#FallBreak

Posted on October 26, 2025 by Steph

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

First Saturday: No Kings

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

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

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

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

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

First Sunday: Picking Pumpkins

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

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

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

Monday to Wednesday: Berkely Springs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday to Friday: Baking and Coffee

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

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

Second Saturday: Halloween Parade and Carving Pumpkins

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

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

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

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

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

Second Sunday

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

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

A Wider Circle

Posted on October 4, 2025 by Steph

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Friday: Travel West

The night before we left for my sister’s wedding in Davis, California, I had a stress dream. In it, North and I were together, trying to get to a medical office only a few blocks away where we were supposed to meet Beth. But for various reasons, we could not get there. We were trapped for a long time in a big warehouse with a roller coaster inside (and compelled to ride the coaster) and there were all these mythical creatures wandering around. Somehow in the course of our wandering, I lost my shoes, laptop, and phone.

Now as all these items are things you need to put in the bin to go through security, and we failed to make our appointment, the dream seemed to be about travel worries. But I commented to Beth that morning that it was strange, because these aren’t my specific travel anxieties. Instead, I fret ahead of time about my physical and mental discomfort from not being able to move for long periods of time (I get antsy and sometimes get leg cramps) and the inevitable disruption to my sleep if I’m traveling across time zones. I don’t do well with sleep deprivation.

Well, the things I find unpleasant about flying did happen. On the longer flight I had to pee and couldn’t get out of my seat because the seatbelt light was on for a long time, and I am a rule-follower. I also got a little airsick. And of course, later, I was jet-lagged. But I am not going to say any more about any of that right now, because North had a much worse time. It turns out my dream—largely about obstacles to arrival—was closer to the mark than I thought.

North flew from Cleveland to Phoenix and found out their flight from Phoenix to Sacramento had been canceled due to heavy rain in Phoenix. The only flight they could get to Sacramento would have them arriving the following day too late to make the wedding and to make matters worse the airline wasn’t even putting stranded travelers up in hotels. (Did you know the Trump administration gave airlines more leeway about this?)

And another complicating factor: North is too young to rent a hotel room. My sister called up Dave’s sister who lives in Phoenix, asking if North could spend the night at her house, but the sister said no. Beth talked North through the process of getting a flight back to Cleveland the next day and found an Airbnb for them and then another one after the first one didn’t want to let North use Beth’s membership. And because the airport was full of people who needed to leave and find accommodations, it took forever to get a Lyft. It was quite the ordeal.

In between all the calls and texts, we reunited with my mom, Sara, Dave, Lily-Mei, their cat Shadow and bearded lizard Sparky; we also met my mother’s gentleman friend Paul, Sara’s friend Kimberly who was staying with my mom, and Sara’s family’s new (to us) cat Glimmer. Dave and Lily-Mei left soon after we arrived to attend a minor league baseball game with some of the wedding guests and the rest of us (except the cats and the lizard) had pizza.

Saturday: More Travel, Brunch, and Wedding

North got up before dawn the next day and went back to the airport in hopes of getting on a flight to Sacramento standby. The agents they consulted could not find one, but North found one by themselves and managed to get on it. We’d all given up hope of them making it to the wedding, so everyone was excited they were coming after all.

The wedding was a three-day affair with events before and afterward. Sadly, we had arrived too late go to the swimming hole Friday morning and afternoon and the Friday evening ball game would have kept us up unbearably late, as we are early birds on East Coast time to boot.

However, we were there (minus North) for the pre-wedding brunch at this venue. It’s a farm/brewery with a nut orchard and hops fields and a lot of poultry (chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys) wandering around. There are couches and tables inside and just outside a big, open-sided barn full of antique farm equipment. You can reserve tables for events and during the afternoon and evening there are food trucks and sometimes live music. It was morning, so we brought all our own food—three kinds of quiche, pastries, and two big bowls of fruit salad my mom made.

At the brunch and later at the wedding I reunited with and met people from many eras of Sara’s life (high school, college, Santa Cruz, Oakland, and Ashland), plus some of Dave’s friends, and Lily-Mei’s two besties Athena and Emma. Among the notable guests (for me) was Sean, who went to our high school and overlapped with both Sara and me. He and I were in a student group (Student Coalition for Peace) together. It was great to see him. I was also surprised at how happy it made me to see Dune, my favorite of Sara’s ex-boyfriends, with whom she moved from Santa Cruz to Ashland. I hadn’t thought of him in a long time, but I was always fond of him.

At the brunch, when I approached Sara’s best friend whom I hadn’t seen in decades, I said, “Abigail?”

She answered, “Steph. I haven’t seen you since that other wedding. The one that didn’t take.” Here is a good time to explain Sara has had three weddings. One in her late twenties, the one to which Abigail was referring. Then in her late forties, during the first summer of covid, she legally married Dave in an outdoor ceremony with a handful of local friends who would not need to travel during those perilous times. This third wedding was the party with a wider circle of family and friends Sara wanted and couldn’t have five years ago.

Later I told Sara about this exchange, and she cracked up, saying, “That sounds like Abigail.”

Throughout the morning, North kept us updated on their travels by text. When they got to the Long Beach airport, this is what they had to say: “I love this airport. It’s so calm and quiet and not full of people sitting on the floor crying.”

After brunch, we picked North up at the Sacramento airport, which was also not full of people crying. North hadn’t eaten lunch, and we thought we’d need to eat again before the wedding, so we stopped at a shopping center where the kids got pizza and Beth and I got tacos. Back at Sara’s house, North hung out in Sara’s pool. Because there’s a fence around the pool and it’s private, North left their waist-length curly blond hair uncovered and it floated behind them. They looked like a mermaid. Beth said she was tempted by the pool, too, but we had about an hour before we needed to get dressed for the wedding and as we were both jet-lagged and exhausted, a nap seemed more practical.

The wedding was at this vineyard. People mingled outside. I talked to a few people, but not as many as at the brunch, as I was a little worn out. I wandered around and took in the Spanish colonial architecture and the fountain in the courtyard, illuminated by the late afternoon sun.

When it was time for the ceremony, people took their seats in front of a bower with pink crepe at the top and pink roses appearing to grow on the sides. (Sara later told me it was a real rose bush but no roses were in bloom, so Abigail had stuck cut roses into the bower. It was very convincing, I think because the spacing wasn’t too regular.)

Abigail’s wife Val officiated, giving a speech about how Sara and Dave are very different but work together anyway. Dave is a retired actuary who likes spreadsheets and suburban developments, golfs, and wears polo shirts. Sara, while a responsible business owner, also has a hippie streak and likes old houses and collecting what he calls “rusty metal shit.” (He wrote this on a box when they were moving from Ashland to Davis.)

