Life is a Highway

Posted on June 9, 2024 by Steph

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

“Life is a Highway,” Rascal Flats

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

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

1. Baking

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

2. Socializing

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

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

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

3. Cleaning

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

4. Dealing with Medical Issues

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

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

5. Watching Television

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

6. Riding the Rails

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

7. Being Promoted to Honor Thespian

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

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

8. Graduating

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Going to Camp

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

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

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

Meanwhile, in News of the Other Kid….

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

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

Sunrise, Sunset

Posted on May 25, 2024 by Steph

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Yesterday was a big day around here, full of endings and beginnings. North has finished high school (though graduation is almost two weeks off) and we adopted two kittens.

Penultimate Week of School

“I am never going to high school on a Tuesday again,” North informed me on the second Tuesday in May when I got back from voting in the Maryland primary. Public schools were closed because some of them were polling places, so North had the day off. They had already voted by mail, so they ordered pizza and watched two horror movies back-to-back—Halloween and Bodies, Bodies, Bodies. “Are you living your best life?” I asked them and they said yes. The reason they’d have no school the following Tuesday was that it was Senior Skip Day, and I did end up saying yes to that.

Last Weekend of the School Year

The following weekend Beth and North went cabin camping. They took some hikes, including one along the Susquehanna River, where they saw a lot of herons, and they explored antique stores in Havre de Grace, where North bought some penguin earrings. On Saturday North fed most of their school papers for the year into a bonfire, which has been a May-and-June camping trip tradition for both kids over the years. (They had to save a few papers because there was another week of school left.)

Last Week of School, Monday

On Monday, North went to school in pajamas because it was Pajama Day for Senior Spirit Week. They were also lugging a tote bag filled with apple juice, pineapple juice, paper cups, and a bag of Sour Patch Kids. This was their contribution to their AP Lit class’s end-of-year party. In law, they started watching Legally Blonde, and they didn’t expect to have to complete any assignments on it. They reported that they were doing math games in their IB math class and regular work was continuing in Sociology and Mythology, but things were definitely winding down.

The next day was Senior Skip Day. This was also the day we met the kittens (virtually). But let’s back up a little here, so I can tell you about a different cat, because he was an important part of how we got here.

The Original Conjuring Cat

If we’re friends on Facebook, you’ve probably seen pictures of our next-door neighbors’ very friendly cat, Uno. I haven’t asked, but I assume his people named him that because he’s blind in one eye. Uno’s family moved in back in December and sometime in February he started to expand his territory to include our yard. He rolls around and naps on our grass, occasionally climbs a tree, and winds around my legs while I come outside to put compost in the bucket or hang laundry on the line. If I stop petting him before he thinks I should, he knocks the socks off the drying rack or bats at my ankles to get my attention. Sometimes when someone opens the back door, he will come inside and explore. We are all smitten with this cat.

The first week in May, Uno’s people went away for a few days and North cat-sat for him. He must have missed his family because for a few days he came inside our house more often than usual and stayed longer. He actually jumped up and sat on my lap while we were watching television one night. Everything about this experience, his weight and warmth in my lap, the way he purred and licked my hand, was deeply comforting. It was that night I felt something shift in me and I realized, more than a year and a half after Xander died, that I finally felt ready to have cats again. Like Mr. Mistoffelees, Uno had performed a conjuring trick on me and melted that frozen, cat-shaped part of my heart.

I decided not to say anything to Beth or the kids for a week, just to see if the feeling stuck. It did and ten days ago (in our family therapist’s waiting room) we started looking at kittens available for adoption at various rescue organizations’ websites. The next day, Thursday, we put in a request to meet two male kittens. We heard back from their foster home on Sunday that they were no longer available, so we chose another pair of kittens, one male and one female, from a litter of four, and we heard back that same day that they were available. We made an appointment to meet the man who was fostering them virtually on Tuesday morning, knowing that North would be home for Senior Skip Day.

The Naming of Cats

Before the meeting, we talked a lot about cat names. I am the one who cares the most about names, the one who regularly posts comments on Swistle’s baby-naming blog, and the one who has a list of cat names saved up for future cats that is longer (by far) than the number of cats I am likely to have in the rest of my life, unless I become a crazy cat lady. But I also like the serendipity of cats who come with good names already. Matthew was just such a cat. Xander came to us with the name Spanky, so obviously that had to be changed.

When we were waiting to see about the two male kittens, I wavered between their shelter names (Oliver and Enzo) which I liked, and the names I’d picked years ago for two male kittens (Jonas and Ezekiel, from the Indigo Girls song). Everyone seemed willing to let me decide. But when we learned they’d already found a home and we were considering the male-female pair, I was lukewarm on their names (Dawson and Darla), but I didn’t have go-to set of names for a mixed sex pair.

I did have one for a gray female, though, Willow. My logic was pussy willows are gray, and I also liked the idea of another name from Buffy, the Vampire Slayer because it is my all-time favorite television show. We had a brief discussion about how the kitten in question might be more of a gray/brown mix, the kind that’s often called a brown tabby, but Beth reassured me that pussy willows are gray and brown if you include the stem. I’d been considering giving any cats we adopted middle names to honor Matthew and Xander and when I put Willow and Alexandra together, it sounded perfect. Willow Alexandra… isn’t that lovely?

My girl cat name list was longer than my boy cat name list. In fact, the only other male name I could remember was reserved in my mind for an orange cat, so I asked if anyone else had ideas. North brainstormed a few: Charlie, James, Leo, and Walter. I liked most of those and threw Jonah and Zachary into the pool, but I wasn’t set on any of them. Then I remembered Graham, which I’d completely forgotten was on the list. (I never wrote any of this down.) We decided we should wait to meet the kittens and see what fit.

Last Week of School, Tuesday (Senior Skip Day)

Tuesday morning, we chatted with the man fostering the kittens while we watched them play with toys and tumble around on the floor with the other two kittens in their litter. We learned all four were getting spayed or neutered the next day and after that, they would be ready for adoption. We requested the forms for the next step.

When we got off the call, Beth said very sternly, “We can’t have four cats,” but no one had said anything about that, so I think she might have been speaking to herself as much as to us.

After the meeting, North and I walked to Koma, a coffeeshop that opened in our neighborhood last winter. We got coffee and split an apricot Danish. I dropped them off at home and continued my morning walk. When I got home, Noah and North were watching Dr. Who. I set North to work organizing and culling a drawer full of free greeting cards we get from charities. (We get more of these than we can use, and the drawer is stuffed).

In the mid-afternoon El came over to watch Fear Street 2 with North and they stayed for dinner. North had wanted them to come earlier, saying it was kind of missing the point of Senior Skip Day to come after school had already let out, but they weren’t really put out. Beth had asked them earlier in the day how their skip day was going, and they said, “Good. I’m not at school,” which I think was all that was required.

Last Week of School, Wednesday

We picked North up at school Wednesday afternoon because we had an appointment, and they had a gift bag. Four of their friends who are juniors had bought them a teddy bear wearing a mortarboard, a box of Sour Patch Kids, and a card. They seemed quite touched by this gesture.

The Naming of Cats, Part 2

That same day we heard from the shelter than Dawson had been adopted so we said we’d take one of the remaining female kittens in the litter and I immediately switched gears to my female-female name pairs. There were three: Amelia and Chelsea (after my two favorite Joni Mitchell songs), Chloe and Olivia (after a line in a Virginia Woolf essay), and Ruth and Naomi (after the Biblical characters, who are sometimes read as lesbians). North didn’t like any of them. But it turned out not to matter, because soon after we got that news, the man who was fostering the kittens said it was a mistake on the shelter’s part, that someone had considered Dawson but not taken him, so he was still available.

