48 Hours

Friday Afternoon and Evening

It was about 3:30 Friday afternoon when we left the house for the second time. We’d swung by the co-op to get some groceries for our weekend getaway to Ocean City, and while we were there, we’d picked up a few staples Noah wanted and dropped them back at the house before hitting the road. I felt light-hearted and happy. Beth and I were embarking on our first full weekend alone in twelve years. (Our last overnight was in Pittsburgh in 2016 during a visit to Beth’s family in Wheeling.)

It took four hours to drive to Ocean City, mainly because there was a surprising amount of traffic for a random weekend in February, mostly between Annapolis and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. There were some compensations, however. Beth had been wanting an Oreo Shamrock Shake since we saw them advertised during the trip to Providence and we stopped at McDonald’s and got one. Also, around Easton there was a beautiful sunset that stained the sky with oranges, reds, and purples. We were driving over the Choptank River around six, near the tail end of it, and that was a gorgeous sight.

When we got to Ocean City, we drove straight to the pizzeria we’d chosen for dinner. It was late and we were ready for dinner, so it was a pleasant surprise that service was remarkably fast. We were eating our fried mozzarella and mushroom and spinach white pizza within fifteen minutes of setting foot in the place. It was quite festive in there, too, all decked out with sparkly green St. Patrick’s Day decorations.

After we ate, we went to the condo where were staying. It was on the eleventh floor of one of those classic Ocean City high rises, with two glassed-in sun porches, one in front with an ocean view and one in back with a bay view.

After unpacking a bit, I stood on the front sun porch, looking down at the ocean and trying to decide if it was worth going back down eleven floors for a quick stroll on the beach when I already had a very nice view of it. Go ahead and guess what I decided. Yes, that’s right, I went.

Saturday

Saturday was the nicest day I can remember having in a long time. Beth happened to get up to go to the bathroom as the sun was rising and when she opened the bedroom door, red light poured into the room. A few minutes later I stumbled out to see the dramatic sunrise from living room, though I was too sleepy to think to take a picture of it, and then I went back to bed.

About an hour and a half later, I had breakfast on the sun porch, watching the waves as I ate my eggs, veggie sausage, and oatmeal with bananas and walnuts. Rain was predicted in the morning, but there was just a little drizzle streaking the porch windows before we set out on our day’s adventures.

We drove to Berlin, where we got coffee (me) and hot chocolate (Beth) at a café. For Valentine’s Day I’d promised to take her out for hot chocolate and ice cream (two of her favorite treats) on this trip and I’d researched the best places to get each in the greater Ocean City area and gave her several options. She chose this one because it has dark hot chocolate. She was not disappointed.

From there we went to the always lovely Assateague Island National Seashore. We started off with a walk on the beach. There were gulls in the sky, sandpipers on the sand, and surfers in the water. We walked all three trails (forest, dunes, and marsh). We saw a blue heron in the water, and a pair of bald eagles in a tree. We speculated that they were checking it out as a prospective site for a nest. We didn’t see any of the famed wild horses on the trails, but we saw some by the side of a parking lot, by the side of the road, or in the case of one horse, in the middle of the road between two lanes of traffic. As we got close, I could see someone in one car had rolled down her window and was petting its nose. You are not supposed to do that because they are wild horses, but people will take stupid chances sometimes.

We’d had a long ramble in the park, and we’d worked up an appetite for lunch. We went back to Berlin, where we ate at a farm-to-table restaurant run by the same person who used to run one of our favorite restaurants in College Park (when I was in grad school there) and later in Rehoboth. It was a long wait to be seated, but worth it. I got a vegetarian cheesesteak with mushrooms and Beth got an eggplant sandwich and they were both very good. We ate on a pretty enclosed porch.

After lunch we walked around downtown Berlin and browsed in various shops. We bought some aged Gouda, sour cherry jam, and dark chocolate. It turned out the ice cream parlor Beth had selected was closed for the season—I tried to check for that, but not all the websites were up to date—so we drove back to Ocean City and got hot fudge sundaes at Dumser’s Dairyland, which was her second choice. We sat at the counter and admired the displays of antique ice cream dishes in different colors of glass and metal. I don’t usually eat maraschino cherries because they’re not my favorite, but on the drive to Ocean City the day before we’d listened to an episode of Poetry Unbound (one of my favorite podcasts) that featured such a joyous ode to the bright red preserved fruits, that I felt I had to this once.

By this time, it was late afternoon, and we were ready to go back to the condo and relax. I read for a while on the sun porch. That night we watched The High Note on the couch where we ate the prepared food that we’d bought at the co-op on our way out of town. (I had a spinach and cheese pie and falafel.)

Sunday Morning and Afternoon

In the morning, I jokingly told Beth I had enough of my diabetes medications to stay another day. (I always travel with extra just in case I get stuck somewhere) and she noted that she could work from anywhere. In fact, she had to work a little that morning because a New York Times story about organizing at Microsoft came out and as the Communications Director of her union, she’s always on call to communicate with the members about things like that, vacation or no.

But we did not stay. Before leaving we took separate walks. Mine was on the short side. I walked about six blocks north on the beach (from 114th St. to 120th St.) and then back along the path that runs through the dunes parallel to the ocean and connects all the beach access paths. It was cold, in the low thirties, with ice on the puddles in the condo parking lot, but it was sunny, so after walking I was warm enough to sit in the sand for a little while in front of our building and watch the waves before going back upstairs to finish packing.

We left the building at ten and found an open Candy Kitchen—some were closed for the season—where we bought candy for the kids (and some not for them). We picked gummy mermaid tails for North because they are fond of gummy candy, and this was a novel shape. For Noah we got chocolate-covered pretzels covered with mini–Reese’s Pieces. Right before Valentine’s Day I’d seen chocolate-covered pretzels in a banner on the Nuts.com website marked “For Her,” and as this is one of his favorite confections, we’d been teasing him about that. Seriously, though, why do pretzels need to be gendered? In case you were curious, the featured “For Him” product was a box of mixed nuts. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous?

Next, we headed to the Ocean City boardwalk where we took another stroll. Most everything except t-shirt shops was closed, but it was fun to walk there on a pretty day and people watch and look at the stilled roller coasters and Ferris Wheel and the shark statue emerging from the wall of Ripley’s Believe It or Not and the dinosaur skeleton statue on the beach, and the front of the shuttered haunted house and, and the very eclectically decorated façade of the Ocean Gallery, and of course, the ocean. I only thought a little about the time we lost the kids on this boardwalk (but I will probably always associate it with that terrifying day). I went and got my boots (and my socks) wet and said goodbye to the Atlantic until summer and then around 11:30, we got in the car to drive home.

We made a pit stop in Cambridge, first going to a café where we got coffee and cake—I recommend their limoncello-olive oil cake and Beth recommends the chocolate-pistachio cake. We took the food to the Choptank River Lighthouse grounds where we had a picnic lunch of dinner leftovers, a mandarin, and cake. Then we strolled over to the lighthouse. It’s a replica (built in 2012) of a classic Chesapeake style lighthouse that used to be on the river nearby. It was closed for the off-season so we couldn’t go up to the top or visit the museum, but I like lighthouses, so it was a scenic place to eat lunch. While we were eating on a bench by the water, I listened to a couple have an extended argument about the composition of a photograph of the lighthouse one of them was taking. It’s interesting what other people will fight about sometimes.

We got home at 3:35, almost exactly forty-eight hours after we left. We were reunited with our offspring, who survived the weekend without us, and gave them their candy. I told Noah that his pretzels were called “Peanut Butter Explosion,” and I thought that sounded sufficiently macho for him to eat them. He laughed and then when he bit into one and some of the candies fell off onto the kitchen floor, North said, “I can hear the explosion.”

It was good to see them again, but it was also good to get away just the two of us. We will be empty nesters someday not so far in the future, so there should be an opportunity to do it again before another twelve years goes by.

Rhode to College

Thursday

On the Thursday the before President’s Day weekend we made a six-state, nine-hour-fifteen-minute-with-frequent-stops-drive to Providence to attended Accepted Students Day at Johnson and Wales University.

I took this picture of a chicken statue outside a convenience store near the Maryland/Delaware border, thinking I’d made a Facebook album of whimsical roadside statuary, but there was no more. It was around this point in the trip that we started seeing scattered patches of snow on the ground. By Connecticut, there was an even layer of it everywhere that hadn’t been plowed. I asked Beth if she was enjoying the snowy landscapes and she said, “Yes!” enthusiastically.

