(Re)Birth

Posted on April 5, 2026 by Steph

Birthright

The Wednesday after North left to go back to school, Beth and I went to a rally outside the Supreme Court while the justices were hearing a case about birthright citizenship. The President was inside listening, too, and according to the Post, when he left in the middle of proceedings, passersby “offered a range of gestures.” We didn’t see him, as he left from another side of the building, but Beth said she would have liked to offer a range of gestures if she’d had the chance.

What we did see was several hundred people with signs. Ours were pre-printed ones we picked up there that said, “It’s literally in the Constitution.” But there were plenty of hand-lettered ones that said, “Citizenship is a Birthright,” “ICE Out” (held by a man in a blue bunny hat), “Keep Your Hands Off the 14^th,” “Immigrants Pay Taxes Billionaires Won’t. Deport Billionaires,” “Together, We Are America,” and “Born Here, Belong Here.” The Rapid Response Choir was singing and people played drums.

Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” Beyoncé’s “Freedom,” Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” and other thematically appropriate songs played before the speakers got started. Honestly, none of them were particularly memorable (partly because some were hard to hear) but it was notable that a descendent of Wong Kim Ark spoke. And that turned out to be important because there were some hecklers arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment only applied to nineteenth-century freedman, so it served as a reminder that applying the amendment to immigrants is long-established precedent.

I was wearing my “I Stand with Immigrants” t-shirt and someone approached me wanting a picture because she was part of the organization that designed the shirts. I said I’d had it since the first Trump administration (when they were handed out at a rally for the Dreamers), and she said, “I guess it’s a timeless message” and I agreed, it’s evergreen. Later I saw someone else in the crowd with the same shirt, which has never happened before, though I’ve worn it to many protests in the past fourteen months, a lot more often than in the first administration.

We left before the event was over because it was a workday for me, but I was glad to have gone. It feels as if a lot about our country’s identity is riding on how we decide to treat the children of our newcomers.

Re-Birth

Noah worked from Monday through Thursday that week, but he was off Friday, and I didn’t have much work either, and Beth was free after her ICE watch shift, so it seemed like a good day to dye eggs. We had a kit Beth had picked up for sale just after Easter last year, that claimed to produce neon eggs, but the colors turned out like those from a regular kit. The enclosed stickers were in the shapes of neon tubes, however, so maybe that’s what it meant. There was also a glitter packet. Beth tried it out, but it didn’t stick very well. Noah created a batik effect by dyeing an egg yellow, drawing stars on it with white crayon and then re-dyeing the egg blue. It came out nicely. I made two two-toned eggs and used the stickers to spell out “Resist” surrounded by rainbows on the yellow/green one and “No” on top of a crown on the pink/purple one. And of course, we also used the face stickers and the little felt hats we’ve had for ages.

Saturday, I made a batch of almond flour banana chocolate chip walnut muffins because we had a lot of little baggies with frozen overripe bananas in the freezer—I found seven separate bags, some with tiny little stubs of frozen banana. By the time I’d combined them all and mashed them I had 1 ¾ cups, which was enough for my purposes. Beth had asked if we could donate half the batch to the immigrant aid bake sale that’s at the farmers’ market every week. I was glad to be contributing to a good cause, so when we found out the sale was cancelled that week, due to people being away for the public schools’ spring break, we decided to freeze them for the following week.

We’re not religious, so our Easter observation consists of dyeing eggs and eating candy. Sunday morning, I gave Noah his Easter basket with little ceremony shortly after he got up. We’d just we discovered the cats intently watching a wasp on the living room window and to save them from getting stung we removed them to another room while the wasp was caught and released outside. I came out of the room where I’d shut them up carrying the basket and handed to him after he let the wasp go. I’d been resisting the Easter candy (mostly) for weeks, so I had a Reese’s egg after lunch and before my daily walk in hopes the exercise would prevent a spike. It did blunt the rise.

On the walk, I took pictures of flowers, purple ones because it was Easter. I had a lot to choose from: lilacs, redbud, wisteria, grape hyacinth, and a budding iris right outside our fence. I do appreciate all the symbols of rebirth you see this time of year in the form of chocolate bunnies and eggs as well as the real rebirth of the natural world, so reliable and beautiful, no matter what else is happening around us.

