The Grad Who’s Going Places

Posted on May 28, 2023 by Steph

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Friday: Senior Splash and Arrival

Okay, settle in. This is a long one.

We hit the road for Ithaca on Friday morning. It had been another busy week, with our first session with a new family therapist (on Tuesday) and an appointment to have North measured for orthotics for their feet, knee braces, and a compression suit for their torso (on Thursday). The most interesting part of that appointment for me was watching the technician scan North’s feet with a camera and create a 3-D image of them on his computer screen. Everything should be ready for North to try on for adjustments the last week in June.

At 1:30 p.m., a little after we passed Harrisburg, Noah and the rest of the class of ’23 waded into the Dillingham Fountains for Senior Splash, an Ithaca tradition. It was live streamed for about an hour, but when I tried to watch it on my phone, I couldn’t get the video to start. Asked about it later, Noah said 1) yes, the water was cold (the event had been postponed two days because on Wednesday the high was 50 degrees—on Friday it was in the low 70s); 2) no, you did not have to prove you were a senior to get in the water, it was on the honor system; and 3) yes, it was fun. He received a t-shirt and a towel as mementos.

At four p.m., as we were driving through the Tioga mountains near the Pennsylvania-New York border, I was concentrating on sending Noah good thoughts because he had another interview for a video editing internship for a production company. Or I thought he did. Turns out it was postponed until Tuesday.

We got to our Airbnb around six and were delighted to find a pair of geese and their five fuzzy goslings in a little pond behind it. (Later a heron would join them.) We ordered pizza, and then went to pick Noah up from his apartment and the pizza up from Franco’s. When Noah came out of his building, I launched myself at him and gave him such an enthusiastic hug that he laughed. We went upstairs briefly so I could see his place, which I knew looked almost exactly like his junior year apartment—it was in the same complex—but I wanted to see it anyway.

I have two strong memories of Franco’s that washed over me when we walked inside the pizzeria. We ate there in April of 2019 when we visited Ithaca for Admitted Students’ Day and Noah was trying to decide between Ithaca, RIT, and Boston University. North was in Colombia on foreign exchange trip, and I remember messaging with their host mom while we waited for the pizza. The second memory was in July 2020 when we came to collect Noah’s belongings from the dorm room he couldn’t return to after spring break, because covid cut that school year short. Back then, Franco’s was operating on a takeout-only basis, and there was a crowd on the sidewalk, waiting, trying to stay as distanced from each other as possible. As we waited, a passerby yelled to all those assembled, “Best pizza in Ithaca!”

I don’t know if it is, as I haven’t tried all the options (and Noah did not offer an opinion when asked), but it’s good, and we enjoyed it before settling in to watch a couple episodes of Blackish, having decided it was kind of late to start a movie (me) and the screen of the Airbnb’s television was too small to do justice to a movie (Noah).

Saturday: Iconic Ithaca

On Saturday we tried to hit as many of our favorite places in Ithaca as we could. We had breakfast at Ithaca Bakery (second breakfast for me and Beth as we were up hours before the kids). While we were there, we picked up Noah’s graduation cake, and I thought nostalgically about the fact that I’ve ordered cupcakes from this bakery every semester he’s been on campus for his half-birthdays and birthdays. Beth bought some of the rosemary-salt bagels she likes there. I got a latte and an almond croissant, and they were both very good.

Next, we went grocery shopping at Wegman’s, where we’ve often bought groceries to stock his apartment kitchens. This time we were getting supplies for his post-graduation picnic.

Lunch was at Moosewood, at Noah’s request. We ate outside, under the famous striped awning. We’ve eaten at Moosewood a couple times before, starting with his first prospective visit in August 2018, though the last time we tried to go (when we were dropping him off for his junior year) it closed suddenly due to a staff member getting covid and our reservations were cancelled. North hadn’t been with us on either of our previous visits, so it was their first time, and they were happy to finally visit the iconic restaurant associated with several cookbooks I’ve been cooking from their whole life. They got a black bean burger and said it was really good. We all shared a cheese board, and I had a bowl of cream of pea soup and an iced ginger tea. At lunch, Noah opened his graduation present from us, a new camera lens.

We walked partway down the Taughannock trail after lunch, but we didn’t make it all the way to the main falls. It was pleasant to walk in the woods and along the dry half of the pocked stone riverbed. Noah took the opportunity to try out his new lens. It was drizzling when we started the walk and raining a little harder by the end. We had two umbrellas between us and shared them.

We went to Purity Ice Cream (another favorite place) after our hike and then Beth left me and North at the house so she and Noah could take a chair from his apartment (the only furniture in the place that was his and which was too big to bring home) to drop it off for donation. North and I both went to bed, as they had a headache, and I was sleepy because I hadn’t slept well for two nights in a row. When Beth and Noah got home, he made baked ziti for dinner because he’d bought the ingredients and never got around to making it for himself. We were expecting Beth’s mom, her aunt Carole, and Carole’s granddaughter Holly to arrive late that evening and Noah said it was nice to make a full recipe and not have to scale it down for solo dining.

After dinner Beth, Noah, and I went to the Commencement Eve concert and fireworks show. It was in the arena where Commencement would be held the next day and where we’d seen presentations and eaten catered meals when Noah was a prospective and checked him in during orientation his freshman year. Everywhere we turned all weekend, we were awash in memories.

The concert featured a choir, a wind ensemble, a jazz ensemble, a trumpet troupe, and a dance group. The groups were on different parts of the stage and the lights would go on the left, center, or right, depending which band was playing, leaving the rest of the stage dark. This meant there was no moving on and off stage, which streamlined the event considerably. The musicians also performed the songs seamlessly, with no breaks. This gave the event a very propulsive feel. The audience was instructed to hold its applause until the end and for the first few songs it did, as there really was no time to applaud. But eventually people started applauding over the beginning of each new song, because that’s how people are. Anyway, the musicians (all music majors) were very talented. It was a great concert and I say this as someone who has been to a lot of band concerts. The fireworks display was fun, too, even though it was damp and chilly out.

We dropped Noah off at his apartment and when we got back to the house, YaYa, Carole, and Holly had just arrived, after a long drive from West Virginia. They tucked into the baked ziti and after some conversation, we went to bed.

Sunday: Commencement

Commencement was the next morning, or I should say the next morning and afternoon, because it lasted three and half hours. It was nice, but probably very much like any commencement you’ve been to before. Before it started, quotes from students and their photos flashed by on a screen. (We never saw Noah’s and found out later he had not submitted either.)

The keynote speaker, an alumnus from the class of 1980 who works as a theater producer, was reasonably entertaining and gave pretty good advice that boiled down to—take risks, be kind, and enjoy the ride. Another alum, a civil rights activist, received an honorary degree. The student speaker was bubbly. The last hour and a half consisted of the reading of the names, almost one thousand two hundred of them. The graduates were called to the stage in the order they had taken their seats, not alphabetically or by school, so there was no way to know when your kid’s name was going to come up unless you could see the graduates’ seating area and I could not. Noah was near the end and eventually he started texting Beth to let her know how far he was from going onstage.

And then it was over, the graduates moved their tassels from one side to the other, confetti came streaming down from the ceiling, and mortarboards flew into the air. (That was when I cried a little.) Noah kept his mortarboard, and I was glad he did because I wanted to get pictures of him in full regalia afterward. He had cords for graduating summa cum laude, for the Communications honor society, and for working for ICTV. We walked around campus and took pictures in front of the Park School of Communications and the fountain where just two days before, he’d taken a dip.

By the time we got back to the house and reconnected with Carole and Holly, who had been exploring Ithaca while the rest of us were at graduation, it was mid-afternoon. We had a picnic lunch at a little park by a pond nearby. North had made pasta salad, Beth made a tofu salad, and we had cheese and crackers and chips, berries, watermelon, and mango. It was a feast. There was also cake. I’d been torn between surprising Noah with it or letting him choose the flavors and I let him choose. It was chocolate with cream cheese frosting and chocolate ganache between the four layers and it was excellent. Holly, who works at a bakery, raved about it.

After the picnic, we all drove around to see Taughannock Falls from the upper overlook and Buttermilk Falls. Everyone but YaYa and Carole walked along a short bit of the wooded trail there.

People ate various leftovers for dinner and YaYa, Carole, and Holly gave Noah cards, money, and a class of ’23 mug. Then Beth, and Holly, and the kids went out for ice cream again. I stayed home and while they were gone, I started to feel ill with a stomachache and dizziness. I’m still not sure what was wrong but based on the graph on my glucose monitor app, I think I might have been having a blood sugar crash. I am not particularly sensitive to my spikes and drops—I usually have no idea they’re happening until I see them later on the graph—but if that’s what it was, I now know two pieces of cake in one day might not be a good idea, even if the second one is very small.

Even though I didn’t feel well, I stayed up because I knew we were all going to watch Noah’s senior project when everyone got back. It’s a film about suicide, called It’s Not Your Fault, based on the experiences of one of the other filmmakers. Julius was the co-director, editor, and screenwriter, and also acted in it. His close friend from high school killed himself during their sophomore year of college. Noah was the other director, lead editor, producer, and the software developer. It’s an interactive movie, sort of like a choose-your-own adventure book. There are two places where you decide what action the characters will take, so there are various paths through it, but they all lead to the same ending. When Noah and I were discussing this earlier in the semester and I said that sounded kind of nihilistic, but he said the point of that was to stress that the character who did not prevent his friend’s death was not to blame, and then I understood.

Monday: Departure #1

In the morning I packed up the rental house kitchen while Noah and Beth packed up his apartment. The house’s checkout time was an hour earlier than his apartment checkout time, so when we were ready to leave, the rest of us headed out to his building so the West Virginia contingent could say their goodbyes and Beth and I could help Noah carry things down from his third-floor apartment and pack them into the car. Despite the fact that Beth had been to Ithaca the previous weekend to take home some of his belongings, he still had a lot of stuff and when it was all spread out on the sidewalk behind the nearly full car it looked kind of hopeless. We considered our options: should buy some packing materials and mail things home, find a place to donate things, throw things away?

Beth and Noah set to work opening bins that weren’t completely full and packing things into them and into the little crevices between boxes, performing some minor miracles and nearly eliminating the pile. I filled up half the legroom in the passenger seat and Noah and I put things on our seats to carry in our laps. He took his wastebasket to the lobby of the building where other people were leaving abandoned items. In the end all we had to throw out was a pair of worn-out sneakers and food, a couple grocery bags worth. I felt acutely guilty for the waste, but there didn’t seem to be any other option.

Beth and I had packed lunches with food from the rental house and we got Chipotle for the kids. We picnicked at Buttermilk Falls. Noah took some final pictures of the falls, and we got in the stuffed car and left Ithaca. I remarked that considering I never lived in Ithaca, only visited a half dozen times over the course of five years, I was surprisingly sad not to have a reason to return. Beth said she was, too. The only one of us who has lived in Ithaca did not comment, but he did seem a little wistful at the falls. It’s a really fun place to visit, full of natural beauty and good food. But perhaps I will be falling in love with another college town soon.

It was nine-thirty when we got home, after another picnic meal of Indian takeout eaten near a lake in York, PA. We did only the most necessary unpacking (perishable food), glanced at the mail, and fell into bed.

Tuesday: Home

Noah had not quite two days at home, and the first one was busy. He had two interviews, one in the early afternoon and one in the evening. Beth, North, and I went to family therapy in the morning before he was up, and we returned right before the first one started.

After the first interview, Noah and I read Serpentine, a short story by Phillip Pullman that takes place in between the His Dark Materials trilogy and the Books of Dust trilogy. I bought it for his birthday, thinking it would be good for a couple days, which might be all the time we had if we didn’t have time to read in Ithaca (and we didn’t), but it was even shorter than I realized. It only took about a half hour to read. It was enjoyable, though.