Somewhere in New Jersey we got a text from Noah, informing us the job he’d interviewed for was his if he wants it. It’s a six-month, full-time junior editor position, starting in early May, at a video production company where he did some gig work back in October. He’s waiting to see the contract, which has some key details (like salary) he didn’t get over the phone, but we were all very happy to hear the news, as his job search has been proceeding slowly.

When we crossed the Rhode Island state line we started seeing signs that read, “Don’t Litter Our Clean Rhodes.” I was taken with those. There was also one that warned motorists of “Rhode work.” You have to admire their commitment to the bit.

We arrived at our AirBnB just before 6:30, ordered Chinese, and watched an episode of Gilmore Girls. Our progress through this show has slowed considerably in the six months Noah’s been home because it’s a Beth-Steph-and-North show and we aren’t watching television in that configuration much these days, so it was nice to get in an episode. We are near the end of season five (of seven) and we started it when North was fourteen, so our goal of finishing it before they leave for college isn’t seeming very achievable, especially since they recently accepted a camp counselor job at a Girl Scout camp this summer, which will have them away from home from early June to mid-August. Everything’s coming up employment for the Lovelady-Allen offspring.

Friday

Accepted Students Day events didn’t start until 11:30, so the next morning we all took a mid-morning walk to a neighborhood bakery, where we got coffee, hot chocolate, olive bread with cream cheese, and a ginger scone. I immediately started plotting to return to try the lemon cake I half-wished I’d ordered instead of the scone (which is no shade on the scone, which was very good).

The event started at a hotel in downtown Providence. We walked past a group of enthusiastic cheerleaders and picked up information packets and stood in line to get our pictures taken with balloons that read “2028” and signs that read “JWU” and “JWU Mom.” There was only one of those, so Beth and I had to share. (Beth joked she was going to write “a sternly worded email” admonishing the school for the lack of signs for non-binary parents.) Someone in a Wildcat Willy costume was circulating and giving people high fives. North said, “I got an email from him, saying I might see him here.” North then opined he had “too many muscles and too many teeth.”

After the preliminaries, there was a luncheon in the ballroom. While we ate, we listened to the President of the University, the Director of Admissions, and an alumni speak. The administrators sounded like administrators at any school, but the alum was a business major who was active in Republican politics, trying to “modernize the party.” North admitted later this choice “got in my head.” They knew it wasn’t a lefty liberal arts college, but they did wonder why a mainstream school would select someone with strong beliefs on either side of the political divide to represent it. We were also curious what it would mean to modernize the Republican party. Would that mean arresting its slide toward authoritarianism or accelerating it? So, that was distracting.

Appropriately for a university with a famous culinary school, the food was much better than usual for this kind of event (though I don’t believe it was student-made, except for some chocolates on the table). There was salad and rolls, and the vegetarian entrée was risotto with asparagus, artichokes, green beans, mushrooms, and sun-dried tomatoes. Sadly, I had to leave about two-thirds of the meltingly soft rice on the plate (thanks, diabetes), but I ate half a roll and all the chocolate cake with raspberries and whipped cream. So now you know where my priorities lie. Beth advised North, “I like the school that gives you chocolate cake.”

Next, we attended sessions on Residential Life and Dining Services, New Student Orientation, and a Q&A panel of current students. Most of the questions for the students focused on student clubs and campus recreational facilities. There was a table with popcorn and quite a spread of desserts (multiples kinds of cake, brownies, cookies, etc.) at this event, but it was too close to lunch for me to partake. I did tuck a packet of peanut butter protein balls into my coat pocket for later.

Since we had toured the Harborside campus last spring, we toured the downtown campus. This would be where North’s academic classes would be (the culinary ones are at Harborside) and where the library, bookstore, and administrative buildings are.

The student ambassadors were very friendly and attentive. One noticed North’s crutch as we were on our way to one of the sessions and directed us to a more accessible entrance to the auditorium. Another saw we were falling behind our tour group and offered to take us around on our own private tour. It seemed like a good sign for getting accommodations should North need any and personal attention in general.

Oddly, though, we couldn’t get much information about the honors program. North recently got an invitation to apply, but details about it are scarce online and neither the tour guide nor a staff person at the orientation session was able to say much about it. It was very different from Towson, where we attended a whole panel about their honors college last spring. (North got into that program, which I may not have mentioned because Towson is relatively low on their list.)

By this time, it was almost five, and we were all tired. We perused the menu of a nearby pizza place where we got pizza last spring, ordered from the hotel lobby, and returned to our AirBnB. Friday is movie night for us, and North thought we should watch something Noah wouldn’t like. We watched Family Switch and I have to say I think it fit the bill. Speaking of their brother, North observed, “He doesn’t know how to appreciate a good bad movie.” After the movie, I blogged a little and we played Uno and got to bed later than we intended.

Saturday

Saturday morning Beth went to a nearby park for a walk and North and I visited the bakery again (and I got the lemon cake, which worth a second trip). It was snowing and it was cozy to sit there with our coffee, tea, and pastries, watching the snow and eavesdropping on a college-age straight couple having what North interpreted to be a bad first date at the next table. Then we drove home, through heavy snow in the early part of the drive that petered out in Connecticut. When we got home, we congratulated Noah on his job offer and he presented us with a plate full of chocolate and chocolate-peanut truffles he’d made in our absence. (On Valentine’s Day he’d promised us a surprise on our return.)

It was a nice trip, but it didn’t feel as clarifying as the Accepted Students Days we attended with Noah, the ones that ended up steering him toward Ithaca and away from RIT. JWU was North’s first choice last fall when they were accepted and it’s still high on their list, but they’ve become less sure recently and the program didn’t sway them back to it or rule it out for them.

But they don’t have to decide yet. We’re attending another Accepted Students Day at Saint Mary’s College of Maryland in a couple weeks, and they are still waiting to see if they’ve been accepted to Oberlin and Mount Holyoke, and we can’t forget Aberystwyth, the school in Wales. They were originally told they had to accept or decline their offer there in late January, but they applied for an extension, and they were given until the end of March. So, there are a lot of pieces that haven’t fallen in place yet, but sometime in the next few months we’ll know where their Rhode to college ends.

A Taste of Christmas

Saturday

“The bag didn’t fall off and the tree didn’t fall off,” Noah observed, gesturing to the roof of the car, when we stopped for lunch at a Sheetz in Virginia. It was true. Both the rooftop bag and the tree were still securely attached to the car. The ride was going very smoothly. We got out of the house roughly on schedule, the weather was clear, and traffic was light, all the way from the DC suburbs to Blackwater Falls State Park, even though it was the Saturday before Christmas.

When we got close to Blackwater, we started seeing snow on the ground. They’d gotten a foot of it five days earlier and it was mostly melted, but in places it was still a few inches deep. We wondered if any would be left on Christmas. No more was forecast, so that was our only chance for a white Christmas. Because we’d just finished watching White Christmas the night before, the kids predicted it would snow on Christmas Eve and they would each find love at the resort. (“Siblings, siblings/there never were such devoted siblings,” North sang, altering the lyrics to “Sisters” slightly.) Stay tuned to see if either of these predictions came true.

We arrived at the park lodge around 2:40 and met Beth’s mom in the lobby. We had to wait about an hour to check into our cabin, so we chatted with each other and wandered around the gift shop. While Beth was somewhere else in the lobby, I bought her a rainbow-striped sticker in the shape of West Virginia to put in her stocking. She’s getting a new work laptop and she’d been saying she needed stickers for it.

When we got into the cabin, we unpacked, and Beth went out to get some groceries for dinner and the next morning. She came home and made chili and almond flour cornbread for dinner. (I asked if she really wanted to cook after the drive, but she said she preferred to get her responsibilities out of the way early—we were all cooking one meal during the trip.) After dinner, we watched Christmas is Here Again, because the internet connection was too slow to download The Shop Around the Corner, which YaYa had mentioned was her favorite Christmas movie. Once we finished the movie, we found the other one had finished downloading, so we had it all lined up for the next evening.

Christmas Eve

We only had one day in the cabin before Christmas and there was a lot we wanted to do. We needed to trim the tree and deck the halls and make chocolate-peppermint cookies and gingerbread and take a lot of walks.

I was awake a little earlier than I would have liked. It’s so dark and quiet there, it would have been perfect for sleeping in, but I was wide awake at 6:20, so I got up and went for a walk down to the Pendleton overlook. I left the house a little after seven, hoping to see the sunrise, but I think I was actually too early because it takes the sun a while to clear the mountains. It was a pretty walk anyway. There was a smear of pink in the sky over the ridge, and some snow on the rocks in the river below, and golden light glowing in some of the windows of the lodge on the other side of the dark canyon.