Both Sara and Dave spoke. In her speech she read a list she’d made while single of forty-two characteristics she hoped for in a partner, then noted how Dave checked off almost every box. Lily-Mei was the ring bearer, bringing them the same rings they’ve been wearing for five years. The couple took their vows and kissed. As they walked away from the bower between the rows of folding chairs, guests showered them with rose petals from bowls in the aisle.

There were toasts at dinner. Sean made a similar point to Val’s about the couple’s differences, starting by noting that Dave goes by Dave. He said in his circles a man named David would go by David, and that one in Sara’s might go by Ocean or Redwood, but Dave is Dave. Sara said she couldn’t thank everyone who helped with the preparations, but she called out Abigail for her special efforts and North for their fortitude in travel.

After dinner, there was karaoke. Sara and Dave had the first number, “Summer Nights,” from Grease. When it got to the line “Did she put up a fight?” Dave sang, “Did you respect her boundaries?” which got a laugh. My mom sang “When I Fall in Love.” We stayed for about half the karaoke and when we left Sara thanked us for staying up so late, which was kind of funny because it was only nine o’clock, but you know—jet-lagged early birds.

Sunday: Last Day in Davis

The only wedding weekend activity left was a winery tour Sunday afternoon, but we’d opted out of that. There was talk of having breakfast out with Sara’s family and some of her friends, but she texted me that morning to say that they’d been up late at the wedding after-party and couldn’t make it before we needed to take North back to the airport. So, my family of four went to a bakery/café where I had ratatouille with a fried egg, a charming apricot Danish with apricot halves rather than preserves in it, and a latte.

We drove North—who had spent longer getting to Davis than they’d spent there—to the airport, said our goodbyes. On the way back, we went to the Davis food co-op to pick up provisions for breakfast the next morning and our own travels the next day. Then we swung by Sara’s house, picked up Noah and walked to my mom’s house for lunch. She and Sara live within a fifteen-minute walk of each other, which must be nice. Paul was there, too, and the five of us ate brunch leftovers in Mom’s backyard. Beth had never been to Mom’s house, where she’s lived for a couple years, so she got the grand tour of the house and the garden, which has more kinds of fruit trees than I can remember. Right now, though, all she has is grapes and some green oranges. We stayed over there a couple hours and got to know Paul a little better.

Then we went back to Sara’s house because I needed some down time before Sara and Dave got back from the winery. Noah, Beth, and I read, I soaked in the hot tub, and Beth dozed in one of the poolside lounge chairs. I also read your blogs and made a stab at starting this blog post. Mom and Paul came over for dinner, and the eight of us had Chinese takeout and leftover cupcakes from the wedding.

Monday: Travel East

At first, I thought we wouldn’t see Sara’s family in the morning because we were leaving early, but I forgot it was a school day and there is a seventh grader living in the house, so we got to say our goodbyes to Sara, Dave, Lily-Mei and the cats in the morning after all. We flew home. It was uneventful, with only the usual discomforts, none of which mattered, as we all got where we were going, approximately on time.

When we walked out to the parking lot at National Monday night, I noticed that the air, which I would not have called humid under normal circumstances, did feel damper than the dry air of central California. Throughout the next several days, I often found myself thinking of the orchards; the cacti; the palm trees; the distant, arid mountains; and the rusty old shit in my sister’s yard.

Goodbye, Sophomore

Posted on August 29, 2025 by Steph

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Saturday: Takoma Park to Oberlin

We left the house for Oberlin (for the first time) a little before nine a.m. last Saturday. Our first stop was Mike and Sara’s house because Rose’s boyfriend John, who goes to Oberlin, had spent the summer with Rose’s family and we were giving him a ride back to school. We chatted with Mike and Sara, who were about to leave for a Tesla takedown protest (they are regulars) while John loaded his bags into our car and said goodbye to their little white dog. John and Shorty had bonded over the summer, Sara said, while John lingered on the porch with the dog. (Rose had already left for school a couple days earlier.)

When we got into the car, I remembered I had failed to take a leaving-for-college photo at our front gate and Beth said she’d indulge me by going back home. As North stood in front of the gate where they’d had a back-to-school photo snapped every year since they were two (except 2020), I said “Hello, sophomore!” to make them smile.

And then we drove to Ohio, with many stops along the way. We got snacks at Blue Goose Market in Hancock, Maryland, and lunch at Next Door in Bedford, Pennsylvania. Blue Goose is a regular stopping place for us and Next Door is on its way to becoming one. We listened to music and podcasts to pass the time. For the first hour or so, North and John were very chatty, mostly talking about mutual acquaintances from both high school and college. (They did not go to the same high school, but he’s from the area and high school theater circles are small.)

We arrived in Oberlin around six o’clock and dropped John off at his dorm. Next, we went to Keep and carried North’s things into their room. It’s the same one they had last spring, a first-floor single. They prefer a first-floor room because of their chronic pain, but they only found out recently they’d gotten into it off the wait list. The room was familiar to me, not only because I had been in it last year, but also quite often during the 1986-1987 school year, when a close friend of mine lived there. We didn’t linger because it was almost dinner time and Tank was only dining co-op that was open before the semester started, so we needed to scoot.

At Tank there was a bountiful buffet of chickpeas in tomato sauce, roasted potatoes, pancakes, cornbread, and brownies. I had to think about what carbs I most wanted, and I decided on a small serving of potatoes and a brownie. We ate on the steps of the wraparound porch, also familiar because I ate at Tank my first year of college. It felt good to be back in Oberlin and eating OSCA food.

After dinner we tried to get some groceries for breakfast, but first the IGA and then the Aldi’s we tried were closed, so we ended up picking up a few things at a Sheetz to supplement the food we’d brought from home. The search for an open grocery store was a little frustrating, but we were rewarded with a beautiful sunset as we drove around Lorain County.

The rental house where we were staying had two cats in the driveway who were quite insistent that they wanted to come inside with us, but when the owner showed up to help us with the keypad, he said they were not supposed to go in the second-floor apartment where we were staying. The place was notable for its religious décor. There was a Bible quote framed at the top of the stairs outside the entrance, another one on a mug in the kitchen, religious books placed on the bedside table, and a tiny Jesus figurine in the glass jar of makeup wipes in the bathroom. It looked like he was floating on a cloud in there.

The space was one big room with a kitchen and bathroom off to the side. North was staying with us that night so we could get an early start the next morning and they slept on a pullout couch in the living room area. At bedtime I was dismayed to find out I’d left my sleep mask at home, so I didn’t sleep well. Neither did North because apparently one of us was snoring. (They opted to sleep in Keep the next night.)

