Trip 1, Beth and June: Thursday to Wednesday

Beth had two back-to-back work trips the first two weeks of August. Except for one night at home, she was gone for ten days.  June was gone most of that time, too, because Beth took her with her when she left for the first trip (the CWA convention in Pittsburgh) and dropped her off in Wheeling with her mom for a week of what the kids call Camp YaYa. She hung out with various relatives, ate cupcakes with Beth’s aunt Carole to celebrate her eightieth birthday, went swimming three times, saw a production of Godspell and The Emoji Movie, and spent the night in a treehouse cabin with YaYa. Noah’s been visiting YaYa for a week every summer since he was about June’s age or a little younger, so she was glad to finally get her turn.

At home, Noah and I were left to our own devices. He was at drama camp during the day the last three days June was gone, but we found time to finish the first book in the Dark Tower series, start the second one, and watch Psycho and The Birds. I didn’t cook anything much more demanding than pasta or frozen foods for dinner (except one night when I made a big vegetable stir-fry) and I got a lot of work and a little reading of my own done. It was nice to have both the one-on-one time with him and some time alone.

I started thinking about our fall garden, as a lot of our summer plants are dying prematurely this year and I didn’t want the garden to be over in mid-August. I planted carrot seeds in an unused plot, cilantro in a couple pots, and cauliflower, chard, and lettuce seeds in a starter tray because those seeds were a little old and I wasn’t sure what would come up. When I have a better sense of what’s going to germinate and survive the seedling phase, I may buy some starts to fill in the gaps. So far, there’s cilantro and carrot tops coming up and I see several promising-looking chard seedlings.

Since I had time sit on the porch a little while every morning, I also enjoyed what we already have in the yard. The resurrection lilies bloomed right on time the first week of August. They’re all done now. One morning during a delightfully cool spell, while I was sitting on the porch, wearing long sleeves and socks and drinking hot tea, I noticed a hummingbird sipping from the flowers on the volunteer trumpet vine that’s taking over our side fence. And as I was looking in that direction, I further noticed that the black cherry tree I planted in the side yard nine years ago was bearing fruit for the first time. (This is about on schedule apparently. They start to produce fruit when they’re ten years old and it was a sapling when I planted it.) The fruit is tiny and bitter, so I’ll leave it for the birds, but I’m glad the tree is healthy and developing as it should, especially since we have a couple of ailing silver maples in the front yard that may need to come down, which makes me very sad.

Intermission: Wedensday

Wednesday afternoon, Beth returned with June. I was happy to have everyone under one roof, if only for night, so I made a summery feast–yellow squash and corn soup, blueberry muffins with frozen berries we’d picked last month at the berry farm, and slices of one of the last garden cucumbers, and peaches from the farmers’ market. Beth left for Netroots Nation in Atlanta early the next morning, before I was even awake. Having seen her for a few hours made me miss her sharply, more than I had during the six and a half days she’d just been gone. But this was a shorter trip. She’d be returning late Saturday night.

Trip 2, Beth: Thursday to Saturday

I worked Thursday and June helped me clean the bathroom and make dinner (blueberry pancakes with more of the frozen blueberries). Friday I took off work. I was intending to take June to the library and the Long Branch pool, as I haven’t been to an outdoor pool all summer. But when I looked up the hours, I found it’s closed on Fridays and the Piney Branch indoor pool where I swim laps every Sunday is only open early in the morning and late afternoons and evenings on weekdays. This might have worked most days, but late afternoon was out because Noah had a drama camp demonstration we were planning to attend.

It was already shaping up to be a challenging day. I’d woken with a mysterious itchy rash on my right arm. Then while I was making a run to the Co-Op for milk, I lost my SmarTrip and my phone gave me an ominous warning about a virus I thought was probably fake but just to be safe I decided to power it down and leave it off until Beth got home and could look at it. Nothing seemed to be going according to plan.

So, I thought about it and made a new plan. June had been wanting to go on a picnic for a while so I suggested that. She was right on it, making pasta salad and sugar cookies while I was running my errands. I suggested something with protein might be a good idea, so we also took some veggie turkey slices, and I threw some fruit into the bag as well. The sky was looking threatening, but we packed umbrellas and headed out for the playground. We ate at the picnic table and then June waded in the creek. She didn’t want to swing or use any of the equipment, which made me think about how my kids have been coming to this playground since we moved to Takoma when Noah was a year old, but now our playground days are close to over.

