The World You Want to Live in

Posted on May 20, 2025 by Steph

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Wednesday

The day after we got back from Oberlin, we had my birthday cake (lemon with strawberry-cream cheese frosting, made by Beth, delicious as always) and Beth and I opened more birthday and Mother’s Day presents, those from Noah and gifts that had arrived in the mail while we were gone. Counting what we opened in Oberlin, Beth got a big pile of dark chocolate, and I got four books, three jars of nut butter, and tickets to see a Bernice Johnson Reagon tribute concert. It was nice to stretch the celebration out a little.

Thursday

The next day Beth and I went to the Supreme Court because they were hearing a case about birthright citizenship. North had to go into the city at the same time because they had an interview for a summer job, canvassing for the Fund for the Public Interest. If they get the job, they’ll be working for most of the summer in the Virginia suburbs on a campaign to get people to support legislation to reduce plastic pellet water pollution.

It was a warm, sunny day and there was a moderate-sized crowd in front of the court, with only one counter protester from a sketchy organization called the European Legal Defense and Education Fund. I hadn’t brought a sign, but I picked up one that said, “American Born Children Are American Children.” I thought that went right to the point. Others I liked said, “Made by Immigrants” (held by a young Asian American woman); “Born Here? Belong Here!”; and “‘All Persons’ Means All Persons.” I mean, really, the Fourteenth Amendment is crystal clear on this point. I can’t believe we even have to protest about this one, but that’s where we are.

The sound system, as is so often the case, was terrible, so I have nothing to report about the speeches. Even Representative Jamie Raskin, who can almost always make himself heard, was only intermittently audible. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi was there, too. In fact, she walked within a few feet of me on her way to the stage. I wished I could have heard her. She is not as often at these events, so I don’t know her talking points as well as some other members of Congress. She got heckled by a young woman in camouflage and a beret for not having done enough when she was Speaker. I get annoyed at woker-than-thou people sometimes, when it would be more helpful to stick together and support people who show up, even those who are more moderate than you’d like. Not that I think this kind of thing probably bothers Pelosi much.

North was thinking of joining us for the end of the rally after their interview, but it was already wrapping up when they finished, so we met at Union Station instead and had lunch. They said they have a second interview on Monday and that they were given to understand most people who get a second interview get a job offer. Still, we are not counting unhatched chickens.

Friday

Late Friday afternoon, Beth and I drove out to a pizzeria in Bethesda, where we got an eggplant parmesan small plate and pizza with arugula and cherry tomatoes. I also had half a slice of tiramisu. It was a pre-concert dinner date. We were going to the Strathmore Music Center and since we got there early, we took a stroll in the sculpture garden and by a couple ponds with fountains and noisy frogs.

We were there to see a tribute concert to Bernice Johnson Reagon, civil rights icon and founding member of Sweet Honey in the Rock, organized by her daughter the singer Toshi Reagon. On entering we were given tote bags emblazoned with a quote from Reagon, “When you begin to imagine and act as if you are living in the world you want to live in you will have company.”

Family members, scholars, and singers sang and spoke about Reagon’s life and work. There were sing-alongs for some of Reagon’s more famous songs (with very precise and pointedly humorous instructions from Toshi about when the audience was to sing and not sing). She also spoke about different political issues between songs, especially environmental ones.

The two surviving members of the original SNCC Freedom Singers sang and though they looked somewhat frail in body, their voices are still strong. Hearing them felt like a brush with history.

Saturday

Saturday morning, Beth, North, and I headed to the mall to see a display of art by trans people on blue, pink, and white panels arranged into the stripes of the trans flag with panels in the middle spelling out “Freedom to Be.” You can see an overhead photo in the link above. The project was sponsored by the ACLU and inspired by the AIDS quilt. The panels were from all over the country, with a surprising number from Idaho and West Virginia. There was supposed to be a rally at noon, but by 12:25 it hadn’t started, and we had decided to leave when there was an announcement that it wouldn’t start for fifteen to twenty minutes.

We decided we’d already seen the most unique facet of the event already and we’d rather have lunch than go to another rally, so we headed for a vegan fast-food place nearby. I got a cheesesteak, and it was quite convincing, though you should bear in mind I haven’t had a real one since the late 80s.

