest of the gifts in the same paper and mailed them on Thursday. It was pleasing to have one person checked off my list.
Beth and I finally picked a photo for the card—by this point we’d forgotten which ones of the final three the kids preferred, and to make it less complicated, we decided not to ask them to remind us. After all, the four of collaborated in the narrowing down from almost forty to three so everyone had already had a substantial say. Beth designed the card and ordered it.
On the first Saturday of December, Beth and I went to Agricultural History Farm Park. The idea was to take a walk somewhere new and to take in some Christmas cheer. We walked on trails through woods and over a creek and along harvested cornfields in golden late afternoon light. In the barn, there was live music (oddly, someone playing guitar and singing Tears for Fears “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”) and free hot cider and gingersnaps plus more treats for sale. Outside the barn there were people taking a hayride and there were goats in a pen and a man giving a blacksmithing demonstration. (It made me nervous that he was not using any eye protection, and it wasn’t because he was in period costume because he wasn’t.) On the way home, we stopped at a coffeehouse where we got coffee, hot chocolate, and macarons (peppermint for me, chocolate-hazelnut for Beth) and we picked up a wreath at a grocery store. It was a pleasing outing.
That night, Beth and I went over the kids’ lists and decided what to get them and which ideas to farm out to relatives. Over the rest of the weekend, I communicated with my mom and sister about who was getting what. This exchange is still in progress and it’s not Christmas shopping exactly, but it’s a precursor to shopping.
Sunday Beth put up the wreath and started the outside lights, both the candy cane lane and the strings of lights that go in the trees and on the porch. She finished on Monday.
On Monday morning as I was walking in a chilly drizzle, I got a text from North, asking, “Hypothetically, if you were getting an Oberlin ornament,” if I would prefer one of three options. I’d asked for an Oberlin ornament for Christmas, so this was not exactly a surprise, but it was cheering, nonetheless. I chose the white squirrel, which is Oberlin’s unofficial mascot because of its small population of albino squirrels. North had been waiting impatiently to see one and finally did recently. (Before that they saw gray one with a white tail, probably the offspring of a mixed-color squirrel couple.)
Monday evening, in a flurry of focused online activity, I nearly finished my shopping.

So, things are moving along. Cards on are their way to us, most presents have been purchased, decoration is partly complete. When both kids are home later this week, we’ll decide which if any indoor decorations to put out, get a tree, and walk through the lights display at Brookside Gardens.

I’m looking forward having everyone home and to the tree and lights outings. As I prepare for Christmas, I’ve been oscillating between feeling I’m dutifully going through the motions and enjoying the tasks. I think that’s okay. We can’t always feel the same way and sometimes duty slips into merriment when I give it a chance. Either way, we will manage to Christmas.

Before Breakfast: A Long Hop

Posted on November 17, 2024 by Steph

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

From “Before Breakfast,” by Willa Cather

The Day After

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Week After

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Second Week After

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fall Break AF

Posted on October 29, 2024 by Steph

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Weekend 1

Friday

Beth and Noah and I were all in bed when North got home for fall break at eleven-thirty p.m. on Friday night. They were home earlier than we expected. They’d gotten a ride from someone they knew from their housing co-op and made surprisingly good time. I heard them come in and got up to greet them, when I discovered they had two of their fellow Obies with them. As I was only wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt and underwear I retreated to the bedroom while their friends used the bathroom, played with the kittens a bit, and left. North came into our room to give us hugs and shortly afterward they went to bed, too. They said the friends admired our copious Halloween decorations, which were only about half up at the time.

Saturday

Beth went kayaking Saturday morning, but the kids and I hung around the house all day, except for my daily walk. North and I watched an episode of Emily in Paris, and we talked a lot.

I learned North is now thinking of a double major in Theater and Psychology with the possible career goal of becoming an intimacy coordinator. They received an invitation to register for Acting 1 for the spring semester, based on the audition they sent for the fall, and they are going to audition to be in a Winter Term play. Their favorite classes are Sociology and Psychology and while they were struggling in their Spanish class earlier in the semester, they’ve brought their grade up to a B.

They are still going to Quaker meetings and volunteering at the kitten shelter where they have learned to give vaccinations to cats. They’re also active in a group that fundraises for humanitarian relief in Gaza. And of course, being in a housing and dining co-op takes up a fair amount of time.

North made a batch of pumpkin-cream cheese muffins, which was the first of several baking projects over the course of break. When the kitchen was free, Noah and I made spinach manicotti for dinner. Although Keep was a mostly but not quite vegetarian co-op when I lived there, apparently now it’s a mostly but not quite vegan co-op and North was hungry for eggs and cheese, so we planned a lot of meals with those ingredients—omelets, grilled cheese sandwiches, tacos, ravioli with alfredo sauce, and broccoli-cheddar soup. (North even turned down my offer to make breaded tofu sticks with homemade applesauce, which is one of their favorite meals, in favor of cheesier options.)

That night we watched A Ghost Story. North was sorry to hear we’d watched I Saw the TV Glow and Summoning Sylvia earlier this month, saying it was “mean” for us to watch two queer horror/horror-comedy films without them, but we’d drawn the nominated movies out of a hat (well, a bike helmet). “Blame the helmet,” I told them.

I liked the movie, but afterward North said, “I think I like movies where people talk.” (It is not a silent movie, but it is remarkably sparse on dialogue. A minor character actually gets the longest speech in the whole thing.)

Sunday

North met up with several of their friends who are still in high school for lunch. They brought four of the muffins with them and then forgot to give them to their friends, so there were more for us. That afternoon we headed out to Northern Virginia for our annual pumpkin gathering expedition.

We set off at three-thirty, listening to a Halloween playlist Noah found, all of us singing along with “Ghostbusters” as we got underway, and offering our judgments about which songs belonged or didn’t on the playlist as we went along. (Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat”? The Eurhythmics “Sweet Dreams?” Why?)

While we were in the car, North asked about an unfamiliar WiFi network they’d noticed in the house—Last-Name AP (the kids’ real and rare hyphenated last name I’ve decided not to include here). Someone joked it could be Last-Name AF. And then we started to discuss what was Last-Name AF. This whole outing, we decided. Why?

We have been going to the same farm stand since before the kids were born because it’s owned by the family of a friend of ours from college. Over the years we’ve added required stops to the itinerary—we’ve been eating dinner at the same restaurant since 2016 and we added two different parks during covid when we were all looking for outdoor activities. One is for strolling before dinner and the other is for eating dinner at the picnic tables.

The stand is on the original location of the farm, which relocated to cheaper land further away from the city as development encroached on it. It’s now hidden behind a tall highway sound barrier wall. You really have to know it’s there to find it. It’s also unstaffed sometimes and operating on the honor system, as of last year. This year there was another surprise—there were no jack-o-lantern-sized pumpkins! We picked out some tiny ornamental pumpkins, a pie pumpkin to use for soup, and apple cider; paid for them; and then turned our minds to the problem of finding bigger pumpkins.

North searched on their phone and found a nearby garden center that was selling pumpkins. We picked out four, took pictures at the bower of hay bales and cornstalks that I think was designed for that purpose, and picked up apple cider doughnuts and pumpkin butter.

Our next stop was Meadowlark Botanical Gardens, where we traditionally take a pre-dinner walk. It was decorated for Halloween, which was a new, fun development. We walked among the changing leaves, along the path of ghosts and ghouls (and my favorite, a skeleton in a bathtub of dirt); watched ducks, geese, and koi in the pond; and wondered why there weren’t any kids dressed up in their Homecoming outfits getting photographed, because we’ve seen that every other year. No weddings, either, though there was mother, father, and toddler girl getting professionally photographed.

We ordered dinner from Sunflower while in the park and went to pick it up, then headed to Nottoway Park to eat at the picnic tables in a grove of trees. Our timing had been thrown off by needing to go out of our way to find a new pumpkin venue so it was almost completely dark by the time we got there, but we were near a lighted playing field, so we could see our dumplings, seaweed salad, miso soup, sushi, vegetarian shrimp and noodles well enough to eat them.

It turned out to be too dark for our customary walk in the community garden plots. We tried, but we couldn’t see what flowers and vegetables were still growing in mid-October, which I always find interesting. The last stop was Toby’s for ice cream. Beth and I, independently of each other, got the same thing—one scoop of pumpkin and one of cinnamon. I recommend that combination if you find yourself in Vienna, Virginia any time soon.

North said later it was a “very satisfying” outing.

Monday through Thursday

Beth, Noah, and I went back to work on Monday. Over the course of the week, North completed an online food safety training so they can sign up for a head cook slot next semester, and they had a video call with the other food buyer at Keep so they could confer on the food order for next week, but they had a lot of free time, too.

On Monday night I asked North to consider their “television goals” and they said, “that sentence is Last-Name AF.” But there were a lot of options because we are all watching different shows in different configurations and a lot of them include North, so we haven’t watched those since they left for school. While North was home, we watched the last five episodes of season 3 of Emily in Paris (North and me), one episode near the beginning of season 6 of Gilmore Girls (North, Beth, and me), the last few episodes of season 2 of Good Omens (North and Noah), and the first four episodes of season 3 of Grownish (everybody).