Last Week of School, Thursday

North left for school wearing a senior class t-shirt for Senior Spirit Week. They came home and reported they had successfully returned their chrome book and confirmed they had no outstanding debts to the school so they could graduate, after waiting in line for over an hour to do so. There were cupcakes in their math class.

After school, Beth and North went to PetSmart and came home with all manner of pet toys, including some from the Pride display. There was a rainbow-colored tunnel, three interlocking rainbow-striped arches made of cardboard for climbing and scratching, a ball track, and worms that dangle from a stick because the man who fostered them said it was their favorite. They also got the kind of food they’ve been eating and litter. We also ordered a cat tree with platforms and a cave and a ball on a string to bat.

Friday: Last Day of School and Kittens’ First Day Home

North wore their Oberlin t-shirt to school on the last day of school. In the early afternoon we had a phone call with the shelter to finalize the adoption paperwork and an hour later, we were picking North up at the bus stop, so we could go pick the kittens up from their foster home in College Park.

In the car North reported on their last day of school. Nothing academic happened except in Mythology, where they listened to the teacher read them a story about Gilgamesh. There was Italian ice in math class. They liked seeing where people were going to college on their shirts.

The kittens came right to us when their caregiver brought them out. They were curious and friendly, not shy at all, and they went into the carrier without much fuss. We marveled at how tiny there were. Matthew and Xander were twice as old (four months) when we got them, and they grew into very large cats, so they were big for their age and already looked half-grown when we adopted them.

I hadn’t gotten much work done that day but once we were home it was impossible to work. Obviously, we had to sit in the living room and watch the cats for the rest of the afternoon. They explored the living and dining room, jumped up onto whatever surfaces they could, nosed around under furniture and came out with dust on their whiskers. They liked all the toys and played energetically with them. They pounced on each other and wrestled and didn’t seem at all sore from their surgeries two days prior. When they discovered the basement steps they raced up and down them. (We’d wondered if they would be able to manage the stairs when we first saw them, but that worry was put to rest. It’s relevant because it’s where their food and litter will go, though we started off with it upstairs.)

After a few hours with them we decided Walter was the name that fit best. It was the only one that was either first or second on everyone’s list. I am pleased with how it alliterates with Willow, and I also like that it could be after Walt Whitman, since our first cat (who Beth got in college) was named Emily, after Emily Dickinson. I told the kids that Whitman and Dickinson were the two best nineteenth-century American poets. “And that’s a fact, not an opinion,” which made them both laugh.

“You have strong opinions about poetry,” North told me. But why wouldn’t I? I spent a big chunk of my twenties and thirties studying and teaching literature.

As for the final piece, Walter’s middle name is Matthias for Matthew. So, the names are Willow Alexandra and Walter Matthias. Willow is the one with the white markings. She looks a lot like Emily as a kitten and a bit like Uno, too, who is a tabby with a white chin, chest and feet.

Around five-thirty Beth drove North to school for Senior Sunset. It’s an end-of-year tradition that, along with Senior Sunrise, bookends the year. The kids sat out on the football field, socialized, signed each other’s yearbooks, and watched the sun set. Pizza, chips, and snow cones were served. It sounded like a nice, low-key event. North said it was fun, and they hung out mainly with other kids from the GSA.

The cats have been here for a full day now. They seem quite at home, not unsettled by the move at all. They will cuddle with us, but only briefly (unless they fall asleep) because they are quite busy playing with their toys and running around like maniacs. They are starting to meow more after being almost silent yesterday. From the night Uno sat in my lap to the day they moved in with us it was only two and a half weeks. And in less time than that, North will be leaving for the Girl Scout camp where they are spending the summer as a counselor. Part of the reason we hurried once we’d made a decision was so that they would have time to bond with the kittens before leaving for most of the summer.

So, all in one day, there was ending, of our time with kids in K-12 public schools, and a beginning, of our time with these kittens who will eventually be our empty nest cats. It makes me wonder about the future, what North’s college years will be like, what’s in store for Noah, and what the kittens’ adult personalities will be like.

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears

Festive Friday

Posted on May 6, 2024 by Steph

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The night before Noah’s birthday North popped into his room to say good night and to wish him a happy birthday in advance, because they would not see each other on his actual birthday. North would be leaving for school before he got up. From there they would go to El’s house, from there to the prom, and from there to after-prom, and they’d be home after midnight.

North started reporting a few days before prom that their teachers kept saying they didn’t expect any of the seniors to show up at school on Friday and, surprisingly to me and Beth, there was similar sentiment on the parents’ Facebook page for North’s school, with people saying they didn’t see why prom had to be on a Friday and that they wouldn’t make their kids go to school that day. What are we not getting? Does it really take that long to get ready for prom? I wouldn’t know. I didn’t go to my prom and neither did Noah, but Beth went to hers and she seemed just as mystified. Anyway, we made North go to school, though they are angling to stay home on Senior Skip Day later this month, and we’ve said we’ll consider it.

Beth, Noah, and I are all home most weekdays, so we went about our usual business until two p.m. when we took a cake-and-presents break. The cake was chocolate with strawberry frosting, a family favorite. Beth had made it the night before. It was delicious as always. Noah opened cards with checks from both grandmothers, plus new headphones and a few books from Beth and me—Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar, and two books from the Discworld series. Over the course of the day, he talked to my mom on the phone and his boss from his internship in Los Angeles last summer also called to wish him a happy birthday.

Several hours after opening presents we went out for pizza and gelato at Mamma Lucia, at his request, and then we came home and watched the first half of Tetris (we’d finish it the following evening). Beth said it would qualify as a movie North wouldn’t want to watch and when I told them the next day that he’d picked a movie about Tetris they didn’t look impressed. When I qualified that it was actually about the licensing of Tetris, the blank look on the face seemed to convey, “You just made it worse.” It’s more entertaining than it sounds, though.

Beth had an unexpected work crisis and had to work a little after the movie, but we weren’t up much past our bedtime. After I’d fallen asleep, though, I kept waking up, maybe because I knew North wasn’t home yet and except for Cappies’ shows, they don’t often stay out late so I’m not used to it. Then around 1:40 a.m. I could hear them in the hall outside my bedroom door impatiently trying to get Noah out of the bathroom so they could use it and go to bed. It reminded me of how the kids would often wake me arguing over bathroom access when they were little, except then it would have been several hours later, and it would be the beginning of their day and not at the end. But the upside was that I knew North was home safe.

The next morning I asked how the prom went and North said the first couple hours were fun, but it went on too long and it was too loud. Dinner was served buffet style but there wasn’t much for vegetarians, so they ended up eating rice, salad, and cheesecake. Luckily, they’d had pizza at El’s house before arriving at the prom. Apparently, even though North attended school neither of them needed even the few hours available to primp because they found time to watch Scream before leaving. Later North said that was more fun than prom, but they also liked bowling and eating funnel cake fries at after-prom.

Later Saturday North gave Noah a gadget to attach his camera to his camera strap (it was on his list), and we continued to eat the cake. By Sunday night we’d polished it off. So now our eldest is another year older and our youngest has passed another end-of-high-school milestone. In the month and a half since North turned eighteen there have been a few of those, more related to being a legal adult than finishing high school:

They voted in the Maryland primary.
They got a tattoo of a compass on their thigh.
They now call their own Lyfts and ride alone (unless it’s somewhere I need to go with them).
Depending on the appointment, they sometimes go into the doctor’s office without us.
They explored a dating app and have had three dates with someone they found there (Not El. North and El met at school and are not exclusive).

One thing eighteen year olds cannot do, however, is pet a baby goat at a school Earth Day celebration without parental permission. (This was a couple weeks back.) I signed the form, though it seemed kind of funny that I had to do it. Chances are, though, that was my last time signing a school permission form. And that in itself is a kind of milestone.