Sunday

We stayed close to home. I was coming down with a cold and spent a lot of the day in bed, reading my book club book and writing much of this post and the previous one. North made almond butter chocolate chip cookies and Beth put a lot of plants in the ground in the garden and built a mesh structure with a gate to enclose them.

Monday

North’s second interview consisted of shadowing a canvasser and then giving the spiel a try themselves. They got people to give money at two houses. They will do this for three more days (Wednesday through Friday)—and be paid for those days—before they find out if they have the job. But they also have an interview at a day camp on Friday morning, so they are keeping their options open.

Today

Meanwhile Noah volunteered to do some extra chores today (scrubbing fans in addition to mowing the lawn) so he could be excused later in the week. He is supposed to have some work from Mike soon, which is good because he hasn’t been working much recently. His last gig was a day of sorting through archival footage for a documentary about a labor union last week. I hope both kids are gainfully employed this summer, with bonus points for the work being enjoyable and/or meaningful. Honestly, I’d be happy with two out of three for each of them.

But beyond the short term, this is the kind of world I want to live in—one full of celebration, one in which newcomers are welcome and valued for their contributions to our country, one in which the heroes of the past are honored and we don’t have to re-litigate all the battles they fought, and one in which people are free to be themselves. Let’s try to imagine it.

May Days

Posted on May 5, 2025 by Steph

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May Day

Often on May Day I will go to downtown Takoma Park in the morning, get a coffee and a pastry and watch the Morris Dancers usher in the second half of spring. During the first spring of the pandemic, back when North was more actively Wiccan, we built a Maypole and promenaded around it. This year instead of celebrating the pagan aspects of the holiday, we embraced the more political side of May Day and attended not one, but two protests.

The first rally was in support of immigrants. I met Beth at her office, and we took the Metro to Franklin Square where the rally started. It was supposed to go from 11:30 to 3:00, but Beth needed to work before and after, so we showed up at Franklin Square at noon. The sound system (which had been working early on, we learned from one of Beth’s colleagues), had given out and speakers were trying, with limited success, to make themselves heard with bullhorns and microphones.

But it was a warm, sunny day and there were a lot of people Beth knew from work, and interesting people-watching, as there often is at these events. I especially liked a cardboard cutout of Trump labeled “Liar” with flames that emerged from and retracted back into his pants. It was operated with a lever, I think.

I noticed a lot of images of butterflies, abstract purple ones on little hand-held signs and big fabric monarch butterflies that people were carrying. You can see one in the middle ground of the first photo—between me and the White House. I asked one person with a little sign what it meant, and she said she didn’t know, someone had given it to her. Beth guessed that it was probably a symbol for migrants because some species of butterflies migrate and it turned out she was right. (I married a smart cookie.)

Around twelve-thirty, we began a long, round-about march to Lafayette Square in front of the White House. It took an hour and a half to get there, and we walked through our old neighborhood, where we lived from 1991 to 2002, a time span that included the first year of Noah’s life. When we passed within a half-block of our apartment building, we peeled off the march to pay homage to it. Beth noted that in the twenty-three years since we lived there, the gingko trees that line the block have grown taller. It wasn’t the only change—the commercial blocks of 14^th Street have an almost completely different set of businesses than when we lived there. Beth suspected we were walking down 14^th Street so we could chant “What’s disgusting? Union busting” at a restaurant that’s been trying to stops its employees from unionizing.

Once we turned onto R St, the gracious townhouses and old apartment buildings looked more familiar. On 16^th Street we passed NEA and AFL-CIO headquarters, where staff stood outside their buildings with signs. We cheered them, they cheered us, and then they joined the march. (There was support from passers-by along the route, too.)

We didn’t stay long at Lafayette Square once we got there because Beth needed to squeeze in a couple hours of work before the next rally. I had brought my laptop, thinking I might work, too, but I forgot the notes I needed at home, so I ate the lunch I’d packed, read a few sections of the Post I’d brought with me, and started writing this.