In other activities, near the beginning of the week, North filled out their Ohio ballot and put it in the mail (before they returned to school, they were notified it had been received). They had Maddie over for dinner and to watch Clue on Wednesday. They baked a lot. After the muffins, they made a batch of almond butter chocolate chip cookies and a loaf of pumpkin-chocolate chip bread from the same recipe I’d used when I sent them their second care package of the year. Sadly, between poor timing on my part (it was still in the mail over the three-day Columbus Day weekend) and the vagaries of the college mail system, it took six days to reach them, and it molded. They said it had smelled good, and they wanted to try it, so they recreated it at home.

North and I went on a couple little outings. On Tuesday morning we went to the co-op to get yet another pumpkin because I’d forgotten to get an extra one to cover with metal spiders. North helped me pick out an appropriately warty one and then applied the spiders to it later in the day. (Throughout the week they helped add Halloween decorations on the porch and yard.) On the way home from the co-op, we stopped at Spring Mill Bread Company and got coffee and a lemon bar. On Wednesday we went to the Langley Park farmers’ market and got pupusas and supplemented the meal with a pink drink and apple croissant (for North) and a pumpkin chai latte (for me) from Starbucks. In a less recreational but important errand, Beth, North, and I all got flu and covid shots on Thursday morning.

Weekend 2

Friday

Friday evening, Beth, North, and I went out for pizza at Roscoe’s, which is North’s favorite place to get pizza in Takoma. We ate outside and got the marinated olives appetizer, which is also their favorite. Noah was still at work, so we got an additional pizza to bring home for him. From Roscoe’s, we went to the newish Red Hound (where Beth and I have eaten a couple times, but North never has) for soft-serve. North was intrigued because we’d told them they have interesting flavors there, just one flavor at a time. That night it was maple ice cream with optional apple cider syrup. We all got our ice cream with the syrup, and it was very good. It was a pleasant evening, so at both establishments we ate outside.

When Noah came home, we watched the first hour of Beetlejuice, but not until a long discussion about whether to have the subtitles on (North’s preference) or off (Noah’s). It was starting to get heated when Beth pulled out some of the conflict resolution tools we learned when we were in family therapy, and we ended up setting a laptop on the floor under the tv playing the same movie with the subtitles turned on so there was one screen each way. Once the movie got started, we discovered why “Banana Boat” was on that Halloween playlist we’d been playing the weekend before. It features prominently in the movie, which the kids had never seen, and Beth and I hadn’t seen since it came out in 1988. Still, the song is not spooky in itself, so we still disallow it.

Saturday

On North’s last day at home, we tried to cram as much autumnal fun as we could into one day. It started with a trip to Doc Waters Cidery to pick apples. We’ve never done this before, but it’s not much different than picking berries and we do that every year at Butler’s, which is just down the road from the cidery. (Butler’s has their own apple trees, but you’ve got to pay the rather exorbitant pumpkin festival admission to get to them when the festival is happening, so we didn’t do that.)

The main difference is that you reach up rather than down to get apples and for the high ones there’s a tool you can use to shake them loose and catch them. It looks like a lacrosse stick. The rows of trees were labelled with the variety, and we picked a few different kinds and then of course they got all mixed together and we didn’t know which ones were which. Some of the varieties were almost finished and there were a lot of apples on the ground with bees buzzing around them. We filled our peck bag to overflowing and then visited the snack bar where we got a cup of warm cider we passed around and more apple cider doughnuts (bringing our total apple cider doughnut consumption for North’s break to a dozen). We stopped at a shopping center where we got Noodles and Company and Mexican for lunch.

We made a pit stop at home to unpack the apples and our lunch leftovers and then we headed to the Takoma Park Halloween parade and Monster Bash. None of us was participating in the parade (though North will dress up first as a package of Lorna Doone cookies to trick or treat at department offices at school on Halloween, and later as Fluttershy from My Little Pony in a group costume at a party).

Historically, we have often been critical of the costume contest judging, but I found after watching the parade go by that the only costume that I was really invested in was the kid in the five-to-eight-year-old group whose face was painted white and whose head was enclosed in a carboard picture frame painted with the background of The Scream. I thought he should win something, probably Most Original. Noah liked the costume but thought the painting was too famous to be original. I said I thought it was original for a Halloween costume, and we agreed to disagree. If I had been a judge, the preschooler in the Pennywise mask accompanied by a toddler brother in a yellow rain slicker with a red balloon would have presented me with a dilemma. It was inarguably the scariest costume on anyone in the four-and-under group, but it made me feel kind of icky, seeing a kid that young dressed as an evil, psychotic clown. Beth opined that maybe Scariest shouldn’t even be a prize for that age group (they do have different categories for different ages some years, but not this year).

Anyway, Pennywise did win Scariest in her age category and The Scream won Most Original in his. There was a nicely executed excavator made of painted yellow cardboard in the youngest age group. The kid in it wore a hard hat. One of the prizes for the nine-to-twelve-year-old group went to a monster with multiple tongues and long claws and among the teen and adult winners was an alien rock star. The group prize went to a family dressed as Super Mario characters. If there had been a category for dogs (and given how often dogs are in the parade maybe there should be), I think it should have gone to the one in the panda costume. There was no one I thought really should have won a prize who didn’t… so good job, parade judges.

Back at home, we started to carve our jack-o-lanterns. We’d held off until the weekend before Halloween so they wouldn’t rot. Beth made the cat, I did the Kamala pumpkin, Noah carved the bat, and North’s is the scarecrow. While we carved, we listened to the official family Halloween playlist, to which I added The Addams Family theme this year, at North’s request.

Noah and I made a broccoli and cheddar soup for dinner. After dinner, I did the dishes and started roasting pumpkin seeds (so North could take some to school) while Noah finished his pumpkin and then we finished Beetlejuice, and watched It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Beth and I went to bed, but the kids got in two episodes of Good Omens before calling our busy day a wrap.

Sunday

At 8:45 a.m., I watched from the porch as our car pulled out of the driveway and down the street. Beth was driving North back to Oberlin. They took most of the apples we picked to donate to the co-op with some reserved for Beth’s mom. When they got to Oberlin, they visited the college arboretum and had Chinese for dinner. Then Beth drove to Wheeling, where she’s staying for several days to visit her mom and brother who’s in town, too. I would have gone with them, but I thought someone should be here for the trick-or-treaters since the yard is all decorated and that seemed like a visual cue that we would be handing out candy. I was second guessing myself a little about staying home, though, as I watched the car disappear. It was a good break, and Last-Name AF, but it was hard to see it end.

Eight for October

Posted on October 14, 2024 by Steph

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I long wondered what I would blog about once North left for college. After all, it’s “a chronicle of suburban lesbian family life,” according to my home page. Noah’s here, of course, but between work and his lengthy bus-to-train-to-bus commute, he’s gone for twelve hours at a stretch on weekdays, and occasionally he works on the weekends, too, as he did two weekends ago, when he needed to work on an ad to convince people not to vote for Jill Stein. (Please don’t any of you do that, especially if you live in a swing state.)

But at the end of September, I thought I was doing reasonably well coming up with topics. I blogged twice that month, which is within the range of normal for me. But then I got stuck. It’s not that we haven’t been doing things, but nothing by itself seemed worthy of a blog post, so here’s a potpourri of our recent doings. (Some of them happened in September, but we won’t be picky about the blog post title.)

On the day before the fall equinox, the three of us went to the Bon Air Memorial Rose Garden in Arlington, to walk among the roses and zinnias and other late summer flowers. It was very pretty, Noah took a lot of pictures, and afterward we got ice cream at one of the places on the Post’s list of best ice cream in the DC metro area (though that was kind of an accident—it just happened to be nearby, and we didn’t confirm it was on the list until we got home). Noah and I both got the coconut chocolate crunch. I thought it was good, but not chocolaty enough, which was exactly what the Post said, as I learned after the fact.
There was a street festival the first Sunday in October and we went to see Anna Grace, a preschool/drama camp/Highwood Theater compatriot of North’s perform covers of Hazel Dickens, Iris DeMent, Kris Kristofferson, and Jerry Garcia. She has a lovely voice, and I thought she did particularly good job with the Iris DeMent song, “Working on a World,” even though it’s from the perspective of an older person. Then we got lunch from the food trucks. I got vegetable dumplings and a Thai vegetable-tofu curry and I split a large cup of pumpkin cheesecake ice cream with Noah.
We always have pizza for dinner on Fridays, alternating between takeout and homemade. The past two homemade nights I made it with pesto in a desperate effort to use up the abundant basil from our garden before it gets too cold for it to survive. The past two takeout nights Beth and I opted to go out rather than order in, once at Koma and once at Red Hound. (Noah gets home after our normal dinner time, so we brought pizza home for him both times.) This has been nice, like a built-in date night. At Red Hound, we had the whole back patio and its fairy lights to ourselves while we waited for our food.
The kids’ schools used to have a parents’ visitation day on Columbus Day/Indigenous People’s Day/Día de la Raza. It was that day because many parents have the federal holiday off and the kids don’t. Beth and I used to take advantage of the kid-free middle of the day to go out to lunch between visiting one school and then the other. This year Beth and I had no school to visit, but she suggested we go out to lunch anyway. We ended up changing it to dinner at the Olive Lounge because I had a mammogram late that morning and because I decided I’d rather have a night off cooking dinner rather than lunch out anyway.
In less fun news, around three weeks ago, I was taking my morning walk on a rainy day during a long stretch of rainy days, and I slipped and fell partway down a wooden staircase that leads down to a footbridge that spans Long Branch creek. I hurt the lower right quadrant of my back badly. It’s almost but not quite completely healed now, but at the beginning I had trouble bending over far enough to put on and take off my own socks, and I had to skip swimming for a week and then do a shortened version of my routine the second week. (The third week I was back to my full routine.) I also had to postpone the aforementioned mammogram until Monday because I didn’t think I could twist into the required positions. (Then to make matters worse, I tripped on another walk a few days after I hurt my back because I was looking at my phone while walking and I bloodied my left knee and shin. This was a minor injury, though, just a couple scrapes.)
The kittens will be seven months old on Thursday. They are growing and looking more like small cats and less like the tiny fuzzballs we used to be able to hold in the palms of our hands. They are plenty mischievous, though. Willow is an expert climber, finding a path to a shelf in Noah’s closet that’s near the ceiling; Walter is focusing his explorations on the great outdoors. He is always dashing out the front door and occasionally he slips past our notice and gets to stay out on the porch until he cries to be let back in. They both enjoy the laser pointer Noah recently remembered he owned. Here’s a video Noah took of Willow pursuing the red dot. Doesn’t she have an impressive vertical leap?
I’ve been keeping busy with book club and writing postcards to voters. We read Wind in the Willows in September and started Fathers and Children in October—we will continue that one through November. My last few batches of postcards went out to Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
We got off to late start decorating for Halloween because North is often the one who gets that ball rolling, but I had Noah bring everything he could find up from the basement on Saturday and then I brought up the rest and put a few things out. I’m expecting some help from North with this project, though, because they are coming home for fall break and will be home late Friday night (or in the wee hours of Saturday morning). We can’t wait to see them.