Bittersweet

Posted on April 30, 2024 by Steph

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Last Field Trip

When I wrote to my sister to tell her I wouldn’t be working on Friday because I was going to chaperone a field trip, my last ever, she replied, “Last field trip…bittersweet!”

It’s just one last after another for kids and parents alike senior year. I hadn’t done this particular parenting duty for a while though. My heyday of chaperoning field trips for North was fourth, fifth, and sixth grade. (I never did one for Noah after preschool because when he was in elementary school, he had a younger sibling I was looking after and after that the schools didn’t ask very often. Plus, he never seemed to want me to do it as much as North did.)

After supervising a bunch of rowdy sixth-graders attending a chorus festival, I wasn’t in a hurry to do it again, but it had been six years and I had an inkling high school seniors in an AP English class would be better behaved.

It was also a draw that trip was to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I’d been only once before, when Beth’s mom and aunt were visiting in 2017 and I remembered feeling rushed on that visit. I was the slowest to move through the displays and I had not finished the history section and never got to culture at all.

It’s an excellent museum, but it wasn’t completely clear why the AP Lit classes were visiting. They’ve read African American literature, of course, but the trip didn’t seem explicitly tied to what they’d read. According to North, there hadn’t been any discussion ahead of time about how the visit would connect to Their Eyes Were Watching God or any other works of literature. I wondered why.

North and I left the house at 7:25 on Friday morning and caught a bus that would take us to the Takoma Metro. We had the choice to meet up either at school or at the Wheaton Metro, and the Metro stop is on North’s way to school, so we went there. We got there a little early and I ate the breakfast I’d packed from home. There was a young woman using the same low concrete wall I was using as a table to set out her breakfast from Dunkin’ Donuts and the makeup she was applying. I didn’t know it at the time, but it turned out she was on the trip, too.

Once the students, teachers, and chaperones had arrived at the Metro station I received a map of the museum and a list of the students in my group. A teacher took roll, and I was able to cross off three kids in my group who weren’t there or who had been switched to another group, but I did not have the remaining kids collected. Apparently, that would happen later. We all got on the Metro and went to Metro Center.

Here we were supposed to divide into groups, but it wasn’t clear how because I couldn’t put kids’ names to faces and they had not been told ahead of time their group numbers, which would have enabled them to find me. It was a big crowd, three sections of AP Lit, probably about seventy-five kids. North and the kids I did have with me tried to help locate the other kids on the list, but I don’t think I ever had all eight of them in one place at the same time.

I was moderately stressed about this, but whenever I let North’s teacher know I didn’t have all my group with me, she didn’t seem all that concerned, and she said she’d find the rest of them. It didn’t seem as if they were supposed to stay with me the whole time anyway, just to check in at certain points, though it also seemed all the chaperones were handling it differently. Instructions were never clear.

We walked from Metro Center to the museum and got in line. There was a group of high school students from Michigan in line next to us. Two of them were in Trump or MAGA gear, which caused North to raise their eyebrows at me. We had timed tickets for 10:15. We were given instructions to convene for lunch at the food trucks at 12:15. My group immediately dissolved and North and I were left alone to explore the museum for two hours. North said a little sadly that El was supposed to come on the trip but couldn’t because it conflicted with a coffeehouse the literary magazine was putting on at lunch that they were helping to organize, so they’d stayed at school. It was an odd echo of the fifth-grade trip to Mount Vernon, when I ended up chaperoning just North, who was using crutches and a wheelchair and couldn’t keep up with their classmates. I must say though, that just like at Mount Vernon, I enjoyed the unexpected one-on-one time with North.

We had a list of two things to try to see on each of the museum’s five levels, so we used that as our guide. We started on the first floor at the Afrofuturism exhibit, where we checked off the Janelle Monae video and Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther suit. (Throughout various parts of the museum, North was interested in actors’ and musicians’ costumes, which makes sense, as they spent a lot of time in high school on costumes crew or as costumes manager.) I found this exhibit very interesting. It took a broad view of Afrofuturism, including for instance the Abolitionist movement. Though I’d always heard of Afrofutrism as an artistic movement, the Abolitionists did imagine a different future for African Americans, so it makes sense. The exhibit also went beyond science fiction and speculative fiction, considering the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley as Afrofuturist. North and I had a good talk about the exhibit, and they were kind enough to let me go on and on about Octavia Butler.

This would not have been true if we’d made it to the history section of the museum, but we didn’t, so my most heart-rending moment came in Afrofuturism. There was a display case with three space-related uniforms. The first one belonged to a NASA astronaut. The second one was a costume worn by Nichelle Nichols, the first black woman crew member on Star Trek. The third one was from a kids’ space camp and had belonged to Trayvon Martin. His name was embroidered on it. Seeing that was a gut punch.

Next, we went all the way to the top of the museum and worked our way down from the fifth floor (Music, Art, Performance, Culture). North rested on a bench and watched a video while I made a quick scan of the floor to get a lay of the land and find the suggested items so we could visit them together first. It was easy to find Chuck Berry’s Cadillac, though probably not so impressive for North, as they’d never heard of Chuck Berry. They dutifully read the plaque about him. I tried to take a picture of the bright red car but there were too many people in the way, so I gave up. (I didn’t end up taking any pictures inside the museum.) The second destination was Neighborhood Record Store, which consisted of a faux record store where you could page through album covers, interlaced with informational placards about artists. After that, we wandered around the floor, taking in the displays, especially costumes. I think it might have been here I saw a purple cape worn by Prince that kind of surprised me with the awe and joy it made me feel. I’m not even a huge Prince fan, but still… It was one of the sweet moments, interspersed with the bitter.

We didn’t spend too much time on the main part of the fourth floor (Sports, Military, Education), but we made sure to find Kobe Bryant’s Lakers uniform and to stop at the Place Table. This was a table with a screen. Photos moved all over it and when you touched one it would stop and text about the place in the photo and what it meant to the person in the photo would appear. It was part of a larger exhibit about sense of place. I watched part of a video about an African American town on Martha’s Vineyard, while North lingered at the Place Table, reading people’s stories.

The third floor was devoted to Interactives. We watched an instructional video about how to dance in a step show. (Some people were in front of the screen dancing along.) Even though we were hurrying by this point because we needed to be out of the museum soon, North later said the Green Book display was their favorite feature in the museum. You sit in a car, with a screen for a windshield. It shows you where you are driving on a map and you have access to the Green Book, which helps you select restaurants and hotels where African Americans could stay along your route.

We were almost out of time and intended to quickly pop into the history galleries on the second floor to find the stools that came from North Carolina Woolworth’s that were used in a sit-in and to walk through the segregated train car, but these galleries were crowded, and you are funneled into the fifteenth century, so we didn’t think we could make it to the twentieth century in the time we had left without dashing through the galleries, which did not seem like a respectful thing to do. We did glimpse the train car from an atrium a floor above.

We reported back to the lobby where I could only find one member of my group. It turned out the meeting place was outside the museum and by the time North, the other kid, and I went outside all the kids were in line at the food trucks. North’s teacher let me know everyone was accounted for and we got our lunches, walked back to the Metro, and headed home.

Other Lasts

The field trip was not the only last of North’s high school career this week. Last weekend they attended their last two Cappies shows, The Adams Family on Friday night and The Prom on Saturday night, and they wrote a review for each one. I don’t think they’ve ever attended two plays in one weekend before, so they went out with a bang. Also, the Adams Family review will be published in The Alexandria Times. This was their first published review of the year, so that made them happy, partly for the validation, but also because it gave them the last point they needed to graduate as a five-star thespian. I asked if they were happy or sad to be done with Cappies (except for the meeting to vote on awards for plays) and they said both because it was fun but also a lot of work.