By four-twenty, Noah had arrived at the office to accompany us to a labor rally. Beth was in a meeting, but we left as soon as she was ready. We proceeded to Freedom Plaza. As we approached, I noted that there was an ice cream truck and that I had already walked 18,000 steps that day (by bedtime, I was up to 21,000 steps) and according to my monitor, my blood sugar was getting low and falling quickly. “Do you need ice cream?” Beth asked. I said I did, and I got some for myself and Noah, too. Beth had been so busy at her office she had only just eaten lunch, so she abstained.

The sound system was better at this rally so we could hear speakers from various unions and workers who were organizing. We heard from a kindergarten teacher, a bartender, a flight attendant, and others. There most notable Trump cutout at this rally portrayed him as a vampire, with blood running down his face. We left around six, though the event was supposed to continue until eight. We were footsore and my legs had chafed from all the walking, and I needed to get dinner started.

Birthday

Two days later, Noah turned twenty-four. We got the party started a day early by going out for our traditional Friday night pizza at his choice of restaurant—Roscoe’s, followed by gelato, and then we came home and watched La chimera. I’d asked Noah if he wanted to draw a movie from the pile of index cards on which we’ve written the names films we’ve agreed to watch (this would be the normal procedure) or if he’d like to watch the one that he’d contributed. He opted to leave it to chance. Beth said later, “I could have predicted that,” and pleasingly, it turned out he picked his own movie.

Saturday morning Beth made the cake, chocolate with fresh strawberry buttercream, and Noah watched car racing. In the afternoon, Beth and I both painted the fence—this project is ongoing—but we excused him from fence duty since it was his birthday. We took a break in the mid-afternoon to eat the cake and for him to open his presents. He got an upgraded membership to a podcast he likes, a t-shirt from a show he likes, and three books (two from the Discworld series and one from the Murderbot series) with more presents still to arrive. Over the course of the day, he talked and texted with both grandmothers and North.

That evening we set out for the city, to have dinner at a Chinese-Japanese-Peruvian fusion restaurant Noah chose and to the D.C. Film Festival to watch an Icelandic film. (Noah had been to the festival earlier in the week to see a movie, in his words about “a Turkish phone sex operator who has to coordinate a disaster response.”)

At dinner we got several dishes to share—yucca fries, cilantro dumplings filled with squash, Brussels sprouts in a chili glaze, cauliflower, a deep-fried egg (crunchy on the outside and soft inside), and fried rice decorated with watermelon rind cut into the shapes of little airplanes. The dish is called “Aeroporto” (Airport). For dessert, Noah and I tried the national dessert of Peru—a custard made of sweetened condensed milk with passionfruit shaved ice and meringue sticks on top. Everything was very good. If you’re local, it’s worth a visit. Our only complaint was that the fried rice dish was supposed to come with egg noodles and none were in evidence.

The movie was about a middle-aged trans woman, the main cook at a seafood restaurant in a fishing village, and how her relationship with her best friend, the owner of the restaurant, changes when she comes out. The friend is also coming to grips with his own struggling marriage and his relationship with his gay teenage son and the restaurant is undergoing significant changes, too. It was well done, and I recommend it if it’s streaming any time soon.

Beth and I are early-to-bed types, so the movie kept us up past our bedtime, but it was a fun evening and worth it to celebrate the birth of our eldest. And with my birthday and Mother’s Day in less than a week, more celebration is on the horizon.

Rise Again

Posted on April 23, 2025 by Steph

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Rise again, rise again!
Though your heart it be broken, and life about to end
No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend
Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again!

From “The Mary Ellen Carter,” by Stan Rogers

I first heard of the song “The Mary Ellen Carter” when a friend posted it on Facebook on Easter about a year into the pandemic. It’s not literally about Easter, but about a shipwreck, and more broadly, resilience and not giving up on valuable things when others have. Because of when John posted it, I often think of it at Easter now. Though I haven’t lost life, home, love, or friends, some people already have, so the song’s message is certainly needed now.

Here are a few things we are not giving up on:

Wednesday: Justice

A week ago today, Beth, Noah, and I went to protest for Kilmar Abrego Garcia in front of the Civic Center in Silver Spring. Seeing the plaza fill up with people reminded me of this protest, almost five years ago. There was a group of people in pink, fluorescent vests that read “Rapid Response Choir” on the back, which made Beth laugh and say, “Everyone has to have their thing.” The choir was practicing “We Shall Not Be Moved,” and accompanying themselves with bongo drums and a tambourine.