Back at home, June helped me clean the kitchen, without complaint. Before he left for camp that morning, Noah had mowed the back lawn, also without complaint. It made me reflect that kids growing up is not all bad.

The trip to Round House Theatre was nerve-wracking because the first of the two buses we needed to take was twenty minutes late and for most of the trip I was sure we’d miss the second one and possibly Noah’s presentation. But we just barely caught it and we arrived ten minutes early. I breathed a sigh of relief and felt the weariness I often feel after stress settle over me.

The topic of the camp was theater design and for a week the campers focused on a play that Round House is producing this fall, working on sketches of costumes for characters, brainstorming props, experimenting with lights, painting scenery, and designing background sound. Individually and in groups, they gave presentations on each of these topics. Noah and two other boys presented on the sounds they would use in a specific scene in the play. This was Noah’s third time in the theater design camp and he presented on sound the last time around, too. I guess he’s specializing. He brought home some blueprints he made, the cue sheet for his sound plan, and some faux marble tile he’d painted. It was all very interesting and Noah said the camp put him in the mood to see a play sometime soon, so I hope we do.

I would have liked to stop in Silver Spring for dinner where we switched buses, but Megan was supposed to sleep over, so we needed to get home. We arrived at home to find a phone message letting us know she was sick and couldn’t come after all. June took it hard because the sleepover had been planned for a while and Megan’s family was about to leave for a three-week trip so it couldn’t be re-scheduled any time soon. It was seven when we got home and I ordered a pizza which didn’t come until past eight o’clock. We were all hungry and tired it was a discouraging end to the day, but we tried to salvage it with a game of Sleeping Queens before June went to bed.

Saturday was my rash was no better and now June had it too on her leg. The day was better, though. I took her to the library and the indoor pool because it looked like rain, although it didn’t until evening. We’ll go to the outdoor pool eventually. There’s still three weeks of summer break left. I was also glad Beth was coming home, though thunderstorms in D.C. delayed her flight.

We were messaging a lot all through that day and since she was at Netroots, it sometimes turned to politics: “All the sessions have been interesting but it feels a little precious to be talking about messaging when armed white supremacists are marching in the streets to protect symbols of the Confederacy,” she wrote.  It made me remember when she was at Netroots two years ago and the big drama was a blowup between Black Lives Matter activists, Martin O’Malley, and Bernie Sanders. That seems like it happened in a different country. We have slid so far backwards, so fast, it’s frightening. Except that’s not exactly it. People haven’t suddenly gotten more racist, they have gotten more willing to show it. In any case, it was a good reminder that Beth was doing important work on her travels, however uncertain the results.

First Day Home

But I am glad she’s home (as of 12:15 a.m. Sunday), because I miss her when she’s gone. And even though she was probably exhausted, the first day she was back she went grocery shopping and then we went to the Montgomery County Fair to look at farm animals, eat unhealthy food, play carnival games, and go on rides. The whole time we were there I was struck by the diversity of the crowd and our county—blacks, whites, Asians, Latinos, women in headscarves and others in the garb of Orthodox Jews. I told Beth that night as we were dropping into bed, a little past our bedtime, that everyone wants to eat fried dough and go on rides that take us high into the sky. “Those are culturally universal values,” she joked.

Meanwhile all four of us are planning to go to a rally in support immigrants (specifically the Dreamers) tomorrow morning in front of the White House because there’s important work to do at home, too.

Girl Scout Camp

About a week ago, Beth and I drove out to Southern Maryland to pick June up from Girl Scout sleepaway camp, where she’d been making calzones and mac-and-cheese in an outdoor cooking-themed program. Of course, she also swam in the pool, kayaked in the pond, did archery, and spray-dyed a t-shirt. (It’s like tie-dying but with no knots and a spray bottle of dye.) She also learned a lot of songs and ghost stories we’ve been hearing since she got back.