Also that afternoon, the kids and I cleaned the porch. This is an annual tradition involving a hose, buckets of soapy water, a push broom, and rags. We do it in May or June around the time the pollen has stopped falling and mixing with a year’s worth of dirt into a grimy mess on the floors and walls of the porch. This activity tends to end in some kind of water play, so we all wear bathing suits to do it. Before North got home from school, Noah and I carried all the furniture and ladders and everything else we store on the porch to the front yard, and I started to wipe them down with damp rags.

When North got home Noah stationed himself next to the porch with a hose and buckets that he kept refilling with clean and soapy water, while North used the broom to push water over the floor and I scrubbed the porch walls with rags. The kids did a really good job. The porch looks great. When Noah sprayed North with the hose, I realized I didn’t have my phone to document this and I went back inside to get it and then had them recreate the scene, telling them, “Make it look spontaneous.”

That night we had tofu-vegetable bowls with chow mein noodles for dinner because it’s a family favorite. At dinner Noah thought to mention that he thought the internship from his first interview of the day was his if he wanted it. It’s unpaid, but he’s willing to do that for the experience, especially now with jobs in film so scarce.

After Noah’s second interview he said even if he got that one, he thought he’d prefer the first one, so he’s going to accept it. It’s not all nailed down yet, but even so, it’s a relief that he (probably) has a position. Later that evening Beth, Noah, and I watched one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because it wouldn’t be a proper visit from Noah without that. (Just thirty-eight episodes to go.)

Wednesday-Thursday: Departure #2

I took Tuesday and Wednesday off work because Noah’s visit was so short, but he spent most of Wednesday unpacking and repacking his things, so I actually ended up working a little that day. While Beth was driving North to school in the morning, he got a robocall asking if he’d like to be switched to a direct flight because his was overbooked, but he wanted to check with Beth to see if she could get him to the airport earlier than planned and by the time he found out, the airline had given the direct flight to some other lucky traveler.

We left for the airport at three. He wanted to get there really early and it ended up being a good idea because we ran into several snags: there was unexpected traffic on the way to the airport; one of his suitcases was overweight and he had to get out of line and shift things from the heavier to the lighter bag to get them both under fifty-two pounds, saving $100 in the process; and he forgot to take his iPad out of his backpack while he was going through security and got called aside for a long time. Beth and I were watching from the other side of the cordon and wondering what on Earth was happening.

Finally, he got on his plane and while he was in the air, he was informed his connecting flight from Detroit to Los Angeles had been cancelled. So, with some coaching from Beth, he learned some high-level flying skills, like how to get one’s luggage back mid-itinerary when it’s not on the carousel. The airline put him up in hotel, so he didn’t have to sleep in the airport. It was more than twenty-four hours from the time he left DCA until he got to LAX.

But he arrived and Friday and Saturday he got settled into his apartment, which he’s sharing with three other Ithaca students. He’s been shopping for food, shoes, and housewares. He’s going to attend a watch party for the series finale of Succession with some other Ithaca folks tonight. He was supposed to attend an orientation for Ithaca students and grads in Los Angeles on Thursday, but he got switched to another one that will meet next Tuesday.

While he was flying, Noah took a picture of the ad on his seatback suggesting that an airline gift card would be a good gift for “The Grad Who’s Going Places,” and texted it to Beth. She texted back “That’s you!” and it is. In less than nine months he’s gone to Australia for a semester, then home for a month, back to New York for his final semester, and now he’s in California to begin seeking his fortune. He doesn’t have a return ticket because we don’t know where he’s going next or when, but I can’t wait to find out.

Arts & Sciences

Posted on April 29, 2023 by Steph

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It’s been a busy week for all of us, full of artistic events and (mostly medical) appointments.

Monday Afternoon and Evening: Visual and Musical Arts

In art class, North’s most recent project is a painting of cherry blossoms, based on some photos Noah took while he was home for spring break. The cherries on our block were just starting to bloom when he left in mid-March. On Monday, their teacher asked North to finish the painting so she could put it in the art show at their school later in the week. This was a nice thing to learn because the kids don’t always know ahead of time what’s going to be on display.

That night Ithaca’s Campus Band (for non-music majors) had its twice-yearly concert. It’s livestreamed, so we got to watch Noah play triangle, suspended cymbals, snare drums, and timpani. It was a short concert, just four songs, but I always enjoy hearing him play. I have since he was nine and it was a little bittersweet watching his last college band concert after all these years. My favorite song was the last one, “The Cave You Fear,” because I could hear him playing the timpani pretty well. I asked Noah about the title, and he said it’s a Joseph Campbell quote: “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” That’s something to think about, as he stands on the brink of his adult life.

Tuesday Morning: Medical Science

North had an appointment at the pain clinic at Children’s on Tuesday morning. They were being evaluated for POTS because of some dizziness they’ve been having. I didn’t go because I thought it would mainly be a procedural appointment, during which their heart rate would be measured in different positions (laying down, sitting, standing). And they did do that (and found they don’t have POTS), but they also had a long consultation about pain as well.

It was a new doctor and Beth and North both reported that they liked him. North has had a lot of experiences of not feeling heard by pain doctors, but he seemed to listen, to have reviewed their chart before the appointment, and to have consulted with the neurologist they’re seeing for their migraines, all points in his favor. He gave them a referral to see another doctor to consult about possibly getting braces to help stabilize their joints and he mentioned that the new migraine drug they are about to start might help with other kinds of pain, too. We’re all feeling cautiously hopeful about these developments. North mentioned it would be nice to have their hands freer if braces made it possible to use their cane and crutches less. They were specifically thinking of standing for long hours in the kitchen at culinary school more easily.

Tuesday Evening: Literary Arts

That night was Favorite Poem Night at the library. North was considering coming with me but didn’t because they’d gone to bed with a migraine. For years I didn’t read a poem at Favorite Poem Night because the pressure of picking one favorite poem was too overwhelming. Seven years ago, I chilled out and realized it could be just a poem I liked, and I read an Emily Dickinson poem (#670, “One Need Not Be a Chamber to Be Haunted”). I’ve read a poem most years the event has been held since then. It was cancelled for covid in 2020 and I think in 2021, too.

Tuesday, inspired by all the spring wildflowers (dandelions, asters, buttercups) in my yard, I returned to Dickinson and read poem #81, even though it’s actually about fall flowers and how they extend the floral season just when it seems to have ended.

We should not mind so small a flower—
Except it quiet bring
Our little garden that we lost
Back to the Lawn again.

So spicy her Carnations nod—
So drunken, reel her Bees—
So silver steal a hundred flutes
From out a hundred trees—

That whoso sees this little flower
By faith may clear behold
The Bobolinks around the throne
And Dandelions gold.

There were many lovely poems read, including pieces by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Alice Walker, Jack Prelutsky, Ada Limón, Mary Oliver, Robert Penn Warren, and Maya Angelou, among others, but I was particularly excited to see “What You Missed that Day You were Absent from Fourth Grade,” on the program because I just love this poem. There were two precocious little girls who read poems in French and the poet laurate of Takoma Park—yes, we have one—read from his work. It was a fun event.

Thursday Evening: Visual Arts

We had a fairly uneventful 504 meeting at North’s school Thursday morning. We didn’t make any changes to their accommodations, decided that they will stick with the half-virtual, half-in person schedule they’ve had since January for the rest of the school year, and discussed possible changes to their senior year course schedule, but we didn’t make any final decisions about that.

After the meeting was over, we decided to take a sneak peek at the art displayed in the hallway and we discovered that not only was North’s cherry blossom painting there, but also their winter landscape, which is based on a composite of a photo Noah took of me at Blackwater Falls State Park and other photos both kids have taken there. North noted with some amusement that the cherry blossom picture had been hung upside down. The blossoms are supposed to be dangling down from the branch. Beth needed to get back to work so we didn’t have a chance to look at the other art right then, but we returned that evening.

Walking through the art at a more leisurely pace, we found North had three pieces in the show. The ink wash cityscape they completed largely at home last fall and winter was there, too. We got to chat with their ninth-grade ceramics teacher who taught them virtually during the pandemic, and with their current painting teacher, and to look at painting, drawing, photography, and digital art from other classes. There was a whole room that was dedicated mostly to ceramics and other forms of three-dimensional art, which interested North because they are signed up for Ceramics 2 next year.

Friday: Theatrical Arts

In the morning, North had a psychiatrist appointment, again pretty uneventful. That night North and Beth went to see Sister Act at a high school in Virginia, so North could review it for Cappies. They’ve been really busy with this activity recently—in the past two weeks they’ve also attended and reviewed Mean Girls and Legally Blonde. The theater director and Cappies’ co-ordinator for their school reads the reviews and he pulled them aside recently and told them he really enjoys their writing.

Beth has gone to many of these shows with North and I intended to at the beginning of the school year, but because the Cappies have a meeting to debrief after the play and many of the plays are at schools pretty far away (often in Virginia), going to one usually means getting home after midnight. After the one time I did it in October, I was never up to it again. I am not the night owl I was in my youth. I always had mixed feelings about skipping the plays because I like theater and I would have liked being familiar with the performances when I read North’s reviews. And as this was the last play North would review this year, I had some FOMO as Beth and North left the house, around five p.m.

It turned out to be a good night for me to stay home, though, because an hour or so after they left, I started to feel dizzy and sick to my stomach. I ended up putting the pizza and salad I’d ordered straight into the fridge as soon as it arrived and crawled into bed at seven. I listened to podcasts for a couple hours until I fell asleep during one. I woke recovered in the morning, so I’m not sure what was wrong.

Apparently, I missed the best show of the year, according to Beth. She raved about the acting, the choreography, and the pit orchestra. North wrote the production was “dynamic and enchanting, with stunning acting, magnificent vocals, and expert behind the scenes work.”

Upcoming: Visual Arts, Medical Science, and Pastry Arts

The play was just the beginning of a busy weekend for North that will include a therapist appointment, Sol’s birthday party, and a trip to the National Art Gallery with Ranvita. Then next week North has in-person appointments at urology, the pain clinic, and a Zoom meeting with Accessibility Services at Johnson and Wales University to get more detail about what accommodations are possible in the Baking and Pastry Arts program.

Speaking of pastry arts, North has volunteered to make my birthday cupcakes next month, so in addition to appreciating both offspring’s musical, photographic, artistic, and theatrical talents, we’ll soon have the opportunity to appreciate the younger one’s baking, too.

Dragons, and Seahawks, and Cats, Oh My! College Tours

Posted on April 8, 2023 by Steph

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Friday: Takoma Park, MD to Providence, RI

It took us over ten hours to make the six-state drive to Providence for the first of three college visits we did over North’s spring break. It could have been done more quickly, but we took a lot of breaks for lunch, restroom visits, and for those of us with hourly step goals to try to meet them. I also need to walk every hour or two to prevent leg cramps.

We ordered pizza ahead of our arrival, but apparently not early enough because when we got to the busy pizzeria, the friendly young man at the counter said it wasn’t going to be ready for another forty-five minutes. That was what the app said, too, but we thought it might have been a mistake because we’d ordered almost an hour earlier. I was hungry and it was almost eight and I try not to eat after eight p.m., so I bought a slice, or I tried to—he gave it to me for free, stage-whispering not to tell anyone. I ate it in the car. It was good.

We settled into the house and Beth went back to get the much-anticipated pizza. Beth and North ate their slices while we watched the first forty minutes of Do the Right Thing. I’d nominated this film for family movie night, back in February for Black History Month, and now on the last day of March, we were getting around to it. We were too tired to watch the whole thing, though.