Sunday: Oberlin to Wheeling and Back Again

Why did we need to get an early start? We were driving to Wheeling to see Beth’s mom Sunday. It’s a three-hour drive each way, so it was going to be another long day on the road (the second of three), but North hadn’t seen YaYa since Thanksgiving and really wanted to go, so we did.

We arrived at YaYa’s house at 11:40 and soon after Beth’s aunt Carole and cousin Holly (who live two doors down) came over for a visit. As we left the house, we admired the flourishing Rose of Sharon in front of Carole’s house before we went to have lunch at the bistro at Oglebay resort. We ate on the patio, and the restaurant is on a hill, so we had a nice view of the park. We got a feast that started with a butter board with various compounded butters, fresh bread, and olives. I got a slice of quiche and a salad as well. Next, we went to the lodge and got coffee, chai, and a slice of lemon cheesecake.

Back at YaYa’s house we socialized some more, and I went for a short walk in her neighborhood. At 4:40, we said our goodbyes and drove back to Ohio. We drove mostly along rural roads and saw a lot of Amish people. There was another beautiful sunset. They are easier to see when there aren’t many hills or buildings. We had dinner at a Panera and then stopped in Wooster for ice cream and frozen custard at the dairy where OSCA gets its milk. It was fun to have a connection to the place.

Monday: Oberlin to Takoma Park

We picked North up at Keep the next morning and walked to Slow Train Café for coffee and pastries. From there we went to Ben Franklin, where we got clothes hangers and other sundries for North. (At home they had divided their hangers into a bag to take and hangers for children’s clothes to donate. Can you guess which bag they packed?) It was eleven o’clock by the time we said our goodbyes and got in the car again. When took pictures on the Keep steps, I said, “Goodbye, sophomore.” And it was time to go.

Our drive featured another stop at Blue Goose with a longer than planned stop to walk along the nearby C&O canal. We just kept finding interesting things, like a feral cat colony and water lotuses in bloom. It was a welcome distraction from the growing number of miles between us and our youngest child.

Tuesday through Friday: Takoma Park and Oberlin

Until recently, I thought this drop-off would be easy (if not objectively, then comparatively). It wasn’t anyone’s first year of college, it wasn’t the first drop-off after a year and a half at home due to a global pandemic, no one was going halfway across the world. But the fact that North’s multi-day migraine hadn’t gone away and their digestive woes were still unresolved made it harder to leave them. Right before we left home, we’d found out through the portal that their H. pylori test came back negative, so it’s more likely gastroenteritis than an ulcer. They got an appointment at the Cleveland Clinic, but it’s not until late September. Even though I am sorry they are dealing with these health problems, I am proud of them for taking steps to manage them. They are growing into quite the capable young adult. But of course, we are here to help if they need it.

On the positive side, they have a lot to look forward to this semester. They like their class schedule—two theater classes, one psychology class, a sociology class, and they will be on production crew for a show (which one TBD). They are one of two food coordinators for all OSCA, serving as a liaison to the wholesalers that supply the co-ops with food. It’s a paid position. They are now three days into the semester. Good luck, sophomore!

The Seaside Reminds You

Posted on July 23, 2025 by Steph

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The seaside
Reminds you of
Where you’ve been

“The Seaside,” by Janis Ian

We just got back from a week in Rehoboth with extended family four days ago. We stayed in a house where we’ve stayed twice before, once in the summer of 2020 and again Thanksgiving that same year. Because of covid, houses were going for cheap then and we could afford a five-bedroom house a block from the beach for just the four of us. I am very fond of this house. I love the aqua-painted kitchen, the wood paneling on most of the rooms, the cathedral ceiling in the dining area, and the indoor balcony that overlooks part of the first floor. We missed our families so much during those visits, it was satisfying to be back with mine this year.

The house is full of memories of those covid-era visits. There were little things, like the hooks where we hung our masks, and bigger ones. During the summer one North was partially paralyzed and in a wheelchair. We’d rented the house before we knew that would be the case, and so every time we left or returned to the house, we had to lug the wheelchair up or down the four brick stairs that lead to the porch and then we had to help North pull themselves up those same stairs.

When we arrived on Saturday and were walking up those stairs, this memory hit me hard. I asked Beth how many days she thought it would take not to think of that summer five years ago every time we went up or down the stairs and she said probably longer than a week. She was right.

Saturday

But about this trip… we all arrived at the beach in the late afternoon, despite having very different journeys. We had a four-and-a-half-hour trek from Maryland to Delaware, with a return to our house in the first five minutes of the drive for forgotten items, a stop for lunch, and moderate traffic. My mom, sister Sara, brother-in-law Dave, and twelve-year-old niece Lily-Mei arrived at the beach house, having been travelling from California since the previous morning. They flew to Philadelphia, arriving in the middle of the night after a re-routed connection (changed from Chicago to Colorado) and stayed overnight there and slept most of the next morning before driving to the beach.

North and I took a walk on the beach before the party was complete and then after a dinner of burgers, hot dogs, corn, and watermelon (with many cooks pitching in), everyone but Lily-Mei went to the beach or boardwalk. I was in the beach contingent with my mom, sister, and Dave. We admired an elaborate sandcastle with a stairway carved out of it, an intricate clear and purple jellyfish washed up on the beach, and the pink-tinged sky over the ocean. We saw dolphins and pelicans and osprey. Sara had not intended to swim on this outing, but the water was warmer than usual (and even more so for those accustomed to the Pacific) and she couldn’t resist, so she stripped down to her bra and underpants and dove in. Later she explained she always matches these garments just in case such opportunity for spontaneous swimming arises, though it’s more often in lakes and rivers when she’s at home.

There was some commotion on the beach further north. We saw what looked like police car lights on the beach and more searchlights on two boats close to shore, plus there were helicopters in the sky. We later heard it was a rescue mission for a lost swimmer, a young man, and sadly he was not found. It would be a few days before his body was discovered by a kayaker.

Sunday

Sunday morning, I woke to a message from my health care practice, letting me know the second strep test was negative. I’d been wearing a mask around those who weren’t in my immediate family (and presumably not yet exposed to whatever I had) but after learning it wasn’t strep, I put it away. I still had the sore throat at that point, but it lessened over the course of the week and eventually went away (mostly).