Three Weekends

Posted on September 15, 2024 by Steph

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Three weeks have gone by since we took North to Oberlin and then came home without them. It feels odd to be a household of three, none of whom attends a Montgomery County public school, needs to go to a Back to School Night anywhere, or is starting any new extracurricular activities. But September has not been completely unrecognizable. Each of its first three weekends we did something familiar in the form of a picnic, a music festival, or a pie contest. And we tried something new, too.

First Weekend: Labor Day Picnic

I had gotten used to the rhythm of North coming home from camp on Friday evenings and staying until Sunday morning, so I guess it wasn’t surprising that when on the Friday before Labor Day weekend they didn’t come home, it felt strange and hard.

The weekend itself was low-key. Beth went kayaking Saturday morning, and I went swimming. Noah mowed the lawn, he and I made zucchini fritters for dinner, and we all watched a movie. The day before we’d all conducted a round of movie nominations and vetoes, which netted us six movies to watch in September and October. Saturday night we watched King of Hearts, a movie which North had vetoed in a previous round, and I threw back into the pool, suspecting it might survive the process this time. I loved this French 1960s anti-war movie as a teen and hadn’t seen it since then. It doesn’t completely hold up, but it has its charms.

Also over the weekend Noah and I finally finished reading Maskerade, which we’d been reading since mid-July and started a new book, which despite its title seems to be more fantasy than romance. Sunday night we went to Koma for soft serve. The flavor names there are kind of fanciful. Beth and I got Brigadeiro, which the menu described as “sort of like a Brazilian Fudge.” Without this helpful note, I would have thought it was chocolate. Noah got caramelized coconut (and a salad because he hadn’t eaten much at dinner).

Labor Day was barely a holiday, as two out of three of us worked. Noah went into the office for a shortened day and Beth was at her computer most of the day as well. AT&T was on strike and strikes and political campaigns don’t take holidays. Noah’s been working on ads for Democratic political candidates, but also issue ads, on topics such as abortion and redistricting. A lot of them are airing in Ohio.

While they were thus engaged, I made a plum torte (your recipe, Suzanne) and assembled a picnic dinner of vegetarian hot dogs, devilled eggs, tomato slices, corn on the cob, and cole slaw to eat in the back yard. The torte was slightly burned on top, but independently of each other, Beth and Noah both declared it “pretty” and it was tasty, too.

Noah wasn’t initially sure he’d be home by dinner time. He has a long commute—two buses and a train—and generally gets home at seven-thirty or eight and eats a plate of whatever Beth and I have already eaten. But he got off early enough to eat dinner with us. I was glad about that because our three summer picnics (Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day) are long-standing traditions and Beth and North had both been out of town this Fourth of July, and of course, I was missing North. It wasn’t like being all together, but it was still nice. The weather was pleasant, warm but not hot or humid, and it’s always relaxing to eat outside.

While we were eating Noah spotted a huge wasps’ nest high the branches of the silver maple in the back yard. We decided to leave it there, as it’s obviously been there a long time, and they haven’t bothered us yet. When I say we decided, I mean mostly me, as Beth and Noah initially assumed we’d be getting it professionally removed. But I offered to take over mowing the back yard for the rest of the mowing season (probably a month or so) since Noah is hesitant to do it now. It seems to me if we’re going to plant sunflowers and zinnias in the garden at least partly to attract pollinators to the cucumbers and tomatoes we shouldn’t object if they set up housekeeping near the garden.

Second Weekend: Takoma Folk Festival

On Saturday I went swimming, but Beth couldn’t go kayaking because of a small craft advisory so she did the grocery shopping a day early in hopes the warning would be lifted by Sunday, but it wasn’t. The silver lining was that we had more time for the Takoma Park folk festival that day.

We’ve been going to this music festival since Noah was a toddler, and we’ve been almost every year it’s been held since then, rain or shine. In fact, it was rainy the past two years (and cancelled for covid the two years before that) so we all appreciated that the weather was perfect—sunny, in the mid-seventies, and not a trace of humidity. We spent the whole afternoon there, arriving a little after noon and staying until it ended at six-thirty.

I enjoyed every act we picked—a mix of country, singer-songwriter, and rock– but later I wished we’d seen some music from another country, as I often like to do that. Most of the international music was on one of the three indoor stages, though, and the day was too beautiful to go inside. Here’s who we saw and what the program had to say about them.

Karen Collins and the Backroads Band: Classic country with vintage sounds and rockabilly flair
Amoreena: Blending baroque pop and piano folk with introspective lyrics
Acacia Sears: Poetic indie rock with metaphor-rich lyrics and unique melodies
Ammonite: Songs of queer joy and heartache, wrapped in a fusion of country, punk, folk, rock, blues, and roots music
Blank Page: Vibrant Americana rising stars sharing joyful original songs
iylAIMY: The most welcome jolt in folk, featuring rapid-fire lyricism, lush harmonies, and even beatboxing
Samiah: Enchanting and powerful female-fronted original modern rock songwriting

The two country acts had the greatest diversity of age. If I had to guess I’d say Karen Collins is in her seventies and the two youngsters that make up Blank Page are still in high school, though I learned from their Instagram that they have a busy performance schedule, with about a half dozen gigs a month. Overall, it was a fun day listening to music from young and old.

When we got home, we watched our second movie of the half dozen we’d picked— Whisper of the Heart. This was one of Noah’s picks. He wants to watch the whole oeuvre of Hayao Miyazaki and by now we’ve watched so many of his films it feels familiar and comforting to enter these bizarre but recognizable worlds.

Third Weekend: Long Branch Festival and Takoma Park Farmers’ Market Pie Contest

On Saturday, Beth went kayaking and I went swimming, which as you are by now gathering, are our normal weekend routines. But we did do something a little out of the ordinary. We’ve never been to the Long Branch festival before, and we decided to try it out.

There was one stage and when we arrived around five-twenty, the Cuban band Beth had most wanted to see was just finishing up. We listened to their last song and then walked around the playground where the festival was held, looking at vendors and food booths. Dinner options were less extensive than we anticipated— quesadillas and pizza were the only vegetarian choices. After mulling over our options, we decided to eat at El Golfo, which is right across the street. I got my usual—spinach enchiladas and Noah and I spilt an order of flan and a slice of tres leches cake. (I thought the almost an hour round trip of walking to the festival and back would prevent a blood sugar spike and it did.) We ate outside and while we were eating the band came back from a break, so we got to hear them after all.

When we got home, we watched movie number three—Las Niñas, so between the Cuban music, Mexican food, and Spanish film it ended up being quite the Hispanic evening.

The pie contest was the next day. Long-time readers probably remember that North entered this contest every year it was held from the age of seven or eight and they won twice—with a cantaloupe pie when they were ten and a mushroom pie when they were thirteen.. They also entered several apple pies (it was originally an apple pie contest), a lavender-mint pie, a corn custard pie with an Earl Grey-infused crust, a plum pie, and most recently a Dutch pear pie, all delicious.

Unlike the Labor Day picnic and the folk festival, this wasn’t just something we did with North, it was something we did because of North. It was their thing. In fact, if they gone to school at Saint Mary’s, which is a two-hour drive away, they may have even come home for it. (We talked about that when they were still deciding.) So… I wavered a little about whether I wanted to go, but it’s a fun event and you get to eat pie, so in the end I did. I went alone because Noah had plans (he goes to a board game event at a Panera in Rockville most Sunday afternoons) and Beth had to work because the strike at AT&T finally ended that day, after a month, and she had to write a statement.