Saturday: Providence and Environs

The next morning, we attended the open house for Johnson and Wales University’s culinary school. This school offers the only bachelor’s degree in Baking and Pastry Arts in the country, and it is currently North’s top choice.

The event began with a scavenger hunt in the Culinary Arts Museum. There were spaces to explore, like a diner built in the 1920s and a colonial era tavern. (It wasn’t clear to me if they were real or recreations.) North had a list of things to find, such as the jacket of a celebrity chef and a prototype of the microwave from the 1940s. It was fun and North found all the items on the list. Unfortunately, they missed hearing when you were supposed to turn in the paper, so they didn’t win a bag of cooking utensils and swag.

I sampled a small cinnamon roll from the table of student-baked treats, and we visited several booths, including one for study abroad and another for accessibility services. The woman at that booth was surprisingly discouraging about accommodations for a student with chronic pain and mobility issues.

We proceeded to a panel discussion. While we waited for it to start, we discussed how the school seems to have two mascots. The official one is the Wildcats, but the school’s logo includes the flag of Wales, which has a dragon on it (although at first, I thought it was a griffin). You actually see as many if not more dragons than wildcats in the graphics around campus. Depending on how far you can zoom in, you might see one on the right side of the chef’s jacket North’s wearing in the first photo, across from the words “Future Wildcat.”

At the panel, a dean and about a half dozen professors who described the program and explained how the different tracks in the culinary school are structured. A few of them stressed how JWU’s culinary school is unique in that it’s housed in a university and students also take academic classes. Toward the end, during the Q&A Beth asked about accessibility again and got a very different, more positive answer from the dean. So that’s something to investigate in more detail because except for this one concern, North is really sold on this school. At the discussion we picked up samples of student-made confectionary. I choose a bag of salted caramels that I saved for later—they were excellent.

We went on a tour next. There are two campuses, one in downtown Providence and another on Narragansett Bay. The culinary school is in the harborside campus, though students can also take any academic classes that aren’t offered there in the downtown campus. We toured the two main harborside classroom buildings, which were bustling for a Saturday morning. Several clubs were meeting—including a Latin American cuisine club that was holding a competition and a baking club. We were invited in to watch students present their meals and baked goods, and we were offered pastry samples. I had an almond cookie even though I’d already had a cinnamon roll and I did not regret it. (It reminded me strongly of a tart I used to get at the Portuguese bakery in Provincetown where Beth and I often travelled back in our twenties and thirties. That and the fact that something called “New England coffeecake” was on offer made me wonder if that day’s baking focus was New England regional pastry.)

We could have boarded a bus to tour the downtown campus at this point, but there wouldn’t have been time for lunch if we did that, so we decided to wander around downtown Providence on our own later. We checked out a food court-style dining hall where North could have used their visitor’s badge for 10% off, but they were in the mood for Panera, so we went to one just across the Massachusetts border, before walking around the downtown Providence campus. We tried to go to the Admissions Office and the bookstore, but they had both closed for the day.

While we were driving to Rhode Island the day before we’d glimpsed the ocean from the highway (in Connecticut) and that got me in the mood to see it again. We considered going to the beach that afternoon, but it was late afternoon by the time we got back to the house, and we were farther inland now, almost an hour away from the Atlantic, so we decided Greenwich Bay was a better idea.

However, North didn’t want to risk leaving the house during prime migraine time because they get one in the late afternoon more often than not these days and they were saving their last dose of the really effective medicine for the next night because we had evening plans. After some discussion, we decided to leave them alone in the house. We have not done this since they were hospitalized in October, though we’d been considering it for a while. It felt momentous and anticlimactic at the same time.

It was a short drive and a long walk to the bay. It was a scenic walk, though, along a wooded, riverside path. When we got to the beach, we sat on a bench and looked at the water for about fifteen minutes before we headed back.

When we got back, North had gone to bed with a headache after all, so it was just the two of us for dinner. After considering a few options, we ordered takeout from a Japanese restaurant the dean recommended during the part of his spiel in which he lauded the many fine dining options in Providence, where many alums work as chefs. His praise was not misplaced. We got several small dishes, and the garlic eggplant and crispy cauliflower were especially good. You should go there if you’re ever in Providence. It was very satisfying.

Sunday: Providence to New York, NY and Union City, NJ

Sunday morning, we drove to New York City. North was supposed to meet a friend from camp for lunch in Brooklyn, but the friend cancelled by text when we were right outside the city. That gave us enough time to reconsider our next destination and our lunch plans. We stopped at a pretty little park by the Hudson River, had a picnic, and regrouped.

We decided to go to Coney Island. It took us longer to get there than we thought it would—isn’t that always how it goes in New York?—and when we did there was no legal parking to be had anywhere so Beth kindly volunteered to stay with the illegally parked car just in case she had to move it and North and I took a quick jaunt to the amusement park and beach.

We had early evening theater ticket so we could only stay about forty-five minutes and we had different priorities. North was hungry for pizza and drawn to the wooden roller coaster and I just wanted to go to the beach. I bought two slices, one for North and one to take back to Beth, and North found it unsatisfactory as New York pizza. After they’d eaten the subpar pizza, I gave them money for the roller coaster, and they got in line. I took off my shoes and socks and walked on the beach for about ten minutes before North texted that the ride operators didn’t take cash. By that time it was too late to figure out how to get tickets and stand in line again, so we decided to get ice cream, hit the bathrooms, and meet up with Beth. The expedition didn’t go exactly as we hoped, but I did get to walk barefoot on the beach on a sunny day and eat strawberry cheesecake gelato, and that doesn’t happen every day.

We got to the theater (a converted church basement) where we were seeing Stranger Sings!, a musical parody of Stranger Things, a half hour before the show, which was a relief. If you’ve seen the source material (as North and I have), the show is funny and a lot of fun. If you haven’t (like Beth) it’s baffling, but she says she enjoyed it anyway so we will take her at her word.

We stopped at a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant to get a post-show dinner of vegetable and tofu stir-fried noodles for North. The food came really quickly, and we took it back to our AirBnB in Union City, New Jersey. North liked it so well they left a glowing Yelp review.

Monday: Union City and New York to Takoma Park

On Monday we had a busy morning planned. We had a mid-afternoon tour of NYU and before then we had three stops. First was the Catacombs by Candlelight tour at Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral. This consists of a guided tour of the outdoor cemetery at the Cathedral and the vaults underneath it. The guide gives a lot of historical information both above and below ground. It was a little less creepy than North was hoping for, I think—no stacks of skulls and bones like in the Paris catacombs they read about in a 39 Clues book in elementary school, just sealed vault doors lit with electric candles—but it was still atmospheric and interesting.

From there we visited a high-end chocolate shop, which was Beth’s primary goal for our day in New York. We all picked treats (mostly candy, but North got a jar of fancy olives). The only thing I’ve tried so far was a pistachio truffle, but it was so good it made me take the lord’s name in vain when I bit into it. I still have a dark chocolate-cherry bar to try.

North wanted a pizza do-over so we went to another place they’d found. Here I should mention that North planned a lot of our activities in New York and navigated us to them. It made them seem like someone who’s almost ready to go to college, maybe even in a big city. They found the pesto, olive, and fresh mozzarella pizza at Prince Street Pizza much more to their liking than the boardwalk pizza. There were outside stools and counters, though we needed to wait a while for other diners to vacate the stools. There’s a lot of open air or semi-enclosed sidewalk dining in New York. I’m guessing at least some of it was born of the pandemic. A lot of the spaces are quite decorated and festive, but this one was more utilitarian.

At NYU, students were only allowed one parent and as I enjoy these tours more than Beth does, she walked around Greenwich village and sat in Washington Square Park while North and I went on the tour. Oddly, there was no introductory information session, which I’ve come to expect. We watched a two-minute video and set out. The other strange thing was that the tour was almost entirely outside the buildings we visited. We didn’t enter a residence hall or dining hall or classroom, though we approached them. We did go inside the student center and the main library and it’s lovely, twelve stories with an atrium in the center and the floors all enclosed in glass with an abstract gold pattern painted on it. We learned that NYU’s mascot, the Bobcat, is named after the card catalog. Bobcat is short for Bobst Library Catalog. You’ve got to appreciate a school that names its sports teams after the library catalog. Our guide was affable and informative. North was especially impressed with the study-abroad opportunities.

By the time it was over, North was done in—between the catacombs, our perambulations through the neighborhood, and the campus tour, it had been a lot of walking. They were starting to drag, so they sat down at a table outside a café to rest while Beth fetched the car from the parking lot. I went inside to buy a flourless chocolate-walnut cookie to justify our presence, and while I was inside a young woman took the other chair at the table where North was sitting and did not leave when I stared at her, so I ate the cookie standing up.

It was around four-thirty when we hit the road. We had long drive home, so it was past our bedtime when we arrived, stashed our perishable food in the fridge, and fell into bed.

Tuesday: Takoma Park

We had a one-day, two-night pit stop at home. North rested and Beth and I worked. I wrote half of the April issue of an e-newsletter for a supplement company, did two loads of laundry, mailed a care package of Easter candy to Noah, and cleaned most of the kitchen (losing steam and leaving the kitchen floor un-mopped) and started writing this.

North got a migraine in the late afternoon and tried their new device which arrived in the mail while we were gone. You strap it to your arm, and it vibrates in a way that’s supposed to block migraine pain signals, but it didn’t work (at least this time) and they ended up napping the rest of the day.

Wednesday: Takoma Park to Saint Mary’s City, MD and Ridge, MD

Wednesday morning, we set out on the southern leg of our trip. We arrived at Saint Mary’s historic site around lunch time, so we had a picnic there. Saint Mary’s was the first settlement in Maryland and its capital in the seventeenth century. Now it’s a living history museum and archaeological site. All fourth graders in Maryland public schools visit it. The year North went, I chaperoned. Turns out I remember this trip a lot better than North does because everything there looked very familiar. We wandered around a little before it was time for our tour and decided to return the next day when we’d have more time.

Saint Mary’s College of Maryland is a public honors college that’s located right next to the historic site. It’s on the shore of Saint Mary’s River, which feeds into the Chesapeake Bay. It’s a gorgeous campus, full of red brick buildings, woods, and ponds. Their mascot is the Seahawks and we saw many actual seabirds, including ospreys, while we were there.

We listened to a presentation by an administrator and then set out for our tour. When North was registering for tours, Saint Mary’s was the only school that asked if the student had any accessibility needs, so North had requested a slower-paced tour. (They were able to keep up with the tours at JWU and NYU, but it was a concern ahead of time, and the NYU tour left them pretty wiped out.) We ended up with our own private tour, the three of us, plus two guides.

The tour was quite thorough. We went all over the small campus, and we saw the main dining hall, a dorm room (with a view of the pond), a townhouse (housing for juniors and seniors), the bookstore, and a classroom. We visited the boathouse where students can take out boats and paddleboards and saw students on the water and others sunbathing on the docks. We saw students wearing waders standing in the pond with nets and clipboards taking samples, presumably for a science class. The guide was attentive and at the end of the tour remembered to find out the answer to a question we’d asked that he didn’t know the answer to, even though we’d forgotten we’d asked.

After the tour, we checked into our AirBnB which was also on the water and had its own private dock on Saint Jerome Creek. It was so lovely we all sat out there for a half hour before we even unpacked. North went to bed with a headache soon after that, and I cooked dinner—vegetarian fish filets and roasted asparagus and carrots. Beth and I ate on the deck and then I went back to the dock to watch the sun set.