After breakfast, Beth did the main grocery shopping for the trip, Noah and I read, and North got busy making the chocolate-peppermint cookies. They were pleased with the crackle and shine they got on them this year. They’ve been perfecting them for the past six Christmases.

When Beth was home and the cookies were baked and the kitchen cleaned up, we decorated the tree. Decorating a tree is always the same, isn’t it? Everyone oohhs and aahhs over the ornaments they’d forgotten and reminisces about when they were made or purchased. Somehow, despite the petite tree and multiple boxes crammed full of ornaments, we made them all fit. Beth also gathered some evergreen branches from the woods behind the cabin to line the mantel and North arranged the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer figures around them, making Rudolph and Clarice seem to kiss.

We took a little break for lunch before Beth and I went on another walk, this one down to the falls. The day was mild and big chunks of ice were melting and falling off the rockface and crashing to the ground as we approached the staircase. The wooden stairs were wet and half-covered in slush, and I didn’t have appropriate footwear on, so I only went halfway down the steps and waited for Beth at the upper platform as she went to the very bottom and then climbed back up. Then we browsed the gift shop near the falls. Beth spotted the same sticker I bought her at the lodge, and I was afraid she was going to buy it, but she was torn between that and another one, and decided to wait and think about it, to my relief.

When we got home, Beth and YaYa set out on another walk, while the kids and I shaped gingerbread cookies from the dough I’d made at home, decorating them with colored sugar, nuts, dried cranberries, and hard candy. They came out well and when I took my first bite of one, I thought, this is the taste of Christmas.

I made kale and potato soup for Christmas Eve dinner. While I was cooking, Beth asked me if I’d packed the cranberries, remembering she hadn’t seen any in the freezer, and we came to the distressing realization that when I read “cranberries” on the packing list I thought it meant dried cranberries for gingerbread and not the frozen cranberries that North needed for the cranberry-orange muffins they were planning to make for Christmas breakfast. North tried soaking the dried cranberries we had left to see how much they’d make, and it only came to a quarter cup, when the recipe called for one and half cups of fresh cranberries. So, after dinner, Beth set out to see if she could find any fresh, frozen, or dried cranberries at Dollar General, which was the only store open anywhere nearby. Alas, there were none to be had.

That night we watched The Shop Around the Corner, which I recommend if you’re in the mood for a 1940s Christmassy movie with Jimmy Stewart that’s not It’s a Wonderful Life. North was crocheting a sock with the multicolored yarn and crochet hooks my sister got her for Christmas. (We’d opened presents from my West Coast relatives on the Solstice to make room in the car). They finished it as we were watching the movie. It was their first attempt at a sock (earlier this year they made a sweater and part of a blanket) and it fits and even has some ribbing at the top. They finished its mate a few days later.

After the movie, North opened the last window of our Advent calendar and ate the chocolate Santa they found behind it, Noah read “A Visit from St. Nicholas” aloud (a Christmas Eve tradition), and we put things in each other’s stockings without any pretense at secrecy, just the occasional instruction to “avert your eyes.”

Christmas

Despite the kids’ predictions, it did not snow on Christmas Eve. By Christmas morning, there was a little snow left on the deck and in piles near the road, where it had been plowed, but that was about it. YaYa, North, and I were all up by seven, so North and I opened our stockings together. YaYa wanted to wait until Beth was up, so they did theirs together a little while later, and Noah was last. In addition to sweets and a clementine each, everyone had several little gifts. Coffeehouse gift certificates (from Starbucks and Koma, a new one in Takoma Park) were popular. Beth was surprised to see the rainbow WV sticker and declared I was “sneaky” to have gotten it under her nose.

Noah set the mood by lighting the gas fireplace, plus setting up fireplace videos on two screens in the living room, declaring, “The more fires the merrier,” and putting on Christmas music and occasionally singing along, most enthusiastically with “Feliz Navidad.”

North started making a delicious breakfast of eggs, vegetarian sausage and bacon, orange-cranberry muffins (light on the cranberries) and blackberries. I had a cup of the chocolate-peppermint tea I got in my stocking with it.

After breakfast, we opened presents. Food, books, and clothes were the most popular gifts. A great deal of chocolate was exchanged, YaYa got elderberry-infused honey and jam, and I got three flavors of fruity teas plus chai. I got four more books to add to the three I’d opened on the Solstice and left at home. Noah got even more than that.

North got a pastel colorblock sweater they’d admired in Rehoboth over Thanksgiving weekend and fuzzy socks in pale green and red and white. Noah got a flannel shirt, and we got sweatshirts and robes from YaYa. I got gloves and a pair of navy corduroys I’d bought myself from an expensive catalog, immediately regretted buying, and almost returned, until I asked Beth if she’d like to buy them for me for Christmas and she said yes, so she reimbursed me for them and took them from me and wrapped them. So that wasn’t exactly a surprise, but now I have them. There were some practical gifts, too. Noah got a toolkit, North got headphones, and Beth got a Dutch oven that was so big and heavy we almost despaired of fitting the gift into the crowded car and considered leaving it at home. In fact, I thought we had until we were unpacking the gifts in the cabin and I saw it among them.

From the late morning to the mid-afternoon, Beth took a long hike up the along the ridge behind Lake Pendleton. The ground was soggy from all that melted snow and as mentioned previously, I had failed to pack boots, but I accompanied her for the first leg of the walk, up to the lake and then I wandered its shore for a little while. The lake was still frozen, and it was lovely there.

We settled in for a quiet afternoon of reading and crocheting. I’d been considering finishing the book I had in progress before starting any Christmas books, but I’ve been wanting to read Holly and stopping myself from buying it for months, and there was a big chunk of the other book left, so I switched over to King, getting up every hour to go outside and walk twice around the perimeter of the house to keep my Fitbit happy.

YaYa made a scrumptious dinner of spinach lasagna, garlic bread, and salad, and we watched The Nightmare Before Christmas afterward—which somehow Noah had never seen, though we’ve watched it without him several times—and Christmas was a wrap.

After Christmas

Then things took a turn. The morning after Christmas, YaYa had a bad fall and after she was checked out at the nearest hospital, Beth ended up driving her home to Wheeling where she’d be more comfortable that afternoon. Beth stayed overnight at her house. She returned to the cabin Wednesday morning, along with her aunt Carole and Carole’s granddaughter Holly, who had come along to drive YaYa’s car back. We had a nice, if short, visit with them. We served them gingerbread and chocolate-peppermint tea and drove to the Pendleton canyon overlook. That night Beth and I had a soak in the hot tub at the lodge and Thursday morning we all went to the accessible falls overlook as a last little goodbye before we left the park.

We were sorry to miss the last two days of our visit with YaYa, and it wasn’t precisely a white Christmas, and the kids did not find their true loves, but that would have been difficult given that they didn’t even leave the cabin until Tuesday afternoon when I suggested a walk to the falls, and then once more when we went to White Grass Café for lunch on Wednesday, after Beth got back. But we all got a taste of Christmas. I hope you did, too.

Thankful

Before the Beach: Weekend to Tuesday

Three days before Thanksgiving, North got into the baking and pastry arts program at Johnson and Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. This is currently their first-choice school, though they haven’t decided for sure and are keeping their options open until they hear from the rest of their schools.

When they got the notification, they were on their way home from Winter One Act auditions. North will be directing a one-act play in early January as their senior project. There was a flurry of excited texts between North, Beth, and me, but Beth had to wait a day to give North in-person congratulations because she was out of town. She’d taken a four-day trip to visit a friend in Morgantown and her mother, who was turning eighty, in Wheeling.

While Beth was gone, the rest of us watched two horror movies (A Quiet Place 2, and Lights Out), plus Noah and North started a tv series about Korean zombies, Noah attended a cast party for the Scooby Doo movie and North attended and reviewed a production of MacBeth for Cappies. Remembering all the kid-friendly dinners I used to make when the kids were little and Beth was travelling for work, I made dinners I knew would still be popular (vegetarian chicken, broccoli, and spinach fettucine with alfredo sauce one night, causing Noah to exclaim “Pasta!” because I hardly ever make it anymore, and tacos another night because that’s one of North’s favorite dinners.)

On Tuesday, North and I were busy in the kitchen. I made Beth’s birthday cake, chocolate with coffee frosting, which is the cake I most often make for her and which she’d requested this year. North made almond flour cornbread for Beth’s birthday eve dinner, and they also made pumpkin pudding because we had some leftover pumpkin puree from another project they wanted to use up.

Beth returned home Tuesday evening, later than she intended because car trouble kept her in Wheeling until late afternoon. We were all happy and a little keyed up to be re-united and because we were leaving again for the beach the following day for our annual Thanksgiving trip.