I got there about a half hour after pie slices had gone on sale, swinging by the farmers’ market first for tomatoes and a raspberry-yogurt smoothie. The line was long, so it took me twenty minutes to get to the tent. I perused the list of winners at the entrance. I decided if there were any slices left of the winner for Kid’s Pie (raspberry) or Other Sweet Pie—this means non-apple, non-peach– honey-fig was the winner, I would get one of those. The raspberry pie had sold out. There was one slice of fig pie left and I wasn’t sure it was the winning fig pie as there are often a couple fig pies and I’d forgotten the number associated with the winner, but I bought it anyway. It was quite good—the crust was crispy and tasted of molasses. I picked up one of the slices of apple pie for Noah. It was very pretty, with intricate leaves in the crust.

I sent North a picture of the pie slices and gave them the lowdown on the winners in various categories. I figured they’d be interested in Most Unusual because that’s a category they’ve won in the past. It was called ABC Medley, which we both assumed meant it had ingredients that start with those letters. I did see a pie with cucumber in it and I thought that would certainly be unusual (more unusual than cherries for instance) so that could have been the ABC pie, but I don’t know what else was in it or if it was even the winner for sure.

Meanwhile, in Oberlin

We’ve been texting a lot with North, and we’ve had three all-family calls. They’ve been busy. Classes have been in session for two and a half weeks. They say Spanish is their most challenging class. They were elected one of the food buyers for their dining co-op, they’ve been to interest meetings for a couple different theater groups, they auditioned for a part in a play (which they didn’t get), they’re volunteering at a cat rescue, and they attended a Quaker meeting in town to see what it was like. They’ve been to the movies in town (seeing Reagan) and went to a party at which people pretended to be rushing a non-existent sorority (Kappa Epsilon Epsilon Rho, which spells KEEP, the name of their co-op).

We sent them their first care package. I made almond butter chocolate chip cookies, Beth bought Jolly Ranchers for North’s candy bowl, and then I filled up the box with things I found in the pantry I thought they’d like to have (a box of Annie’s mac-n-cheese, Pop Tarts, Honey Vanilla chamomile tea). Beth said the theme was “random things North likes.” I had no idea where the Pop Tarts had come from, but it turned out Noah bought them for himself, so I replaced them.

Things seem to be going well. We miss North, but we’re all settling into our grooves, running on separate tracks until they cross briefly when they come home for fall break in a little over a month.

Between Camp and College

Posted on August 24, 2024 by Steph

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North had eleven days at home between camp and college. It took them three days to do all their laundry from camp and I took advantage of having another person home to give them some more chores, like cleaning the bathroom, vacuuming, weeding and cooking dinner. And of course, there was list-making and packing, tending to pre-college administrative tasks, and chatting with their recently assigned roommate.

But there was plenty of time for other pursuits.

Caffeinated Outings

North and I went out for coffee or other beverages four out of the first five days they were home. We didn’t plan it that way, but on the first Monday they were home I needed to get yard waste bags from the hardware store, and I invited them to come with me and stop at Takoma Beverage Company and they did. We got coffee and split a chocolate-cherry scone. Then two days later I was going to the Langley Park farmers’ market in search of peaches, and I invited them to come with me and stop at Starbucks and they did.

The peaches we found at the market were hard and greenish. I was skeptical they’d ripen but we’d walked a mile or so to get them, so I bought them and hoped for the best. (Two days in a paper bag with a chunk of apple did the trick.) We got pupusas, too, and these were good as always. We ate them at a table in front of Starbucks, where we got refreshers and a cake pop. I arranged the peaches, pupusas, Paradise and Pink drinks, and the pop for a photo and posted it to Facebook with the caption that “Today’s outing was brought to you by the letter P.”

The next day, after North’s psychiatrist appointment, we stopped at Lost Sock for coffee and alfajor cookies (dulce de leche and coconut). While we were there I said since we’d been to three out of four of our habitual spots for mother-child coffee runs, we should be completists and go to Koma sometime before they left. They laughed and agreed. And then on Friday morning, when Valerie cancelled on them at the last minute, they texted me and asked if I could meet them there, so I did, and we got tea and a strawberry Danish.

Outings with Friends

Having been gone most of the summer, North had a lot of friends they wanted to see. The first Monday evening they were home they went to Ranvita’s birthday party, which was held at a Chinese restaurant. The next day a big group of friends went to the Montgomery County Fair and then swimming. They were gone most of the day. On Friday evening they went to a drive-in movie with El and saw a double feature (the newest Deadpool and Alien movies). They said neither movie was one they would have chosen to watch without the drive-in part of the experience, but they had fun. The following Monday, they spent most of the day at Miles and Maddie’s house. The twins brought North home as I was cooking dinner and came inside to see the kittens and exclaim about how big they’ve gotten. (The kittens have each tripled in size since we got them three months ago.)

Medical Appointments

North had several routine visits with healthcare providers, but the most notable one was with the neurologist who manages their migraine care. What was notable was that it was the first time in the almost two years they’ve been seeing him that he didn’t need to brainstorm about new medications or treatments because the new preventative they’ve been on since mid-May is working remarkably well. It’s a once-monthly injection they give themselves and the first couple weeks it didn’t seem to be helping much. Luckily, the doctor warned us it might take up to three months to show results. In June they had thirteen migraines (down from an average of twenty or more) and in July it was ten. When we had the meeting, almost halfway through August, North had only had four. (They’re up to eight now for the month.)

And because they have effective rescue medicine that can be used twice a week, plus another semi-effective one that can be used five times a month, this means they hardly ever need to go to bed with a headache or power through one anymore. The doctor also mentioned that for people for whom this medication works, it often keeps getting more effective with time. I can’t tell you how happy we all are about this turn of events. Beth commented how easy it’s been to get used to being able to make evening plans without considering how many meds North has already used this week. We can just assume now either they won’t get a headache or if they do, there will be enough meds. It is downright liberating.

Montgomery County Fair

We took advantage of this freedom to go to the Montgomery County Fair late Saturday afternoon instead of earlier in the day, which is a more migraine-friendly time for North. We all, but especially Beth, like to ride the Ferris wheel after dark, but between the kids’ bedtimes when they were younger and not wanting to risk a late afternoon migraine, many years we couldn’t stay that late. There was another potential problem, though. Rain was forecast on and off all day. It had not rained yet when we left, but the sky was threatening.

We arrived a little before five and walked around the rides to see how many tickets we’d need to ride our favorites. Then we loaded up a card with the requisite number plus a little extra and the kids and I got in line for the swings, which then closed with no explanation. As we walked to other rides and they closed one by one, we gathered it was because it was about to rain. And rain it did, a real gully washer.

I was afraid we’d just wasted a lot of money on non-refundable ride tickets on the last night of the fair, but determined to make the best of it, we headed for the animal barns. This was something that North’s friends hadn’t done when they went earlier in the week, and they do like to see the animals. Even with an umbrella, I got kind of wet on the way there and to top it off I slipped and fell into a puddle at the entrance to the rabbit barn and got the whole back of my pants soaking wet.

Everyone else at the fair had the same idea about what to do in the rain so the animal barns were crowded, but we there was enough room to walk around and see the goats and sheep and rabbits and poultry and oxen, plus a llama and an alpaca. North’s favorite is the rabbit barn, so we stayed there the longest. There were a bunch of white rabbits there with black rings around their eyes. They looked as if they were wearing eyeliner. According to the sign, this kind of rabbit has been bred since the nineteenth century, starting in France. North and I got to pet one. It was very soft.

The rain was letting up, so we got some food while we waited for the rides to dry out. North said “the interesting food” is at the end of the midway, which their friends had not visited. Between us we got pupusas, a spinach crepe, and cheese and grapes from the dairy shed. Dessert round one consisted root beer floats, ice cream, and a red velvet funnel cake, which we threw out after eating only half of it because no one liked it enough to make it their primary dessert.

While we were eating, I’d seen a woman walking on stilts and blowing bubbles and that reminded me of the Halloween parade because there is always someone on stilts there and we talked about how North might enter this year because they will be home for fall break and how I may someday volunteer to serve as a judge.

There was an announcement that the rides were open, so the kids and I rode the swings, and then North did the Genesis, a ride with a long row of seats that goes up and down and side to side. All the lines were long because it was a Saturday night and the last night of the fair and everyone had to take a break at the same time because of the rain. Beth got in line for the Ferris wheel while Noah and I were watching North ride the Genesis. I was also watching the changing colors of the lights on the Ferris wheel, which were lovely in the gathering darkness.

When we joined Beth in line, I told her that being at the carnival rides put the lines from John Prine’s “When I Get to Heaven” in my head: “I’m gonna kiss that pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl” and she kissed me before I could finish the lyric. The fair sometimes reminds us of going to the Lorain County Fair in Ohio when we were in college and puts us in a nostalgic mood. When we got up in the air, we could see the whole fair lit up, which is always fun.

My last ride, with both kids, was the Mousetrap, a very strange little ride. It’s a tiny roller coaster inside a building that’s almost completely dark. The painting on the outside depicts mice pursued by cats, so I guess you are supposed to be a mouse darting this way and that in the dark.

By this point, we’d finished all our must-dos, but we had some tickets left, so North rode the Sizzler, one of those innocent-looking little carnival rides with clusters of cars that spin in one direction while the whole ride is going in another direction. I got quite sick on one of those as a teenager (like throwing up sick), so I contented myself with watching and singing along with Beth to the music playing—“Summer Nights” from Grease. Beth said I could call the blog post “Summer Loving,” but I explained it was about more than the fair. Noah went off in search of fried Oreos for dessert round two (North got a pretzel).