Thursday: Ridge and Saint Mary’s to Takoma

We didn’t have to be out of the house until noon, so we had a leisurely morning there. I ate my breakfast of yogurt, banana, and granola on the dock. North came to join me and we talked about the schools we visited and the college application process. Beth went for a walk and then went kayaking—the house had its own kayak you could use—and then I went for a walk. We got back about the same time and left the house to return to Saint Mary’s.

This time we bought tickets, and we took a guided tour of the Maryland Dove (a recreation of a seventeenth-century ship), a store, and a print shop, where we watched and participated in a demonstration of a printing press. We also wandered around some of the other buildings and read the historical signs about the people who lived and worked there. I was struck by the story of a woman who at the age of seventeen married a widower who had five children, and then bore him seven more. Being seventeen in the 1600s was a lot different than being seventeen now, I thought.

After a couple hours in Saint Mary’s, we left for lunch and our drive home. North’s considering a few more schools, so we’re not finished with college tours, but I think they’re off to a good start, with a lot of different ways to imagine their future—as a dragon/wildcat, a bobcat, or a seahawk.

Where They Are, Part 5

Posted on March 13, 2023 by Steph

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Friday: End Game

North is finished with their afterschool therapy program. Their last day was Friday, about a week before we expected. The confusion arose from the fact that in the last two and a half weeks, they were only attending three days a week so they could stay after school and help with costumes for the spring musical, and we were under the impression those five missed days would extend their enrollment, but they didn’t, even though previous absences had.

We didn’t know for sure when their last day would be until Tuesday, so IOP seemed to end kind of abruptly, and I think before North felt quite ready. But it’s possible that after this four-and-a-half-month journey– of hospitalization, a long wait at home to get into a partial hospitalization program, the PHP, and then the IOP– any kind of end of intensive therapy would have seemed sudden.

There are upsides. North will have more time for schoolwork or extracurriculars or whatever they want to do now that they won’t be in therapy three to five afternoons a week and Beth will be logging a lot less time in the car driving to and fro.

And North won’t be working without a net. They still have their psychiatrist (Dr. C) and their therapist (A), both of whom they’ve known since they were twelve. We are considering going into family therapy and finding North a peer support group of some kind since they found that aspect of the PHP and IOP helpful. Beth and I were thinking when IOP was over, North would go back to school full-time, but they want to stay hybrid, so that’s what we’re going to do, at least for now.

Friday was busy. It started with a neurology appointment to discuss North’s worsening migraines and ways we can address them. The doctor was optimistic and exhaustive as he explained all the different medications and devices North can try. He also had a lot of lifestyle advice about food, hydration, exercise, and sleep. It made it seem like he was really committed to fixing the problem, which is what you want from a doctor, but it isn’t always that way, is it? Anyway, the upshot is he wants to keep North on the preventative that hasn’t been working, but at a higher dose until they’ve been on that dose for six weeks, and then if it still doesn’t work, there’s a plan for other medications they can try. And because the rescue medication they’ve been taking is very effective but can only be used twice a week, he prescribed a different one so they can alternate them and have relief more days of the week. They’re also getting a patch to put on their arm that’s supposed to block headache pain signals, but we don’t have that yet. (Since the appointment North has tried the new medication twice and oddly, it helps but only very briefly, and then the headache returns.)

From the doctor’s office we took North to school, but there was only a little over an hour left in the school day, and we were a half hour from home, so Beth and I set up shop in a nearby Starbucks and worked. Then we picked North up from school and headed to Columbia.

We decided to mark the end of IOP by taking North out for pizza and frozen yogurt. I worked in the library with Beth and had one last ramble around town, mainly in Symphony Woods, where I hadn’t been in a while. I took a lot of pictures of the painted picnic tables there. This one of a heron taking flight is my favorite. Herons always remind me of North because it was their symbol in preschool. The park was the site of the Christmas light display where Beth and I took a walk the day North was accepted to the PHP program three months earlier, though of course, those lights are long gone. I couldn’t help thinking of that day, though, and how relieved we were.

A little before 6:30 we went to fetch North. They were playing Scattergories with two other teens and a staff member. They answered one last question, said some goodbyes, and we left. They had a polished rock that says “Peace” on it they picked for a memento and a certificate for the IOP, like the one they got when they finished the PHP. We walked out of the facility for the last time and went to dinner.

Eating out felt like a bold plan because it involved eating inside a restaurant, which is something we still rarely do. But eating outside wasn’t feasible because it was dark, and the day was in the low 40s and damp. And takeout didn’t seem sufficiently celebratory because we get takeout pizza a couple times a month. So, we took the plunge. The restaurant, a combination pizza/Indian place, was large and mostly empty, so maybe not such a daring choice after all.

When we got home, we watched the first half of Loving. I’d originally picked it for Black History Month, but we didn’t get around to it in February.

Friday/Saturday: Bring the Boy Back Home

The other notable thing that happened on Friday, or rather very early Saturday morning, was that Noah came home for spring break. His bus was scheduled to arrive at 11:30 p.m. in— guess what suburban Maryland town? Yes, Columbia. So, after the movie, Beth drove up there and back for the second time that day and probably for the last time in the foreseeable future, as his bus back to school departs from Bethesda. Beth got him Taco Bell because he was hungry and brought him home around 12:20 a.m. I was in bed, and I woke up when they came in but just barely, so I didn’t see him until the next morning when I debriefed him while we both ate oatmeal.

I learned about the film he’s making for his senior capstone project. He’s working with a classmate, who wrote the script. It’s a fictionalized account of the suicide of a friend of the scriptwriter. They’re going to start filming in April. They don’t have all the actors they need yet but they have some, which is better than this time last year when Noah was on the verge of dropping his cinema production class because he couldn’t find any actors.

I asked about his classes and he’s enjoying Machine Learning (apparently the professor is disappointed that Noah’s a senior and can’t take his more advanced Machine Learning class) and he showed me some CGI he made in another film class. Things seem to be going well for him academically. He’s applied for summer internships in Los Angeles, but he hasn’t heard back from anywhere yet.

Later that morning Noah and I started reading Eric, from the Discworld series—this one’s partly a parody of Faust. He and I made tortellini soup for dinner—I’d texted him about a week earlier and given him a choice of three pasta-based soups and that’s what he chose. It felt deeply right to all sit down to dinner together.

Saturday: My Favorite Year

After dinner, the four of us went to North’s school to see the spring musical, My Favorite Year. In the program, the actors and crew wrote about their own favorite years. I don’t think Beth, North, or I will be counting North’s junior year of high school as our favorite year, but it was nice for them to be involved with the show and for all of us to be able to see the play together and see the costumes they worked on worn. North found out today that a song in which the main singer wears a skirt covered in patches that they made was nominated for best song by the Cappies. If the song wins, the actors will perform it at the Kennedy Center, and presumably the skirt will be there, too. Even though North couldn’t participate in crew until the last few weeks before opening night, when t-shirts were distributed during Tech Week, they were surprised to see their name printed on the back in the list of cast and crew. I was touched by that, too. Ranvita had a small role in the play and North had brought a bouquet for her, which they gave her when the play was over. It was a fun outing.

Sunday/Monday: Springtime of Life

Noah’s been home a few days now and we’ve started season 3 of His Dark Materials and season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He folded laundry and helped North with their computer science homework this afternoon. It’s nice to have him home, and looking ahead at the rest of the spring, there’s a lot to anticipate—having a more normal schedule, North’s birthday, which is less than two weeks away, our spring break college road trip in April, Noah’s and my birthdays in May, and his college graduation. I hope you’ve got a lot to look forward to this spring, too.

Here and There

Posted on February 15, 2023 by Steph

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We’re two and a half weeks into our current routine. On weekday mornings Beth works and North attends online classes or does homework, depending on the day of the week. Beth takes them to school in time for lunch where they hang out in the theater room with friends or attend improv club, again depending on the day of the week. Then Beth returns home to work some more and picks North up after they’ve finished their afternoon classes and takes them to Columbia, where they attend their afterschool therapy program. While North is there, Beth works in the Howard County public library, as she doesn’t have an office in the coworking space anymore. Then she brings North back home. They usually roll in around 7:15, which means we’re eating dinner late these days.

Wednesdays through Fridays, I stay home, but most Mondays and Tuesdays, I go with Beth and North to Columbia so we can attend individual family or multi-family therapy. We leave the house at 2:15 and get back five hours later. A lot of that time is spent in the car, but during the two hours while North’s in IOP before family therapy starts, I either work in the library alongside Beth or wander around Columbia. I am learning a lot about its environs. If you want to know how to find a coffeeshop, grocery store, drug store, post office, or pretty trail within walking distance of the Howard County Library main branch, I’m your girl.

Here a few things that have happened in the past couple weeks while we weren’t driving back and forth between Takoma and Columbia, some here and some there:

Snowfall (Here)

We have had almost no snow this winter. Just some flurries a couple days before Christmas and a dusting on the first morning of February. It was pretty and so novel I took a lot of pictures on my walk, but by afternoon it was all melted, except in the shady spots. I particularly liked how the snow looked on the red leaves of this plant.

Swim Pass (Here)

You may recall I finally got the Piney Branch pool to agree to honor my pre-pandemic punch card, but I wasn’t sure it would actually work until I successfully used it on the first Saturday in February. I am pleased about this, as I had $25 worth of swims left on the pass. It should last me the rest of the month and a week into March if I go every weekend. I’ve been swimming three Saturdays in a row now and it’s nice to be doing it again after an almost three-year-long break.

Care Package (Here and There)

I made brownies that same weekend, for two reasons. I wanted brownies and I wanted something homemade to put in a Valentine’s Day care package for Noah. I wrapped the individual brownies up in foil and decorated the foil with snowflake stickers because I couldn’t find any heart stickers in the sticker drawer. (Later I got some in direct mail from the American Heart Association and I put them on the envelopes of my valentines for Beth and North.)

In the care package, I also included Girl Scout cookies, Valentine’s Day candy, and a set of long underwear Noah accidentally left at home. (I texted him one morning when the temperatures in Ithaca were in the single digits asking if he wanted them and he said yes.) The following Monday, I mailed the package from a post office in Columbia, because, as previously mentioned, I know where things are in that town.

Lake Kittamaqundi Trail (There)

Last week I stumbled across this trail, which is part of the longer Downtown Columbia Trail, which goes right by the library. For a while it just seems to go along the highway, with some weedy fields in between. But eventually it comes to a creek and that creek leads to a reservoir and there’s a trail with some public art that goes along each side of the water. I didn’t have time to make the whole loop the first day I went, so I resolved to return and, where the trail bifurcated, go the other way so I could see the other side of the little lake.

Home Repairs (Here)

As of a week ago, the repair work on our roof, eaves, and kitchen is finished. We still don’t have the final bill, which we need to know what we can afford this year in terms of summer vacation, but it’s good to have the house intact, with new paint inside and out, and to have it ourselves.

Early Valentine’s Day Dates (Here)

North went over to Ranvita’s Saturday afternoon, for pizza and a movie and an exchange of Valentine’s Day gifts. North got Ranvita a box of chocolates; Ranvita got North a rose-scented candle. As a result, Beth and I had several hours alone, so we had a date, too. She picked me up at the pool and we got takeout from Mark’s Kitchen, a Takoma fixture that’s about to either close or be under new management after thirty-two years.

Because it might be my last chance to have my favorite dish there, I got the bibimbap with a fried egg, a bit of a diabetic splurge, because of the rice (and I did eat a good bit of the rice). I might not have done it, but my sensor expired that morning and because they are less accurate the first twelve hours after application, I wasn’t planning on taking any readings from the new one until that evening anyway. Sometimes during these gaps I eat just as I normally would, and some days I go a little crazy and have half a banana and a strawberry in my morning oatmeal, a splash of orange juice in my tea, and a rice bowl for lunch. This was the latter kind of day, and it was very satisfying. I have no regrets.