Birthday Eve: Wednesday

We arrived at the beach house around 5:15 p.m. the next day. Beth headed right back out to get some groceries, while I put away the groceries we’d brought, distributed linens to all the bedrooms, and made our bed.

We had canned chili with the cornbread for dinner. Because Beth’s birthday was on Thanksgiving this year, we’d decided to have her cake on Wednesday night to space out the festivities. We had it after dinner, but we saved the presents for the real day. We’d picked up a new numeral seven candle at a Dairy Queen on the drive to the beach because when I packed the candles from our (frequently re-used) stash, I noticed the wick on the seven looked broken. We all agreed the new one looked more like a one that a seven, and in fact when I put the photo on Facebook, someone commented “Happy 51st” and Beth set the record straight and then I commented that she can pass for fifty-one.

After dinner, Beth and I took a walk on the boardwalk. I invited the kids to come with us, and North said, “It’s not going to be romantic?” but they didn’t come, and it was kind of romantic to be walking in the dark, just the two of us, listening to the sound of the waves crashing on the sand.

After our walk, we watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and The Mayflower Voyagers, a re-telling of the Pilgrim story with Peanuts characters. This last one is kind of obscure and getting hard to find online, possibly because it’s a rather outdated, white-washed version of the story. Beth joked that “the woke mob” was conspiring to get rid of it, but we eventually found it.

Birthday/Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a pleasant, low-key day. I went for a solo walk on the beach in the morning and again with North after lunch. In between those walks, as soon as everyone was home and awake at the same time, Beth opened her presents. Even though she’d asked for a gift certificate for a skate shop so she could buy herself new ice skates, she seemed surprised that we’d all pitched in (with assists from my mother and sister) to get one big enough to cover the cost of the skates and not just contribute toward it. The kids and I also got her a high-end hot chocolate mix, some orange-chocolate bark, a box of chocolates, and two dark chocolate bars. (Beth is serious about chocolate.) She was very pleased with everything.

After the presents were opened, we all set to work making our main Thanksgiving dinner table decorations, turkeys made from apples, toothpicks, raisins, dried cranberries, and olives. I have been making these since I was a kid and along with a little glass turkey North bought for Beth’s birthday eight years ago and some gourds leftover from our pumpkin patch expedition, they graced our table another year. I am thankful for the continuity they represent—of family, love, and tradition.

The kids and I are reading The Golden Spoon—a murder mystery that takes place on the set of a baking competition based on The Great British Baking Show—together and I read to them for an hour in the afternoon. Late in the afternoon I laid down to rest and surprised myself by falling asleep almost at once and sleeping deeply for almost an hour. That felt luxurious.

Everyone was responsible for a cooking a dish or two for Thanksgiving dinner, so people were in and out of the kitchen all day—Beth made mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy, I did the Brussels sprouts, Noah assembled the stuffing, and North was responsible for the cranberry sauce, and basting the tofurkey roast. North also whipped cream for the pies. We had six little tarts— three pecan, two apple, and one pumpkin—mostly from the farmers’ market, to give us maximum flavor choices without buying three whole pies. The cream was surprisingly hard to find, we’d struck out at a few stores until it occurred to North that we could try ordering a cup full of heavy cream from the Starbucks around the corner from the house and it worked.

After dinner and dishes, we took a family walk on the boardwalk, my third visit to the beach or boardwalk that day, and then we initiated this year’s Christmas specials viewing with A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Black Friday

I was up early Friday morning, and when I looked at my weather app and saw the sun had only risen three minutes earlier, I decided to hurry down to the beach to see if I could catch the tail end of the sunrise. It took twenty-five minutes to get dressed and walk down there (the house was several long blocks from the beach) but when I got there, the sun was still fiery orange and there was a trail of molten gold running down the ocean and wet sand. It only lasted about five minutes, but I stayed another hour, walking and sitting and walking again, and there was still some pink lingering in the clouds when I left. I love the quality of early morning light on the beach in the late fall and early winter, the way there are shadows clearly delineated in each little depression in the sand.

I saw two dolphins making their way north and a surfer. It was a middle-aged man in a wetsuit, and he stood on the beach for a long time before he entered the water. I wondered if he was waiting for the right kind of wave or if he was trying to psych himself up to get in the cold water. Given how quickly he was in and out, I decided it was the latter, but as someone who has never been immersed in the ocean in Delaware in November (and never will be), I give him props for riding even one wave.

Back at the house, I had a small breakfast to tide me over until we went out to Egg. I am largely adjusted to having diabetes—it’s been almost two years and three months since I was diagnosed and I’ve figured out some hacks—but I still have moments of wishing I could eat things I probably shouldn’t and the pumpkin praline French toast at Egg spurs those feelings in me. I had frittata instead and watched sadly as someone at the next table ate what I really wanted.

Christmas shopping was next. When we tell people we go Christmas shopping in Rehoboth over Thanksgiving weekend, people always think we mean the outlets, but we shop downtown, which is busier than an average day, but never mobbed. It’s a very sane Black Friday shopping experience.

The kids and I hit BrowseAbout Books, the Christmas store, the tea and spice shop, Candy Kitchen, and other stores. Beth split off from us, so I don’t know where she went. I was relatively productive, and didn’t do any more shopping after lunch, opting instead for reading with the kids. In the mid-afternoon, we did our Christmas card photo shoot on the beach. On the way back to the car, even though it was cold, we picked up a pumpkin-cinnamon frozen custard and split it four ways. I was craving that flavor and I reasoned it was only going to get colder later in the day.

Our next event was the holiday sing-along and Christmas tree lighting in the early evening. As Beth was parking and the kids and I were approaching the bandstand where a chorus was singing “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” I commented, “It is,” gesturing at all the decorations on Rehoboth Avenue.

Once we’d met up with Beth, we moved through the crowd, relocating a few times, trying to find a space where more people were singing, and fewer people were having loud conversations that made it hard to hear the music. Beth said she thought more people used to sing at this event and I agreed. We all sang, though, “Frosty the Snowman,” “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “All I Want for Christmas,” etc. North even valiantly tried to sing “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas,” even though they don’t know many of the lyrics. (Neither do I.) Right before seven, the countdown began and then the tree lit up, its multicolored lights and big star joining the light of the moon in the night sky.

After it was over, Beth went to fetch the car while the rest of us went to Grotto to pick up the pizza, stromboli, and mozzarella sticks we’d ordered ahead of time. We all met up, drove home, and ate the food in front of the tv. That night we watched The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Frosty the Snowman (the song got me in the mood), and Frosty Returns.

Small Business Saturday

The next morning after we checked out of the house, I did some solo shopping and took a short walk on the boardwalk and beach before we all met up for lunch. The day was cold and windy, and the beach was covered in seafoam. I saw a boy standing on the wet sand shoveling and at first, I thought he was shoveling foam. It was sand, but the foam was so deep, you could have shoveled it.

We tried a new (to us) restaurant that’s in the space where a Greene Turtle used to be. I used to eat at Greene Turtle more for the ocean view than for the food—and Beth and Noah refused to eat there—so we didn’t mind the change in ownership. Overall, it seems to be an improvement it terms of pleasing everyone, though North thought the pizza was too saucy. It was very festively decorated for Christmas, with lights, and presents suspended from the ceiling, elves sitting up on the beams, and a tree near the restrooms. But my favorite part was the Santa hats on the chair backs.

The kids and I went back to the beach after lunch so they could stand barefoot in twenty-three frigid waves. What can I say? It’s a goodbye-to-the-beach tradition. The number of waves is always the last two digits of the year. I don’t do it barefoot in the fall or winter, though. I wear rain boots. A little water went over the tops and my socks got damp and sandy, but I didn’t mind much. It just meant I got to take a little bit of the beach home with me.

HalloWeekend

A week ago, on Saturday morning, we were in a hotel room in Western Pennsylvania discussing the comparative usage and etymology of the phrases “fraidy cat” and “scaredy cat,” having discovered that Beth and I would use either term, but the kids had only heard of the latter. The reason for this was that we were on our way to HalloWeekends at Cedar Point (having picked North up at school on Friday afternoon and driven most of the way there the day before) and as we were preparing to hit the road and drive the last few hours, Beth was considering buying one of the necklaces with cats on them that let scare actors know you don’t want to be scared. She speculated it was supposed to evoke the idea of “fraidy cat” and the kids were surprised by the term, which sent us down a pre-breakfast googling rabbit hole.