Tomorrow and Thursday North will take an IB math exam, Friday they will go to the prom with El, and the following week they have the AP Lit exam. Over the weekend, Noah was helping North with their math homework and I was at the dining room table, half-listening to them. My phone was showing me memories of my kids eighteen years ago and I showed North a picture of themselves as a one-month old. “I was little then,” they said. “I didn’t have to do calculus. When did the expectations change?” I wonder the same thing sometimes.

There are several weeks of school left, and one more dance in early June (Pride Prom) but after a busy spell, things should start winding down soon. And then high school will really be over. I can hardly wrap my head around that bittersweet reality.

Before the Leap

Posted on February 29, 2024 by Steph

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I’ve had a Leap Year blog post tradition going here since 2012. Each year I write about the leaps one kid or the other has experienced in the past year. (It still bugs me that I didn’t think to do this in 2008 because North was almost two then and the transitions that occur in the year from one to two are some of the most dramatic ones you see in parenting.)

This is what I had to say about the previous posts in 2020:

Two leap years ago North was in kindergarten in a Spanish immersion program and I wrote a blog post, called “Leap Year” about how kindergarten is a year of social, cognitive, and physical leaps. That year North learned to spend a longer day away from me than in preschool, they learned to speak Spanish, and they learned to read and write in both English and Spanish. Plus, they learned to jump rope and pump on the swings. It felt like a big deal.

Then one leap year ago Noah was in ninth grade and I wrote another blog post, called “Hop Year” about how the transition from middle school to high school had gone smoothly and how being in a high school humanities-based magnet program wasn’t that different from being in a middle school humanities-based magnet program.

Well, here it is, four years later and Noah’s in the midst of another transition, this one bigger than starting elementary or high school. He’s living away from home, managing his own life, taking the first steps of young adulthood. I thought I should write a leap year blog post about that. “Vault Year” seemed appropriate, given the magnitude of the changes.

Little did I know that just a few weeks after I wrote that, covid would send Noah home for almost a year and a half, but still, he did leave home, and then he did it again, going as far as Australia and Los Angeles before bouncing back here.

While I was writing my 2020 post, North and I discussed the fact that in 2024, they wouldn’t be starting anything new. Instead, they’d be finishing their senior year of high school. North asked me to write it about senior year anyway. I could call it “Before the Leap,” they suggested. I agreed and I try to keep my promises so—even though it’s been four years and North doesn’t even remember this conversation—here goes.

Senior year has been decent for North, especially if you compare it to what came before. Covid hit in the spring of their eighth-grade year, so most of ninth grade was remote school—which was not good for them—and they were dealing with a cascade of health problems at the same time, including partial paralysis and non-epileptic seizures. Tenth grade they were back at school, but they were absent a lot (about a quarter of the days of second semester) due to migraines and chronic pain. In eleventh grade they didn’t attend school in person at all from the end of October to the end of January, due to mental health challenges, and after that they had half their classes online and half in person.

This year we got an accommodation for a shortened school day (five periods instead of seven), and they don’t go in until third period. They get more sleep now and this has helped eliminate morning migraines (though they still get them in the late afternoons four to five days a week). Their attendance and grades are good, straight As for first semester. They are taking AP English and IB math and they’re involved in extracurriculars, mainly GSA and theater. They are the lead Cappies critic for their school, they directed a one act play, and they’ve had small parts in the fall play and spring musical (which opens next week). They’ve been accepted to four colleges, one is an honors college, and at two of the others they’ve either been admitted to the honors program or invited to apply. They’ve lined up a summer job. Compared to where things were this time last year, they are doing really, really well.

Last weekend, right before we left the condo, I texted North this photo commenting, “The building where we stayed is named after you.” I didn’t mention the other part of the high rise’s name, but it seems appropriate. North is at a high point—not of their life, no one wants to peak at almost eighteen—but of high school. We are proud and excited to see them take the next steps in their journey, wherever that may take them. Maybe this was a leap year after all.

As for Noah, it could be he’s poised on the edge of something new as well, if he accepts the six-month job at the video production company. He’s been waiting to get a formal offer and a contract for two weeks now. The uncertainty about that is driving me a little crazy, but it hasn’t been radio silence from the company. They’ve been in touch, and he went into the office for a one-day job yesterday, editing video footage for an educational technology company’s social media. If it all works out, this will be his first full-time job. That’s a big leap, too.

Senior Sunrise

Posted on September 2, 2023 by Steph

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My youngest child is now a senior in high school. How did this happen, people? The night before school started, I was indulging in some nostalgia, looking at old back-to-school blog post pictures and showing them to North. They thought I was gathering them to make a Facebook post and while that wasn’t my intention, once they said it, it seemed like a good idea. So, the next morning after I took the traditional photo by the front gate, I posted sixteen of them, starting with my tiny two year old about to start nursery school and ending with the one I just took. (The only photo not by the gate was ninth grade, the year school was mostly online. That picture is of them in their pajamas, sitting at a card table with a laptop in the dining room.)

But I am getting a little ahead of myself. On Saturday Beth and North went to the optometrist to pick out frames. We found out right before North left for camp that they need glasses and we were hoping to get them before school started, but there was an unanticipated hurdle with the insurance, so there was a delay. We’re hoping that if eyestrain has been contributing to North’s increased migraines, wearing glasses might help. Both Beth and North picked out frames and apparently while they did so, North made comments like, “These are too much like Mommy’s” or “These are too much like Grandmom’s.”

On Sunday morning North completed the last half hour of the agreed-upon time for working on the summer math homework. In a little over three hours, they got about a third of the way through it. Their reward was Sweet Frog. Actually, it was unrelated– we always have ice cream or frozen yogurt on the last day of summer break. We went mid-afternoon, in case of a headache, but they didn’t get one, so we all had dinner together (a tofu-tomato-basil stew Beth made) and watched a couple episodes of Blackish. Over the weekend North had been cleaning out their binder from last year, getting school supplies together, and preparing their breakfast and lunch for the first day, so there was no rush to get things together that night.

North has an abbreviated schedule this year, five classes instead of seven, and their counselor arranged it so that they don’t have a first or second period class. This is partly a mental health accommodation and partly a migraine one, because in tenth grade and the first quarter of eleventh, they were getting a lot of morning migraines, and these ended when they stopped getting up early to go to school and were better rested.

They’re taking AP Lit, Myth and Modern Culture, IB Applications of Math, computer science, and Ceramics III. They are a little nervous about that last one because they never took Ceramics II and had Ceramics I during the pandemic when it became more of a sculpture-with-found-materials class, but there was no way to fit Ceramics II into their schedule. Otherwise, they got all the classes they asked for, which is not bad considering the counselor had only five slots to manipulate.

On Monday morning, a little before eight, North was ready to go the Ride-On bus stop in front of our house in order to arrive at school at nine-thirty. Last semester when North only had afternoon classes, Beth drove them to and from school, but she’s not able to do that this year, so North will be getting there themselves on public transportation. Their route involves two buses and the Metro. They are still fine-tuning exactly when they need to leave.

I took the picture at the gate and while I was doing it, Noah came out on the porch to wish North a good day. Beth was out on her walk, but she got home before the bus arrived, so she was able to say goodbye, too. North got to school in plenty of time and then because of a suspected gas leak and evacuation which happened before they arrived, classes were shortened, and they had an even longer wait for third period than anticipated.

They took the school bus home, arriving around three-thirty. They gave a brief report about their classes. In case you were wondering, the math teacher made no mention of the summer homework, so North thinks it was voluntary. Speaking of homework, they didn’t have any that night and they went to bed with a headache around 4:50. They tried one of the new rescue medications for the first time. They say it’s not as good as the really effective one, but better than the least effective one. They were able to come to the dinner table, though they didn’t want to eat much, and to stay awake until 9:15.