We had responded rapidly as well, only hearing of the protest that morning. Beth made a sign that said, “Stop the Abductions Now” on one side and “Bring Them Home” on the other. Mine said, “No Concentration Camps” on one side and was blank on the other because I forgot to do both sides. We were there early, so we paced back and forth across the plaza to get some steps.

When the program of speakers began in the area where there’s a skating rink in the winter, people moved in closer to hear. It was mostly state and local elected officials and people from non-profits. Being packed in, I could see a lot of signs. Of course, there were signs that went right to the point, saying things like “Bring Kilmar Home,” “Detention without Due Process is Kidnapping.”

There was someone holding a sign that quoted the Emma Lazarus poem from the Statue of Liberty “Give me your tired, your poor…The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” There were a lot of signs that said things like “Due Process,” “Rule of Law,” or “No Kings.” These are the things we want these days—it’s that basic.

Signs thanking Senator Van Hollen were among the most common because the day of the protest was the day our senator was flying to El Salvador to visit Abrego Garcia. Most of the speakers cited his visit and people clapped enthusiastically each time. It’s interesting that Van Hollen was the one to step up because he’s the more moderate of our senators. He’s on the Foreign Relations Committee, though, so maybe that’s why. Or maybe this was just his moment to rise to the occasion.

Toward the end of protest, I dropped my phone on the hard cement that’s under the ice rink part of the year. The screen didn’t just crack, a small piece of it fell out and you could glimpse the inside of the phone through the hole. Surprisingly, it didn’t immediately stop working, but fairly soon it had stopped responding to touch, even though I could still see messages flashing across the screen.

To make a long story short, it took three days to get it fixed and for someone who didn’t even get a smartphone until 2015, I had an embarrassingly hard time living without one for that long. I missed my podcasts the most. It was difficult to motivate myself to take walks or do outside chores without them. I also felt as if I was wasting the glucose monitor on my arm (which is read with my phone). They only last two weeks and my insurance has decided to stop covering them and I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do about that, so missing three days’ use of what could be one of the last ones was disheartening.

Friday: Art

Beth had the day off for Good Friday. She worked on our fence in the morning. We’ve been scraping off the loose paint, sanding it, washing it, and rubbing it down with vinegar to halt the growth of mildew in preparation for re-painting it. We’ve been at this for a couple weeks. It’s a big project (and not one we chose—the city cited us for peeling paint).

That afternoon, at Noah’s suggestion, we visited the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. DOGE had already been to The National Gallery of Art, so it’s clear the Smithsonian and art in general are in the crosshairs. It seemed like a good idea to see uncensored art for free, while we still can.

We started in the Portrait Gallery and since I didn’t have my phone, I asked Beth to take pictures of Toni Morrison and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Moving at different speeds, we kept drifting apart and reuniting so I didn’t remember to ask her to take any more, but I was particularly drawn to paintings and sculptures of writers—Sappho, Edgar Alan Poe, Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, etc. Speaking of writers, we caught the James Baldwin exhibit which was days from the end of its run. Afterward, I wished I had lingered longer there, but I found the photos of Baldwin with Nina Simone particularly joyful.

We also went through an exhibit of portraits all the U.S. Presidents in order, including this one of Barack Obama. His was the most recent one. There are placeholder photographs of President Biden and Trump who have not had their portraits done yet. I saw a preschooler in a MAGA hat lingering with his parents near the Trump photo, which was upsetting, but I suppose we were lucky to see only one such hat in the roughly three hours we were there. But still, on an innocent child…

We left the museum and got pizza at Wiseguy and ice cream at Haägen-Dazs, went home, and watched the first two-thirds of The Last Showgirl, too tired to finish it.

Saturday: Rest

There were big protests all over the country on Saturday, and millions attended. There were at least three separate events in D.C. to choose from. Beth went to another march for Abrego Garcia, this one starting at the Washington Monument and proceeding to the White House. I thought about going, but I didn’t. I had not slept well the night before and I was feeling fatigued and generally burned out. I felt a little guilty about skipping the protest, but Maya reminded me that self-care is important, too.