One of the most exciting things that happened to June at Camp Winona was that after two years of being put in the lowest swimming group and confined to the shallow end of the pool, she was placed in the highest of the three groups and allowed in the deep end. She’d been plotting about this for years. She tried taking swimming lessons in the spring of fourth grade in hopes of getting in a better group, but to no avail. This year she decided she was going to swim breast stroke during the test because she had a theory it impressed the camp staff when anyone did this and they automatically put them in a higher group. The only flaw in the plan was that she doesn’t know how to do the breast stroke. But when I saw a picture of her in the daily photos the camp releases playing with a pool noodle right next to the tile on the pool wall that said “7 feet, 10 inches,” I thought her plan might have worked. It turns out breast stroke wasn’t an option this year, so we’re not sure what happened, but we were happy because it was important to her and, as always, I admire her persistence and strategic thinking.

Choir Camp

June had a day to relax before it was time for her next camp. Choir camp orientation was Sunday afternoon. In addition to a couple of information sessions, the campers had their first practice and parents were invited to observe, so I tagged along. The choir director had them do some posture and breathing exercises and then some vocal warmups before he introduced them to their five songs.

Three of the songs had a water theme: “Bring Me Little Water, Sylvie,” “The Quiet Sea,” and “We Know the Way,” from Moana. This song is partly in English and partly in Samoan. They also sang a sixteenth-century French song, “Je Ne Fus Jamais Si Aise” and “In My Life.” When the director asked how many people had heard of the Beatles song, only about half the kids’ hands went up and June’s was not among them. I’ve noticed over the years that band, orchestra, and choir concerts are an excellent way for kids to learn the music of their parents’ and grandparents’ day.

They started practicing. Beth said she found it very interesting how the director stripped the songs down into little pieces to start working on them in different combinations—only sopranos for one bit, altos for another, sopranos and baritones together—rather than having everyone sing together as they would eventually. Also, they didn’t sing the French words on the first day, just the words “one” and “two” in place of them so they didn’t have to struggle with unfamiliar pronunciations and the music at the same time. He did give them some pointers on diction for the English songs, though.

There were about fifty kids in the choir, aged ten to fifteen, plus a handful of sixteen and seventeen-year-old junior counsellors who sing with them. Campers seemed to skew a little to the older side of the range, though, especially the boys. I wondered if it takes a while to own being the kind of boy who wants to go to choir camp. (The choir was about eighty percent female.)

The last thing that happened, back in the auditorium once the choir campers were reunited with the orchestra campers, was a raffle. They have these every day at all the music camps. The prizes range from t-shirts from previous years to Six Flags tickets. One tradition is to raffle off a cardboard box every day. This stands for the right to sit in the box seats of the auditorium during the next day’s post-lunch concert.

When I picked June up from camp on Monday she seemed cheerful. She’d painted in her art elective and played theater games in her drama elective. There had been an all-female barbershop quartet at the post-lunch concert. She was wearing her t-shirt from orchestra camp last year because it was summer youth music camps alumni day. (All the days had themes. One day they wore funny hats and glasses; another day they were supposed to dress in the colors of the Maryland flag.) Best of all, the chorus teacher had singled her out while the sopranos were practicing, saying people should sing the piece as she was, “lightly” and he also praised her pitch.

This was a relief because June had worried a little before camp started if she really had enough experience because a year of school chorus is required to register for this camp and she didn’t precisely have a year of school chorus experience. She was in chorus in fourth grade until it disbanded without explanation right after the Holiday Sing in December. But I thought a third of a school year of chorus, plus several months of private voice lessons in fifth grade, plus musical drama camp every summer since she was five had to be the equivalent of at least a year of chorus so I’d checked the box that said one year on the online form.

On Wednesday, she reported that after trying out for it, she’d been put into a small group that would come to the front of the stage and sing part of “Bring A Little Water, Sylvie.” Also, her drama class had selected a scene from Aladdin to perform for the rest of the campers on Friday afternoon before the concert and they had started to work on the choreography. Auditions were the next day and she planned to try out for the genie. (She didn’t get the part, but it was just as well because her foot started bothering her, for no discernible reason on Thursday evening and by Friday she was on crutches—luckily, we have a lot of orthopedic equipment in the house after all her injuries last year.)