I took a walk on the boardwalk, finding a shady place on a roofed concrete platform in front of a hotel where I could watch the ocean. It was a sunny day, and the sea sparkled. I was wearing North’s crocs because the bottom straps of one of my Teva’s had slipped out of the base of the shoe when I was a half block from the house. As the crocs were the only shoes they had, I’d promised to return in an hour. However, when I texted to ask if they’d rather have the shoes back at eleven or an iced chai from Café a Go-Go, they opted for the chai, so I stayed out a little longer. (I ended up wearing my Birks for the rest of the week, despite my qualms about wearing them on the beach and getting them wet.) I can’t complain about the Teva’s lack of durability, however. I got them on a trip to the Southwest with Beth in the mid-nineties.

Beth, North, and I went to the beach in the early afternoon. We all stood in the shallow water together for a while and then North and I went in deeper. The water was very calm and full of jellyfish. We kept seeing them and brushing up against them and even stepping on them (which is an unsettling feeling.) We never got stung that day, though we did get that itchy, prickly feeling you sometimes get after sharing the ocean with a lot of jellyfish. However, it was the first time I’d been in the ocean since last July and North did not get as much time in the water as they would have liked on their trip to the beach with friends in June, so neither of us wanted to get out.

North’s trip in June was a senior beach week for most of the participants, but it was not what you might expect of a senior beach week. There was a chaperone (an aunt), the kids were not allowed out after nine p.m., and they were not allowed to swim unless a lifeguard was on duty and the aunt was watching, too, and the aunt rarely wanted to go to the beach. North loves the water and being back at the beach seemed to be bringing their frustration with this situation back.

Back at the towel, I finished up my book club book and then dozed in the sun. After a little while, I heard a tween girl’s voice and thought sleepily to myself, that girl sounds like Lily-Mei, without thinking about the fact that we were expecting Sara, Dave, and Lily-Mei and I’d even been wondering what was taking them so long. Do you see where this is going? They’d had trouble finding us and had settled one lifeguard stand over and then when they finally did find us North had gone back to the house and Beth and I both appeared to be asleep, so they didn’t want to wake us. Lily-Mei had concerns about going in the water because of the jellyfish, so she didn’t, and she and Dave left—maybe to go to Funland—I wasn’t sure, and Beth left, too, but I had another short swim while Sara read.

Mom made ratatouille for dinner and after the dishes were done, everyone but Mom and Noah went to the boardwalk. Sara and her family were headed for the arcade games at Funland and Beth, North, and I were tasked by Mom to get fudge at Candy Kitchen. Beth and North got frozen custard, and I went ahead to Funland to see if I could find Sara and her family. We hadn’t been separated long but they had already won a stuffed animal. Lily-Mei is a whiz at these games. Beth and North caught up with us and we watched the three of them play for a bit before coming home.

Monday

The next morning, I could see the fruits of their labor on the couch. There were three stuffed animals, and one of them was a truly enormous yellow duck. Apparently, Lily-Mei won the ring toss. You know that game, the one that’s so hard to win most people think it’s rigged? (Every time I went by the ring toss for the next several days I’d stop to see if anyone won and I never saw anyone do it.)

Discussing it, my mom said, “She wins so much stuff.”

And Dave said, “Yeah, she’s lucky.”

And my mom gave the proper grandmotherly response, “No, it’s because she’s good at everything she does.”

Beth went kayaking that morning; I was home all morning unpacking (which I hadn’t done yet), reading with Noah, conferring with my sister about my mother’s birthday cake and calling to buy the cake, chopping parsley and scallions for dinner, and generally hanging out with people. North made a tomato-cucumber-mozzarella-pesto salad for lunch and there was enough for me.

North and I spent a long time in the ocean that afternoon. Noah joined us briefly at the beginning and Sara for a longer time later. There were fewer (almost no) jellyfish, but not much in the way of waves. Sara and I took a walk on the beach, discussing parenthood and friendships and other things and then I got myself a frozen custard on the boardwalk.

I came home from the beach a little early to lend Noah a hand with dinner. He was making vegetarian crab cakes, and I got there in time to help with the frying part of the operation. They were a big hit. Both Mom and Sara asked him for the recipe.

Tuesday

It was our anniversary, the summer one that commemorates our first date (in 1987), but neither of us remembered it until the night before. We knew we had an anniversary this week, we even had dinner reservations, we just made them for the wrong night. We decided to keep things as they were because other people had made plans around this timing.

We opted to have a mini date on our actual anniversary. Beth needed ingredients for the meal she was making that night, so we went to the farmers’ market and a cheese shop and then got beverages and pastries and took them to the boardwalk. While we were gone, in an attempt to be “the cool older cousin,” North took Lily-Mei out for coffee and they got jagua tattoos on their hands.

Then Sara, Dave, and Lily-Mei were shopping in downtown Rehoboth for a dress for Lily-Mei to wear to her parents’ covid-delayed wedding in September. (They got legally married the summer of 2020 but never had a wedding and decided to do it this year.) Mom took my kids out to a late lunch, and Beth was working and then starting dinner prep, so I went to the beach alone in the mid-afternoon. (Sara worked almost every day we were there, and Beth worked intermittently, too. I was the only non-retired adult who was completely on vacation during my vacation.)

Almost as soon as I got there, the lifeguards cleared the water because lightning had been sighted five miles away. About a half hour later, they cleared the beach. People were still allowed on the boardwalk, so I went to a pavilion and read on a bench for a couple hours. Eventually, the lifeguards went off duty and I considered my options. There were dark clouds to the west and sunny skies to the east. I had not seen any lightning in the two and a half hours I’d been on the beach and boardwalk. People were trickling back onto the beach and some into the water. I decided I’d split the difference and read on the beach but not risk a swim. I told Beth later I didn’t think she’d want me to get electrocuted on our anniversary. “Or any other day!” she exclaimed. As a result, I read two-thirds of a novel in a day, which is a real luxury for me, and I did it with an ocean view, so I can’t complain too much about not getting to swim that day.

I came back to Beth’s signature beach week dinner—gazpacho, salt-crusted potatoes with cilantro-garlic sauce, a cheese plate, bread, and olives. She put Spanish guitar music on for ambiance and served dark chocolate for dessert. This meal is always much anticipated and enjoyed by the beach house crew. I think there would be a revolt if she didn’t make it.

After dinner everyone but Beth, who does not care for scary movies, watched The Presence, but we had to fast-forward through a scene that was not age-appropriate for Lily-Mei and then later had to consult some online summaries to learn what happened and how the plot twist at the end worked. North figured it out without help and Dave objects to the logic, in ways I can’t explain without giving spoilers.