Happy Passover and Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate. Whether you do or not, I hope you feel at least a glimmer of hope and renewal in these lovely spring days.

#SpringBreak

Posted on March 31, 2026 by Steph

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

First Saturday: Hugs and Heights

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First Sunday: Flora and Fauna

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday: Coffee, California Tortilla, and Clothes

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

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

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

Wednesday: Swimming and Cinema

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

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

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

Thursday: Trip to Tattoo

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

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

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

Friday: Chilly Cherries

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

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

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

Saturday: Democracy and Death

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday: Goodies and Goodbye

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

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

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

A Richer Place

Posted on February 22, 2026 by Steph

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We welcomed the Year of the Fire Horse at the National Museum of Asian Art yesterday. We arrived about a half hour before the lion dance was scheduled to start so we wandered around the museum, looking at early modern Japanese pottery and ancient Iranian metalwork. Have you ever heard about the tradition of mending broken pottery with gold and how this practice could be seen as a symbol of how our scars can be seen as something that makes us stronger or more beautiful? I feel like I see it all the time on social media and I don’t know if that was the original symbolic intention, but I did see a pot like that, which was kind of cool.

We went outside to the steps of the museum, which were crowded with people who had come to watch the lion dance. It started about fifteen minutes late and the couple behind us was having a protracted discussion about whether it was worth continuing to wait. It was. There were two full-sized lions (one purple and one red), with two adults inside each, and one orange baby lion with two small children inside. The three lions danced to the music of the drums and received red envelopes from a few members of the crowd and pretended to gobble fortune cookies out of a basket on the ground and then threw the cookies to the crowd. The baby lion had a chaperone, an adult not in costume who followed it around and gave it instructions when it got off course. It was seriously cute.

We used to go to see the Lion Dance in Chinatown occasionally when we lived in D.C., and I think we might have taken Noah once when he was very small (pre-blog). Seeing the tiny children inside the dragon costume did shake loose a memory I hadn’t thought of in ages. One year one of my grad school professors at the University of Maryland invited her students to see a lunar new year performance at her small son’s Chinese dance school, followed by a buffet feast. Try as I might, I could not remember her name or even what class she was teaching but I remember her son’s first name, even though I only met him once. It was Logan, which his mother explained his parents gave him because it was an English name that sounded like a Chinese one. (The child was biracial.) It’s funny the little glimpses into other people’s lives we remember years later. Given that this event happened about thirty years ago, Logan could have his own kid old enough to learn the lion dance by now.

When the dance was over, we headed over to the Arts and Industries Building, where there were food and crafts booths and more performances. I initially had some trouble finding food that was both vegetarian and not too diabetic-unfriendly, but I ended up with eggrolls, a tofu dish, and half a small and very expensive Korean black sesame seed cheesecake, which I shared with Noah. Beth and Noah had noodles, and she got a Vietnamese bahn mi sandwich, which is a favorite of hers. Everything was delicious. I only regretted that I couldn’t have a Thai iced tea. I used to love those, but they are super sweet and I have yet to try one since diabetes. We briefly listened to some Mongolian singers before heading home.

As we walked across the Mall, headed back to the Metro, I was feeling emotional about multiculturalism. When the kids were small and we’d go to the Folklife Festival (which, sadly, has been cancelled for this year in favor of some fake State Fair* on the mall) or to Takoma Park’s Fourth of July parade and we’d be watching musicians and dancers from all over the world and eating food from different cultures I would so often talk to the kids about how the United States is a country of immigrants that one year when Noah was around twelve he interrupted and supplied the lesson himself. But it’s true. I like living in a country and a region with a lot of immigrants. I think it makes us stronger and more interesting.

So that’s one reason Beth has gotten involved with a local organization that helps support immigrant communities. She’s not sure what she’ll be doing yet—maybe delivering groceries to people who are afraid to leave their houses, maybe observing drop-offs and pickups at our kids’ old majority-Latino elementary school in case ICE shows up. It’s a way to protect and give back to the people who make our home a culturally richer place.

By the way, I read that the year of the fire horse, which happens only every sixty years is supposed to “bring intense, fast-paced change.” That could certainly be good or bad. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for good.

*No shade to real state and county fairs, which I really like.