As we left the fair, we saw a big ad for Corktoberfest on the side of a trailer. We see it every year and every year North says they read it as Cocktoberfest, which would probably be another kind of event altogether. Then everyone said I should call this blog post Cocktoberfest, even though we did not attend the wine festival, which as you may have guessed does not even happen until October. We did see roosters, someone pointed out, quite innocently. What can I say? We were tired and happy and a little punchy from our night at the fair, which could have been a disaster, but wasn’t.

Creek Walk

The next morning the kids and I went wading in the creek. We do this almost every summer, generally near the end. The most common route is to start with a trip to Starbucks and then enter the creek near the Jackson Avenue bridge and that’s what we did. We walked through the creek to the Carroll Avenue bridge, opting not to continue all the way to the playground, because we all had afternoon plans and time was running short.

We found the spine of an animal in the water and couldn’t determine was it was—too big for a squirrel or rabbit, too small for a deer (unless it was partial), maybe a fox? It will remain a mystery.

It was pleasant to walk in the cool water with sunlight filtering through green leaves all around us, even if the morning was not that hot, and even if the walk was on the short side. No one fell and got hurt. No one was stung by bees. This activity is not without peril, but we keep doing it anyway.

Cobbler

That afternoon North and I made a peach-blackberry cobbler with the blackberries we picked and froze last month. They made the filling, I made the dough, and then they rolled it out to cover the fruit. There are four fruit-based desserts I make every summer. It starts with strawberry shortcake on Memorial Day, progressing through sour cherry sauce for ice cream on the Fourth of July, blueberry kuchen whenever we pick blueberries, and then this one, usually toward the end of the summer. Making it on the same day we took a creek walk really did make it seem like summer was truly almost over. And it was Beth’s last night cooking before North left, so she made one of her classic summer dinners—barbequed tofu, corn on the cob, and fried okra.

DNC

The following night we watched the first night of the DNC for two reasons. The president of Beth’s union was speaking briefly and there was going to be a 90-second video Noah helped edit at work. The CWA president spoke with a group of other union officials a little after eight and Beth texted him to say he did a good job. By this point, we’d been waiting for more than an hour and a half for the ad, with everyone running out the room every now and then for snacks and bathroom breaks. The video was originally supposed to be the first thing played in the program, but the order of events got switched around and Noah didn’t know when it was going to play, just that it wasn’t first anymore.

By nine, North was thinking of bailing and taking a shower so I ducked into the bathroom to start get ready for bed so I wouldn’t need to wait a half hour to get in there if the ad came on soon. Sure enough, I was washing my face when I heard shouting from the living room and I ran in, face sudsy, washcloth in hand, to watch this. Turns out it was the walk-in video for Kamala’s cameo.

Beth, North, and I were all in bed by ten, but Noah stayed up to watch more of the convention and the next morning he told us there was another ad about abortion he’d worked on that he didn’t realize was going to play. Here it is.

Television and Ice Cream (and More Coffee)

And then the eleven days came to an end. On Tuesday we finished the second season of Grownish as a family. The next day, North and Noah watched a couple episodes of Good Omens because he had the day off, and North and I got to the midpoint of the third season of Emily in Paris, which was our goal since finishing the season wasn’t in the cards.

On Wednesday, two nights before we left for Oberlin, I made breaded tofu sticks because they are a family favorite. North requested applesauce to go with them, so I made blackberry-applesauce with our stash of frozen berries from the berry farm and served it with carrot sticks and slices of garden cucumber.

Thursday morning North wanted to go to Starbucks yet again because it was the first day the fall menu items were available, and they wanted a pumpkin-cream cheese muffin and some kind of apple-flavored coffee. I prefer to wait until it’s autumn, or at least September, for these kinds of treats, so I got a plain latte and a croissant.

Speaking of treats, we have a long-standing tradition of ice cream (or frozen yogurt) on the last night of summer break. About a week before we left, North and discussed the question of whether it should be the night before we began the journey or the night before we parted ways in Oberlin. The first would include Noah; the second was closer to the first day of school. Finally, I said, “Why not both?” and that’s what we decided to do. (Before that even happened, though, we went to Sweet Frog the first Thursday North was home because they were having an as-much-yogurt-as-you-can-fit-in-a-cup sale for six dollars, but it turned out you needed to give the cashier a code, which we neglected to do. Live and learn.)

The following Thursday, North’s last night at home, we met up with Noah (who came straight from work) at Mount Dessert Island Ice Cream in Mount Pleasant. Remember how we were working our way through Post’s list of best places to get ice cream in the D.C. metro area earlier this summer? Well, we hadn’t been to one since the end of June, but North suggested we do one last one. We’d been to the top three, so we picked this one because it was number four.

We found a parking space right nearby, which was a stroke of luck in that neighborhood. (A side note: Beth and I lived in a group house in Mount Pleasant for three months during the summer of 1991 when we first arrived in D.C.) The store is very small, located on the first floor of a rowhouse, with benches out front. Beth got white Russian, North got a float with blueberry soda, Noah got something with chocolate chips and caramel, and I got fig. Have you ever had fig ice cream? It was excellent, tasting of the fruit and brown sugar all the way through. It wasn’t just vanilla with fig chunks. I highly recommend it if you’re local.

The next afternoon after a morning of work and packing and whatnot, Beth, North, and I hit the road for Oberlin, via Wheeling. More about that trip in the next installment…

Interlude

Posted on August 4, 2024 by Steph

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We had a two-week interlude between our trip to the beach and the next trip, to Wheeling for a family reunion, where we are now.

The last weekend in July, a week after we got back from the beach, North came home from camp on Friday evening and stayed until Sunday morning, as per usual. Saturday was a busy day. North and El had breakfast in the city and then El came over and they watched a movie. After lunch, Beth, North and I went berry picking. Noah opted to stay home and participate in an online gaming event.

We intended to get blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries, but though all these berries were listed as available on the website and again when we checked in at the farm entrance, once we’d picked blackberries, we learned the blueberry fields were closed. I don’t know if they ran out while we were picking blackberries or if the staff at the gate didn’t have up-to-date information. We knew we were cutting it close, as blueberry season, which used to last until August when the kids were small, seems to end in late July now, if it lasts that long. I’m guessing it’s climate change.

But it might have been just as well there were only two kinds of berries to pick because we were kind of rushed for time. On arrival, we visited the snack bar and got a blueberry hand pie with ice cream to share and then we picked two quarts of blackberries and two pints of raspberries. In the blackberries, North and I were sharing a container, so we stuck together, and they told me amusing stories from camp. The berries were kind of sparse and we sometimes wished we had Noah with us to reach the high ones. I told North I was getting my stretching in for the day. It was easier picking in the raspberry field, and we were in and out of there quickly. We dashed into the farm market afterward and got blueberry jam, cheese, pretzels, a slice of blueberry cake for me, and a mixed berry slushy for North.

The reason we were on a schedule was because Beth was going on an evening kayak tour of the monuments on the Potomac, and she had to get there by six, which meant getting home by four-thirty. She said it was a lot of fun and she got some beautiful pictures. While she was gone, Noah and I made a soba noodle salad with shiitake, tofu, and broccoli, which North praised with unusual enthusiasm. I think they were getting tired of the food at camp after six weeks of eating it. After dinner, we watched Teen Beach Movie. They showed it at camp and North had to miss it to stay with a kid who was afraid to watch it (if you’ve seen it, you will find this as puzzling as we did—it’s a rated G Disney movie aimed at tweens). North had FOMO about it, so we indulged them.

The next morning, we said goodbye to North again until the following Friday. I had a nice, low-key summer Sunday. I took my daily walk in weather that was hot but not miserably humid, read, and napped. Beth made gumbo for dinner and then we watched the Olympics.

Another work week rolled by. Beth and I continued to watch swimming and diving and gymnastics every night through Thursday, and the kittens often watched with us, sitting on the coffee table in front of the television. When the U.S. women’s gymnastics team won gold and were all high fiving each other, Willow jumped up and put her paw on the tv screen right over their hands, then she chased the flag they were carrying around.

It only took us five days to eat up all the raspberries and half the blackberries (the other half I’d frozen for future baking plans). Not satisfied with our higher-than-average berry consumption, I made a blueberry kuchen with grocery store blueberries on Wednesday, freezing a quarter of that for North, who came home again on Friday evening.

That night, we watched a little track and field and talked about camp. North always needs to vent a little when they get home. They always enjoyed sleep-away camp as a camper, both at Scout camp and elsewhere, so they’ve been surprised at how many kids are homesick or don’t want to be there for other reasons. Those kids are a small minority, but they take up a lot of the counselors’ time and North had one in their group who’d been a handful. They did say all the others were “angel children.” Then they took a shower—something they sometimes only manage once in a week at camp because they are so busy—and emerged from the bathroom, exclaiming, “I feel so clean!”

Saturday morning Beth and I left a little after ten a.m. for our next adventure, leaving North to do laundry, play with the kittens, write goodbye notes to be distributed to other camp staff members at the end of the last week of camp, attend a belated graduation party for El Saturday night, and then to take a Lyft to the camp bus stop Sunday morning. I’d drawn up a page-long to-do list for Noah, divided into categories such as “Kitten maintenance: #1 priority—Don’t let the cats die” and “Garden Maintenance: #2 priority—Don’t let the garden die.”