After Beth and I had gone to bed, there was a long discussion, led by Lily-Mei and later related to me by North, about the relative hotness of various celebrities. It started with Brad Pitt because some of the group was going to see the F1 movie the next day. My mom’s verdict: yes, very much so, especially about thirty years ago. Lily’s Mei’s: not now or then. Everyone else was in the middle or expressed no opinion. Then Sara, Dave, and Lily-Mei (who were all kind of still on West Coast time) went out to the boardwalk and brought home fudge and other candy.

Wednesday

I had lunch with my mom because a large portion of the crew (everyone but me and North and mom) was going to see the aforementioned F1 movie. We went to our usual spot, a boardwalk restaurant where most tables have an ocean view and where I indulge in one of my once or twice-yearly departures from vegetarianism to eat fried clams. Mom got a grilled cheese sandwich with crab. The food at this place is fine, but not outstanding. We mainly go for the view.

Once I was back from lunch, North and I went to the beach. We were in the water a little over a half hour and got out because we kept brushing up against jellyfish. There were more that day than any other so far and I got stung in more places than I realized until I got out of the water and saw the angry red marks on both thighs just above the knee, one ankle, one wrist, and one forearm. It barely hurt when it happened, but the stinging and redness got worse with time. (It still hurt when I went to bed, but by the next morning, I was fully recovered.)

Beth and I had our delayed anniversary date. We did not exchange presents because we are going to an Emmylou Harris and Graham Nash concert later this month and that is our present to each other. We did get cards. In fact, we picked out the exact same card from BrowseAbout. It has two starfish on the front and says, “It’s written in the stars. You were meant for each other.” We both crossed out “you” and replaced it with “we.” This is less of a coincidence than it sounds like for two reasons. First, while the store has a large selection of cards, I couldn’t find many anniversary cards. More importantly, Beth often gets me a card with star imagery for our anniversary because the summer were both twenty, thirty-eight years ago, she wished on a star for me to fall in love with her and I did.

We went out for tapas (asparagus, spinach-ricotta gnocchi, brie and fig wrapped in phyllo, and a salad with strawberries, watermelon, feta, and candied pecans, all excellent). We were seated next to a long table of at least ten lesbians who were either in late middle age or seniors. They were about to go to a play together and seemed in high spirits. I told Beth if we retired to Rehoboth, it might not be hard to find a friend group.

We followed dinner up with ice cream on the boardwalk. I decided to get cinnamon with churro bits to continue the Spanish theme. Beth was in the mood for brownie sundae, but we went to a few places and couldn’t find one, so she got coffee with hot fudge. I said I thought one kid or the other could be induced to make brownies when we got home and mentioned we still had sour cherries in the freezer for a topping. She was enthusiastic about this idea.

While we were on our date, everyone else went to trivia night at a gay bar in town. Apparently, they won a couple categories, because, according to my sister, her husband knows something about sports, and her daughter is a good guesser. Everyone was home when we got home, but Sara, Dave, and Lily-Mei returned to the bar later that evening for karaoke.

Thursday

Beth, my kids, my mom, and I went to Egg for breakfast, Sara’s crew having elected to sleep in instead. Noah and I did what we usually do on summer visits to Egg—got two orders of lemon curd-blueberry crepes—I eat a half an order, and he has one and a half. He loves crepes and I can manage about a half order of sweet ones without a blood sugar spike so it works out for both of us.

I left Egg on foot to go to BrowseAbout to get a gift certificate for my mom’s birthday and to pick up a book for myself, as I had almost finished both books I brought with me. When I got there, I discovered that I’d left my debit card in the pocket of the skirt I’d worn the day before, so I had to go home, get it and return. I stayed in the air-conditioned house long enough to fold a load of laundry. The day was the hottest of our trip (only high eighties but quite muggy). Still, I can’t really complain about the walk, a long portion of which is along the boardwalk. I even found some wild blackberries growing in the dunes and ate a few. (I had no idea blackberry bushes could grow in sand.)

When I got back it was almost noon, and the house was quiet as Sara and Dave had taken all our offspring to Jungle Jim’s waterpark. I stayed in the house to blog and when they returned and had eaten a late lunch, North and I went to the beach.

If you’re wondering if we went into the water, you don’t know either of us very well. I did decide I’d take just a quick dip, but the waves were better than they’d been all week (though still not as big as I’d like) so then I decided I would stay in until I touched a jellyfish, but I ended up staying in for a half hour and getting almost as many stings as the day before. “Same time tomorrow?” North joked as we were getting out of the water and I was assessing the damage.

Some of the lifeguards had a vinegar solution so you could spray on stings, and I did and initially I didn’t think it helped much but the stings didn’t hurt for as long as the day before, so I guess it did. North, whose suit protects them better than mine, got back in the water for a little longer and then we both read on the beach until biting flies drove North back to the house. I had my legs wrapped in my towel and that mostly foiled them, but I followed soon after. I showered, read with Noah, and then returned to the pavilion to get a little more beach time without getting sandy or bitten again.

Dinner was spring rolls, made by Sara and Dave. They made them the last time they came to the beach, three years ago, and they may have found their own signature beach meal. (Once you find a meal that works for four vegetarians, one diabetic, one person with a gluten sensitivity, and a few picky eaters, you tend to stick with it.) Sara played Thai music because she said she was not going to be outdone by Beth when it came to ambiance.

We visited the boardwalk after dinner, got ice cream, and went to Funland. By this time, Sara had convinced a somewhat reluctant Lily-Mei that the big stuffed duck could not come home with them on the plane. I suggested leaving it in the house as a surprise for the next renters, but Sara thought the cleaning crew would throw it away, so she and Lily-Mei came up with the idea of taking it to the boardwalk and giving it away to another kid. They decided to go back to the ring toss, on the assumption that any parents who allowed their child to try it were willing to bring home an enormous prize.

I had some unvoiced doubts. What if the parents were assuming there was no way their kids could win the ring toss and that was the very reason they let them do it? Or what if a child who had failed to win would be uninterested in an unearned prize? But we went ahead and watched as the first person I’d seen win the ring toss all week did so. We watched the next contestant, a girl who was probably around seven years old. She did not win. When Sara asked her dad if his daughter could have the duck, he was very grateful and the girl flashed an enormous gap-toothed smile and said, “Thank you so much!” So that worked out well.

At Funland, Sara, Dave, and Lily-Mei rode the Viking ship while my kids rode the Paratrooper, a fast-moving, direction-switching Ferris Wheel. (Beth had peeled off to play Skee ball and my mom had headed home.) Then Noah went home and the remaining five of us went in the Haunted Mansion. We all tried to make funny faces when the camera for the souvenir photo went off. After all these years, I’m still not exactly sure where it is, so I had to do it several times before I saw the flash. The pictures turned out well. Sara and I went home after that, leaving Dave, North, and Lily-Mei to ride more rides.