The trip was a long time in the making. When Noah graduated from high school in 2019, he asked if we could go to Cedar Point that summer, but North was in a play and had a couple day camps and we had another trip planned and we couldn’t fit it in, and you can probably guess why we didn’t go to any amusement parks in 2020 or 2021. It’s a lot easier to get to Hershey Park from where we live, so when we did go to one in 2022, that’s where we went.

But Noah doesn’t ask for much, so it had been bothering me for a long time that we never granted his wish. And then when North got covid this summer and missed a camp field trip to Hershey Park we decided a fall visit to an amusement park was in order. As always, it made more sense to go to Hershey Park. It’s only a couple hours away and Cedar Point is in Ohio, nine to ten hours away. But it’s always going to be that far away, and we’ve been to Hershey Park in the Dark, but not Halloweekends, so we decided to road trip to Ohio over Columbus/Indigenous People’s Day weekend.

I’m glad we did it. It was a lot of fun, long drive and all. We arrived at the park mid-afternoon Saturday and stayed until the evening and then all of Sunday, too. We stayed at the Hotel Breakers, which is a stately early twentieth-century hotel right next to the park and on the shore of Lake Erie. (You can see it in the background of the first picture.) Cedar Point is the amusement park of Beth’s childhood and her family used to stay at this hotel and she really loves it. We got a suite with two beds in one room and a fold-out couch in another, so Noah was able to close the doors between the rooms and have his own space at night. Being so close to the park allowed us to go back to the room in ones and twos as people wanted, which was convenient because the kids wanted to stay longer than we did both nights.

The hotel went all out when it came to lobby decorations. There were spiderwebs on the chandeliers, skeletons riding the carousel horses that usually reside there, life-size figures in various spooky tableaux, and It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was playing on a continuous loop on a television. Right outside the front entrance there were witch legs sticking out of planters.

The park was also nicely decorated. There were giant collages made of pumpkins and different colored squashes– my favorite was the skull—and all sorts of skeletons and monsters, both statues and animated, talking ones. We all liked the big ogre that sang “Ogreface” to the tune of “Poker Face.”

North used a loaner wheelchair because they didn’t feel up to hours of walking. It works just like at Hershey Park. You get a pass that allows you and your party to go to the front of the ride lines and then they make a note of when you’re allowed to go to the next ride (based on the length of the line you skipped). It was easier pushing them around Cedar Point, which is flat, than Hershey Park, which is a little hillier, but even so by the second day my arms were sore.

Over the course of one and a half days, in different combinations, we rode all kinds of rides—many coasters, a mine ride, a Ferris wheel, swings, a train that goes through a village of skeletons (this is a permanent feature of the park—it’s not for Halloween), and one of those tower rides that drops you from a great height. This last one is called the Power Tower and it’s 240 feet high. North was the only one who wanted to ride it. Together the kids rode much scarier coasters than I ever have, but Beth said that’s because in my youth there weren’t coasters with the cars hanging off the sides of the track or with so many inversions. I do want to note, as I do whenever we go to any amusement park, that in 1989, the week before my college graduation, when it was the tallest coaster in the world (205 feet), I rode the Magnum at Cedar Point. It is far from the tallest now and I would never ride it.

While we were in line for the Blue Streak, which at 78 feet is the smallest wooden coaster in the park and right at my limit, I was explaining to Noah that in my experience, the years from my mid-teens to early twenties marked the peak (pun intended) of my roller coaster bravery. So when the ride was over and a middle-aged woman in the row in front of me asked her friend, “Why is this ride so much scarier than it used to be?” and I relayed the comment to Noah, he laughed.

We had minor mishaps on two rides. On the Wild Mouse, a small coaster with cars that spin on the tracks (think of it like a teacup ride that also goes up and down), North’s car got stuck on the track, still spinning, and it was a while before they could get off, quite dizzy. On the Ferris Wheel, there was no malfunction, but we misjudged how cold it would be up there after dark. In the daytime it had been in the mid-fifties, and I was warm enough in my hoodie with two layers underneath. I enjoyed the first two rotations of the wheel and the lovely view of the all the lit-up rides and the shimmering surface of the lake, but during the third rotation we were stopped for a long time near the top and we were all freezing, especially Noah who was only wearing a t-shirt under his denim jacket. So we when we got to the bottom we were all aghast when it started back up again for a fourth and final spin, again with long stops.

After that, Beth lent Noah her fleece jacket, hat, and gloves, so he could stay in the park with North to do some of the haunted mazes and outdoor scare zones, while Beth and I retreated to the hotel to rest and relax after a long day. (She may have mentioned once or twice that she told everyone it was going to be cold and to dress warmly.)

On Sunday we did fewer rides and took in some shows. We saw a short musical murder mystery play called Wake the Dead. The premise is that it’s the funeral of the victim and his four potential heirs are expecting to find out who will inherit, but instead each is accused of his murder and must mount a defense in song. In the end the audience votes and then the guilty party (who presumably varies from show to show) sings again. It was fun and featured an actor who did a spirited version of Meatloaf’s “Hot Patootie/Bless My Soul.”

Next, we attended a recitation of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” with a brief frame narrative in which the murderous narrator is about to be executed for his crime and then sets out to explain himself to the witnesses to the execution. I’m not sure the extra bit added much. The story stands alone and the actor who recited it did a nicely creepy job.

After the second show, we split up because the indoor mazes opened at five and the kids wanted to do more (the outdoor fright zones weren’t open on Sundays). Beth was not interested, being the self-described fraidy cat in the family, but I stayed with the kids for two mazes. The first was a tour of a haunted house with members of a paranormal society leading you through it. Just a few steps in I got North’s wheelchair stuck in a doorway and North said, “Noah is better at this,” and I handed it over to him. He was very good at maneuvering it through narrow spaces, even when the lights went out and it was not at all clear to me which way to turn. I walked behind him and held onto the hem of his jacket. Later I told Beth that there were so many people jumping out at you it made it less scary, because there was no suspense. You were pretty much always expecting it if it had been thirty seconds or more since the last one. The second maze was a dance club run by vampires. It was called Orpheus, so I thought it was a nice touch that “Don’t look back” was spray-painted on the wall in two places. There were more mazes, but by that time I’d had enough so I left the kids and went back to the hotel.

Beth had already eaten dinner, but I hadn’t so I invited her to join me on the beach while I ate half an apple, plus a cheese stick and a latte I got at the Starbucks in the lobby. (Finding diabetic-friendly vegetarian food in the park was kind of a challenge so I carried food with me.) Cedar Point and Lake Erie hold a lot of childhood memories for Beth, but it’s also very near Oberlin and we went to the park once or twice and to the lake many times in college, so it has nostalgic early relationship vibes for us, too. We didn’t stay too long, though, because it was cold out and we wanted to go inside and soak in the hot tub while we waited for the kids to come back. That was nice, as after over 24,000 steps that day, my feet were sore.

On Monday morning Beth and I took separate walks on the beach. It was lovely down there. There was a big flock on seagulls near the water and the remnants of the sunrise in the sky. I would have liked to walk longer, but we had a nine-plus-hour drive ahead of us, so I said my goodbyes to the beautiful lobby and lake, and we hit the road, back to work and school and the routines of the week.

Three Days at the Beach: Coronavirus Chronicles, Part 81

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.

Oregon Adventures, Part 2: Ocean, River, and Bays

Thursday

Mom’s sister Peggy, Peggy’s husband Darryl, their daughter Emily, and Emily’s seventeen-year-old son Josiah arrived Thursday afternoon. After they settled into their guest house and got Peggy and Darryl’s dog situated at the kennel, we met up for dinner at a causal restaurant in Bandon. We needed three tables pushed together for our group. Conversation was lively and featured many stories about the middle generation’s comparatively lax seventies-and-eighties childhoods and a surprising number of accounts of personal injuries, including a recent horrific experience Dave had getting both his contacts stuck to his eyes. (This misadventure led to Sara and Dave spending half the night in the ER, instead of going out for an anniversary dinner.)

Friday: Pacific Ocean, Coquille River

Friday morning, Peggy and Emily met up with Sara, Dave, Lily-Mei, and me to go to Circles in the Sand yet again. It was the last day of this month it was happening, and Emily really wanted to see it. As I told Sara, I would never turn down an opportunity to go to this gorgeous beach. Darryl was feeling ill, so he didn’t come. His symptoms (fatigue and body aches) seemed like they could be covid, but Peggy got him a test and it was negative.

There was a new labyrinth that day. Because the tide was low but coming in, we showed Peggy and Emily the places where you can see sea stars and sea anemones before the water covered them back up, and then we walked the labyrinth. Emily was supposed to meet a friend who was travelling in the area, and they didn’t find each other until after we’d finished, so they talked a while and then I showed Peggy, Emily, her friend, and her friend’s kid the sea caves, but we couldn’t go inside any of them because there were too many people inside them already.