The second day of school was strangely similar to the first. There was a shelter in place, again before they arrived, because of a “disturbance” in the neighborhood. North said it was a false report of a shooting. They had a little homework in their Lit class, creating a get-to-know-you infographic, and they got a headache again, at the same time, and again came to the table, but didn’t eat much. This was kind of a shame because I’d let them choose dinners for the first three days of the week. It was broccoli-cheddar soup on Monday and black bean soup on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Noah had a little work with Mike, a family friend and local filmmaker who often employs him for short-term jobs. They were filming a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a solar panel installation at a warehouse in Baltimore and getting drone footage of the panels. Mike took him out to lunch afterward, so he was gone from early morning until early afternoon. Mike might end up needing him to edit the footage, but that’s up in the air (no pun intended). Noah hasn’t heard back from any of the jobs he’s applied for, so it’s good he has an occasional side hustle.

Soon after Noah got home, Beth and I left to pick North up at school and go to family therapy. On the way home, North got another migraine and tried the second new medication they’d been prescribed and found it did nothing, so they went back to the mildly effective one they’d used Monday and Tuesday—they are allowed to mix them– and went to bed. They got up for dinner and I was glad they were able to eat some carrots and most of the broccoli-cheddar-quinoa patties I’d served them, but they went back to bed afterward, only emerging briefly to make their breakfast and lunch for the next day after I’d finished the dishes.

Thursday after school there was a kickoff meeting for the theater program, with information about the fall play, Cappies, and improv. We had a psychiatrist appointment late that same afternoon and as we weren’t sure how long the theater meeting would last, we rescheduled it, unnecessarily as it turned out, but North wanted to be able to stay for the whole thing if it ran long.

Friday was Senior Sunrise. There’s a tradition at North’s school (and some other area high schools) of the seniors having a sunrise picnic at the beginning of the school year and a sunset one at the end. The event started at six a.m., so Beth and North were up before the sun. North wanted coffee and Starbucks isn’t open before six, so they stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts. North said the sunrise itself was “underwhelming” but the spread of fruit salad, doughnuts, and muffins was nice. They said they kind of wished they’d brought a blanket because the AstroTurf of the football field was damp with dew, but then when they didn’t have to lug a blanket to all their classes, they were kind of glad they hadn’t brought one. Since they were at school for first and second period, they sat at the picnic tables outside the school and did English homework.

North’s got one week of senior year under their belt, but there’s one more back-to-school festivity to come. There’s a long retaining wall along the parking lot of North’s school and every year it’s painted white, and during the second week of school, the seniors paint their names on it in red or blue. The names stay there for the duration of the year and the next summer. The painting will take place next Friday during lunch. It’s a nice tradition and a reminder that all the students who pass through the school leave their marks. It’s time to find out what North’s mark will be.

Three Days at the Beach: Coronavirus Chronicles, Part 81

Posted on August 27, 2023 by Steph

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I: Home, with Covid

Friday Evening through Wednesday Morning

Beth and North got back from camp on Friday evening around dinnertime. North was one of two campers sent home that day. The camp reported that three more tested positive at home after camp was over. Over the next few days, North was sick, but not too sick, with a sore throat and some congestion and fatigue. While we were waiting for Beth and North to get home, Noah prepared for their return by consulting the FDA web site that has revised expiration dates for covid tests and he separated our stockpile of tests into expired (4) and non-expired (6) boxes.

We didn’t make North isolate, as that’s just not good for them. We masked when we were in the same room with them and on the first night they ate dinner in the living room, one room over from the rest of us. There’s no door between those two rooms, so conversation was possible. On Sunday North had a headache and didn’t want dinner, then on Monday we all ate dinner on the porch together and Tuesday they had a headache again. For the first couple days we had the A/C off and all the windows of the house open, for air circulation, until both kids requested that we turn in on Monday morning when the weather got hotter and stickier.

Beth, who had the closest contact with North (on the ride home) tested on Saturday and again on Monday and Tuesday, each time negative. Even so, she decided not to go into the office Monday or Tuesday, although partly that was because she had a lot of work to do before our upcoming beach trip and she didn’t want to waste time commuting. Beth and I started masking again when inside stores and places of business, which we had only stopped doing last month. (Ironically, North never stopped.) North didn’t leave the house until Wednesday.

By Monday, North was well enough to work on their online summer math homework packet. I had only stumbled across the packet on their school’s website while they were at camp, and it was surprisingly long, over two hundred problems. It was unclear if it was mandatory or voluntary—outside of magnet programs our experience has been that summer assignments are voluntary, but I’ve always made the kids do them. Also surprisingly, it said it was due five days before school started, which has never happened.

So, on Sunday we discussed what to do about this lengthy assignment due in three days, using brainstorming and decision-making techniques we learned in family therapy. Finishing it by the due date seemed impossible. We landed on having North work on it for about three hours and then deciding whether or when to finish based on what the teacher said on the first day of school. Once North started, they discovered it was dynamic. When you get a problem wrong it explains why and then gives you another similar problem, so unless you get them all right, there are even more problems than we thought. I was kind of glad to hear that, though, because it sounded like an educational design.

I wish I had found the packet earlier, because North had a lot of downtime from mid-July to mid-August and this would have been a productive activity for that time, but I didn’t think to look because there was no summer math homework last year. The fact that it was so poorly publicized was one of North’s reasons to believe it couldn’t be mandatory. However, the fact that it had a due date made me think it might be.

On Wednesday morning North was feeling better and covid test they took was inconclusive. Beth couldn’t see a second line and the rest of us weren’t sure if there was the faintest second line or not. In any case, it was a marked improvement.

North had an appointment with the migraine doctor that morning. We didn’t want to cancel so we requested a switch to virtual. This particular doctor habitually runs late, but even so I was impatient when we had to wait forty minutes for him to open the meeting. The reason for my irritation was that we were leaving for the beach right after the meeting. Anyway, he eventually arrived, and we discussed the path forward. He’s going to increase the dose of North’s preventative and prescribe two more rescue meds for them to try. If none of that works in three or four months, the next step is probably Botox.

II. At the Beach

Wednesday Afternoon and Evening: Happiness

We left the house shortly before noon and arrived at our lunch spot, the Taco Bell just past the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, an hour later. It was good timing because Beth had a Zoom call that she had to take in the parking lot. I brought her lunch to the car, and the kids and I ate at picnic tables outside. She was still on the call when we got ice cream from Dairy Queen, so I brought her a mini blizzard, too.

We listened to podcasts all the way there. My contribution was an episode of This American Life I’d saved because it was all stories about the beach. It was called “A Day at the Beach.” Noah’s podcast was a discussion of climate change and North’s was a role-playing murder mystery.

We got to the house about 4:30. After we’d unpacked, North and I made an early dinner. North made a tomato-mozzarella-cucumber salad with pesto while I shucked and boiled corn and cooked vegetarian hot dogs. There was a picnic table on the second-floor deck, so we ate outside. The deck was shaded by big maple and oak trees, so it was like being in treehouse.

After the dishes were done, we headed out to the boardwalk. When we were about a half block away, I said, “I can smell it” and someone said, “The ocean?” and I said, “Happiness,” because for me, it’s pretty much the same thing.

We all got our second frozen treat of the day. This was quite the indulgence for me, but it was going to be a short trip, so there wasn’t a lot of time to pace ourselves. Anyway, I got frozen custard and everyone else got ice cream. The kids and I went down to the beach as the setting sun was painting orange streaks across the sky. Noah and I waded in the water, but North didn’t want to deal with taking their boots off and putting them back on, so they stayed on the sand. I took pictures of both kids in fake pensive poses.