We ate at the picnic tables in downtown Takoma. It was in the high forties, and I had wet hair from the pool, but it was sunny, and we’ve gotten pretty hardy about eating outside in the past few years, so it didn’t seem too cold.

After lunch, we went back to the house and watched the Valentine’s Day episode of Abbott Elementary, then hung out until it was time for Beth to go get North from Ranvita’s and take them to McLean, Virginia where North was attending a play they were going to review.

What Middle-Aged Lesbians Do on a Saturday Night (Neither Here nor There)

We spent the evening apart, as North was attending the play, a musical based on a Mario Brothers video game, which they said was “surprisingly good.” Once Beth had driven them there it was too far away for her to come home, but the play was sold out, so she couldn’t attend and had to occupy herself for several hours. I told her to google, “What do middle-aged lesbians do on a Saturday night in McLean?”

She ended up spending it in a nearby mall, where she got Turkish food for dinner, and when the mall closed, in a coffeeshop where she got hot chocolate. The coffeeshop was having an open mic night and she kept me updated via text about the acts:

[R]ight now there is a white guy singing a slowed down acoustic version of “Little Red Corvette”off key.

Now there is a woman singing a rewritten version of “Blue Christmas” to a backing track. It seems to be about climate change. Also off key.

New guy singing now. Not being able to carry a tune seems to be a requirement of this open mic. Fortunately there is a two song limit.

Meanwhile I was home, doing the kind of thing I do when left to my own devices: cleaning out my mail drawer, menu planning for the next week, blogging, and reading Love in the Time of Cholera. I’d been in bed over an hour by the time Beth and North got home at 11:25 and then North stayed up into the wee hours to write their review.

Valentine’s Day (Here and There)

The day before Valentine’s Day North made chocolate hand pies. They consist of chocolate crust filled with a fudge-like substance and drizzled with more chocolate. They are as good as they sound. North filled a tin with them to take to school for Ranvita, but some were reserved for family (and Zoë, who had dinner at our house that night).

When North got up on Valentine’s Day, a few minutes before their first class, they sleepily nodded in the direction of the heart-shaped balloon Beth had left at their place at the dining room table, and said, “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

At nine-thirty their astronomy class ended, and they had a half hour before English, so they found me in the basement, where I was preparing to mop the downstairs bathroom floor and asked if I wanted to exchange Valentine’s presents now instead of in the evening. It seemed to be what they wanted, and I had no objection.

We gathered around the dining room table and opened cards and gifts. In addition to the balloon, we’d gotten North a box of the Lindt strawberry-white chocolate truffles they like and a Starbucks gift card. I told them it was a little extra cash to make their money at Starbucks go further now that the stars are less valuable. (North has been irritated about this.)

My card was a very cool piece of original art Beth commissioned from North. Two black cats I recognized as Matthew and Xander are standing with their tails forming a heart and it says, “Lucky to love you.” North explained it was because black cats are supposed to be bad luck, but of course, we don’t believe that. Valentine’s Day was the day North assigned the cats as a birthday (years after the fact) when they found out the shelter estimated their litter was born in “mid-February.” The cats would have been twenty yesterday and we miss them both.

Beth got me a book and a box of tiny cupcake-shaped truffles in five flavors (chocolate, coffee, caramel, lemon-poppyseed, and raspberry). It’s a great gift for a diabetic with a sweet tooth because their diminutive size allows me to fine-tune how much sugar I eat at any given time. Beth got treats from me, too, chocolate-covered cashews and chocolate-covered clementine sections.

That afternoon we all drove out to Columbia together because it was a Tuesday. I went back to the lake and explored the other side a little bit. There are a lot of docks and benches and a playground and some retail, including a few restaurants on the water. It’s a nice space.

The theme of multi-family therapy was love languages. We all had to identify our preferred ways of giving and receiving love and talk about how to navigate differences in family members’ love languages. It was well attended, with seven parents in the room and another on Zoom, for the six kids.

North had been looking forward to the dinner I often make for Valentine’s Day, tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches cut into heart shapes, but they had a migraine and went to bed as soon as we got home. I was sorry about that, as food is definitely an example of one of the love languages, though I’m not sure which one—acts of service or gifts? Anyway, this morning while they were doing astronomy homework I made them a grilled cheese sandwich, cut into a heart shape, for breakfast. There had been plenty of love the day before and in the month so far, but there’s always room for more.

Where They Are, Part 4

Posted on January 31, 2023 by Steph

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North went to school yesterday for the first time in a little over three months. (Well, the first time they went there to attend classes, I mean. We’ve been a couple times to watch Ranvita and other friends perform in the fall play and winter one acts.)

But to back up a little…

Thursday and Friday:

North’s last day in the partial hospitalization program was Thursday. They’ve transitioned to IOP, which stands for intensive outpatient program, at the same facility. It offers the same kinds of therapy that the PHP does, but three hours a day instead of six and a half. It meets in the late afternoon and early evening, so that cleared the way for North’s return to in-person school.

Their first day at IOP was Friday. They knew the other kids because some of them had been in PHP together, and on some days, there’s overlap between the two program schedules, so they’ve all been in group together. North is starting out attending five days a week, but they may cut back to fewer days later so they can be on costumes crew for the spring musical.

We decided a gradual return to in-person school was best, so for now North is continuing with online classes through IIS for astronomy, English, and world history in the mornings. Then they will attend statistics, computer science, and painting in person in the afternoons, and go to IOP straight from school.

The computer science class is the second half of the one they started to take in the fall, but apparently you can take the two halves out of order, and it fulfills a half of the tech requirement, so when their counselor suggested it, they decided to take it. The painting class is also the one they were taking first quarter. North completed some second quarter work independently and I think the teacher is going to waive some or all of the rest and let North start fresh with third quarter assignments. Over the past couple months, they completed this pen-and-ink drawing based on a photograph of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia for this class. I really like it.

Beth, North, and I went to Berkeley Springs for a weekend get-away around Valentine’s Day 2020, and as a result I have kind of a romanticized memory of that weekend, as the last hurray before everything changed so dramatically for us as a nation and as a family. I asked North if they have similar feelings about that weekend and if that’s why they chose Berkeley Springs for their cityscape. They paused, considering, and said that might be the case.

(North finished the cityscape two weekends ago when Beth was road tripping up to Ithaca with a bunch of Noah’s stuff that he couldn’t take with him on the bus. Left to our own devices, I read and cleaned, North crocheted and worked on the cityscape, and we came together to go to the farmers’ market, Starbucks, and watch a scary movie while cuddling on the couch.)

Thursday afternoon, after North’s last day of PHP, we had an appointment with Dr. C, their current psychiatrist, who’s filling in during their long-time psychiatrist’s maternity leave. North’s known Dr. C as long as they’ve known their regular psychiatrist because he led the trans kids’ support group they attended in seventh and eighth grade, and he has a good rapport with them. We talked about North’s transition back to school and other issues, including some medication changes and we all left feeling a little better than when we got there.

Weekend

I went swimming on Saturday afternoon at the pool where I used to swim weekly before it shut down first for the pandemic, then for extensive repairs. It re-opened in late November, but between being out of the habit, being salty about the fact that they were not honoring pre-pandemic punch cards, and the pool’s erratic schedule (it’s always been prone to unannounced closures and still is), I didn’t manage to show up at a time it was open until this weekend.

As frustrating as the pool’s management is, I like that it’s convenient, being a less than a half-hour walk from my house and it’s on a few bus lines if I don’t feel like walking. It was nice to be back in the water and it wasn’t too crowded. Perhaps I will get back into my old routine of weekend swimming. It might help that the day after I swam, I finally heard back from the pool manager I’ve been emailing since November, and she said they would honor my old card after all. Now it still has to happen and I’m not counting on it, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Ranvita came over late Saturday afternoon and stayed for dinner. North tried to teach her to crochet, an effort that was hindered by the fact that North is right-handed while Ranvita is left-handed. After dinner they watched a movie together.

Sunday was a quiet day. Beth went ice skating, and we were considering going out for ice cream in the evening to mark the last night before North’s return to school, but they went to bed with a migraine a little after four and didn’t get up until almost nine-thirty, by which point Beth, who was worn out, had already gone to bed and I was in the living room reading, about to turn in myself.

Monday:

Monday would have been a big day even if North going back to school was all that happened, but in addition to that, we had 1) an appointment with two geneticists, 2) another with North’s school counselor, and 3) a family therapy session.

The first meeting was a screening for Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. North’s half-sibling from the donor’s side, Avery, has been diagnosed with it and EDS is associated with a lot of symptoms North experiences, such as chronic pain, especially in the joints, dislocations, and migraine. They were hoping for a diagnosis because it would tie a lot of things together under one overarching explanation, but the results of the interview and exam were inconclusive. After the appointment, North was disappointed. We are going to follow up with a cardiologist, however, because some forms of EDS are associated with heart problems. The doctors didn’t think it was likely North has this subtype of EDS, but they want to check for it, just to be cautious.

Soon after that was finished, we went to North’s school to meet with their counselor to iron out some details regarding their return to school. We got their second quarter grades and learned one of them (history) had not been turned in, probably because of miscommunication between the IIS history teacher and the teacher North will have for history this semester. None of us realized the counselor was going to want North to pick senior year classes in this meeting and that felt a bit rushed and maybe less considered that I would have liked, even though the counselor stressed we can make changes later. Anyway, after fulfilling graduation requirements, North had room in their schedule for art and chorus and a mythology class they’ve wanted to take for a while. I think it could be a fun year.

We left North at school, where they had lunch with Ranvita in the theater room and attended their three classes. When we picked them up to go to IOP, they didn’t have too much to say, but I did learn they are starting a winter landscape with acrylics in painting class.

Beth went to her coworking space, and I took a walk in the grounds of Merriweather Post Pavilion, a concert space. It was a mild afternoon—I wore a sweatshirt with no jacket—and the late afternoon light was pretty in the bare woods. By the time I returned to Beth’s office, with just a half hour until family therapy it seemed too late to start any new work project, so I blogged instead. Then we went to North’s facility where we met with a therapist for our weekly family therapy session, which we spent mainly processing the prior events of the day.

It was 7:20 by the time we got home, so I threw together a quick dinner of ravioli with vegetarian meatballs (a rare splurge on pasta for me) and then we played a couple rounds of Scattergories before bed.

Tuesday:

Because I was going to be in Columbia again during dinner-making time to attend the multi-family group, I got up a little earlier than usual and made a cabbage soup for dinner before the workers (more on this below) arrived for the day and took over the kitchen. But as it turned out, they were finished in that room by 9:30, so my early morning cooking session wasn’t necessary after all.

By nine a.m., North was on the couch attending an online astronomy lecture while crocheting. English started an hour later. Their online classes all meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays. When they were in PHP, they had to watch the videos after the fact, but now they can attend the ones that don’t conflict with their in-person classes as they happen. I hope this helps them participate and engage more with those classes, though as I mentioned, one of them is astronomy, which was their best class last quarter already.

North went to school again and when we picked them up, they mentioned their art teacher said their cityscape turned out well and asked if she could display it. We drove to Columbia again. I thought about walking at Merriweather Post Pavilion again, but I’d already walked in the morning, and it was cold and drizzly, so I took a short walk to get a warm cup of coffee and I brought it back to Beth’s office where I worked a little. She rented the office for January and now that she’s only there for a few hours a day it didn’t seem worth it to renew for February, so it was her last day there. She’s going to try working in the public library starting tomorrow.

We said goodbye to the little office at 5:20 and walked over to the facility where we had our first multi-family group since North started IOP. It was very much like multi-family at PHP, but with a somewhat different group of kids. Just this fact made it seem like we’re progressing through the steps toward something better.