Ice Melts

Posted on February 19, 2026 by Steph

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Snowmelt

The snow that fell three and a half weeks ago is still with us, but it’s gradually melting. Our back yard is still mostly covered with a three-inch layer, with most of the grass in the sunnier side and front yards now visible. We’ve had two days with highs in the fifties with more on the way, so that should speed up the melting.

I am enjoying seeing what emerges from the snow as it recedes—daffodil points in our front yard, a neighbor’s meditating skeleton and frog, a newspaper from the night the snow fell, the last week of January. It was delivered at night to beat the snowfall, but we could not find it the next morning. When I found it and looked at the front page, it was like a time capsule. There was a story about Alex Pretti’s death, but his name had not yet been released. Doesn’t that seem like a long time ago? The news moves fast these days.

What have we been up to while the snow and ice melt? Besides reading a book club book that takes place partly in Antarctica, you mean? (That ended up seeming more apt than anticipated.) Well, we’ve been…

Watching the Olympics

We’ve been watching the Olympics most nights, more figure skating than anything else, but also ski jumping, moguls, snowboarding, skeleton, and bobsled. It’s a nice distraction, and Walter enjoys it too, as you can see from his rapt attention to the opening ceremony. (He was also into bobsledding and ski jumping.)

Baking

Baked goods continue to appear in the house without me lifting a finger to make it happen. So far this month Beth has made chocolate-chocolate chip cookies and Noah has made rye muffins with caraway seeds, and the most amazing turtle shortbread bars for Valentine’s Day. They have a shortbread base, a middle layer of caramel with pecans, and are topped with chocolate. They contain a whole pound of butter and they taste like it.

Going on a Date

The second Saturday in February Beth and I went to see Sly Lives!, a documentary about Sly and the Family Stone at AFI, where it was playing for free for Black History Month. I think the music and fashion would be a nostalgic treat for anyone old enough to remember the 1970s, but I also learned a lot I didn’t know. Sly Stone was deeply talented and flawed, like so many artists. The story is sad in parts, but also joyful. And he had the most beautiful, endearing smile when he was young. (Perhaps he still does, but there is no contemporary footage of him in the film.)

After the movie, we got a late lunch at a pupuseria where there was a benefit for the immigrant community. We got pupusas and Beth bought a sticker and some other small items from the art table. I would have, too, if I’d realized that was the benefit part. I thought the proceeds from the food was being donated, too. (But I have another chance because another Mexican/Salvadoran restaurant near us is having that kind of benefit in early March.)

Celebrating Valentine’s Day

The next weekend was Valentine’s and President’s Day weekend in one. We didn’t have big plans for Valentine’s Day, but a great quantity of chocolate (dark chocolate bars in various flavors and caramel-filled hearts) and cookies (heart-shaped butter cookies from a local bakery and low-carb strawberry almond flour cookies) were exchanged between the three of us. Noah baked the turtle bars that day, while Beth and I were at the Silver Spring Recreation and Aquatic Center, where she’s been going to exercise almost daily since she retired.

The facility is new and I had not been yet. In fact, I haven’t been swimming in months and just a couple times in the current Trump administration. At first it because we were so busy with the flurry of protests at the beginning of this term and then I just got out of the habit. Anyway, Beth used the weight room and I swam laps. We’d hoped to use the hot tub together, but it was out of service. I got a half-sweet mocha at the café while I waited for her to finish. There are some nice amenities there they don’t have at the elementary school where I usually swim (though no kickboards, which is a drawback).

We talked to North the following day. They had not gone to the mailroom to pick up their Valentine’s care package because they didn’t know it was from us, and we declined to tell them what was in it. They have since picked it up, so I can reveal it contained strawberry-white chocolate truffles, coconut milk caramels, and probiotics. This last item is because, after seeming to clear up after their surgery, they are having digestive issues again. This is discouraging.

Rallying for Immigrant Rights

The next day, we went to a protest. I used to take most federal holidays off because Beth had them off and we’d often do something together, but now that she’s retired, it doesn’t seem to make as much difference, so I’m never sure what to do. However, on President’s Day, I worked a little and took off early so I could accompany Beth to a rally for immigrant rights in Annapolis.