Friday I made my way to the University of Maryland on two buses through torrential downpours. I’d been worried if I got drenched I’d be chilly in the air-conditioned concert hall, so I wore a long raincoat and rain boots and carried and umbrella, and I managed to arrive fairly dry, also forty-five minutes before the doors were supposed to open, but when I’m taking public transportation, I like to be on the safe side. I’d been arriving thirty to forty minutes early all week and enjoying the down-time to read a novel or the newspaper or to keep listening to the podcasts I listened to on the bus. This was the first time all week I wasn’t the first one in the music building’s cavernous lobby. At least a dozen people were already waiting when I got there and settled in with the Washington Post’s Health and Science section.

When the doors opened, I got a seat near the front in a place I thought would be good for taking pictures. And it would have been if they hadn’t rolled out a grand piano right into our sightline in between the orchestra and choir concerts, or if June hadn’t been seated because of the crutches.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The orchestra was divided into two groups, one for students entering fifth to seventh grade and one for those entering eighth to tenth grade. I spied two of June’s friends, both cellists, on stage in the younger group. One was from her Girl Scout troop and the other attended her elementary school one year ahead of her and played in the string ensemble with her when they were in fourth and fifth grade. I think it might have been seeing Ingrid, who’d played with June when she was in a well-run school orchestra, and the fact that two-thirds of the kids on stage had just finished fourth or fifth grade that made me angry all over again about how unambitious the instrumental music program at her elementary school was last year, but I pushed that thought from my mind.  

Anyway, the word “unambitious” cannot be applied to any summer music camp at UMCP. The performances are always very impressive and they would be even if the kids had more than six days to practice the music. The younger orchestra group had five pieces. In a medley of Japanese folk music, one of the melodies struck me as very familiar. Later Beth said it was “Sakura, Sakura,” which we’ve heard at more than one concert. June played it in orchestra in fourth grade and it was a favorite of hers. The last song, “Red Pepper,” was a lively tune fitting of that name.

The older orchestra played four pieces. The first two were pretty— “Strip the Willow” had a folksy fiddle sound—but it was the last two “Lullaby to the Moon,” and “Sansaneon,” that really impressed me. I’m not a musician so I often feel I don’t have the language to adequately describe the music at all these concerts I go to because of my very musical kids. I’ll just say the complexity and precision and beauty of it was uplifting.

The choir was on next. They started with the French song, this time with the actual words. It seemed to have come together quite nicely since we heard their first practice on Sunday. All the songs had. When they started “Bring a Little Water, Sylvie” June and five other sopranos and altos stepped in front of the choir and finally we could see her. We could hear her, too. I wasn’t expecting to be able to pick her voice out, but I could, and that was exciting.

I think “In My Life” sounded the most different in its choral arrangement, even more so than “Bring a Little Water, Sylvie.” (I’m fond of the Leadbelly version of that song.) On the car ride home June asked Beth which one she liked better, the Beatles’ or choir camp’ and Beth had to say the Beatles, even though the choir camp version was good. “But I didn’t sing in that one,” June commented.

The last of the choir’s five songs was “We Know the Way,” from Moana. This was the one with the most instrumentation. Most of the songs had accompaniment—flutes most predominantly in the old French song and the grand piano for “In My Life,” but this song started with people blowing conch shells from the balconies and a strong drumbeat.

It seemed fitting as the final song of the concert because it’s about mastery. (It’s from the part of the movie when Moana discovers the disused boats, learns her people used to be sea voyagers, and determines they will be again.) Mastery is a lot of what music camp is about. Getting large groups of talented kids to work together play or sing complicated music and get it up to concert quality in a very short period of time. I’ve been to a lot of these concerts—Noah was in band camp for four years and June’s been to orchestra camp one year and choir camp one year. Still, this aspect of it never fails to impress me.

It was a lovely concert and a wonderful way to end a week of political ups and down which included the confusing and upsetting announcement about transgender troops, discouraging words from the Justice Department about its current thinking on employment discrimination against gay and lesbians, the President’s appalling comments in front of crowds of Boy Scouts and police, the alarming debut of the new White House communications director, the resignation of Reince Priebus, and the President’s continued sadistic treatment of his own Attorney General, and finally, mercifully, the defeat of the Republicans’ latest attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act.  Am I forgetting anything? I probably am.

Consequently, it was a busy week for Beth at work. On Wednesday, she messaged me that she’d be late getting home, “because I am at this rally saving health care.” And it worked!