Meanwhile…

While all this was going on, we had the roof and some structural damage in the kitchen fixed. Remember when the tree fell on our house last May? It’s taken that long to get our insurance and the contractor to agree on the scope and cost of repairs. The work took place indoors and outdoors and has been going on for a week and a half. For the past few days, it’s always supposed to be done the next day, in the way of home repairs.

There were three consecutive days when the kitchen was sealed off from the rest of the house with plastic sheeting to keep the dust from spreading. Because of the way our house is configured, this meant every time I needed to use the bathroom, I had to go outside, walk to the back of the house, open the back door, interrupt the workers, and make them move ladders, etc., so I could pass through the kitchen to get to the bathroom. I ended up routing my mid-morning walk to go by places with public restrooms and tried to limit myself to one other visit to the bathroom in the early afternoon but being cut off from the bathroom was kind of stressful for me.

The best part of having this work done, other than not having holes in the roof anymore and having functioning gutters for the first time in eight months at some point in the near future, is that the repairs to the kitchen walls required re-painting. We’ve lived in this house almost twenty-one years and for that whole time there’s been brown-on-tan sponge painting on the kitchen walls left from the previous owners. I never liked it.

Beth said she didn’t care what color the kitchen walls were, so I got to choose. I went with a golden shade of yellow. It was just what I had been envisioning for the kitchen for many years. North campaigned for lavender and I told them that would be very nice in their first apartment, but I had my heart set on yellow.

I like thinking of them in that hypothetical apartment, though, several years from now, maybe in a college town or a bohemian neighborhood of some city. I imagine my beautiful, talented youngest child happy there, drinking coffee (always iced, even in winter) while baking elaborate cakes, or making art, or maybe painting the kitchen walls lavender.

Winter One Acts

Posted on January 18, 2023 by Steph

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Two Saturdays ago, we went to the Winter One Acts at North’s school to see some of their friends, including Ranvita, act in them. In the spirit of concise storytelling, I’m going to present what we’ve been up to over the past few weeks in bite-sized pieces, three paragraphs max per topic. Can I be that brief? We’ll see.

Theater

It felt novel for the winter one acts to be put on in winter, as last year a covid surge and subsequent scheduling problems delayed them until May and the year before, of course, they didn’t happen at all, as school was closed for most of the year and there were no extracurriculars even when it opened briefly in the spring.

It was our first outing of the year as we didn’t do much for New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day. We got an invitation to go to a small New Year’s Eve party our neighbors were holding, but we didn’t feel up for it. We didn’t do our usual New Year’s Day hike or cheese board either. We did all watch Carol because North found it on a list of New Year’s-themed movies. Afterward we all agreed it was a good film (Beth and I had already seen it) but the connection to New Year’s was tenuous at best. Afterward the kids stayed up to usher in the new year with salty snacks, sparkling juice, and tv, as is their sibling-bonding tradition.

Back to the plays…there were three one acts, followed by an improv presentation. Ranvita had a small part in the first one act, which was also the best one. It involved John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Cornelius Vanderbilt playing Monopoly in the afterlife and it was very funny. Ranvita also had several parts in the improv pieces. These weren’t being improvised in the moment but were workshopped as improv and then turned into very short plays. The schtick was the actors were trying to get through thirty of them in less than an hour (and they succeeded). It was fun to watch and North seemed to enjoy seeing friends, especially Ranvita, and they gave her a bouquet. They haven’t been able to see much of each other the past few months, but they did have a brunch date recently.

Game Nights

The next night, Beth, Noah, and I played Settlers of Catan with the Seafarers’ extension kit Noah got for Christmas. As you might guess from the game, there are ships involved, and you can use them to settle smaller islands off the coast of Catan. It took us a little while to figure out how strategy differs in this version, but we were getting it by the end, I think. Noah won the game. On other nights during his break, we played Sleeping Queens, Jeopardy, and Scattergories, some of these more than once.

Therapy

We have family therapy every Monday and Tuesday these days. Mondays it’s a virtual session in the late afternoon after North has gotten home from their day program. Noah joined us for a couple of these sessions. On Tuesdays it’s hybrid and it’s not just us, but all the families of all the kids in North’s program all together, which I have to say is kind of an odd format. All the kids are there in person, as it’s the end of their day. Some parents come in person, and some attend virtually. Often, Beth and I are the only parents in the room.

Beth has been working in a room she’s renting in a co-working space in a big office building near North’s facility, so she doesn’t have to make the hour and a half round-trip drive twice every day. Since she’s right next door, she always goes to multi-family group in person. I usually do, too, since the one time I tried attending virtually I couldn’t hear well and the person I could hear least well was North. Getting to Columbia by myself wouldn’t be easy, so attending group in person means I spend the day in Beth’s office on Tuesdays. There are four desks, so I can set up my laptop on one of them and I have new environs for my daily walk, so it’s not bad.

Anniversary

Beth and I had an anniversary a week ago today. It’s now been thirty-one years since our commitment ceremony and ten since our legal wedding (they were on the same date). We had breakfast for dinner, and I made muffins using the recipe for the spice cake that was our wedding cake (both times). I’ve made it almost every anniversary since 1992, usually with a lemon glaze, though the original wedding cake had white frosting with purple frosting violets on it. North is quite attached to the lemon glaze and was kind of outraged the year I made an orange glaze instead. Last year was my first year with diabetes and I left the glaze off entirely, but I’ve gotten a little more relaxed and when I was wavering about the glaze, North advocated for it and I ended up making it.

We exchanged presents after dinner. One of the advantages of having an anniversary two and a half weeks after Christmas is that you can just check your wife’s Christmas list and see what she didn’t get. I got Beth a kit of salad dressing spice blends and she got me Hamnet, which were unbought items from our lists. But I also got her two fancy dark chocolate bars, and she got me a roll of postcard stamps because I can always use them for get-out-the-vote campaigns and postage is going up later this month.

Her card said “Always and Forever” on the front, which is exactly what I wrote on the inside of mine. I’m taking that as a sign that we’re going the distance. ‘Til death do us part.

More Baking

I’d been in the mood to make cookies for a while, and I thought I should do it before Noah left so I could send some of them with him. The day I ended up making them was the Sunday of MLK weekend, which was also the thirteenth anniversary of my father’s death. It seemed kind of appropriate because he loved sweets of all sorts and Snickers bars especially, so something with chocolate and peanuts seemed a fitting tribute. North’s been baking, too. Their last creation was a very tasty carrot cake with a chocolate ganache. We’re still eating it.

Media Binges

The end of Noah’s time at home is often a rush to finish television seasons and books and this one was no different. In four weeks, he and I started and finished the current seasons of What We Do in the Shadows and The Handmaid’s Tale. I didn’t think we were going to manage that last one, but he ended up staying home a few days longer than he thought he would, and the extra days included a long weekend, so we watched the last four episodes in two days. That season was something else, wasn’t it?

With Beth, we also made it to the end of season 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (bingeing the last three episodes in the middle of the day on MLK day while North was at their program). Noah is puzzled at how the series will continue for two more seasons, as the title character dies in the season finale, but we’re not telling. With everyone, we got to the midpoint of season 7 of Blackish. We’ve reached the covid era episodes and while the first couple about it were excellent and very evocative, I was disappointed that it basically fell out of the plot after that, as if it barely happened and didn’t deeply alter our lives for years.

As for books, over the course of his break, Noah and I also read What Strange Paradise, The Nova Incident, and Wyrd Sisters. We often save a Terry Pratchett novel for last because they are short and easy to fit into a little scrap of time if we happen to have one left. We finished it on Monday, the last full day before he left. (Meanwhile two days earlier, North and I finished The Inferno, which we’d been reading since early December.)

Goodbye

Once we’d finished Wyrd Sisters, around 3:45 on Monday, I had a bit of an empty feeling, because there was nothing else to finish, after spending much of the last three days in a sprint to read and watch all the things. But there was plenty to do: we had a family therapy session (Noah skipped this one to pack) and I made dinner, a vegetable-bean-noodle soup, not unlike what I made for his first night home, and North made the carrot cake, and I packed Noah some snacks for the bus (pecans, dried cranberries, and a half-dozen of the cookies), and that night we all played an online Jeopardy game. Noah made a valiant effort to fill up on homemade treats while he could, eating two slices of cake and a cookie.

Yesterday morning, we all got into the car at 7:55 a.m. and drove to a mall parking lot just outside Baltimore, where at 9:15, we put him on a bus that said “Let’s Go” on the side. And heeding its suggestion, we all did, to college, to treatment, and to a little office in a co-working suite.

Where They Are, Part 3

Posted on December 11, 2022 by Steph

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When I last wrote, I was frustrated by the long wait to get North into a partial hospitalization program and into the interim instructional services (IIS) program. A lot has changed since then.

Monday

On Monday, North found out that their review of Eurydice had been accepted for publication in a local paper in Falls Church. Fewer than 10% of the reviews Cappies write are published, so it’s an honor. They also got their PSAT scores and were pleased with them, especially the English score. Finally, we got word that North’s application for IIS was accepted.

Tuesday

For North take part in IIS, they needed to make some schedule changes and those came through the next day. Contrary to what I said before (and what we originally read about the program), there are no in-person tutors. It’s all online and there are limited course offerings, so North had to drop all their AP and IB classes and switch to honors versions of their English, History, and math classes. When they eventually go back to school, probably third quarter, they will stay in those new classes. They are also going to drop French and Foundations of Tech because there are no IIS versions and it seemed too hard to get caught up. So, the only two classes of their original seven they will return to will be astronomy (which has an IIS version) and painting (which doesn’t). When I met with all North’s teachers right before Thanksgiving, the art teacher seemed willing to be flexible about North’s second quarter work. I’m glad they will probably stay in that class because they enjoy it.

Wednesday

Even though North’s been admitted to IIS, they’ve only been enrolled in the astronomy class so far. They started to watch the lessons on Wednesday. They’ve attended a class—it meets twice a week– and taken some quizzes and have done all of last week’s work and some of next week’s, too. They’re supposed to hear from the English, history, and statistics teachers on Monday. I am glad to have a plan in place that should let them finish eleventh grade this year.

On Wednesday morning North and I went to the post office to mail their Christmas presents to my mom, sister, and niece. It was good we got that errand done because Thursday turned out to be unexpectedly busy. Later in the day on Wednesday we got the call that there was a spot for North in a partial hospitalization program. We’d have an intake appointment on Thursday and if all went well, they’d start the program on Friday. It was the same one that offered us a spot when North had covid. It’s in Columbia, about forty-five minutes north of where we live and one of the closer locations of the five programs to which we’d applied. (Two were in Virginia.) We were all very happy and relieved to get this news.

North also had a migraine that afternoon and took their new medication for the first time. They were feeling better after an hour—usually it takes several hours—so that was cheering, too. (However, the second time they took it, on Saturday, it didn’t take effect as quickly.) That night after Beth and I had gone to bed, North put up the Christmas decorations in the living room and made red velvet cookies. The decoration wasn’t a surprise, they told me they were going to do it, but the cookies were. They were also excellent.

Thursday

On Thursday we had a slew of appointments. North had a psychiatrist appointment in the morning. I was under the impression it was virtual because the last one was, but it was in-person, so when it was time to leave, I was still out on my morning walk and Beth texted me to say she’d drive to where I was and pick me up. That was a little rattling. North’s regular psychiatrist Dr. W just had a baby, so it was with her substitute Dr C. Luckily, though, North knows and likes him. He led the trans kids support group they attended in middle school.