The rally took place at 5:30 at Lawyer’s Mall, in front of the Maryland State House. It’s a plaza with a bronze statue of Thurgood Marshall, on the base of which people left battery-operated votive candles and signs. State representatives, community activists, and high school students spoke. The timing of the rally was meant to mark the occasion (the following day) of Governor Moore’s signing a bill to ban co-operation between local police and federal immigration agencies. Speakers celebrated this and called for further legislation to prohibit federal agents from masking, engaging in racial profiling, and operating detention centers in the state. One of the speakers, by way of encouragement, gestured to the brick and granite courtyard that was largely free of snow, and said, as we’ve noticed recently “ice melts” to the cheers of the crowd.

We stood in the chilly square as the sun set and darkness gathered, listening to the speeches, and wandering around to read signs that said things like “Abolish ICE,” “Due Process for All,” and “Fund Healthcare and Education, Not State Terror.” I particularly liked one with a picture of a butterfly (a symbol of migrants) and the following words: “We the People” (in calligraphy) “Are Pissed” (in block letters). But the best one was not technically a sign, but a quilt big enough to require two women to hold it. It said “Abolish ICE Now” in gold letters on a blue background. That takes more commitment than markers and posterboard.

We left around seven o’clock. Beth had made a quinoa-vegetable stew for dinner before we left, and I had mine in a thermos to eat as we drove home. As I ate the warm stew, I watched the dark, snowy landscape along the Beltway roll by, hoping for a melting, not so much of the snow, but either of the hearts of any of our leaders who need it, or barring that, of their power.

Winter’s So Cold This Year

Posted on February 2, 2026 by Steph

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Come with me, dance, my dear
Winter’s so cold this year
You are so warm
My wintertime love to be

From “Wintertime Love” by Jim Morrison, John Paul Densmore, Robert A. Krieger, and Raymond D. Manzerek

Snowcrete

A few days after the snow, I walked to the co-op for milk and dinner ingredients and I took a picture of a more than six-foot high pile of plowed snow on a corner across the street from the co-op, posted it on Facebook and asked people to guess how long it would take to melt. Guesses ranged from early February to early April. I promised to track it and announce whose guess was closest. Well, we’ll never find out because as one of my friends predicted, the snow was removed with a front-loader a few days later. There’s no shortage of other piles, including a glacier-like twelve-foot tall and at least eighty-foot long mass that’s been dumped in the parking lot of a closed hospital near my house.

It’s been over a week since the snow fell, but removal has been a challenge because of the thick ice layer on top. People have been shattering it and using the pieces to build igloos, replicas of Stonehenge, or abstract sculptures in their yards. Streets are clear (though some don’t have as many lanes as usual) and sidewalks are mostly clear as well, but the parts that were never shoveled are covered with what everyone is calling “snowcrete” and this makes it a challenge to walk anywhere. It’s unlikely to get easier any time soon because we’ve been having an unusually long cold snap. The temperature hasn’t risen above freezing in a week and a half (though it might tomorrow). It has been sunny, so there are tiny rivulets of meltwater at the edges of things in the afternoons, but there hasn’t been any significant melting. The public schools were out all last week and are still closed. Beth says she’s glad we don’t have kids in the school system anymore because I would be losing my mind and she’s 100% right.

After we finished shoveling the sidewalk and the path from the front door to the sidewalk, we undertook new shoveling projects. All three of us worked on making new paths out of the house—front door to the driveway and back door to the driveway. We share the driveway with our next-door neighbors (UNO’s people) and Beth, Noah, Rose, Seydou and two of their teenage sons spent several days shoveling the driveway. Usually, we either wait for the driveway to melt or hire that job out, but the mostly Latino men who come by offering those services were not much in evidence last week. Why do you think that might be? To be clear, I am not complaining about having to do this job ourselves but thinking with sadness about our neighbors who are afraid to leave their houses. Beth has been trying to get involved with volunteers who are making grocery deliveries to immigrant households, but she hasn’t been able to get connected yet.

The snowy weather spurred a lot of baking. In addition to the pumpkin brownies, Beth made chocolate chunk-almond biscotti, and Noah made banana bread with pecans. And I don’t think either of them is done. Beth brought home chocolate chips when she went grocery shopping this weekend, “just in case” she felt like baking again and Noah ordered rye flour for muffins.