The original plan for the day was for Emily and Josiah to join Sara’s family, me, and North at a swimming hole on the Coquille River, but it was an hour away and Josiah (having come from Idaho) was tired of being in the car and had homework for the Japanese class he’s taking in summer school and then Emily decided to stay in Bandon with him, so it was just the five of us.

We arrived later than we thought we would, just before three, had a picnic lunch, and then we made our way down to the river. It was a scenic spot surrounded by evergreen trees. The river was winding, pebbly, clear, and cold. In the deep spot where people were swimming, there was a ladder you could descend into the water and a diving board, but I chose to enter the water by wading in gradually from a shallower area. I did jump off the diving board later, though. After swimming, we camped out in chairs and towels on both sides of the river, reading and relaxing. (I was reading True Grit, which my book club was going to discuss the day after our return.)  It was a pleasant afternoon and Sara, who loves rivers and swimming holes, was happy to have another one in her repertoire.

On the way home we stopped at A&W for milkshakes (Dave and Lily-Mei), a root beer float (North), and some vanilla soft-serve (me). Sara was saving her appetite for dinner because she and Dave were going out for an anniversary make-up dinner (this time with no ER visit). We also picked up a pizza, because North, Lily-Mei and I were going to have pizza at home while Mom and Peggy’s family went out for seafood.

On returning home, we learned from Mom (who had gotten home earlier than we expected) that Peggy and Darryl’s anxious, high-strung dog got kicked out of the kennel, so they had to keep her on the porch of their no-pets-allowed house (after consulting with the owner) and in her crate in their car overnight.

Mom watched a movie Lily-Mei had chosen with us as we ate our pizza. It was a documentary about men who own cats, called Cat Daddies. North had issues with the premise of the movie, that it was unusual for men to own cats and was exasperated for much of it.

Saturday: Coquille River, Pacific Ocean

The main group activities for the day were a crabbing expedition and a family cookout at Peggy and Darryl’s place. North and I did not care to crab, so Sara dropped us off in downtown Bandon where we visited a café and a candy store. From there we walked to a river beach on the other side of the lighthouse we’d visited a few days earlier. North wanted to rest on their towel and read their book, but I wanted to explore, so I left them there for almost two hours, while I rambled about.

I followed the river beach to an ocean beach, but I got there a rather perilous way, walking over a wide expanse of very slippery seaweed-covered rocks. I fell once and banged my left knee. It was only a glancing blow, but it hurt enough that I didn’t even notice that I had a bruise forming on my right palm and my left foot was bleeding in two places until later. It was all worth it, though, because I came out onto Bandon South Jetty Park, a beach very similar to Face Rock, with sea stars and anemones in the rock formations, and a large table rock covered with cormorants, and seal sunning itself on a rock in the ocean.

I decided to walk back to North via the road instead of the beach to avoid further injury, but it curved away from the beach unexpectedly and for a while I thought it wouldn’t go back, but it did, and I was reunited with my child. Mom and Peggy picked us up and filled us in about the crabbing trip. The group did catch some crabs, but they were all female or too small and had to be thrown back. Also, Peggy had found a dog-sitter to take the dog. (It was a better situation for the dog and she was happier there.)

Back at the house, I had a bath in Sara and Dave’s luxuriously deep tub while North and Mom peeled and chopped nine cups of apples from Mom’s apple trees for apple crisp for dinner that night. Then Mom took a nap while North finished the crisp and then North had a turn in the bathtub. They went to bed with a headache a little after five. I read a little and then Mom and I made a salad to take over to Peggy and Darryl’s.

We had a cookout in the big and well-appointed back yard of Peggy and Darryl’s rental house. Lily-Mei played croquet and other lawn games with various partners and Darryl manned the grill. We all ate burgers and hot dogs, sautéed mushrooms, baked beans, potato salad, green salad, and of course, North’s apple crisp. Everyone raved about it, and it was a little sad they didn’t get to hear that until later. I talked to Emily and her brother Blake, who was the last to join the party, mostly about the kids, and to Darryl, about poetry. I learned that Blake also gets migraines and that he takes the same medication that works for North.

Sunday: Sunset Bay

Our big outing on Sunday was to Shore Acres State Park botanical garden and Sunset Bay. Dave, who needed some alone time, stayed behind to do some work on the house, but everyone else went, so we were a party of ten. (I don’t think all eleven of us were ever in the same place at the same time.)

Mostly what was in bloom in the botanical garden was roses, which were abundant. We compared the scents of different varieties (e.g., one I thought smelled like rose-scented soap, one North thought smelled like lemon balm). We also examined the herb garden and saw dahlias and even some azaleas that had a few blooms left on them. In the gift shop, Lily-Mei got a night light made of translucent colored stone, flattened a penny in a machine, and got a passport for her collection of flattened pennies. Mom got a decorative frog for her garden.

We had a picnic lunch at the tables at Sunset Bay and then got our chairs and towels set up on the beach. Blake and Josiah went exploring and apparently climbed partway up the cliffs. Sara and I did some more sedate rambling through rocks and tide pools where we saw many little crabs.

Sara, Lily-Mei, North, and I waded in the water to varying depths. In Sara’s family they have a tradition of dunking all the way into as many bodies of water as they can in a summer. When you’ve done that you “own” that body of water and they keep a running tally. Sara and Lily-Mei own the Pacific now. North and I do not, as that water is quite cold, even in a protected cove like Sunset Bay. I did get almost up to my waist in the water, though, as did North. North and I went back to our towels and read while Sara and Lily-Mei made sandcastles.

Back in Bandon, we had dinner at Peggy and Darryl’s back yard again. Everyone was there except Blake, who had hit the road.  Lily-Mei jumped rope, first with Sara turning one end of the rope while Lily-Mei held the other. Then when Sara got tired, Lily-Mei figured out how to turn it with her one hand and her opposite foot. It was something else and I’d just been thinking how I hadn’t seen her use her foot as much as she used to when she was younger.

Darryl made a mild vegetarian chili, a spicy meat-based one, and had meat and spice to add so you could customize. After dinner, we had a birthday cake for my mom. Her birthday wasn’t for nine days, but she’s turning eighty and we had a lot of relatives gathered so it seemed like the thing to do.

After everyone sang “Happy Birthday” and ate cake, Darryl, Dave, and Lily-Mei built a fire. It had been misting while we ate so there was disagreement about whether a fire could be built, but they did it and as I was wishing I’d put on another layer over my long-sleeved tee, it was nice to sit around its warmth. Some people made S’mores, but I abstained as I’d already had one dessert. We said goodbye to Peggy’s family that night, as they were leaving the next morning.

Monday: Pacific Ocean

Sara and her family left for a camping trip the following afternoon, leaving Mom, North, and me in their house with the cats for the rest of our stay. (A cat sitter was coming to watch Shadow after that.) They were busy packing all morning and were still at it when Mom, North, and I left to go to Seven Devils Beach around 1:45, so we said our sad goodbyes. Suddenly, our party of eleven had shrunk to three.

When we got to the beach parking lot, I marveled at how few cars there were. There are just so many majestic beaches around Bandon that this marginally less stunning one only rated several cars on a Monday afternoon in July. It took us a while to find the path down to the beach, as it was partly obscured by grass, but it was near a pebbly creek that ran into the ocean. Mom and Sara got settled with their books and I took off to explore. I walked for an hour and fifteen minutes, with the goal of reaching some big rocks in the far distance. The beach was almost completely deserted. Along the way I saw and photographed kelp in different shapes, crabs living and dead, and interesting patterns blown into sand or eroded from rock.

When I got back to Mom and North, North was ready to go and I had hoped to stay another hour and half, so we compromised on forty-five minutes. I’d had enough of walking, and I could read my book elsewhere, so after a snack of cherries and pistachios and some conversation, I spent the rest of my time wading the in water. It was cold but not much colder than Sunset Bay. I waded in about hallway up my thighs. The waves looked tempting, but I couldn’t quite push myself to dive into them. We’d actually chosen this beach because it has bigger waves than the others and Mom likes to watch big waves, if not swim in them.

At home Mom and I walked down to the dock and read for a little while by the riverside. Then we made a dinner of devilled eggs, baked potatoes with cheese and fake bacon, broccoli, and salad. We watched Spoiler Alert, which North chose. It’s a dramedy about a gay male couple, one of whom gets cancer. You find that out at the very beginning, thus the title, and the rest is flashbacks. It’s good, in case you’re interested.