We got back home just in time for me to attend a virtual meeting with my own health care provider about some mysterious leg cramps and pain I’d been experiencing. It had been worst while we were at the beach and right after and seemed to be resolving by the time I saw her, but I kept the appointment to talk about what to do if it comes back. I’m wondering now if it had something to do with having covid, because of the timing.

After lunch and squeezing in a little work, we hit the road for our intake appointment, listening to Christmas music in the car on the way. The program is in a suite in an office building, but the space is a little cheerier than what I saw of the adolescent psych unit when North was hospitalized. In the main lounge area, there were a lot of puzzles, games, stuffed animals, and evidence of crafts projects in progress. There were pillows and a throw on the couch and a rug on the floor. There were also big windows overlooking the grounds of Merriweather Post Pavilion, where there was a Christmas light show.

We met with a counselor, first as a family, then just me and Beth, and then just North. It took a little over two and a half hours. The whole thing felt thorough and unrushed, and we were able to go into more detail than we often can with psychiatric professionals. That was reassuring. When it was North’s turn, the counselor said we should feel free to leave the building if we wanted, so we went for a walk in the light display. It wasn’t dark out yet and it hadn’t opened, but none of the people setting up told us to leave. When we got back, the counselor said we were good to go, and North should come back in the morning.

Friday

The first day went well. North says there are seven kids in the program, and they are in various kinds of therapy most of the day, with a study hall to do schoolwork. There was art therapy that day and they decorated bags to fill with affirmations. Beth and I will be attending a multi-family group therapy session every Tuesday and then family therapy for just the three of us at a time to be determined. That night, we got pizza and watched a cheesy Christmas-themed lesbian rom com (Merry and Gay), which was just what we all wanted.

Weekend

On Saturday we went to Butler’s Orchard to get a Christmas tree. North saw the one they wanted early in the process, but we walked around to look at the others, just in case. Then while Beth was paying for it and watching one of the kids who was working there tie it to the roof, I took North to the snack bar. I saw people walking away from it with hot chocolate and noticed the cups were small but topped with a generous amount of whipped cream. I thought that ratio of sugar to fat might work for me, so I got one (and I didn’t go out of range on it). North got a pretzel and some hot cider. Next, we went to the farm market, where we browsed and bought some treats and Christmas presents. It was a very nice outing. We continued with the festive activities on Sunday afternoon while North was at Zoë’s house—Beth worked on the outside lights, and I addressed Christmas cards and wrote this.

Meanwhile, in Australia

While all this was going on, Noah went snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef. He couldn’t take pictures because it’s underwater, and I wasn’t able to get much out of him about it. He said a boat took them out, and they all wore wetsuits to protect themselves from jellyfish, and that it looked “like a coral reef…with fish.” I am glad he had this experience, and perhaps I will learn more about it when he comes home, which will be in a little over a week. Between now and then he’s going to spend a couple days in Sydney. It’s good he’s getting a chance to explore a bit now that his classes are over.

He’ll be exploring the West Coast this summer, as it turns out. He got into a program Ithaca runs in Los Angeles, that helps communications students or recent grads get internships. There’s also housing, plus optional classes he can take. He’ll be leaving right after graduation. It seems things are falling into place for both kids.

Wait For It: Coronavirus Chronicles, Part 78

Posted on December 4, 2022 by Steph

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So, we had covid and it was pretty anticlimactic. For me it was like a cold, and not even a bad one—I had a sore throat, congestion, and a cough. The Saturday after Thanksgiving, the first night we were home from the beach, Beth and I were both slammed with fatigue almost exactly at the same time. We went to bed that night at 8:30 and I thought we might be in for something bad, but neither of us got very sick. I guess being vaccinated and triple boosted helps.

I tested on Wednesday because I was thinking of going to book club. I was five days out from my first symptoms, and I felt fine, if a little phlegmy. But I was still testing positive. It was such a faint line I was holding the test at different angles and squinting at it when North came by and said, “Do you need my young eyes?” Eventually all three of us concluded there was the faintest of lines there, a contrast to the dark line I got three days earlier. I elected to attend book club virtually (it’s still hybrid). The average age of members is probably around seventy and some of them are in their eighties and frail, plus masking in the group has gone from almost universal to about fifty percent, just in the past few months. It didn’t seem responsible to go, so I stayed home.

North, who had covid first, also had it worse, more fatigue, chills, and dizziness and after they thought they’d recovered, on the Monday after Thanksgiving, they had a fever. This was unfortunate because on Tuesday one of the partial hospitalization programs (not either of the ones I mentioned in my last post—we’ve applied to a lot of them) called with a spot for North the very next day. Not an interview, an actual placement. We’d interviewed at this one in early November, before North was even out of the hospital. I asked about their covid policy and learned you must be symptom-free for three days after having had covid and since North had a fever the day before, we had to give up the spot. Pause here for a long sigh. Anyway, we are still next on the list at this place, so we’ll see.

The other thing we’re waiting for, besides a space in partial hospitalization program, is for North to be enrolled in the school system’s interim instruction program. It’s designed for kids for are hospitalized or can’t come to school for other reasons. A tutor comes to you. It took a while to get North’s psychiatrist to fill out the necessary paperwork and now it’s taking a while for the school to get back to us, but you’re not surprised by any of this, are you?

By Friday, North was testing negative, and they’d been symptom-free a few days, so they went to see their therapist in person Saturday morning. In other medical appointments last week, we had virtual ones with North’s pediatrician to catch her up on the general situation and another one with a neurologist to discuss North’s worsening migraines. They’ve been much more frequent, starting last spring, and we all wonder if being in pain so often is dragging down North’s energy and mood. The neurologist prescribed some new meds, one for prevention and one for treatment. Fingers crossed they make a difference.

We’d been thinking of going to a Christmas market in an old bank building in downtown Takoma Saturday afternoon, but Beth was still testing positive, so we decided to skip it. North and I ran some errands of the post office and drug store variety together on Friday. I was glad to get them out of the house and walking around outside on a sunny day. (I bribed them to come with me with an iced peppermint white chocolate mocha and a slice of lemon pound cake.) At the beginning of North’s time at home, we were taking them on a lot of outings, but these have petered out at bit as Beth and I both got back to working somewhat more normal hours. None of us expected this hospitalization interregnum to last so long (three and a half weeks and counting).

We took the bus to downtown Takoma, and I wanted to walk home, but North didn’t so Beth and I consulted and decided we’d let them take the bus home alone. It was the second time we’d let them go out into the world without one of us since getting out of the hospital. (The first time was the Diner of Covid Doom.) I waited at the stop with them and texted Beth when they got on the bus, and she texted me when North got home. It reminded me of when they were in sixth grade and new at taking public transportation and how I used to wait with them at the stop. I asked North if they remembered that and they said, “No, but it checks out.”

The third time North went somewhere without us was Saturday night, and it was for something more fun than tagging along on their mother’s errands. They had been assigned to review a production of Eurydice at a high school in Alexandria as part of their participation in Cappies. We discussed amongst ourselves whether we should ask school officials if North was still allowed to participate in extracurriculars as they’d been out of school for over five weeks at this point. We decided to ask was to invite a no, so we didn’t. It was encouraging that they wanted to do it and it seemed appealingly normal. There was a carpool, so Beth drove North to their school where another parent picked them up and took them to the play with some other reviewers.

The result of this activity was that Beth and I had a rare evening alone in the house. My friend Megan brought us dinner—cauliflower steaks, cauliflower soup, bread, and salad, delivered in a bag tied with two jaunty yellow balloons. I recommend having a friend who will facilitate your at-home date night when you are too tired (and possibly contagious) to leave the house. Thanks, Megan!

Everything was delicious and Beth and I had a nice stretch of time to talk and hang out before she took a disco nap, starting around 8:30. These Cappies events run late and unfortunately, the carpool would take North back to their school rather than home, so Beth was going to have to drive about an hour to fetch them well after our usual bedtime. I did not wait up—even though I’m sleeping a little better this week. It’s still hit or miss, so I didn’t want to risk a short night’s sleep. Beth and North got home around 11:30 and I didn’t even hear them come in or notice Beth getting into bed.

On Sunday morning I tested negative, which made me happy because I wanted to go swimming. The pool where I used to swim lap weekly for years and which closed during March 2020, first for the pandemic and then for extensive repairs, just re-opened last week. Even though in the past few days I’d been riding buses and going into stores, briefly and double masked, breathing hard unmasked on someone in the same pool lane seemed like a different level of risk. But now I could swim in good conscience.

However… when I got there around one-thirty the door was locked and the hand-written sign on the door said 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. I recognized these as the weekday hours. (The pool is in an elementary school.) Are these the hours every day now? Are they only open on weekdays? Who knows?

I think the universe is trying to teach me something about patience.

A Wild Ride: Coronavirus Chronicles, Part 77

Posted on November 27, 2022 by Steph

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Tuesday: Hello, Covid

It was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, parent-teacher conference day at North’s school. I was in between my second conference (French) and the third (Foundation of Tech) when I got a text from Beth informing me that while I was gone, North, who’d woken that morning with a cough, headache, stuffiness, slight fever, and dizziness, had tested positive for covid. It sounds kind of obvious in retrospect, but I was surprised. After two years and eight months of dodging this virus, I guess I was feeling we were invincible, even though my mom got it in the spring, and my sister’s whole family got it earlier this month.

Two days earlier we had let North leave the house without adult supervision for the first time since they got back from the hospital. They’d had brunch at a crowded diner with several friends. It was an exception to our no-eating-inside-restaurants policy, though we don’t know for sure that’s where they got it. Given that the incubation period is two to fourteen days, the second most likely option seems like the school play, which we attended about a week and a half before they started to feel ill. And I suppose there was the cat café, and we did go see a movie (Ticket to Paradise), but neither the café nor the theater had very many people in it. Ironically, they’d been around people less than usual during the two weeks before they got sick, first on a closed hospital unit and then at home.

I wondered whether I should bail on the rest of my conferences, being an official close contact of someone with covid. That might have been the ethical thing to do, but I was already there and masked, and given that North’s been out of school for several weeks, I really wanted to touch base with each of their teachers to explain what’s going on and discuss various possible paths forward for North academically. It seemed important, and the conferences were less than fifteen minutes each, so I went through with it.

When I got home, Beth said, “I feel like the degree of difficulty of our lives just keeps getting higher,” elaborating that we were like the proverbial frogs being slowly boiled in a pot. There were a few reasons this was bad timing for our family’s first bout with covid. (Is there such a thing as good timing for it?)

We were supposed to have an in-person intake interview at one of the partial hospitalization programs to which we’ve applied the following morning.
We were leaving our annual Thanksgiving-at-the-beach trip immediately after the interview.
The next day was also Beth’s birthday.

Beth called the hospital and to our surprise, they said we could do the interview virtually, so that was a relief. After a brief discussion, we decided we would go ahead with the beach trip. It usually involves Christmas shopping on Black Friday at the shops in downtown Rehoboth and we’d have to skip that, but I said it would be worth it to me to go if all we did was hang out at the house, have Thanksgiving dinner, order takeout the other nights, and take walks on the beach. That was what our first pandemic Thanksgiving trip to the beach was like anyway. (On our very first pandemic beach trip North was paralyzed, and we didn’t cancel then either. We are hardy travelers.)

There were risks, of course. Driving there would mean several hours of close contact with North and if Beth got sick in Rehoboth, then the drive home would be difficult or we could even get stuck there, but if you know how we feel as a family about the beach (me most of all), you’re probably not surprised that we went.

So many of you have shared your covid experiences on your blogs or on Facebook that we’ve had a range of models for whether or how to isolate infected family members from non-infected ones. We didn’t even discuss isolating from North. Given their current situation, it didn’t seem like a good course of action. We began masking when we were in the same room with them, but we weren’t avoiding them, and most of the time we even ate together inside, so that made the decision to spend a few hours in a car together slightly more rational.