Goodbyes

Friday night Beth’s staff took her out for a goodbye dinner at Busboys and Poets. She said it was fun and good to see them. Noah and I were on our own that evening, so we ordered pizza and watched Life of Chuck. I’d been reluctant to watch it with Beth because she doesn’t like violent films and I didn’t know how the apocalypse scenes would be portrayed. Well, it was about as gentle a portrayal of an apocalypse as you could hope for and the film is really very beautiful and life-affirming for a movie with so much death in it.

The next day Beth and I attended a memorial service for our friend and neighbor Chris, who died unexpectedly in late November a couple weeks shy of her sixtieth birthday. Chris worked for the AFL-CIO, so she and Beth met through work. Then about ten years ago, she and her wife Melissa and their two girls Zoe and Skyler moved to Takoma Park just around the corner and two houses down from us. We went to their New Year’s Eve parties several times. We don’t throw parties, so we reciprocated with hand-me-downs for the girls, baked goods, and garden produce. I would often run into Chris outside her house when starting out on my morning walk and this would almost always turn into stopping to chat, mostly about politics and our kids. Less than a week before she died, she messaged me asking about good places in the area to hike because she’d been ill recently, but she was anticipating recovering and wanted to hike, perhaps with Beth, once she was better and Beth had retired. The two of them had discussed kayaking together, too. Well, those outings will never happen now.

The service was at the Washington Ethical Society. The building has no parking lot, and a lot of street parking spaces were still covered in snow, so we weren’t sure if we should drive, take our chances on public transportation, or take a Lyft. We drove and we did find a space a couple blocks away. We had to climb over some drifts, so I was glad I decided to wear boots rather than shoes (and that I hadn’t bought new shoes for the occasion as I considered). I’d also wondered if I’d be underdressed in a grey turtleneck, black cardigan, and black pants but when we arrived and I saw the crowd I felt I’d intuited the standard for largely middle-aged lesbian sad event attire accurately.

The hall was packed. We got seats, but it ended up being standing room only in the back of the room. There were several speakers, arranged chronologically, telling stories about Chris from different phases in her life—her childhood on a gladiola farm in Ohio, her madcap twenties in D.C. (some relayed by a former girlfriend), and so on, ending with Melissa, who told a story about how they got married “for the first time” in Oregon in 2003 during a brief period when that was legal and how when the marriage was cancelled after a referendum, they got a refund check from the state. It was darkly funny but also served to remind us how far we have come in recent years. There were pictures of Chris and loved ones at different ages projected on a screen and then people from the audience went up to mikes set up around the room to tell more stories. Labor colleagues, a fellow soccer coach, and one of the girls on a team Chris had coached spoke affectionately of her.

Chris was big-hearted and passionate about social justice. She helped create some of the online communication tools labor and other progressive activists, including those in Minneapolis, are using to co-ordinate actions. She was a devoted wife and mother, a lover of card games, and an avid birdwatcher and outdoorswoman. (I realized at the ceremony that even though I sent her a long list of parks where Beth and I have hiked, I probably didn’t suggest any she didn’t already know, but she was kind enough not to tell me that.)

When we got home from the ceremony, we found Noah chopping vegetables for a stir-fry, and I lent him a hand. As I chopped cabbage, carrots, and mushrooms, I put on Prince because I was remembering that when Prince died, Chris and Mel hosted an impromptu Prince dance party in their yard. It reminded me how they turned sadness into appreciation and joy. Like the dancers in the Doors song, Chris excelled at finding warmth in the cold.

Snow and Ice

Posted on January 26, 2026 by Steph

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

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

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

Takoma Park, MD to Wheeling, WV: Traveling

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

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

Wheeling to Oberlin, OH and Westlake, OH: Traveling

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

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

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

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

Avon, OH: Surgery

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

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

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

Oberlin: Convalescence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oberlin to Wheeling and Wheeling to Takoma Park: Traveling

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every Phase of Us

Posted on January 11, 2026 by Steph

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Fire and Ice

My first work week of the year was a short one. I didn’t start to work until Wednesday and then I took off early on Friday to go to a protest. Between the kidnapping of the President of Venezuela and the killing of a protestor in Minneapolis, the year had gotten off to a dismal and dismaying start. There were nationwide protests planned for the weekend, but Beth had a prior engagement, so we decided to go to a Friday afternoon roadside protest in Silver Spring. I made my sign the night before; the side I meant to face the street had just the words “Fire Ice” in letters I hoped would be big enough to read from the road, with accompanying sketches of fire and ice. (I think if I use it again, I will make the letters thicker, so they are more legible from a distance.)