Tuesday: Pacific Ocean

We spent the next morning at the house and then set out in the afternoon to visit a thrift store because Mom needs a granny dress. She’s joined a singing group called the Raging Grannies and she needs a costume, but the store didn’t have anything appropriate. From the thrift store we went out for ice cream at Face Rock creamery (our third visit to this establishment), and then we dropped North back at the house because we were going to the beach, and they’d reached their limit of interest in beaches too cold for swimming. I had not, however, and neither had Mom. We went back to Seven Devils State Park, and she set up her chair close to the ocean, the better to watch the waves. Since I’d gone south the day before, I went north. I saw many waterfalls and rockfalls near the base of the cliff, a lot of driftwood (including whole tree trunks with roots), a big black bird with an orange beak that might have been a California condor, and the ribcage and spine of a large animal that might have been a seal. The vertebrae were almost as big as my fists.

We went back to the creamery for dinner—mac-and-cheese for Mom and North and a quesadilla for me—plus tomato soup and potato chips. I bought North their second ice cream of the day (huckleberry cheesecake), because it was the last day of vacation.

Wednesday: Coos Bay

In the morning Mom, North, and I packed up the house and Mom drove us to the airport. Mom was on her way to Ashland to visit friends for several days before she’d meet up with the campers and drive back to Davis. North and I were flying back East. On the way to the airport, we stopped at a Dutch Bros drive-through, satisfying North’s desire to try this iconic West Coast coffee chain.

As we sat in the tiny Southwest Oregon Regional Airport waiting to board our first flight (to Denver) I looked out the window at a narrow body of water, probably an inlet of Coos Bay, and behind it a ridge covered with evergreens. No matter where you look in this part of Oregon, it’s like a postcard.

We boarded our plane and then another and then a taxi and in the wee hours of Thursday morning arrived home, where two nights and one day later, Beth would return from Wheeling, where she’d flown from Saint Louis to pick up her car and pay another brief visit to her family, and we’d all be united again, after almost two weeks apart.

Oregon Adventures, Part 1: Planes, Cars, and Boats

Saturday: Planes

Beth dropped North and me at the airport late Saturday morning. The car was packed with all of our bags because she was setting off on her own travels as well. She is attending her union’s convention in Saint Louis this week, and rather than spend the Fourth of July weekend alone, she decided to go to Wheeling for several days and visit her mom, then fly to Saint Louis from Pittsburgh.

We had two fairly uneventful flights. They were both a little late, but I wasn’t worried about making the connection because we had a four-hour layover in Chicago. It was around nine when we landed in Sacramento (midnight our time), which is quite late for the likes of me, so after we dropped North off at my sister Sara’s house, Mom and I went back to her house, and I went almost straight to bed.

Sunday-Monday: Cars

I was up before five, unsurprisingly. After trying unsuccessfully to get back to sleep, I finished my last blog post, which I’d mostly written in the airport in Chicago, and then went for a walk around Mom’s neighborhood. She was up when I got home around eight, so I made kale and cream cheese omelets, and she sliced strawberries, and we ate this repast on her deck. I’d picked a few blackberries on my walk, and we had those, too.

Sara dropped North off at Mom’s house, and Mom gave us a tour of her garden. She just moved to Davis this spring, so we’ve never seen it. It’s a small yard but it’s like a tiny orchard. She has an orange tree, an apricot tree, a plum tree, a fig tree, two apple trees, a grape arbor, and a blueberry bush, most of them bearing fruit right now. Plus, there’s a playhouse for my ten-year-old niece Lily-Mei, a chicken coop (currently untenanted), rosebushes, and a redwood!

Mom took us on a driving tour of Davis and then made us apricot smoothies with frozen apricots from her garden before we headed over to Sara’s house, where we got another tour. Sara and her family moved to Davis about a year ago, so it was also our first time seeing her house, which has a swimming pool, trampoline, and ping-pong table in the back yard.

At 1:15, six humans (Mom, Sara, her husband Dave, Lily-Mei, North and me) and two cats (Mom’s cat Tara and Lily-Mei’s cat Shadow), piled into two vehicles and began the first leg of our drive to Sara and Dave’s vacation house on the Oregon coast, where we were going to spend the bulk of our West Coast visit. Sara had decided to split the long drive over two days and got a rental house in Medford, about two-thirds of the way there.

I was in Mom’s car with Sara, Mom, and Tara. I managed to nap a little early in the drive and Sara, who had not slept well the night before, did too. I wondered if driving with her two sleeping fifty-something daughters in the car took Mom back to the days of having small kids.

The drive from Davis to Medford is beautiful. It starts in agricultural land, with fields of sunflowers and olive and almond groves. That reminded me of Spain, which I guess makes sense since California was colonized by Spain. Later there are mountains (most covered with evergreens but some arid) and clear blue-green rivers and lakes. Tara was very quiet in the car and meowed only once, right before throwing up.

We arrived at our house around seven and headed to a Chinese buffet for dinner. There wasn’t much vegetarian fare, but I made do with salad, edamame, and sushi with cucumber, cream cheese, and mango. North had noodles and fried rice. We all sampled the rather strange vanilla pudding, which most people thought tasted more like banana than vanilla and I alone thought tasted minty, until Sara decided it was like banana with an aftertaste of mint.

I was up even earlier the next day, as my body refused to adjust to West Coast time. Early in my pre-breakfast walk, I decided coffee was in order to get through the day, so I found a Dutch Brothers and got an iced latte. It was going to get up over 100 degrees and while it wasn’t nearly as oppressive as a day like that at home would be, because it was a dry heat, you could tell the day was going to be hot.

We hit the road a little before ten-thirty. This time I rode with Sara and Lily-Mei, and we played a game in which the players have to list as many animals as they can that start with each letter of the alphabet until they can’t think of any more. Whoever has more wins that letter. It takes a very long time to play this game, partly because it turns out we can think of a lot of animals and partly because Lily-Mei is loath to give up so there were often very long pauses and we only got up to the letter R. We met up for a picnic lunch at a rest stop and arrived at Sara and Dave’s house in Bandon later in the afternoon.

The house is a nineteenth-century, two-story frame house, painted mint green that Sara has decorated in a shabby chic style. It’s been undergoing structural repairs for the past year, and this was the first time Sara, Dave, and Lily-Mei had used it in all that time. The work isn’t done, so the windows were all covered with plastic, which they tore off in some places, so we could see outside.

Shortly after arrival, Sara showed us their dock on the river and then Sara, Lily-Mei, and I went to Face Rock beach. It’s a gorgeous, classic Oregon beach, with towering rocks in the ocean, caves to explore, and tidal pools. Sara and Lily-Mei showed me their favorite places and we saw a lot of sea anemones inside the caves and in tidal pools on the rocks. Sara was looking for sea stars, but she couldn’t find any. We climbed up a sand dune and found a warmer, sheltered area behind it, which was nice because it was cold and windy on the beach.

From the beach we went to a convenience store with a counter that sells Mexican food and got nachos, burritos, and quesadillas to eat on a picnic table outside. Mom and Dave met us there. North stayed home with a headache, but we brought them a quesadilla to eat later.

Tuesday-Thursday: Boats

I managed to sleep until six, which was still earlier than I’d like, but a definite improvement. I took a walk up the road before breakfast, as I was getting in the habit. It’s a pretty road, partly paved and partly gravel, with river views in the breaks between evergreens and ferns, horsetail, foxglove, daisies, and blackberries bushes in bloom growing alongside it.

We had a busy morning planned. The parade was our first stop. It was much smaller than the Fourth of July parade in Takoma, and less whimsical. There were no floats, but there were veterans marching and riding in cars, and people on motorcycles with flags, horses and goats adorned with red, white, and blue ribbons, and a lot of organizations throwing candy to the kids in the crowd as they passed. My favorite part was the person walking in an inflatable eagle suit, walking a corgi.

From there we went back to Face Rock beach. There’s a monthly event there called Circles in the Sand. People rake complex patterns in the sand for several days during the lowest tides of the month, which this year happened to include July 4. This time it was a huge labyrinth decorated with shells, rocks, sand dollars, crab claws, and kelp. Everyone but Mom (who stayed up at the top of the cliff) walked it—Lily-Mei three times, and Sara twice.

Then we wandered around the beach, showing North some of what we’d seen the day before, but there were places they couldn’t climb. I saw some little crabs in a pool up on some rocks I was trying to photograph so I could show North when Sara called to me saying she had found some sea stars. I would need to wade through some cold water to get there and I was rolling up my pants when we realized there wasn’t time because we needed to get back to town for the cardboard boat race, in which Dave was competing.