North seemed very happy, laughing harder at my jokes that they merited. I think we were all glad covid had not derailed the trip. Though it should be noted, we don’t easily give up beach trips. We went to the beach the last time North had covid nine months ago. We went when they were semi-paralyzed, three years ago. By the time we arrived at this one, North was feeling better and so far, none of the rest of us felt sick.

I didn’t want to leave when everyone else did so I stayed behind sitting on the sand, breathing in the smell of the ocean, and watching the waves in the gathering darkness until they were illuminated by the lights from the boardwalk and the occasional flashes of people’s cell phone lights. Then I walked the mile or so back to the house.

Thursday: Drinking in Life

Our first morning at the beach we had a late breakfast on the patio of Egg, a favorite restaurant of ours that’s steps from the rental house. (The house is in a cul-de-sac, right behind the restaurant.) Noah and I both got lemon-blueberry crepes and I gave him a quarter of mine. The paper tag on my tea bag string said, “Drink in Life.” Coincidentally, that was my plan for the day.

After breakfast, I biked to the beach on a bike that came with the house. It was a men’s bike and I found it hard to get on and off because of the bar. In fact, I tumbled off it at the bike rack on Rehoboth Avenue near the boardwalk. It was more embarrassing than painful.

I stayed at the beach and boardwalk most of the day. Beth, who spent much of the day working, ferrying people around, and cooking dinner for us, drove North to join me and we swam together. The waves were big, which I like, but a little too rough. North and I both wiped out. Neither of us was hurt, but I lost a ponytail holder I liked, and we both got a lot of sand in our suits. The water had a lot more sand in it than usual. I heard people complaining about it all day, including parents offering helpful suggestions about sand removal techniques and finally one frustrated mom who said, “If you’re going to keep crying about this, can you go stand ten feet away?” Kind of harsh, but to be fair, the kid didn’t try any of her suggestions.

At eleven-thirty, Beth picked North up so they could pick up a lunch order from Grandpa Mac and to visit an Italian bakery. I stayed at the beach. I saw dolphins and pelicans. I got clams for lunch on the boardwalk, read a few sections of the newspaper I found in my bag because I’d accidentally left my book at the house. Then I took a walk, lay on my towel with my eyes closed and listened to the waves, and swam again, not long though because the water was still rough. By this time, it was three and I was missing my family. I texted North and asked if they’d like to meet up at Funland, giving fair warning that it looked like it might rain.

By the time we did meet, around 3:45, it was raining, so we started out under the roof, with the carousel. We both rode it. I haven’t been on one in a while so that was fun. The rain slowed to a drizzle and most of the outside rides were still operating, so North went on the Free Spin, the Paratrooper, and the Sea Dragon. I enjoyed watching their pink platform boots dangling off the seat of the Paratrooper.

Then we went to sit on the boardwalk where it was quieter because they’d gotten a migraine, taken the good meds, and were waiting for them to take effect. We watched the ocean and a rabbit nibbling dune grass. We went back into Funland shortly before five, thinking to get in line for the Haunted Mansion, which opened at five, but the line was crazy long and after we’d waited in it for fifteen minutes or so it was clear we wouldn’t make it through before Beth was coming to fetch North at 5:30. Beth had to record the President of the union making a speech on Zoom that evening and then edit it, so pickup had to be at a precise time. I wondered if North had wasted their meds.

I couldn’t get in the car with them because I had the bike, so I did a little shopping at the tea and spice shop and Candy Kitchen, then biked home, where Beth and Noah had made a delicious dinner of gazpacho, salt-crusted potatoes with cilantro-garlic sauce, and a spread of fancy cheeses for dinner. I did the dishes and then while Beth was working, the kids and I watched an episode of Shadow and Bone. One of the reasons Beth had to work so much on this vacation is that she’s the Communications Director of her union and her senior writer, who would have covered for her, resigned unexpectedly the week before we left. Also, there’s a new President and he needs to consult with her often about speeches and it was an eventful week for the union.

Later in the evening, we had Italian pastries Beth bought and chocolate-raspberry fudge I’d picked up for dessert. I bought the fudge because I know garlicky meals always make Beth crave chocolate and I didn’t think she’d have time to go out and get herself any. I’d had a nice day, but I was sad she wasn’t getting much of a vacation. I stayed up longer than I probably should have, waiting for her to finish editing the speech and come to bed.

Friday: End of Contagion

North wanted to try a coffeeshop that was just a few doors down and we’d never tried because we don’t usually stay in this part of town. I’d said I’d take them but I was up a couple hours before they were so I had breakfast at home and just got a latte there, while they had a lavender latte, tater tots and an açai bowl on the patio.

We came home and Beth had returned from her morning walk, and she said she could drive us to BrowseAbout where Noah wanted to get a book. I was planning to go to the beach from there so Beth and North watched an episode of Heartstopper—she did manage to carve out time to watch tv with each kid during the trip– while I was packing up my beach things and having a little gazpacho for a lunch appetizer, since I didn’t think it would be easy to take that to the beach and I wanted to have some. North took a covid test and it was negative, which was cause for celebration. Meanwhile, Noah, who had seemed sluggish all day, decided he’d better take a covid test before we left, just in case. Also, negative. Beth, Noah, and I immediately shed our masks for the remainder of the trip, though North still wore theirs in public most of the time.

At the bookstore, I bought The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires for North and Silver Nitrate for Noah. Then Beth swung by to take both kids back to the house and I walked to the beach. It was 12:30 and sunny (the day before had been overcast) so I thought I should probably start out under a boardwalk pavilion, where I’d have a view of the ocean and protection from the sun. I ate my lunch and read a few chapters of Robinson Crusoe. I went down to the water a little before two and swam. The water was still rough, but not as sandy as the day before and the waves were fun. Twice I was swept up the underside of one and propelled into the air above it. This is my very favorite thing to experience when swimming in the ocean.

The waves had carved a little cliff into the beach, and I was sitting there with my feet in the water when Beth turned up at my side. I was pleasantly surprised to see her. We sat there watching the water for a while and then lay on our towels. We took a walk to Funland to find out what time the Haunted Mansion opened that day (it varies), and the answer was five o’clock every day for the rest of the season, which meant if we wanted to do it, we needed to do it that day because we were leaving the next day before five. I texted North to see if they wanted to come to Funland and they did. Noah did, too. So, Beth got on her bike and went back to the house to fetch our offspring and drive them to the boardwalk. (Being further from the beach and boardwalk than North can easily walk was kind of inconvenient.)

North and I stood in line for the Haunted Mansion for a half hour. I amused myself taking pictures of its kitschy exterior, which I love. Meanwhile Noah rode the Paratrooper and then when we got out of the Mansion, North rode the Graviton and the kids rode the Paratrooper together. We still had tickets left but it was time to meet Beth for pizza at Grotto. (One of the great things about Funland is that the tickets never expire. We arrived in Rehoboth with seventy-four tickets purchased in years past—some of the iconic green tickets were faded almost to yellow—and left with twenty-nine, so it felt like all the rides were free.)

We ate mozzarella sticks, deep-fried Brussels sprouts, pizza, and spinach stromboli out on the patio. It was a lovely evening and afterward we migrated to the boardwalk where we got ice cream and frozen custard. I got Nutella ice cream, and it was very good. I was loath to leave the beach because it was the golden hour before sunset, but we’d planned to watch Red, White, and Royal Blue at home, so I tore myself away.