After that was decided and after we’d filled out some pre-interview forms to scan and send to the hospital, I made Beth’s birthday cake, a chocolate cake with coffee frosting I’ve made many, many times. You’d think I’d remember the recipe well enough that I wouldn’t almost forget to add the egg, actually forget the vanilla, and accidentally turn the frosting into a glaze by halving all the ingredients except the coffee, but you’d be wrong. What can I say? I haven’t been sleeping well and I’ve had a lot on my mind. It was comforting to make it anyway, because it smelled good baking and there were batter and frosting bowls to lick, and it made the stressful day seem more festive.

Wednesday: Happy Birthday, Dear Beth

The next morning while we were packing for the trip prior to the interview, Beth got a call from the hospital informing us it was cancelled because that health care visits can’t happen over Zoom across state lines. The hospital is in Virginia and we’re in Maryland. Later I remembered we’ve run up against this rule before while travelling. I guess there’s some sort of exception for D.C. because we’ve had a lot of virtual meetings with providers in the District. This was quite frustrating. We couldn’t get a new appointment until the second week of December, and we won’t even be on the wait list until we have the interview. But there was nothing we could do about it.

We hit the road around eleven and arrived in Rehoboth around three-thirty, with a stop for a lunch of drive-through Taco Bell and Dairy Queen eaten at the tables outside the DQ near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. We masked in the car and kept the windows partially down. It was a warm day—it got up to sixty degrees—so that wasn’t a hardship.

Near the end of the drive, Beth got a call from another partial hospitalization program where we’d been waiting for an intake interview since North got out of the psychiatric unit almost two weeks earlier. It’s in Annapolis, but they are opening a new location in Prince George’s County, which is closer to us than Annapolis, and they wanted to know if we’d like to interview for that location. Beth said yes. They’re supposed to call back by Monday to arrange it. So, on that front, it was one step back, one step forward. Because the facility is new, we’re hoping there will be less of a wait there.

We got to the house, a two-story yellow frame cottage with pale blue shutters, a living room and kitchen on the first floor and three small bedrooms on the upper floor, a narrow staircase between them, and a screened porch in front. We settled in, unpacking food and clothes, making up the beds, and deciding on our order of Japanese takeout for dinner. I was on the beach by five to see the sunset. When I got back Beth left to get the food and we ate her birthday dinner around the kitchen table.

After dinner, she opened presents. There was imported Spanish drinking chocolate powder from North, three fancy chocolate bars from Noah (one from Colombia, one from India, and one from Tanzania), and a bottle of French olive oil from me. It was all very international. Beth’s a fan of good chocolate and olive oil, so she was happy. Next, we ate cake and ice cream, and watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and The Mayflower Voyagers.

Before bed, we took a walk down to the beach to see the stars. We could see Orion’s belt and one of the dippers– we weren’t sure which one. Beth stayed on the boardwalk while North and I went down to the sand. While we were separated, my sister’s family called Beth on her cell and sang “Happy Birthday” to her and let her know her present was on the way.

As we were going to bed, I asked Beth how her birthday had been, and she said it was “a wild ride,” but that it ended well. In my card I’d written (before North came down with covid), “I hope it’s better than getting deloused, or getting your gallbladder out, or getting a flat tire.” I suppose this one will go down as one of Beth’s many memorable birthdays.

Thursday: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving started for me at 4:49. Remember how I said I’m not sleeping well? I stayed in bed until six, trying to get back to sleep, and then I relocated to the living room couch so the light from my cell and laptop where I was reading Facebook and blogs wouldn’t wake Beth. Around 6:45, I decided that as long as I was up, I might as well see the sunrise on the beach, which was only a five-minute walk away.

I used to watch the sun rise on the beach more often, when the kids were younger, and we all used wake at ungodly earlier hours. Well, I can’t exactly say I’m thankful for my recent insomnia, even on a day dedicated to gratitude, but… I was genuinely grateful that morning to see the orange ball of the sun rising over the ocean, touching the beach grass with faint light, putting touches of pink in the sky, painting the wet sand silver with streaks of gold, and making a big, ruffly, clear jellyfish I found at the waterline seem to glow from within.

I walked on the beach until the dawn colors had all drained away from the sky and the sand, went back to the house, ate breakfast, and made a batch of low-sugar cranberry sauce before anyone else was up. Everyone cooked a little throughout the day. Beth made the mushroom gravy and finished the broccoli-cheese casserole that North started. (North felt well enough to cook at first and then got dizzy and had to go lie down.) I made the basting sauce for the tofu roast and Beth made mashed potatoes. We’ve pared down our traditional feast a little over the past couple years since I got diagnosed with diabetes. I stopped making the brandied sweet potatoes because I was the only one who liked them, and we longer make breadcrumb stuffing because the roast comes stuffed with wild rice and Noah was the one who liked the original stuffing best.

Late in the morning, we all made our traditional turkey table decorations from apples, toothpicks, raisins, dried cranberries, and olives. “Will you make these with your kids?” I asked North.

“Yes,” they said. “Will you make them with them?”

“Yes,” I said. It was a cheering vision of the future.

Beth and I had lunch out on the screened porch—leftover Japanese, crackers, cheese, nuts, and fruit. Then we all had overlapping naps. I didn’t manage to fall asleep, but I came close, and it was nice to rest. North slept most of the afternoon. We’d hoped to take our Christmas card photos on the beach that afternoon, but they weren’t up for it. After my nap, I put the roast in the oven and went for another walk on the beach and boardwalk. When I came back to baste it again, Beth went for a walk of her own.

We ate a little after six and everything was delicious. Before we ate, we offered thanks for North being out of the hospital, for being together, for the fact that though we wished Noah was with us that the reason he wasn’t was that he was studying in Australia, something he’d wanted to do for years, and for the vaccines and boosters that kept North’s case of covid mild and that had protected me and Beth so far.

Speaking of Noah, at seven we had a Zoom call with him. It’s only the third time we’ve done it since he’s been abroad. The first time, with me and Beth, was to let him know North had been hospitalized and the second, with all four of us, was the last night North was in the hospital. He’d been trying to call them at the hospital and between the fifteen-hour time difference, difficulties with his changing between domestic and international SIM cards, and the fact that all the kids on the unit shared one phone and it was usually in use, he had not managed it until we linked him into one of our pre-scheduled Zoom calls.

We asked him if he’d done anything for Thanksgiving and he said no. It reminded me of studying in Spain the fall of my junior year of college and how it’s strange to be abroad on this very American holiday. My celebration that year consisted of a sweet potato boiled on a hot plate in a dorm room. We also found out his last school assignment is due the first week of December and he has two whole weeks of free time before he comes home. Beth and I both urged him to travel. He’s already planning a trip to the Great Barrier Reef, but he hasn’t explored much outside the town where he’s living, so it seems like a good opportunity to see more of the country where he’s been living since September. He mentioned in a puzzled way that a lot of the international students have been taking trips to New Zealand and Bali and missing class to do it.

It was good to talk to him. It was the first time I’ve been to Rehoboth without him since before he was born—in fact I think the last time we went without him might have been the trip when we brought printouts of sperm donor profiles to pick out his. It was also the first time we haven’t been together on Thanksgiving, so I was missing him a lot.

After the call, we watched an episode of Gilmore Girls, and then North and I walked to the beach again to look at the stars. There were seabirds resting on the waves, visible only as white spots bobbing up and down in the distance or occasionally taking flight and streaking across the dark sky.

(Not So) Black Friday

I managed to sleep until 5:30 the next morning, a slight improvement. Because my daybreak walk at the beach had been so rewarding the previous morning, I decided to do it again. It was cloudy and drizzling so there really was no sunrise to watch, but I never regret a walk on the beach.

I came home, made myself breakfast, and then left again to go pick up a few books I’d pre-ordered from Browse-About before North got sick. I double-masked and was in and out in a few minutes, resisting the temptation to stay and shop a little. On the way home, I detoured to the beach. It was high tide and an extensive network of little pools and channels of water had formed all over the sand. It was very cool, but I had to wend my way carefully to avoid getting stranded somewhere that would soon be covered by an incoming wave.

There was a family on the beach with preschool-aged twins running around, one in a ladybug rain slicker and one in a bee slicker. The hoods of their jackets had antennae. They were adorable and made me miss my little ones, who are not so little now.

When I got back home, Beth drove out to Route 1 in Black Friday traffic to get Grandpa Mac takeout for North. They’d slept all morning, so it was their first meal of the day. (Then Beth drove back when the order was wrong to get a replacement. This is a testament to Beth’s love for North.) I blogged and read and did laundry so we could bring home mostly clean clothes. It felt odd, not to be busy on the day I usually either start or get serious about my Christmas shopping.

In the late afternoon we had our Christmas card photo shoot on the beach. North and left ahead of Beth and went to the boardwalk where we purchased a frozen custard for North. We all met up and took pictures on the sand and jetties. While Beth and I had our backs to the ocean a rogue wave caught us by surprise and we both got our feet soaked. North took a series of photos of us running out of the ocean. I am considering using one of them on the card. After all, we haven’t had a picture-perfect year.

Beth and North went back to the house while I went to Grotto’s and ordered a pizza and mozzarella sticks for pickup. While they cooked, I went back to the beach to watch the sunset turn a bank of clouds in the northern part of the sky vivid pink and color the water and sand with swirls of pink, gold, and blue. I brought the pizza back home and after an hour or so, I heated it up and we had an early dinner before heading back to the boardwalk for the holiday sing-along and Christmas tree lighting.

When we reached downtown, Beth went to get soft pretzel bites for North while North and I found a place to sit away from the crowds near the bandstand. We found a bench on the boardwalk where we could hear the singing and see the tree but without standing shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of celebrants. We noticed someone was flying a drone near the tree, presumably to get an overhead view when the lights came on.

Although the other people sitting on boardwalk benches and passing by weren’t singing, we did. The first song was “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” and for a half an hour, there was a series of mainly secular Christmas songs like “Jingle Bells,” “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” At seven sharp, the lights on the tree flashed on, just as they always do. The sameness of this event is deeply satisfying.

On the way home, Beth confirmed that the orange light North and I had been seeing in the sky over the ocean the past two nights was in fact a planet—Mars. We marveled that you could see its color from so very far away.

That night before bed, because I’d had a sore throat all day and I was getting stuffy, I took a covid test. To my surprise, it was negative.

Saturday: Goodbye, Beach

Another morning, another early waking, this time around 5:40, another lovely sunrise on the beach, which I enjoyed along with parents with kids, people with dogs, walkers, runners, and people camped out on the sand wrapped in blankets watching the fiery sun hover at the horizon over the ocean. It’s quite the perq if you have to be up before dawn.

I came home and had breakfast and we packed up the house. Even though he’s busy with end-of-semester projects, Noah texted me the pictures of himself wearing a green t-shirt and standing on an Australian beach that I’d requested. We’ll juxtapose one with our beach photos on the Christmas card.

We stayed in Rehoboth for about an hour after we vacated the house. Beth took her daily walk and North and I had a slower ramble along the beach and boardwalk, with a long rest on a boardwalk bench. It was a wild ride getting to the beach, but once we got there it was actually a sedate couple of days, with more naps and less bustling about in shops than we usually have on Thanksgiving weekend, but I’m glad we went, and I hope it will prove restorative.

Note: Beth and I both tested positive for covid on Sunday morning.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Category Archives: Medical Issues

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Wait For It: Coronavirus Chronicles, Part 78

A Wild Ride: Coronavirus Chronicles, Part 77