It seemed very strange to drive away, leaving the kids and the kittens behind. It wasn’t a couple’s trip—we’d be in a group of several dozen people– but we haven’t taken a trip longer than a weekend getaway without the kids since before Noah was born. We really are entering a new phase of life, one in which the times when the four of us are together are more interludes than the stuff of everyday life. I am having trouble getting my head around that.

Comings and Goings

Posted on July 9, 2024 by Steph

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North Comes Home

After that first weekend, North managed to come home the next two as well, by volunteering to be a bus counselor. Saturday of their second weekend home it was very hot, the first hundred-degree day of the summer. We spent it thusly: Beth was up shortly after dawn to go kayaking, I went swimming at Piney Branch pool, the kids watched the last two episodes of Dr. Who, Beth and North had lunch at Cava, everyone went to see Inside Out 2, Noah and I roasted zucchini, tomatoes, and feta for dinner and everyone went out for ice cream at Everyday Sundae in the District. It was on that list of twelve best places to get ice cream in the D.C. metro area that has been guiding our ice cream choices this summer. I got blueberry cheesecake. It was good, but not exceptional.

The next Friday, North came home with a sprained ankle and without their phone because they dropped it into a latrine at camp. Because they weren’t up for much walking, we decided not to go to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, which we’d been considering, and Beth and North spent a lot of time while they were home setting up their new phone. For the record, this was the second phone they lost in a month, so they volunteered to pay for half of it and we took them up on it.

That Saturday North also hung out with Maddie, Noah and I roasted radishes and fried tofu for dinner, and we went to Dairy Godmother in Alexandria, Virginia. This was the longest trek we’d made for ice cream so far. This place is famous for its custard (though it also sells sorbet and vegan ice cream), so we thought that’s what we should order. There are only three custard flavors every day—vanilla, chocolate, and whatever the flavor of the day is. My blood sugar was on the low side when we arrived, so I splurged on a sundae—chocolate custard with marshmallow sauce and sour cherries. It was an excellent combination of flavors. I was quite pleased with it. We have now visited all the top-rated ice cream venues—it was a three-way tie—one each in Maryland, the District, and Virginia. This has been a fun project.

The next morning, Beth drove North to the camp bus on her way out of town, because she was off on her own trip…

Beth Goes to Wheeling

Beth spent another week with her mom. She worked, visited with relatives, road-tripped with her friend Michelle to Morgantown, and spent a lot of time in her mom’s condo’s pool. I sent her off with a pint of homemade sour cherry sauce and I got a lot of compliments about it from Beth’s mom and Michelle.

Noah and I were on our own for six days. We worked and watched a few episodes of Angel and Scrapper. I started writing postcards again after a long hiatus. I did a batch reminding Florida voters to renew their enrollment in the vote-by-mail program and another for a school board candidate (also in Florida) who is running against a Moms for Liberty candidate. It soothes my election-related anxiety a little to be doing something, even if it’s for a down ballot race. Because if the unspeakable does happen, who’s in office at the state and municipal level is going to matter. (Well, it always does, but you know what I mean.)

Noah and I Go to a Parade

Noah and I went to Takoma’s Fourth of July parade. We used to go almost every year, but between covid cancellations (2020 and 2021) and travels (2022 and 2023) we haven’t been since 2019. I enjoyed it. I always do—the painted rooster statue on wheels (the rooster is the symbol of Takoma), the papier mâché shark representing a swim team, the UFO and aliens just because, drummers from various cultures (Scottish, Japanese, and Caribbean), and seeing Jamie Raskin, our congressional representative. If you’re not a Marylander and you’ve heard of him, it’s probably because he was the impeachment manager during Trump’s second impeachment. He was one of many local politicians walking the route or riding in classic cars, and all the rest of them got polite applause, but people went wild for Raskin, shouting out “Thank you!” and similar things. He’s a local hero.

One notable event in the parade was that toward the end, a horse who had been in the parade, got loose and ran through the parade, against the flow of the procession. One person was knocked down, but thankfully, no one was seriously hurt.

When it was over I considered the fact that we don’t see as many people we know as we used to at this event. The crowd skews toward families with kids of elementary school age or younger and we don’t know many people like that anymore. In fact, the only people I saw whom I knew were my city council member and her family, who were in the parade. Her son went to preschool with North. The lack of familiar faces among the spectators made me feel a little sad and unconnected, even though a few people I know were there and posted pictures on Facebook. I just didn’t see them at the time.

My melancholy might have stemmed from the fact that I was already missing Beth and North. It just felt odd to be apart on this holiday we’ve spent together so many times, even though we were split up last Fourth of July, too. I guess being in a new place with extended family made it easier last time. But it’s the kind of thing that will happen more and more often, I expect, as the kids move out into the world.

Noah and I had a picnic dinner (on the porch because the evening was rainy). I scaled it back a little, skipping the potato salad and baked beans, because Noah doesn’t like them and they’re not great for me in a meal with plenty of other carbs. We had vegetarian hot dogs, devilled eggs, corn on the cob, watermelon, and ice cream with blueberries and another batch of sour cherry sauce. He helped by shucking the corn and slicing the watermelon while I was out running errands.

Beth Comes Home and North Does Not

Two days later, Beth came home. North did not because there were fewer campers due to the Fourth of July holiday and not enough to fill a bus. (The campers and counselors who were there went on a field trip to see fireworks in a nearby town—so North was the only one in our family who saw any this year.)

I made a blueberry crumble to welcome Beth home. Noah and I made soba noodles with a peanut sauce, cucumbers, green peppers, and radishes and we all ate the noodles and crumble and watched The Death of Stalin, which Noah’s been wanting to watch for a long time. We weren’t all together, but it was still very good to have Beth home.

Willow and Walter Go to the Vet

On Monday, Willow and Walter got the last vaccine they’ll need for a while, for rabies. Beth reports they were not at all freaked out by the car ride or the dogs in the vet’s waiting room. I wasn’t surprised. They were pretty chill at their three-month visit a few weeks ago. They continue to grow. Walter’s just over five and a quarter pounds and Willow is just over four pounds.

They also continue to be very energetic and mischievous. They spend a high percentage of their waking hours wrestling, chasing each other, or finding things to knock off other things. Willow likes to get up on high things and pounce on her brother from above. Every day I find them in funny places—in the dishwasher, the recycling bin, batting each other through the holes in a laundry basket, drinking from the toilet. Walter is particularly fond of sitting on the printer. Sometimes they sit on the coffee table in front of the television and watch along with us, Walter occasionally batting at the screen if there’s something enticing like race cars. They love ice cubes and come running whenever they hear the dispenser on the freezer door. Then we must give them one and let them bat it across the kitchen floor.

So that covers our comings and goings from the past few weeks. I hope yours have been festive, relaxing, or whatever you want out of these mid-summer days.

Summer’s Coming Around Again

Posted on June 19, 2024 by Steph

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Here now summer’s coming around again
Every year it seems to come in this way

From “Summer’s Coming Around Again,” by Carly Simon, James E. Ryan, and Paul Glanz

North finished a week of staff training at camp. They got certified for CPR and passed the swim test. Sunday, they welcomed the first group of campers and escorted them to camp on the bus. They were home for a day and two nights before that. They didn’t expect to come home so soon, but the camp asked volunteers to be bus counselors and a ride home two days prior was part of the deal, so they took it.

Here’s what we were up to while they were gone and while they were home and then after they left:

Takoma Pride

Takoma Pride was a week ago Sunday. Beth and I dropped by in between a visit to the farmers’ market, where we got strawberries, cherries, and a dill plant, and the Fulfillery, where we got some small cloth bags. We looked at the booths, watched the family parade go by, chatted with a friend, and got our picture taken by the flowery Love sign. Takoma Pride is small but spirited, and I always enjoy it.

Adventures with Bees

The next day a beekeeper came to the house. Why would we need this service? A couple weeks earlier Noah was moving one of our outdoor chairs so he could mow the lawn and he got stung on the face by a bee that emerged from the stuffing of the chair. It turned out there was a whole nest of bumblebees living in there. We were all puzzled because we were under the impression bumblebees don’t sting. As there was also a tiny wasp nest in the eaves, we considered the possibility that Noah was coincidentally stung by a wasp as he moved the chair, but soon after North was walking by the same chair which was inconveniently located right outside the back door and they got stung, too. And they saw the stinging insect and insisted it was a bumblebee.

We consulted with our pest control company agent who told us bumblebees don’t sting and recommended getting a beekeeper to come remove the nest. We did just that because we didn’t want to kill them (though we did have the pest company take care of the wasp nest). It took a while to get the beekeeper to come, but he does it for free, so we can’t really complain. He told us bumblebees do sting on rare occasions when their nest is threatened. Then he got into his suit, enclosed the chair cushion in a garbage bag and took it away to release the bees into the wild. A few must have been outside the nest when he did it because we saw them flying around the area looking for their home for several days afterward.

The irony of this whole adventure was that when Noah set out to mow the lawn it hadn’t been mowed in almost two months because in April and May it’s covered in buttercups and asters and I like to leave it as a little meadow until they’re done, partly because it’s pretty and partly for the pollinators. And then they go and sting my kids. No good deed goes unpunished.