This recurring protest happens every week at 4 p.m. on 16^th Street, a six-lane thoroughfare. The weather was not inviting, in the forties and drizzling when we arrived, but there was a moderate turnout, several dozen people. I’m not a regular at this one, so I’m not sure how that compares to an average week. People’s signs were about various issues, but anti-ICE ones were popular and two people in the median held signs that said, “No Blood for Oil” and “No War.” Someone on the other side of the street had an upside-down American flag. My favorite sign might have been the one that said, “Alexa… change the President.” If only it were that simple…

As usual at these types of protests, there was a lot of positive engagement from passing traffic, near constant honking, waving, and thumbs up from drivers. I most appreciated honks from a school bus driver and a contractor’s truck with a Spanish surname in the name of the company. There was also an elementary school age child (perhaps Latino—it was hard to tell at a distance) who leaned out a rolled down window and yelled “Thank you!” repeatedly across several lanes of traffic. Another driver yelled to us, echoing “No Blood for Oil” and then wished us “a blessed weekend.” This isn’t something I’d say myself, not being religious, but I appreciated the sentiment.

A Ceremony to Prove It

Friday night after a dinner of homemade pizza we watched Train Dreams. In the scene in which the protagonist proposes to his wife, she says they are already married, they just need “a ceremony to prove it.” That line struck me because the anniversary of the two times Beth and I had a ceremony to prove it was in two days. Each one was a different kind of proof. As of today, it’s now been thirty-four years since our commitment ceremony with friends and family in one living room and thirteen since our legal wedding in another living room, with just the two of us, the kids, and an officiant.

On Saturday afternoon I made the spice cake I made for the first time for the commitment ceremony, and I have made almost every year since then. While it was in the oven I read a few chapters of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, which I’m reading because my book club is reading the modern re-reading Pym in February. Earlier that day Beth got a long-delayed haircut. In her first week of retirement, she also paid a visit to the dentist (also delayed) and attended the first meeting of her new Quigong class. She was happy to report she was not the youngest person there.

We had the cake Sunday afternoon, after a video call with North and before Noah left for his game club. It’s a comfortingly familiar cake by this point, dense, sweet, and moist. This year as most years I make a lemon frosting for it—the one year I made orange instead, North was quite put out.

We also exchanged cards and gifts. My card had a botanical illustration of a passionflower on the front. I circled the name of the flower, even though I know from writing about it—it’s a common ingredient in herbal sleep aides—that its name refers to the passion of Christ, not the other kind. Beth’s had pictures of the phases of the moon on it and said, “I love every phase of us” on the front.

One of the advantages of having an anniversary two and a half weeks after Christmas (other than relieving post-holiday letdown) is that we usually have leftover items on our Christmas lists and that makes gift-buying easy. This year we ended up with a reverse “Gift of the Magi” situation, in that without or planning it our gifts improved each other. Beth got me three kinds of nut butter—fancy nut butters being a diabetic-friendly treat—and I got her a nut butter mixer. It’s a lid with an attached crank that allows you to mix separated oil back into natural nut butters without splashing it out of the jar. We haven’t tried it out yet because while I opened one of the nut butters later in the afternoon, it was the pistachio-cocoa butter, which was creamy and didn’t need any mixing.

Happy anniversary, sweetheart. Even though I wish this phase of our lives did not involve the need for quite so many protests, I think we improve each other and this was a blessed weekend.

A Very Nice Birthday

Posted on November 27, 2025 by Steph

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Early Celebration

On Thursday, three days before Beth’s birthday, I made stuffed eggplant with vegetarian ground beef and tomato sauce for dinner because she loves eggplant and it was the last day I was choosing the menu before her birthday. She was quite appreciative of the dinner as well as the dessert, chocolate-covered pumpkin spice truffles I’d made the day before, not for her birthday per se, but more of an autumnal treat. The insides are made of crushed graham crackers mixed with pumpkin puree and they have the texture of the inside of a cake pop.