One thing we didn’t do on Thursday is attend a Good Trouble rally, even though there was one in Lewes, which is just north of Rehoboth. I had thought it might be nice to go to a protest all together as Mom and Sara’s family are no strangers to them, but by the time I started thinking seriously about it, the week had filled up with planned activities and I didn’t want to try to reorganize the schedule to fit in one more thing. I have some mild regret about this, as I haven’t been to a protest now in over a month.

Speaking of politics, over the course of the week I noticed that the t-shirt shops all over town that have been carrying copious pro- and anti-Trump merchandise every summer since the 2016 election, suddenly had almost no shirts with political messages. I am not sure what to make of it, but it reminds me of how the Trump signs mostly disappeared from the red counties of western Maryland, western Pennsylvania, and Ohio between our drive in February to take North to school and the drive in May to bring them home.

Friday

Friday was such a busy day, I barely made it to the beach. In the morning North and I went to Café a Go-Go which we had not yet patronized together. We got drinks and split a slice of tres leches cake.

When I got home, I ran errands with Sara and Lily-Mei. We picked up another dress that Lily-Mei had her eye on for much of the week and had finally decided to buy with her own money. It was a shiny, silver sleeveless gown. It looked like something you might wear to the prom, but she was planning to wear it to my mom’s birthday dinner and the next school dance she attends.

Speaking of my mom’s birthday, the next two errands were to pick up her cake from the bakery and some ice cream from a convenience store. The cake was lemon with vanilla frosting and raspberry filling.

Once I got home, I took off again with my kids for a pizza lunch at Grotto’s. We would not be having our normal Friday night pizza, so we did lunch instead. Then we met up with Sara and Beth so Noah could take a picture of Beth, Sara, North, and me (the four Obies in the group) in front of the sign for a restaurant that’s called Obie’s by the Sea.

We came home, ate cake, and mom opened her presents. In addition to the gift certificate, she got jewelry and a diamond shaped piece of glass with pressed flowers inside to hang in a window. She seemed pleased with everything.

Next, Sara drove Mom to the bookstore to pick out some books while North and I made the briefest trip to the beach yet. We only swam twenty minutes, but the jellyfish were still there, so I didn’t mind the abbreviated swim much. Sara had asked Beth earlier if she thought North and I might prefer the Delaware Bay since Beth had not seen any jellyfish while kayaking there, and she said, “I will answer for my wife. No.” It’s true. I like swimming in bays fine, but it’s not the ocean. Nothing else is and I am not the ocean’s fair-weather friend. And, as I learned later, the bay is full of jellyfish this month, too.

We headed back to the house, showered, and went to my mom’s birthday dinner at a Japanese restaurant. We decided to take just one car because parking in Rehoboth is challenging. Beth, Noah, and I walked. (Between walking to coffee, lunch, the beach, and dinner, I ended up with over 20,000 steps that day.)

The restaurant is one we’ve been to as a group a few times before and a hit with our hard-to-accommodate crew. Mom got the seafood pasta she often gets. I got seaweed salad, edamame with Old Bay, and vegetable tempura. It was delicious as usual.

That night everyone but Beth and me (the early birds) went to a drag show at the same bar where they’d previously been to trivia night and karaoke. Mom had never been to a drag show, and she enjoyed it, especially when one of the drag queens asked if anyone had a birthday and she got to go up on stage and dance and collect money from patrons of the bar. She said it was “the greatest birthday ever.”

Saturday

We packed up the house in the morning. It was a little more stressful for me than usual because I’d slept poorly and being tired made our many belongings all over the house and every little decision about what food to try to fit in the cooler, what to throw out, and what to pawn off on someone else feel overwhelming. Beth and Noah drove to the realty to return the keys and everyone else lingered on the porch for a while to say our goodbyes after the house was locked. The West Coast relatives were headed to Philadelphia where everyone except Sara would be getting on a flight back to California. Sara is staying on the East Coast for another week, to visit my cousin Holly in northeast Pennsylvania.

My family didn’t leave right away though. We rarely do. Beth and Noah got cold beverages and found a shady place to read while North and I paid a visit to the beach. I finally got the idea to wear a long-sleeved t-shirt in the water to protect my arms from jellyfish stings. North’s suit, which only exposes their hands, feet, and lower calves had protected them relatively well all week. They had almost no stings. It worked, though my legs still got some bad stings behind each knee. We ended up exiting the water after less than a half hour, even though it was our last chance to swim in the ocean until next summer and the waves were a little bigger than they’d been most of the week. North spotted a dolphin for the first time that week, so that was nice.

North and I split up briefly. I took a short walk on the boardwalk and then popped into the tea and spice shop to stock up on my favorite teas and North got a takeout order of grilled cheese and fries for lunch. We all met up at the crepes stand, Noah bearing more fries, and we got crepes and orangeade. Even though I was sad to leave the beach (as always), sitting in the shade after a swim, eating our traditional last-day-at-the-beach lunch with my little family of four, I felt the stress of the morning packing rush melt away.

We made one last trip to the beach to put our feet in the water and got our last frozen custard. Soon we would hit the road (with a quick stop at a Crocs outlet) for a relatively traffic-free, intermittently rainy drive that would turn into challengingly heavy rain at the end. Back at home, two affectionate cats, many new blooms in the garden, a day of post-beach chores, and the rest of the summer awaited us.

(Almost) Perfect Days

Posted on May 18, 2025 by Steph

[Show as slideshow]

Oh, it’s such a perfect day
I’m glad I spend it with you
Oh, such a perfect day

You just keep me hangin’ on
You just keep me hangin’ on

Just a perfect day, problems all left alone
Weekenders on our own, it’s such fun

From “Perfect Day” by Lou Reed

Friday

The night before we left to pick North up from school, I made pizza with broccoli, and we watched Perfect Days. The film tells the story of a middle-aged man who cleans public toilets in Tokyo and his ability to take pleasure in the little things in life. Of course, it’s not that simple. We learn obliquely that he has a traumatic past, which could explain his insistence on order and his ascetic way of life. There’s a lot of American music from the 70s and 80s in the film and it takes its name from the Lou Reed song. I recommend it, if it sounds like your kind of movie.

Saturday

Beth and I set out for Oberlin around 10:15. Noah was staying at home because he was going to attend a town meeting hosted by Zeteo from MSNBC with Senator Chris Van Hollen and others to discuss the current political situation on Monday evening. I was a little sad we were going to be separated on Mother’s Day and my birthday (which fell on the same day this year), but I also didn’t want to discourage him from being politically active, so I didn’t press him to come.