Beth dropped me off at the mailing center where my phone was being fixed on her way to the Metro, and I picked it up. Within ten minutes of getting it back, I texted Beth to demonstrate that it was indeed fixed, checked my blood sugar, and restarted a podcast that had been in progress when the phone broke three days earlier. I walked for almost an hour and when I got home, my mood was much improved, and I had a big appetite. I had a veggie burger, broccoli, carrot sticks, and a half dozen tater tots for lunch and I was surprised how good the food tasted.

Over the course of the day, I read six chapters of Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (for book club), Noah and I read from Norwegian Wood and watched an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale and later we made crispy gnocchi with roasted asparagus and leeks for dinner and then all three of us watched the end of The Last Showgirl. It was just the kind of day I needed.

Easter: Tradition

We don’t usually have big plans for Easter, but I’d sent North a care package—a box full of Easter candy, packed with Easter grass—and they’d received it the weekend before Easter. “It’s good to know the Easter Bunny delivers,” they said when we spoke to them that morning.

We had candy, here, too. I put Noah’s in a basket, but I didn’t hide it, just left it on the kitchen counter, and Noah commented the Bunny “didn’t do a very good job” hiding the goods.

Beth and I had been going back and forth about whether to dye eggs this year. I wondered if it was a strange thing to do with no minors in the house (though I announced I will carve pumpkins at Halloween for the rest of my life and then Beth said she was visualizing me carving a pumpkin on my death bed).

Anyway, I asked Noah if he was interested the day before Easter and he said yes, so Beth bought extra eggs when she did the grocery shopping on Sunday morning and after Noah watched a Formula One race and Beth and I washed part of the fence, we gathered to dye the eggs. We did two each. Beth’s are on either end of the line, including the red egg holding a protest sign. Mine are the red and purple one covered in stickers and the green and yellow one that says “Resist” in white crayon (the whole word isn’t visible in the photo). Noah made the blue smiling one and the pink and teal one with the white zigzag. It was fun. I was glad we did it.

Easter Monday: Memories

The next day, Beth and I were back at work and Noah worked on treating a stretch of the fence with a vinegar solution. I made egg salad out four of our Easter eggs and served it on toast with crudites for dinner. It seemed a shame to peel off their colorful shells just a day after dyeing them, but I was storing them in the fridge, so no one was seeing them anyway.

Earlier in the day I was walking through the living room, and I caught sight of another Easter egg, a pale green wooden one from the 2014 White House Easter Egg Roll, with Barack and Michelle Obama’s signatures printed on the back. And it occurred to me that this year’s Easter Egg Roll, sullied with corporate sponsors who seem to be trying to buy their way out of federal lawsuits, was underway right then. That was a depressing thought. But I took the wooden egg off the mantle and set it next to my computer to keep me company for a few hours while I worked. Every time I looked at it I remember taking my eight-year-old child to have an iconic Washington experience, in brighter days.

Earth Day: The Environment

I had hoped to plant some sunflower and zinnia seeds on Earth Day, but I didn’t get around to it. My only observations of the day were making a cream of spinach soup for dinner (because it was a vibrant green color) and writing a check to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. I’d read about how federal cuts and a budget shortfall in Maryland will endanger the decades-long cleanup efforts that have been moving in the right direction but are not finished. This breaks my heart because I love the bay.

But I haven’t given up on the Earth, its large ecosystems or our tiny corner of it, so I will eventually plant those seeds. Keep planting yours, too.

Nine Days, Nineteen Years

Posted on March 30, 2025 by Steph

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

Day 1: Saturday, Arrival

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

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

Day 2: Sunday, Birthday Party

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 6: Thursday, In the Heights

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 7: Friday, Cherry Blossoms

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

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

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

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

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

Days 8-9: Saturday to Sunday, Goodbyes

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

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

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

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

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

First Steps

Posted on January 6, 2025 by Steph

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

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

New Year’s Day: First Hike

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

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

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

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

Thursday to Sunday: First Road Trip

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome Christmas

Posted on December 22, 2024 by Steph

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

From How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Return to the Nest

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

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

Second to Last Weekend Before Christmas

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

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

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

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

Last Work Week

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

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

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

Solstice/Last Weekend Before Christmas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ten for December

Posted on December 10, 2024 by Steph

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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.