Saturday: Saying Goodbye

The next day we packed up the house, returned the keys, and split up for our last few hours in Rehoboth. Beth went kayaking in the Rehoboth Bay, Noah wandered around downtown, and North and I hit the beach. I had my longest swim of the trip with them. We were in the water almost an hour. This wouldn’t be unusual for me, but I’d been taking shorter swims because of the roughness of the surf. But it was the last day, so we had to seize the day. We had a nice talk in the water, in between diving under waves and I lost another ponytail holder. This time it wasn’t even a scrunchie but a plain hair elastic, which tend to be more secure. I told North that of everyone in the family, they were the one I worry least about in rough water. They are a very good swimmer.

We all met up at our traditional last-day lunch stop, a crepe stall in a little alley off Rehoboth Avenue, where had a feast of crepes, fries, a bagel sandwich (for North who doesn’t care for crepes) and orangeade. We had a few more stops on the agenda. I got a scrunchie to get my wet, tangled hair out of my face, we went to BrowseAbout so North could get stickers to decorate their crutches, Beth got a Rehoboth t-shirt with a drawing of a kayak, and we picked up sea salt caramels, saltwater taffy, and an assortment of gummy candy at Candy Kitchen. The kids and I went down to the beach get our feet wet one last time and just before 2:30, seventy hours after we arrived, we left the beach.

I didn’t want to leave. I never do. But there were compensations. We had to stop for an hour in the middle of the drive at a Starbucks so Beth could work, and it was surprisingly pleasant for me to have a little oasis of time I could read your blog posts and do other things on my laptop without feeling guilty that I wasn’t putting away perishable food, doing post-trip laundry, or sorting the mail.

When we got home, I checked the garden and found new sunflower and zinnia blooms, and we ate takeout Indian we’d picked up on the way home and then I did the aforementioned chores and we watched the last half hour of Red, White, and Royal Blue, which is cheesy but fun. I was grateful to have had this last-hurray-of-summer getaway with my wife and both kids and that we all came home well.

Summertime

Posted on June 17, 2023 by Steph

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One of these mornings
You’re gonna rise up singing
Yes, you’ll spread your wings
And you’ll take to the sky

From “Summertime,” (Porgy and Bess), by George Gershwin

End of School

It’s officially summer break now. School came to a slow, drawn-out end this year. North’s online classes finished a week before the in-person ones did and by the last week of in-person classes only one (Statistics) was actually conducting any educational activities and that class only on Monday. Yesterday, the last day of school, was a half day, and it didn’t seem worth Beth driving them to school for three shortened classes in which not much was going to happen, so they didn’t go.

The year ended on a high note, though. North was pleased to get straight As in their fourth quarter classes, especially Statistics because that was their most difficult class and they had to work for it. In their favorite class, painting, the last assignment of the year was a free choice project. They made a collage of tiny paintings based on photographs of things they’ve baked in recent years—chocolate-marshmallow muffins, an orange cake with candied orange slices on top, chocolate-peppermint cookies, a Black Forest cake, and banana pudding bars. They painted them on polaroid film and strung them across a piece of cardboard on golden wire with little white lights on it. The background is overlapping hand-lettered recipes for the baked goods. It’s very cool.

Speaking of art, North’s cherry blossom painting was displayed at an art show at a local mall last month. We missed it because we were out of town for Noah’s graduation. I was kind of bummed about that.

Even before school ended, we engaged in several summery activities:

Summery Activity #1: Dodging Wildfire Smoke

In one way, summer came early. The wildfire smoke from Canada drifted all the way down to our area about a week and a half ago. This isn’t something we normally experience though I know many of you in Western states and provinces live with it for much of the summer every year, and now it’s starting before it’s even really summer. We only had poor air quality for two days but what I hadn’t realized about living with smoke is how many decisions in entails. When is it bad enough to shut the windows, to mask, to refrain from hanging laundry outside, doing yard work, or sitting on the porch? I guess when it’s a fact of daily life, you develop a system. My sister, who lived in Oregon for many years, told me what her cutoffs were for all these activities, based on the Air Quality Index.

Summery Activity #2: Swimming, Swimming in the Swimming Pool

North and I went swimming two weekends in a row at the Long Branch outdoor pool because the Piney Branch indoor pool where I usually swim laps on Saturdays has been closed for lifeguard training. It’s reminded me how pleasant it is to swim outside. What deters me is that there are fewer dedicated lap lanes and kids are more likely to intrude on them. Also, it’s slightly less conveniently located.

But it’s been nice having North come along, except for one thing and it’s not a little thing. They’ve been harassed by the same two boys both times we went. The second time a lifeguard noticed and made them leave North alone. Because it had happened the week before, I’d been glancing up from my laps every now and then to see if anyone was bothering them, but I missed it when it happened. Apparently, the boys sang a song to them, which when North looked up the lyrics on their phone in the car on the way home caused them to exclaim, “This is a very sexual song… (reading a little further) …Eww!”

Summery Activity #3: Going to Pride

The weekend before school ended was Pride, both in Takoma and in D.C. North went to the D.C. Pride festival with Sol last year and they decided to do it again. They wanted a ride to the Metro, so we decided we’d all swing by Takoma’s much smaller Pride festival before dropping them off. We visited some booths and picked up pins and temporary tattoos. North spun a wheel to learn a trans fact at a trans booth and learned the pronoun “hir” was coined by a writer for the Sacramento Bee in the 1920s, “so it’s not new,” a person staffing the booth informed us.

The farmers’ market was in progress nearby, so we walked through it even though Beth had been shopping at the Silver Spring farmers’ market the day before. We ended up with the first local sweet cherries of the year and two little basil plants to replace a bigger one a squirrel destroyed by digging up its pot and snapping its stem. While we were in downtown Takoma, North got a cold brew and Beth and I got gelato. I went with cherry, to be seasonal. It was very satisfying.

A few hours later North called for ride home from the Metro. They’d amassed a lot of tchotchkes, including heart-shaped stickers with the colors of various Pride flags they’ve used to decorate their walker, a couple rainbow rubber bracelets, Mardi Gras beads, and some 3D printed animals. They said they had fun.

End of School Activity: Cappies Gala

The next day was the Cappies Gala at the Kennedy Center. North has been writing reviews of plays at DC area high schools all year. All the critics who reviewed at least five shows were eligible for vote on the nominees for the award ceremony and they’d voted. North only had two tickets and as Beth had driven North to most of the plays they reviewed, and she could drive other kids, she was the obvious choice to attend.

When I asked how it was, what Beth and North both said first (in separate conversations) was that it was very loud. Apparently, the audience screamed for every nominee and kept it up for three hours. Beth’s ears were still ringing when she woke up the next morning.

Perusing the program, I learned there were awards for: marketing, props, costumes, hair and makeup, choreography, special effects, sound, orchestra, lighting, sets, stage crew, stage management, ensembles, dancers, various kinds of actors (in male roles, female roles, featured, supporting, in a musical, in a play, comic, etc.), vocalists of various kinds, critics, best play, and best musical. There were performances from different shows interspersed between the awards. Beth says the vocalist who sang “I Hate Men,” from Kiss Me Kate was very talented and the scene from Dracula was quite creepy. There was a brief quote from North’s review of Eurydice in the program.

An actor from North’s school won for Vocalist in a Male Role, apparently the first time someone from the school had won a Cappie since 2009. He’d been the lead in My Favorite Year this spring.

Cappies has been a good experience for North. They’re thinking of doing it again next year and if they do, the theater director told them they might be lead critic for their school.

End of School Celebration

Thursday afternoon North came home from school, finished with eleventh grade. They folded laundry, rode the exercise bike, made a tofu and broccoli stir-fry for dinner, watched an episode of Gilmore Girls with us, and took a bath.

The next day they mostly took it easy, and I knocked off work early so we could go to the movies. We took the bus to Silver Spring, North started the festivities with a chai, and we saw North’s friend Norma, who came over to chat while they were drinking it. (Silver Spring was hopping that day. Later in the expedition we saw Zoë.)