Pizza and Protest

Friday night we went to Red Hound, which is Beth’s favorite pizza place. A lot of their business is takeout and there are only three tables inside (plus some outside tables) so we were gambling an inside one would be free and the gamble paid off. We got pizza with goat cheese and all three of us got maple soft serve with caramel-apple cider sauce. They always have interesting flavors there.

Part of the reason I suggested we go to Red Hound was that it’s just a few blocks from the ongoing Free DC protest just over the DC line. People gather with pots and pans and percussion instruments every evening and make noise for five minutes. It was at eight o’clock in the summer but now it’s at seven. We got there a little early as Beth’s former colleague Sara who organizes the protest was setting up her bin of noisemakers. A thirty-something woman was telling her that she lives in the apartment building just across the street and watching the protest has become part of her six-month-old baby’s bedtime routine.

Indeed, once it had started, I looked up and she was at the window holding the baby and waving. Beth said it will be a fun story to tell him when he’s older and wants to know what life was like during that perilous time during his infancy when the country was teetering on the edge of dictatorship. In Beth’s version of this scenario democracy is saved.

We’d brought instruments with us since Noah still has some from his days playing percussion in middle and high school band. Beth took the tambourine and he had a cowbell. We’d only brought those two, so I picked a maraca from the bin and at seven sharp we all started to play. Pedestrians and people in passing cars honked or shouted encouragement. A Metro bus driver also honked in support. A man in front of the CVS across the street did a little dance and yelled, “You guys are the greatest.”

There were eight people there, counting us, and I knew two of the other five, Sara of course, and Jim from my book club. Jim told Noah to be careful hanging out with “this troublemaker,” gesturing to me. Sara, who has been doing this almost every night since August, says it still cheers her up every time. It was only my third time attending, but I am inspired to go again some time.

A Very Nice Birthday

On Beth’s birthday we had our usual Sunday morning video call with North, but it was somewhat unusual because we sang “Happy Birthday” and Beth opened her presents on camera. I got her Alison Bechdel’s Spent and some orange chocolates she likes. The kids got her two different graters (a garlic grater and a micro plane grater) that had been on her wish list. She also opened a pile of dark chocolate bars from my mom.

After lunch, we sang “Happy Birthday” again and had the cake I’d made the day before—dark chocolate with coffee frosting. It’s the cake I make most often for Beth’s birthday and I need to read the recipe through a patina of brown cocoa powder spills.

Noah left for his weekly board game group in Rockville, and Beth and I went for a walk in Brookside Gardens and Wheaton Regional Park (these parks are adjacent and you can easily cross from one to the other). We spent most of the hour-long walk on a series of interconnected wooded trails. We were usually alone but every so often we’d cross paths with other people, dogs, and horses. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing at home.

We had Burmese takeout for dinner and Noah came home early from his games to eat with us. (He’s usually out until after we’ve gone to bed.) We ordered a feast that lasted for days afterward, but the most popular dish (based on order of disappearance) was the eggplant fritters. After dinner we had more cake and watched a couple episodes of Man on the Inside. Beth declared it had been “a very nice birthday.”

Afterward

By Monday it was already time to start thinking about the next holiday. That afternoon, Noah chopped up onions, celery, and mushrooms for Thanksgiving gravy and stuffing at the dining room table. While he was doing that, I was chopping vegetables (including some of the same ones) in the kitchen for the soup we were having for dinner that night. This felt like a kind of cheering, festive parallel play. And that night Beth used the mushrooms and some of the onions to make gravy.

But even though we had turned our attention to Thanksgiving, her birthday wasn’t quite over. On Tuesday she got a card from her brother and a present from my sister (reusable cloth produce bags she’d requested) in the mail.

But the most exciting thing that happened on Tuesday was that North came home. Their flight from Cleveland was delayed, so we didn’t even leave the house to drive to National until ten p.m., a time we are normally in bed. Beth had thought traffic would be light by that time of night and it was until we got close to the airport, where there was quite the backup of cars. Turns out a lot of people are flying or picking people up from the airport two nights before Thanksgiving. It was almost midnight by the time we got home, but Noah and the cats were all up so North got to be reunited with the whole family. And the next morning, we left for the beach.