On the drive we started with music and Beth chose Lou Reed’s Transformer (the album with “Perfect Day” on it) because the movie had put her in the mood. We also listened to eight out of the nine episodes of a podcast called Let’s Make a Rom-Com, about writers collaborating on, you guessed it, a rom-com pitch. It was light and more diverting than talking about politics, which is what we might have done left to our own devices. We stopped for a late lunch of salads at Next Door, a vegetarian-friendly restaurant in Bedford, Pennsylvania that may be becoming our go-to lunch-on-the-way-to-Oberlin spot, followed by gelato, and arrived in Oberlin around dinner time.

We found North sitting on the grass in front of Keep with people eating leftover wedding cake from wedding-themed party that had recently happened there. North had skipped dinner to go out for Chinese with us. After dinner we dropped them back off at Keep and settled into our rental house.

Sunday

Sunday was my birthday and Mother’s Day. We’d chosen to take a day trip to Put-in-Bay, an island in Lake Erie Beth and I once visited in college and where she’d also been as a child with her family. It’s a place Beth and I remember fondly.

We’d resolved to try to have a politics-free day, and we mostly did, though we slipped up a few times. This one didn’t count, though, we decided. In the ferry parking lot, the attendant asked us about the message “No Kings. June 14” Beth had written on the back window of the car with washable paint. (She’s been keeping it updated with the names and dates of whatever the next big national protest is.) We’d been a little nervous driving through Western Maryland, Western Pennsylvania, and Ohio with this on the car, but no one said a thing about it up to now. (Interestingly, I’d noticed there were dramatically fewer Trump yard signs, flags, and billboards compared to the last time we made this drive, in early February. The change was especially notable in Pennsylvania.) Beth told the attendant about the protest, and he said, “Is that the day he’s having his stupid parade?” So, that was a satisfying exchange.

You are discouraged from bringing cars on the island and there are golf carts you can rent, so we did that. It was fun riding in an open-sided vehicle along the roads. The day was cool (with highs in the fifties) but sunny so it wasn’t too cold. Our first stop was a short wildflower trail. There was an informative sign at the beginning so we could identify May apples, Jack in the Pulpit, blue phlox, and other blooms.

Next, we had lunch on the patio of a restaurant in town. I got a vegetable crepe for my meal and split a chocolate-peanut butter one with Beth for dessert. The wildflower trail had been both my and Beth’s first priority, so our next stop was North’s—Crystal Cave. We knew the cave purports to have the world’s largest geode, though North looked it up and found a cave in Spain says the same thing, so who knows? In any case, it contains a very large geode. In fact, the whole cave is the geode. A dozen or so people can stand inside it and walk around, and it looks just as you would imagine such a thing would look. It was very cool.

We decided to visit the butterfly house next. It’s a greenhouse filled with hundreds of butterflies, and it had just opened for the season, so there were a lot of butterflies hatching in nursery you could see through a window. North got to release a newly hatched one from a plastic cup. It wasn’t quite ready to fly, so it fell to the ground, but it wasn’t hurt, just sat there, gently stretching its wings. The butterflies were all different colors and sizes and very beautiful.

We took another short trail to a cliff overlook and then went to visit the old lighthouse before we got on the ferry to go back to the mainland.

Right near the ferry, there was a store called Cheese Haven, advertising that it sold 125 kinds of cheese, so we felt obliged to go inside and buy some (a big hunk of Parmesan, brick, and smoked Swiss) and to get some candy and raspberry-cheesecake fudge, too. Beth had been looking for strawberry fudge all day because we both remember having excellent strawberry fudge at Put-in-Bay. On consideration, Beth thought we might have actually gotten it on a different, nearby island. It is difficult to recreate memories from almost forty years ago, but we had a truly lovely day, and we made some new memories with North.

Back in Oberlin, I opened birthday and Mother’s day presents (though I was saving my cake for later at home) and we had Mexican for dinner and then went to Dairy Queen. It was packed and I have never seen so many employees behind a fast-food counter. There were so many they seemed to be trying not to get in each other’s way, but they also seemed quite cheerful. I wondered if the store was training all its new employees for the season. Anyway, the line was long, but it moved quickly, and no one seemed impatient. The atmosphere was more festive than harried.

Monday

Monday morning was North’s acting class showcase. The students were divided into seven groups with two to three actors in each and each group performed a scene from a play. They were all well done. The first one, about a married couple splitting up, seemed like it could have been a one act, but the others were clearly parts of something larger and left you curious about how the play unfolded.

North had a comic role, a thirty-something man high on mushrooms. (I asked if they did any extracurricular research for the part, but they said no.) I always like seeing North on stage and they shone. Afterward, the professor said to us, “Wasn’t North great?” and what parent is going to disagree with that?

North had three take-home finals but they’d finished them early so when the showcase was over, so was their first year of college. We had lunch at Keep (a tasty tofu scramble with sautéed carrots and zucchini, rice, and mini cinnamon muffins) which we ate on the porch. North’s friend Cal came over to eat with us and North asked the assembled diners to sing “Happy Birthday” to me, even though it wasn’t my birthday anymore.

They spent the afternoon packing up and cleaning their room, and after we helped them load everything into the car, we had a picnic dinner on Lake Erie. We got takeout from The Root Café, a hippie sort of vegetarian place. After we ate, we walked on a path near the water. You could see the Cleveland skyline across the lake. There were a lot of people walking on the path and North said they felt like a character in Bridgerton, taking a promenade. From there we got ice cream and drove back to Oberlin. North spent the night in our rental house because their room was vacated and cleaned.

Tuesday

Tuesday morning North attended another acting class showcase to see a friend of their perform in an abbreviated version of Chekhov’s The Seagull. It was a little before lunchtime when we left Oberlin. It was a long, rainy, traffic-stalled ride home. We had lunch at a highway rest stop and dinner at a dinner in Western Maryland. When we got home, North was reunited with the cats—Willow initially ran down to the basement on seeing them but soon remembered who they were—and their brother who had been saving funny memes on his phone to show them.

I had a very nice birthday weekend. I can’t say they were perfect days because I was separated from one of my kids on Mother’s Day, but it was nice to reunite with North in a special place and then it was nice to be back home and all together again for the summer.

Plus, my birthday celebration was not over…

The Three Rs: Four Rallies, A Road Trip, and a Little Romance

Posted on February 16, 2025 by Steph

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The first half of February was crazy busy. In different combinations, the three of us went to four protests, all of us took a road trip to Oberlin to see North perform in a play, and we celebrated Valentine’s Day. Settle in, this is a long one.