Then we went to see The Blackening. We decided on this film because North wanted to see it and Beth doesn’t like horror, so she wouldn’t be missing anything. It was fun. I liked the way it played with horror movie tropes (especially, but not entirely, racialized ones). There was some commentary, too, about the social and personal cost of trying to determine who or what is Blackest. That was the point of the movie, but I think I missed a few African American in-jokes because a few times the (about half Black) audience was laughing and I had no idea why. I didn’t mind that, though. That’s what makes something an in-joke.

When the movie was over, we met Beth at Matchbox and had pizza on their patio. It was a pretty evening to eat outside, warm but not hot or humid, and predicted rain did not materialize. From there we went to Ben and Jerry’s (where we saw Zoë) and then home with a detour back to Ben and Jerry’s when I realized I’d left my backpack hanging off a chair—much to my relief no one stole it.

At home we watched the first hour of Sister Act. I’d nominated this for family movie night in hopes that we’d watch it before North reviewed Sister Act for Cappies, but that happened in April. Based on what we’ve watched so far, North says the plot is about the same in the musical.

Dispatch from Los Angeles

Noah’s internship seems to be going well. It’s at a production company that makes documentary films. He’s been on a couple shoots I know about so far. One was interviewing a lawyer who specializes in the Americans with Disability Act. The last one was in San Diego at the Lacrosse World Games where they filmed an indigenous lacrosse team.

The company is very small operation—a filmmaker plus an intern (currently Noah) on the smaller shoots, and temporary crews hired on an as needed basis for bigger shoots. The filmmaker told him he was used to interns being “slower and less capable” than he is, which is an oddly backwards way to give someone a compliment, but there you go. The filmmaker also went out of his way to secure extra funding so Noah could come along on an out-of-town shoot.

The timing of the shoot means Noah won’t be able to come up to Davis while North and I are there visiting my mom and my sister’s family in early July, which I’d been hoping he could do. I’m sad about that, but also happy that he has this opportunity. Some of his peers from Ithaca who came to L.A. haven’t been able to find internships yet—the writers’ strike has made it very difficult—so I’m glad he did.

When he’s not working, he’s been exploring his environs and socializing. He attended a few plays at an experimental theater festival in Hollywood and he went to a birthday party for another Ithaca student, someone he knew from his IT job at school.

Noah’s summer is underway, and North’s is beginning. Next week they’re volunteering at a day camp at their old preschool and the week after that, they’re headed to the Johnson and Wales University campus in Charlotte, North Carolina, to participate in a two-day culinary program for high school students. It should give them an idea what it’s like to work in a culinary lab.

Both kids are spreading their wings and taking to the sky for trips long and short. I am very proud of both of them.

May Harvest

Posted on May 31, 2023 by Steph

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Because we were out of town the weekend of Noah’s graduation and Beth was also gone the weekend before that, we had a lot of chores and errands to do over Memorial Day weekend, but we also found time for fun.

Beth did yardwork, took North out for driving practice and to Value Village to look for clothes to wear at the upcoming Cappies Gala at the Kennedy Center, kayaked, set up Noah’s big television (on loan to us) in the living room, and organized her office (aka Noah’s room, which is now full of his boxes she needed to re-arrange so she can work in there). I mowed the lawn, swam, cleaned the bathroom, did laundry, and cleared out my mail drawer.

On Sunday we went strawberry picking. “I feel like someone is missing in this car,” I said as we pulled into the dirt road that leads to Butler’s Orchard. We’ve been to Butler’s in various configurations to get Christmas trees or to visit the farm market, but we’ve never been berry picking when it wasn’t all four of us because Noah was home for the summer all through college. I sent him photos from the fields and asked him to guess where we were so he could be included. (It wasn’t much of a challenge.)

There are always a lot of parents with small kids picking berries and we amused ourselves by listening to their parents’ instructions:

“If you hold it like this, the berries won’t spill, and we can take them home.”

“Las fresas rojas son las fresas más dulces.”

“Get out of the road!”

It was all so familiar and also so far away. It’s been a long time since any of us needed reminding to hold the basket steady, pick only red berries, and stay out of traffic. We filled our cartons quickly. The berries were so juicy our fingers were stained red when we finished. We may have sampled a few berries (and if we did, they were divine).

We wandered over to the snack bar, but we’d reserved a late afternoon picking slot and by the time we were done, it had closed for the day. North wanted to go look at the farm animals, so we did, but they declined to go down the giant slides.

At the farm market we got apricots, local cheese, granola, salad dressing, and treats—a strawberry roll for me, a strawberry slushy and a caramel for North, and a brownie for Beth. We also picked up some lotion and soap that Beth’s mom likes.

As we left, Beth said, “Another successful trip to Butler’s.”

We always have a backyard picnic on Memorial Day and again, it felt strange to do it without Noah, though less so than berry-picking, as we’ve had a few Labor Day picnics without him already. North was saving their good pain meds for an event at school the next day, so I offered to make it a picnic lunch instead of a picnic dinner in case they got a migraine in the afternoon (which is when they always start). But a little before noon, while I was just starting the shortcake dough, North emerged from their room saying they felt sick to their stomach. They didn’t think they’d want a big lunch, so I went back to the dinner plan, and then they got a migraine in the late afternoon.

So that’s how it came to be just Beth and me for dinner, and because it was a rainy day, we ate our vegetarian hot dogs, baked beans, devilled eggs, new potatoes, and watermelon on the porch instead of the back yard. We used a little side table Noah brought home from school. It used to be on the balcony of his apartment.

One of the potatoes was home-grown. I’d planted a wrinkly, sprouted potato in a big pot back in mid-March and I dug it up on Memorial Day in hopes there would be a few and we could have them for our picnic. There was only one, but I was still kind of excited to see it because we’ve never grown potatoes before. We had also new potatoes from the grocery store, so I just mixed ours in with the rest. It had a different color skin, so I could tell it apart. It was a very respectable little potato, with a nice, creamy texture.

On Tuesday evening North was inducted into the International Thespian Society. The ceremony was held in the courtyard of their school. First there was cake and socializing. There was music playing from shows the school has put on in recent years and kids kept breaking out into song.

Then Mr. S, the theater director, called each student being inducted to light a small candle from a big one (“the candle of Thespis”) and set it to float in tub of water. He would say something about their theater work, announce how many stars they had earned, and invite them to say a few words. Some kids shared memories of theater and of course there were some inside jokes. North had two stars, for their work as “a costumes whiz” and for their Cappies’ reviews. After all the students had lit candles, Mr. S explained that the candles were like the theater because of their ephemeral beauty, which has to be appreciated in the moment. It was really lovely. Eventually, North will get a certificate and a pin, but they haven’t arrived yet.

While we were waiting for the ceremony to start, I was texting with Noah. He had his orientation earlier in the day, he officially accepted the internship, and he started today. So, our harvest for the last four days of May comes to:

Three quarts of strawberries
One new potato
One award, two stars
One internship

On to summer!

Arts & Sciences

Posted on April 29, 2023 by Steph

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

Monday Afternoon and Evening: Visual and Musical Arts

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

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

Tuesday Morning: Medical Science

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

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

Tuesday Evening: Literary Arts

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday Evening: Visual Arts

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

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

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

Friday: Theatrical Arts

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

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

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

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

Upcoming: Visual Arts, Medical Science, and Pastry Arts

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

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

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Category Archives: School

Life is a Highway

Sunrise, Sunset

Festive Friday

Bittersweet

Before the Leap

Senior Sunrise

Three Days at the Beach: Coronavirus Chronicles, Part 81

Summertime

May Harvest

Arts & Sciences