Mini-Kitchen Renovation

We’ve been doing a partial kitchen renovation, little by little. We had it painted in January 2023 and then we got a new induction stove this April. Last week we had a new back door and kitchen flooring installed. The old door didn’t fit quite right in the doorframe, and it used to blow open on windy days if it wasn’t bolted shut and the pest control company cited it as a possible entry point for mice. We had mice for years and we’ve only been mouse-free for several months, so we did not want to extend an invitation for them to return.

I’m not sure how old the floor was, but it was there when we moved into the house in 2002 and it was badly chipped. The old pattern was white with little black diamonds. I liked it a lot and wanted something similar, at least something black and white and geometrical. This was surprisingly hard to find. Almost all the options for the kind of interlocking tiles the contractor suggested had a wood, granite, or marble pattern and I didn’t want flooring pretending to be something it wasn’t. I had to look at eight hundred patterns—really, no exaggeration—to find the big black and white checkers we ended up choosing, but I really like them. I didn’t even remember this until Beth mentioned it, but it looks just like the floor in our D.C. apartment where we lived from 1991 to 2002. Maybe that’s why it speaks to me. North is not pleased that the floor looks “different.” I get it. Change can be hard, maybe especially in your childhood home.

Weekend Visit

Speaking of North, they came home Friday evening and stayed until Sunday morning. When they got home, they hugged the kittens first, then Beth and me, and then Noah, who said on seeing them, “I have a job.”

“I do, too,” they replied.

North’s first night home we had homemade pizza with vegetarian pepperoni and olives for dinner and watched All of Us Strangers, which was moving and well-acted. Saturday morning, they had brunch with El in the city.

That afternoon we drove all the way to Rockville for ice cream. We did this because the weekend section of the Post had a feature about the twelve best places to get ice cream in the DC Metro area and we all thought it was incumbent on us to save the article and sample ice cream from at least four places, with each of us getting to choose one. North thought we should start right away and since they won’t be home every weekend this summer, we let them choose first. They noted there was a three-way tie for first place and went with Sarah’s Handmade Ice Cream and Treats because it had some tea-based and floral flavors and they found that intriguing. It was also ranked the best ice cream in Maryland, the other two winners being in the District and Virginia.

On the drive there, I was wondering if it was silly to drive so far for ice cream, when ice cream is widely available closer to home, and I’m not an ice cream connoisseur. It’s not like I’ve ever gone out for ice cream and thought “Yuck!” but I have to say it was a fun outing. When we got there, we recognized the shopping plaza as somewhere we’d once stopped to use the restrooms on a road trip, though none of us was sure exactly when. The flavors were indeed interesting. North got lavender-honey and Thai iced tea. I got apricot-pistachio. If you’re local, we give it four thumbs up.

North got a migraine after we got home and used the new nasal spray for the first time. It didn’t eliminate the headache, but it quickly took the pain down to a manageable level. However, they said it stung and then it dripped down their throat and tasted bad. “But it’s better than a migraine, right?” I said.

“I guess so,” they said, but it wasn’t a ringing endorsement. They went to lie down for a little while but then they got up and were able to carry on with the evening, so I count it as a win. When I wrote about this earlier, I didn’t realize that as with their most effective med, there’s a limit on how many times they can take it, five times a month. So that gives them meds for roughly three days a week, up from two, which still falls short of what they need, but it’s an improvement. They took the spray to camp with them when they went back.

That night Noah and I made enchiladas using cilantro I’d grown from seeds harvested from a previous year’s cilantro plants. This isn’t the first time I’ve managed this feat, but I was fishing for compliments on my gardening prowess when Noah said it practically qualified me to be a tradwife, which wasn’t exactly what I was going for. We did also make the sauce from scratch, but not from our own tomatoes or poblanos, so we’re not quite suburban homesteaders yet.

That night we watched a couple episodes of Grownish and the next morning the kids watched an episode of Dr. Who before North left for camp. Noah agreed to get up at 7:30 to do so, which was unusual for him any day of the week and it was a Sunday. He did note he needed to shift his sleep schedule when he started work on Tuesday, but on Saturday he was still asleep when I left the house at eleven to go swim, so I was kind of surprised he managed it.

North said goodbye to everyone (except Beth who’d gone kayaking and said her goodbyes the night before) and called a Lyft. They said before they left that they were nervous but excited to meet the kids. Their group this week is in a theater-based program, and they were happy about that. They will probably be back home next weekend.

Kitten Update

So, I promised a kitten update in the comments section of my last post. They turned three months old on Monday. No surprise, they continue to be very cute. When we first got them, they did everything together. If one of them went to the water bowl, the other would drink, too. They would use the litterbox at the same time. They slept together and played together whenever they weren’t sleeping. It’s been almost four weeks since we got them and they still do all these things, but they are spending a little time apart now. One evening Willow slept on Beth’s stomach as she lay on our bed, while Walter was camped out on me on the living room couch, and this went on for at least an hour. Willow has the habit of trying to suckle on Walter’s belly, which apparently kittens sometimes do with their siblings after they’ve been separated from their mother. He is very patient with this behavior, though sometimes he looks a bit puzzled by it.

I didn’t expect personality differences to emerge this early because Matthew and Xander were very similar as kittens and quite different as adult cats, but it does seem as if Walter is going to be the more laid-back, easy-going one and Willow is more daring and adventurous. She will climb a window screen in pursuit of a fly and is a little more intense in their wrestling matches and chasing games. She also likes to play “monster under the covers,” which is what we called it when our first cat, Emily, used to chase our feet under the covers. (Emily enjoyed this game her whole life.) Walter will sometimes join in if he sees her doing it.

We took the cats for their three-month checkup and vaccines on Monday, and they are healthy. As we suspected, Walter is growing a little faster than Willow. Willow has gained a pound since we got her and now weighs in at three pounds. Walter has gained a pound and a half and now tips the scale at four pounds. The vet says they’re both in a normal range for their age. The vet put their picture on the office Instagram. Check out Takoma Park Animal Clinic if you want to see it.

Working Man

Noah started his job on Tuesday. For now, he’ll be in the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and either working from home or off on Mondays and Fridays. Based on the total number of hours he’s supposed to work between now and November, I suspect the work will ramp up over the course of the next several months and will be more than full-time by the end. Another hint that hours may get long: he was told that closer to the election, the company will provide lunch.

He seems to like the office. There’s another seasonal employee he says is about his age. He spent his first two days sorting through stock photos and trying to find out which ones were shot in the United States, because candidates want images made in America in their ads. (It’s always interesting to me to learn the things people do at different jobs that you’d never realize have to be done.)

So, another summer is coming around. It will be a summer unlike any other we’ve had thus far, with all four of us working. I was all alone in the house Tuesday and much of Wednesday because Beth had to go into the office and then to a Juneteenth event. This is pretty rare since Beth’s office is still hybrid and she usually works at home, and even when she does go to work, for the last year or so, one or both of the kids was usually home. It’s a change, but despite North’s reaction to the floor, not all change is bad.

Life is a Highway

Posted on June 9, 2024 by Steph

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Life’s like a road that you travel onWhen there’s one day here and the next day gone

“Life is a Highway,” Rascal Flats

Hey, guess what? North graduated from high school and Noah has news, too.

In the almost two weeks between the last day of school and graduation, North kept busy. This is what they were up to:

1. Baking

We went strawberry-picking the day before Memorial Day and North volunteered to make the strawberry-blueberry shortcake I usually make for our Memorial Day picnic. It was one of many baking projects. They also made chocolate cupcakes with strawberry-whipped cream frosting for their friend Grey’s birthday, and two batches of almond butter-chocolate chip cookies, one of which was for a picnic with friends, and one for us. They made enough of the cupcakes for us to sample them, too.

2. Socializing

Speaking of friends, they were quite social in their time off school. They had a gathering in a playground with friends from middle school (this was the one with cookies) and another gathering at Ranvita’s house with friends from high school, at which everyone made a different pasta or potato dish to share.

The first Saturday in June, roughly the same group of friends also met in downtown Silver Spring for lunch and then went to Ranvita’s house to prepare for Pride Prom, which North attended with El. North says it was more fun than regular prom because it wasn’t as loud, the music was better, and they knew more people. (Beth and I discussed how it was very lesbian to get ready for prom at your ex-girlfriend’s house and go with someone else and everyone is fine with it.)

In addition to all these group social engagements, their new friend Valerie came over and had dinner here one day, and they went to El’s house the afternoon after graduation practice to watch Fear Street 3, having previously watched the first two installments together, and then they went to Maddie’s house the day before graduation to drop off tickets—we had extra and North gave them to several of their junior friends—and they hung out there for a while.

3. Cleaning

The kids and I gave the porch its annual big clean the same day as Pride Prom. This chore involves carrying all the porch furniture onto the lawn, scrubbing the walls and floors with soapy water to remove pollen, grime, and dust, and then lugging the furniture back onto the porch. It also involves water play, usually in the form of Noah spraying North with the hose (with their consent). Because it was a sunny day, the spray made rainbows and that seemed appropriate because it was the first day of Pride month. It also reminded me to find the little Pride flags we stick in our front porch planters in June. (I often leave the flags there all summer and into the fall, taking them down after National Coming Out Day in October.)