My point is not exactly that the kids in the summer youth music camps at UMCP spent their week more profitably than the President and his administration, although they did. And it’s not that this experience of working together to make something beautiful will help them work effectively with others in the future, although it may. My point is more modest, just that cooperation to make something worthwhile is still possible, in the arts and even in politics. And it always will be, if we can find the way.

Thanks to Beth and everyone else who rallied, and wrote and called their Senators, and worked behind the scenes to preserve Americans’ access to health care this week.

The first week of the Trump administration was sickening. No, really. June, Beth, and I all came down with a stomach virus. June stayed home Monday and Tuesday, went to school Wednesday and came right back home after only an hour a half. It was bad timing because I’d gotten sick the night before and had to drag myself out of bed to go get her. That same day Beth came home from work early, quite sick, and after that I didn’t even bother making June go to school Thursday, even though she probably could have gone. She also missed two basketball practices and a Girl Scout meeting. Beth said being too sick to follow the news from Wednesday afternoon until Thursday was kind of perverse relief.

I worked a couple hours each day (being the least incapacitated of the three of us) and cooked dinner for whoever was in any shape to eat, though on Thursday, reading “Cabbage and Noodles” on the white board, I decided no-one’s digestive system was up for cabbage, except Noah’s (he never got sick) and I didn’t make it.

By Thursday night, everyone was well enough to sit up at the same time and Noah didn’t have any homework because the next day was a teacher grading day, so we watched the fifth episode of Series of Unfortunate Events. (Over the course of the weekend, we watched the last three, so now we have to wait impatiently until they make more.)

June played in her first Pandas’ game of the season on Saturday afternoon. She missed the first two because her ankle was still weak and the third one because we were at the women’s march. She was tired from her recent illness so she only played a quarter, but she played up to her usual level and did a good job keeping the ball away from opposing players. The Pandas won, 10-6. They were ahead or tied for most of the game and they were just on fire in the last quarter, taking shot after shot at the basket and getting most of the rebounds. Megan scored three of the five Panda baskets. She also brought cupcakes with white and teal frosting (the Pandas wear teal shirts this year) and plastic basketballs stuck in the frosting, so everyone lingered in the mid-county community center lobby longer than usual after the game, eating cupcakes and talking.

During the game, the parents had shown a different kind of team spirit, writing postcards to our elected representatives with postcards, pens, stamps, and addresses provided by the coach’s wife. It was hard to decided what to write about, but the Mexican border wall and the Muslim ban were front of mind, so I went with that.

Noah had almost no homework because it was the weekend between semesters so he and I were planning to make a vegetable lasagna and a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting, but shortly after we got home from the game he fell asleep and slept for three hours. I was afraid to wake him, thinking he might be sick, but at 6:30 he woke disoriented and disappointed that it was too late to make the lasagna. Everyone fixed themselves something quick for dinner and he and June went ahead and made the cake.

Sunday afternoon Beth and I went to the White House to protest the refugee and Muslim travel bans. I didn’t decide whether I was going until the last minute. I had to skip my weekly swim to do it. And so there would be something for dinner after the rally and June’s voice recital, Beth, Noah, and I worked that morning in shifts on the lasagna we didn’t make the night before. (Beth grated cheese, Noah and I grated, diced, and sautéed vegetables and then Beth assembled it.)

The kids stayed home (though Noah considered coming with us). The timing unnerved me because the rally lasted from one to three and June’s recital was at four-thirty. We decided we’d just stay for the first half. Beth bought poster board while she was out grocery shopping and we painted our signs. Hers said, “Stop playing politics with immigrant and refugee lives” and mine said, “America is better than this.” I thought they complemented each other, plus I can re-use mine at future rallies.

This was a more or less spontaneous rally and tens of thousands of people came, so we weren’t sure if Metro would be overwhelmed, but it wasn’t too bad, though definitely more crowded at Metro Center than on a normal Sunday afternoon. If there was a stage or speakers, we never saw it or heard them.