A Scary World

Posted on November 1, 2025 by Steph

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Pre-Halloween Activities

Two days before Halloween, I posted on Facebook: “Steph knows it’s a scary world out there, so she wrote to PA voters in hopes they might help hold the line, and she made some comfort in the form of soup in a pumpkin shell. Vote YES on judicial retention!” The first two pictures were of a cardboard sign and tombstones some neighbors made for their “International Development Graveyard.” The tombs read “USAID: 1961-2025,” “Environmental Conservation,” “Global Health,” “USAID Education Programs. RIP,” etc. I also included a photo of a stack of postcards, my second batch for Democratic judges in Pennsylvania, and my cream of pumpkin soup. There’s only so much we can do, but I try to keep doing it.

All Hallows Eve

The next afternoon Beth set out for Oberlin to stay with North during and after their endoscopy, which was taking place on Halloween. The doctors are closing in on an overactive gallbladder as the source of North’s ongoing digestive problems, but they wanted to have a look inside their upper digestive tract to rule out any other problems before scheduling a gallbladder removal surgery. The procedure went smoothly, and they didn’t find anything, but they are running a second H. pylori test (the first one came back negative, but this one’s from a biopsy and more accurate) as a final step before surgery.

Beth drove North to Cleveland Clinic and back to the rental house where she was staying in Lorain. It was Halloween, so they watched Muppets Haunted Mansion and ate pizza and candy. (Beth bought some in case any trick-or-treaters came to the rental unit, but none did.) North had been sad to miss Halloween festivities on campus (trick-or-treating at academic department offices and a party) so I hope this was some compensation. It reminded me of other times they had to miss trick-or-treating—for Outdoor Education in sixth grade and when they were hospitalized in eleventh grade. They really love Halloween, so the timing was not ideal. The next morning, Beth and North took a walk along the shores of Lake Erie and then Beth left for Wheeling for a quick visit to her mom.

Back home, Noah and I held down the fort. We replaced decorations that had blown down and put batteries in ones that make more noise than we want to hear all month. Noah also got the topple-prone witch that Beth and I had been struggling with for days to stand up and got both fog machines going. He had evening plans, filming an amateur production of Sweeney Todd, but I was grateful for his help before he left after dinner.

I was left alone to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. We got about thirty. Toward the end of the evening, I was texting Beth and saying I hadn’t seen any fabulous costumes when a little autumn fairy knocked on the door. Her dress was covered in different colored leaves and she had green, leaf-shaped wings with glow sticks in them. Shortly afterward there was a teenage frog with (possibly homemade) crocheted eyes on a headband. I also appreciated a preteen Grim Reaper with a homemade scythe, a teen Elphaba who had gotten the shade of her green makeup just right, and a little dalmatian with nice spotted face paint. As always, we got a lot of compliments on our decorations. One mom said she always looks forward to our house more than any other.

Post-Halloween Thoughts

The next day on my morning walk, I came across another cardboard graveyard of political commentary. The stones said, “Due Process: 1791-2025” and “RIP Medicare & Medicaid.” That last one may be a bit premature, but it was a reminder (as if we needed one) of the stakes over the next few years.

There will be a time after this time, I keep telling myself, and we may be able to rebuild some of what’s being lost, or maybe even build something better. Some things are lost for good, though, like the East Wing of the White House. It’s not as important as due process, for instance, but I’ve lived in the D.C. area for thirty-four years and I have fond memories of White House tours: Christmas tours in the 90s and in 2023, an East Wing tour in 2010, garden tours in 2011 and 2022, and an Easter Egg Roll in 2014. There’s a reason they call it the People’s House. It belongs to all of us and it’s sad to see the physical symbols of democracy attacked as ruthlessly as its norms, laws, and spirit. That’s scarier than any bright green witch or robed figure with a scythe.

#FallBreak

Posted on October 26, 2025 by Steph

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

First Saturday: No Kings

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

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

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

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

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

First Sunday: Picking Pumpkins

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

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

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

Monday to Wednesday: Berkely Springs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday to Friday: Baking and Coffee

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

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

Second Saturday: Halloween Parade and Carving Pumpkins

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

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

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

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

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

Second Sunday

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

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

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Category Archives: Resistance

(Re)Birth

#SpringBreak

A Richer Place

Ice Melts

Winter’s So Cold This Year

Snow and Ice

Every Phase of Us

A Very Nice Birthday

A Scary World

#FallBreak