4. Dealing with Medical Issues

We also had to squeeze in a lot of appointments before North’s departure for camp. On the day after Memorial Day alone, they had three. One of these meetings, a virtual one, was with the Office of Disability and Access at Oberlin to discuss accommodations. North wants a room on the first floor or in a building with an elevator and access to early registration so they can try to avoid late afternoon classes, as that’s when they get their migraines. The staff person they spoke to was encouraging, but their case hasn’t progressed through all the official channels yet.

Speaking of their migraines, they recently got two new prescriptions, a monthly injectable preventative that you have to be eighteen to take and a rescue nasal spray they just happened to have not tried yet. They’ve only had one injection so far, about three weeks ago, and we can’t tell if it’s making a difference yet, but it can take a while to work (sometimes up to three months), so we’re still hopeful about it. It took so long to get through the red tape that was necessary to obtain the nasal spray that it just arrived on Tuesday and they haven’t tried it yet. We really just need one medication or the other to work because North already has a rescue medicine that works for them, but it can only be taken twice a week, and they get four to five migraines a week. If either of the new medicines works well enough to reduce the number of migraines they get to two a week or fewer or effectively halt them once they start, it will greatly improve their quality of life. So, keep your fingers crossed for that.

5. Watching Television

The Sunday before graduation, North and I were talking about how they were leaving for camp in less than a week and we drew up a list of the six television shows they are watching with various members of the family to see if there was a chance of finishing either all available episodes or a season in any of those shows. It only looked possible for Dr. Who (the kids watched the most recent episode on Monday morning) and maybe Emily in Paris, which they’re watching with me. We had six episodes left in season 2, and we watched three of them on Sunday night, one on Tuesday night, and two on Wednesday night. The four of us also hit the midpoint of season 2 of Grownish.

6. Riding the Rails

In other activities, North enjoys trains, so they amused themselves by taking the Metro to stops they’ve never been just for the ride. One day soon after school let out, they rode the Red Line from one end to the other and were in process of doing the same on the Yellow Line on the Monday before graduation when they exited a train car, not noticing their phone had slipped out of their pocket onto their seat or the floor. They realized what had happened when their podcast cut out as they watched the train the phone was on pull away with it. Metro Lost and Found didn’t respond to inquiries, so we had to get North a new phone. I told them it was an extra graduation present.

7. Being Promoted to Honor Thespian

The same day they lost their phone, Beth, North, and I attended the induction ceremony for the International Thespian Society in the courtyard of their school. There was music playing from various shows that have been put on over the past three years and cake and then we watched all the new and returning thespians each light a votive candle and set it afloat in a metal tub of water. When the candles bump up against each other in the water the melting wax causes some of them fuse. The theater director, Mr. S, explained that each time it creates a different collective pattern from everyone’s individual contribution, just like live theater performance does. It’s a very simple but beautiful ceremony.

Mr. S introduced each student and announced how much credit each had earned for acting, crew work, writing Cappies reviews, participating theater outside school, or taking a theater class. You need at least ten points total in two categories to be inducted and then there are a few levels above that. North was inducted last spring with twenty points, earned thirty more this year, and was awarded ten more from taking an acting class in tenth grade (due to a recent rule change). This meant they will graduate at the Honors Thespian level. The next day at graduation rehearsal, they came home with thespian cords and a Cappies medal (plus a certificate for earning a GPA of 3.75 or higher).

8. Graduating

Graduation was at ten a.m. Thursday at DAR Constitution Hall in the District, and the students were supposed to arrive at 8:30, so we left the house at 7:20. We dropped North off and headed for Peet’s Coffee, where I got a latte and Noah and I split an apple Danish. Beth and I took off on separate walks while Noah waited for us there. The doors were supposed to open for guests at nine, so we were surprised to see the graduates still milling around outside when we arrived.

Instead of letting the kids in first, the doors opened, and everyone was let in at 9:15. North was annoyed at having to wait so long, but that’s how these things go sometimes. We found our seats and waited. We picked a spot where Noah thought would be good for photos, and we noticed Talia’s family on the other side of the hall almost directly across from us. Talia and North went to preschool together and reconnected in high school when they worked on some of the same shows together. Talia’s mom and I have been good friends since our kids were two. Because North went to high school out of boundary and most of their friends this year were juniors, I knew many fewer of the kids graduating than I did at Noah’s graduation, so it was nice to be able to see Talia’s folks experiencing the same thing, if from a distance.

So, you’ve been to a graduation before, right? They are all very similar. There are speeches. The graduates cross the stage and collect their diplomas. People are told at the beginning to hold their applause until all the names have been called and no one does that. (There was an especially fervent fan club of a girl named Sophia sitting near us.)

Beth predicted ahead of time that covid would feature prominently in the speeches since this class had their first year of high school almost completely online. The principal spoke about that and about how their first year was his first year as principal of the school, and how it took a while for him to get to know their class. The student speaker quoted the song “Life is a Highway” and used it as a metaphor for their trip through their high school years, from the online ninth grade year through the masks, distancing, and limited extracurriculars of their sophomore year to the more open last two years.

I always pay attention to names, and while I didn’t go so far as to count to see what was most popular, it seems there were quite a lot of Zoës and Sophias in North’s class. The most interesting names belonged to a boy whose two middle names were John Coltrane and a girl who was named Love Lee Angel plus one more middle name and a last name.

After we’d gone from Abrahams to Zuniga, all the names had been called. Caps flew into the air. North only tossed theirs a few inches because they’d bejeweled it with the Oberlin logo and they wanted to keep it for pictures. That was what we did next. We met El and several of North’s junior friends who’d come to perform in the choir or watch the ceremony—for pictures.

The rest of the day had been planned by North. We went to Sunflower for a late lunch. It’s our favorite vegetarian Chinese restaurant but we don’t go often because it’s in Vienna, Virginia, which is kind of a hike from where we live. We most often go in October, as it’s near our traditional pumpkin patch. We were all very hungry by the time we got there, and the food was delicious. We are especially fond of the fake shrimp.

Back in Maryland, frozen yogurt was our next stop, but I had to abstain because it was too close to lunch and my blood sugar was in what I consider the special occasion range and still rising. Next, we went to downtown Silver Spring and watched Challengers, which was fun. Miles and Maddie met us there after the movie was over for more pictures because they hadn’t managed to meet up with us in the city.

We got home and had a late dinner of frozen entrees. We figured ahead of time there would be no time to cook dinner that night, so we’d stocked up. While we ate, North opened their graduation gifts. They’d previously opened checks from both grandmothers; Noah got them an earring rack; I got them two t-shirts from Takoma businesses (a Takoma Beverage Company shirt with rainbow letters and a tie-dyed shirt from People’s Book where North’s queer poetry book club met); and Beth got them a stuffed white squirrel wearing an Oberlin College t-shirt. North had requested a stuffed white squirrel that was “less scary” than the angry-looking mascot they’d found on the campus store’s website. Beth made the t-shirt herself with an iron-on Oberlin logo. I told them my gift and Beth’s were to remind them of where they’d come from and where they were going.

And then North had to finish up their packing because the very next day they were…

Going to Camp

The next day Beth, North, and I drove to the Girl Scout camp in western Virginia where they are going to spend most of the summer as a counselor. It’s in the George Washington National Forest, near the West Virginia border. Beth had a meeting that went until one and we left soon after. The drive was supposed to take two and a half to three hours, but with traffic it took almost four, with a few brief pit stops for coffee, gas, and restrooms. We listened to podcasts (Handsome, Normal Gossip, and The Moth) and watched the scenery get less suburban and more mountainous. We arrived at camp at five, a half hour late for counselor orientation, but the staff person who met us said the tour had just started and North hadn’t missed much. We dropped their stuff off in their cabin and said a hasty goodbye.

I would have liked to get a better look at the camp, but from what I saw it was much more rustic than the Girl Scout camp they attended the summers they were nine, ten, and eleven. There are no flush toilets, and the cabins have no electricity. I know there’s a charging station counselors can use, plus washing machines, driers, and refrigerators somewhere, and a row of sinks with running water in a shelter outside the latrines, so there are some modern conveniences.

It felt strange to drive away so soon after arriving, but North gets weekends off—the campers rotate in and out every week and the sessions run from Sundays to Fridays, with Saturdays off for counselors—and there’s a bus that runs between Silver Spring and camp that both campers and counselors can take, so they intend to come home sometimes, maybe as soon as in two weeks.

Meanwhile, in News of the Other Kid….

After leaving camp, we found an Italian restaurant nearby where we had pizza before hitting the road back to our own summer as a trio. A summer, which will involve employment for Noah, as it turns out. As we approached the restaurant I got a text from him. Do any of you remember the job he interviewed for in February with a media company that took forever to get back to him? Well, he got that job. It’s a full-time video editing position that will start in about a week and last until early November. The company makes video content for businesses, organizations, and Democratic political campaigns. They’re hiring extra help for the election season.

Noah’s been working only sporadically since last summer (most often for this very office) so it’s a relief for him to have something steady for the next several months. It looks like both kids are embarking on summer adventures, expected and unexpected, as they travel life’s highway. I’m very happy for them both.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Category Archives: Excursions

Ten for December

Before Breakfast: A Long Hop

Fall Break AF

Eight for October

Three Weekends

Between Camp and College

Interlude

Comings and Goings

Summer’s Coming Around Again

Life is a Highway