The chain link fencing they put up to block off Pennsylvania Avenue during Inauguration is still up (maybe they’re not planning to remove it, given all the protests), so the crowd was on Pennsylvania Ave and in Lafayette Square and the surrounding streets. We were kind of cut off from each other, which meant competing chants kept starting and drowning each other out. “No hate! No fear! Refugees are welcome here!” was the most popular one, though. Beth seemed to particularly like, “We won’t go away! Welcome to your ninth day!” It seemed like a good way to pledge ourselves to oppose him every step of the way, not to let this be easy for him because it’s certainly not easy for us.

We left the rally around two, stopped at La Mano for coffee, and we were home in plenty of time for the recital. It started like they all do, with the youngest children, those who need reminders about where to stand when they play the violin and whose feet don’t touch the floor when they sit on the piano bench. The beginning students played songs like “Lightly Row” and “Twinkle, Twinkle.” Then a mother-daughter pair played a Beatles song (“And I Love Her”) on the guitar, followed by another guitarist who June knows from drama camp who played “Worried Man Blues” and “Au Claire de la Lune.”

June went on about halfway through the program. The teacher who was announcing all the students spoke enthusiastically about how June had written her own song. It surprised me a little because June’s played her own violin compositions at previous recitals and Noah and his teacher played a drum duet they wrote at his recital last winter and no-one’s ever mentioned it before. But I was glad for her because she likes to be recognized like that.

Then just as she was ready to sing, someone realized her accompaniment wasn’t set up, so the next child on the program, a pianist, played “A Little Night Music” while they set up the laptop with the recording of June’s voice teacher playing her song on the piano. (The teacher was unable to come to the recital and play it in person.) Poor June, I thought. She’d probably gotten herself all psyched up to sing and then she had to wait.

When it was finally her turn, I knew she was nervous, but she wasn’t showing it, unless you noticed her grip on the microphone stand. She smiled and sang:

If you ever need a friend who has a shoulder to cry on
I’m that girl
Yeah, I can be that girl if you need it

If you ever need a friend who has a warm bed to lie on
I’m that girl
Yeah, I will be that girl when you need it

I’ve been thinking ‘bout how we used to hang out
And I was wondering if you wanna start over again
Over again
I’ve been thinking ‘bout our old lemonade stands
All the things we said
We called ourselves potatoes…potatoes

If you ever need a friend who has a shoulder to cry on
I’m that girl
Yeah, I can be that girl if you need it

If you ever need a friend who has a warm bed to lie on
I’m that girl
Yeah, I will be that girl when you need it

I’ve been noticing you glancing over at me
Maybe thinking ‘bout how we used to sing

If you ever need a friend who has a shoulder to cry on
I’m that girl
Yeah, I can be that girl if you need it

If you ever need a friend who has a warm bed to lie on
I’m that girl
Yeah, I will be that girl when you need it

Here’s the video. You knew there would be a video, right? It’s about two minutes long.

There was a satisfying amount of applause and then June’s school friend Toby played a jazzy song on the piano. He and June haven’t had the same recital slot for a while so I was pleased to see how good he’s gotten. A few kids later there was the only other vocalist, who sang a song from Moana. She was a big hit, too. The last three students were teenage pianists, who were all quite talented.

As we were filing out of the room, the director of the school pulled me aside and asked if June would like to do an encore performance at the 5:30 recital. At first I said no because it had been a long day, but then I thought I should leave it up to her so I found her in the back room where the performers were getting cookies and juice and she said yes.Beth and Noah went home, but I settled in to watch another recital.

This time I got a better seat in the front row. As I looked over the program I noticed that there were a few repeats from the 4:30 program, namely the Moana girl and the last three pianists. I didn’t know they did that. June’s never been asked to perform more than once, either ahead of time or spontaneously.

So, there was another recital with more adorable tiny children, more elementary and middle school kids starting to show mastery of their instruments and a few very accomplished teens, the ones from the first program as well as a slender teenage boy who sang “Amazing Grace” in what I was expecting would be a tenor but in what turned out to be a booming baritone voice. (I imagined his mother in the audience remembering his little boy voice and marveling.)

After both performances, people kept stopping June to praise her. One woman said she’d cried during her song. “Why would she do that?” June asked us later.

Beth ventured that it might be that in these times the idea of someone being a good friend, a welcoming person offering a shoulder and shelter could be especially moving. It’s a good reminder we can all be that girl, that boy, that man, or that woman.

And the next day Beth was at the Supreme Court after work, protesting again.