The race takes place on the Coquille River. People were gathered all along the shore and in a little glass building. Mom and North watched from there because it was warmer and protected from the wind. Sara and I watched most of the kids’ races from the sidewalk and then we joined Lily-Mei down on the ramp next to where the boats launched for a closer view of the adult races.

The initial races were two- and three-boat heats and then there was a final race for all the winners in both age groups. Almost half the kids’ boats sank, but the rest made it out to the designated buoy and returned to shore. The adults fared better, with only a few boats sinking. In one case, a boater who was clearly going to come in last in his race dived off the side dramatically to crowd applause.

Dave was in the last adult group, so we had plenty of time to compare his boat—which he’d made the night before and painted only that morning—to the others, which seemed to have much more sophisticated designs. Most of them were lacquered or heavily reinforced with duct tape. Some looked like real kayaks. You wouldn’t know they were made of cardboard unless you peeked inside. We were all a little apprehensive for him and his fragile-looking boat. Sara and Lily-Mei expressed certainty that he would sink.

Well, we needn’t have worried. Not only did his boat not sink, but he won his race! He had only a short rest before the final race and when it got back into the water, both sides were starting to rip. It held together long enough for him to make it around the buoy and back, and he came in third. This earned him a bronze medal for the whole event, which he wore most of the rest of the day.

The boat was done for, so we collapsed it for transport to Sara and Dave’s recycling bin with the help of a small boy who wanted to help us stomp on it. People kept coming up to Dave and asking how he made the boat. Later someone recognized him in a store and wanted to talk about the race, so I guess he’s kind of a big deal in Bandon, at least for now.

We came back to the house to eat lunch and the afternoon was quieter. Almost everyone took a nap and North and Lily-Mei had baths. Sara made a grid of meals and activities for the rest of the week and Sara and Mom went grocery shopping. When they got back, Mom, Sara, and Dave went on an art gallery walk while North and I made dinner—a tomato-cucumber-mozzarella salad with pesto, and a tomato-green bean-tofu stew.

We were planning to watch the fireworks from the riverside by Sara and Dave’s dock. They’d never done it before so Dave laid in a supply of fireworks for our own personal show just in case we couldn’t see the town show from there. As it turned out, we could only see the top quarter or so of the official fireworks and only when standing out on the very end of the dock, but it hardly mattered because there were neighborhood fireworks going off that we could see, and we had our own. Lily-Mei was more enthusiastic about setting off our own fireworks than the others anyway. She was jumping up and down with excitement as Dave set them off and exclaiming over each explosion and making predictions about them. Plus, Dave had made a fire in the firepit, and we all had chairs and it was very cozy and pleasant.

By the next day I’d adjusted to West Coast time and finally slept past seven. Mom, Sara, and I took a walk in the morning and in the afternoon, we dropped Tara off at the vet. She had continued vomiting not just in the car and she wasn’t eating and Mom was very worried about her. This is a recurrent problem and Mom’s vet hasn’t been able to determine the cause. So rather than order more tests, Mom just asked for IV fluids and an anti-emetic to make her more comfortable. Having an elderly pet isn’t easy.

While we were waiting to pick up the cat, Mom, Sara, and I had lunch. I’d requested that on this trip we do something with just the three of us, since we’re not often alone and they are my original family.

Later in the afternoon, Sara, North and I went to see the Coquille River Lighthouse and the beach there. We’d planned to stay about an hour, but North got a headache fifteen minutes in, so they took the medication that typically takes the edge off for about a half hour and then stops working—they were saving the good meds for nights with late afternoon or evening activities planned—and we stayed another fifteen minutes. We went inside the lighthouse, walked the length of the rocky jetty, saw pelicans, and walked on the log-strewn beach.

Sara and Dave made two kinds of pasta (spaghetti and chickpea macaroni) with three toppings (tomato sauce, pesto, and meatballs) for dinner. And then we watched True Spirit, a movie about the youngest person to try to circumnavigate the globe. Later I was telling North that while they were sleeping we saw a film Beth wouldn’t like and they asked if it was inspirational or if there were children in peril, which are two things Beth doesn’t care for in movies, and the answer was both.

[SPOILER] Even though I knew the teenage sailor didn’t die it seemed like she was going to over and over and in one scene her parents and siblings thought she had, so it was kind of wrenching.

On Thursday morning, Dave, North, Lily-Mei went back to Face Rock to see a slightly different labyrinth that had been raked into the sand. This time the tide was lower, and you could walk to the rock where the sea stars were without wading through water. We saw tons of them, orange ones and vibrant purple ones, plus a lot of cormorants perched on the rocks. It was easier for North to explore one of the sea caves because they were wearing more suitable shoes (on our previous visit they didn’t want to get their orthotics wet, so they didn’t wear them on this trip).

After lunch at home, Mom, Sara, North, Lily-Mei and I went into downtown Bandon while Dave stayed at the house with the contractors. We got ice cream (Lily-Mei got Play Doh which stained her tongue blue), visited a very cool display of art made from ocean plastics (“awesome” in North’s words), hit a toy store, a candy store, a bookstore, a clothes store, and a chocolate boutique where North warmed up with an orange drinking chocolate. (It’s quite chilly on the Oregon coast, even in July.) My mom got Lily-Mei a stuffed narwal and North a book.

Back at home, everyone rested a bit before dinner where we were going to join four more relatives because our party was about to get bigger…

Summertime, Part 2

North had a busy first two weeks of summer break. They volunteered at an outdoor, nature-and-art-based day camp at their old preschool the first week. The camp is for five-to-ten-year olds (mostly alumni of the school) and North had attended it as a camper. On Thursday night they said a week at camp goes a lot more quickly than a week at school. They didn’t know it at the time, but the week was over for them. The next day the school experienced sewer issues and rather than cancel, the director decided to take the kids on a hike. The junior counselors were allowed to bow out if they wanted to, and North did.

The next week North travelled to North Carolina to attend a career exploration program at Johnson and Wales’s Charlotte campus. They spent two days and three nights there, baking in the mornings and going on field trips (to a bowling alley and an amusement park) in the afternoons. They flew there alone, finding their way to campus and back to the airport. It was a much higher degree of difficulty solo travel experience than I had when I flew alone for the first time the summer I was seventeen (and was dropped off and picked up at the airport). The whole week I kept thinking about how both kids were off in the world, doing what they want to do in their adult lives. It was a like a preview of the empty nest.

On Tuesday, the second night they were gone, Beth and I had a date night at MotorKat, a newish restaurant in Takoma we hadn’t tried yet. We ate out on the patio, which was strung with rainbow-stripped pennants for Pride. We got salads, a spring onion-tofu pancake with smoked mushrooms, and cauliflower skewers. If you’re local, the pancake is really good. As we were finishing our entrees, it started to drizzle, then rain harder. One by one, people abandoned their tables and moved inside. We did, too, but we were the last ones to give up on outdoor dining. When the second-to-last couple went inside, one of them said, “We salute you!” We got a new table inside because we wanted dessert. Beth got a trifle, and I got chocolate crème brule, and both were excellent.

We were back at home on the living room couch watching a module of an online parenting course we’re taking as part of family therapy when we heard a loud bang outside. A transformer had blown, which is not actually that unusual. What was unusual was that we still had power. Even more unusual, the transformer was on fire and raining sparks down on a couple of our trees and our fence. Beth said later it looked like fireworks.

If everything hadn’t been soaked from the rain, I think the trees in our side yard would have caught fire. Police and firefighters arrived and blocked off the street for a while. Apparently, they don’t put out electrical fires, though, so they just watched it until it started to taper off and then left. We would have felt better about it if they’d waited until it was completely out, but it did go out eventually and a couple days later the power company came, cleaned up the debris and repaired it. The only sign left is the melted gray plastic stuck to some of the leaves of the trees.

On Thursday afternoon, North came home happy and bearing two galettes (one mushroom-cream cheese and one almond cream-berry) and a bag of scones (chocolate chip and cheese).  They were excellent. It was nice to sit around the table all together and sample them before they went to bed with a headache.

We went to pick up their orthotics the next day. They have a compression body suit, inserts for their shoes, and knee braces. Well, one brace. It turned out they got two left ones so they can only wear one.  We’re all hoping these devices help them stand and walk with less pain, but it’s too soon to tell. And we can’t get the right knee brace for a couple weeks because all three of us are embarked on new travels–Beth to Wheeling and St. Louis and North and me to Davis, California and the Oregon coast. More on that later…

The Grad Who’s Going Places

Friday: Senior Splash and Arrival

Okay, settle in. This is a long one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday: Iconic Ithaca

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday: Commencement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday: Departure #1

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

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

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

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

Tuesday: Home

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday-Thursday: Departure #2

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

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

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

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

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