Rallies 1 and 2: Treasury and Department of Labor

The first Tuesday in February, Beth, Noah, and I all went to a protest outside the Treasury Department. That was when Musk and his youthful minions were rummaging around your personal financial information at that department. It was a much bigger rally than the one outside the White House the week before. I’m no good at estimating crowd sizes, but it filled the street and sidewalks for a long block in front of the Treasury Building and we were packed in tightly. I later learned a lot of people I know were there, but I didn’t see them at the time.

A lot of members of Congress spoke, but I couldn’t always hear the introductions. You could tell when Representative Jamie Raskin and Senator Elizabeth Warren were about to speak, though, because people chanted their names enthusiastically. I thought the best line was about the government being run by a “billionaire boy band,” but I’m not sure who said it, possibly Senator Chris Van Hollen, which was interesting because I don’t think of him as a wit.

There were a lot of American flags in the crowd. This has been true at nearly every protest so far. I like the idea of not ceding symbols of patriotism to the right. We could see workers inside the building, watching us from various windows. A woman near me gave them the finger emphatically and repeatedly, and I wished she hadn’t because there are still career civil servants who haven’t been fired yet working there and who knows what they were thinking? In fact, at one point, a woman in the window waved at the crowd.

The next day Beth went to another protest at the Department of Labor. I couldn’t make that one, as I had a work deadline, or I thought I couldn’t. The FAQs I was writing for a supplement company didn’t take as long as I thought they would, but by the time I knew that it was too late.

Where it Stands: A federal judge has blocked DOGE access at Treasury and then extended the block, but another judge allowed access at Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Road Trip: Friday

Two days later, on the first Friday in February, Beth, Noah, and I drove to Oberlin for a quick weekend trip. The play North had been rehearsing all Winter Term was being performed that weekend—five shows from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. We had tickets for the Saturday evening performance. And because North would be also performing at a matinee that afternoon, they encouraged us to go see another play, one they’d auditioned for and could not attend because it had the exact same performance schedule as theirs. So, the plan was to drive up Friday, see the two plays Saturday, visit with North during the little slices of time they had between performances, and to drive back on Sunday.

It took us nine hours to drive to Oberlin, with frequent stops, including one for lunch at a very nice vegetarian-friendly restaurant in Bedford, Pennsylvania, which we hope to visit again. Early in the drive we listened to music, jazz I think, and talked about the sad state of our country, just long enough to get it out of our systems before we switched over to vacation mode. We listened to podcasts for the rest of the drive, alternating between Let’s Make A Sci Fi, which is about three writers collaborating on a science fiction television series pilot, and two different podcasts about Severance, which the three of us are watching together. These were good, diverting choices, if you have a road trip coming up and they sound up your alley.

There weren’t a lot of Trump signs in Western Maryland, even though that part of the state did go for him, or in Ohio, which also did, but Western Pennsylvania was awash in them, both billboards and yard signs. (Last week I ran into my friend Becky, who was about to take a trip to her hometown in North Carolina, and she and I talked about how it’s in some ways a relief to drive away from the D.C. area where the horrors are taking place and in some ways it’s not, because, depending on your route, you may see ample evidence that people voted for those horrors, whereas in D.C. and its suburbs, few people did.)

We arrived in Oberlin about six-thirty, which was after North’s call time, so we didn’t see them that night. We got pizza from Lorenzo’s, the only restaurant in Oberlin from Beth’s and my era that’s still open, and we ate in our rental house and watched Severance. It was the fourth episode, the very dramatic one that takes place at the company’s outdoor retreat.

Road Trip: Saturday

We met North for breakfast at the Feve, which is famous for its pancakes. I’d eaten an egg and some vegetarian sausage at the house, so I took a risk on a chocolate-strawberry pancake. It was huge and my blood sugar went a bit higher than I would have liked, but we were on vacation.

At the table, we presented North with two tote bags, full of gifts—dried mango, white chocolate-strawberry truffles (an early Valentine’s present), and Valentines from all of us and the cats—plus several boxes of tea we were donating to Keep after a cabinet re-organization Noah recently undertook. I think they were most excited about the mango. They ate nearly the whole bag over the course of the day. We also had two slices of anniversary cake we’d frozen for them, but we didn’t give them those until later.

We stopped at the mail room to get some medications that had arrived and then took them back to the house to hang out until their call-time. They ate leftover cheesy garlic bread and some apple. After we dropped them off at the student union, where the play was being performed, Beth and I went to find a bouquet for them. There was a gift shop downtown that sold flowers, and we got them six purple roses.

We had leftover pizza for lunch, and we read (me and Noah) and worked (Beth), and I took a walk down a bike path in the neighborhood where Beth had walked before breakfast and recommended. There were woods, a park, and houses’ back yards on either side, and it was a pleasant place to walk.

Later that afternoon we went to see Wolf Play, which won a prize (confusingly called an Obie) for off-Broadway performances in 2023. It’s about a lesbian couple who informally adopt a six-year-old Korean boy whose first set of adoptive parents relinquish him and then there’s a custody battle when the first adoptive couple splits, and the father decides he wants the boy back. The boy believes he is a wolf (or maybe just pretends to be) and is played by an adult actor who is manipulating a child-sized puppet and who speaks both his thoughts and his words. It was very well done.

We re-united with North after their performance. Beth picked them up and they got a noodle bowl at the student union, which they ate at the house, along with more mango. After we dropped them off at the student union, we got takeout Middle Eastern food for dinner and ate it before going to see North’s play.

Deficiency was student written and this was its debut. It’s about three brothers (two in high school and one in college) who are at their alcoholic father’s house for spring break. Unbeknownst to each other, all the brothers are all taking testosterone for different reasons and there is confusion and conflict when a package containing some arrives from their mother’s house. North was playing the middle brother, a trans boy, and their performance was comic, serious, and tender in turn. It was wonderful to see them on stage and in a more substantial role than they’ve had for a long time.

Road Trip: Sunday

There was snow and an ice storm overnight and Sunday morning freezing rain was falling and it was extremely slippery outside. We had breakfast, packed up the house, and then I went for a rather treacherous and much shorter walk down the same path where I’d walked the day before. We picked North up at Keep and dropped off the cake. The Christmas tree was still up in the lounge. I was charmed by paper snowflakes in the windows surrounding a “Free Palestine” sign, I think because it made me think about what it’s like to be in college, close enough to your childhood to make paper snowflakes, but old enough to be politically engaged.

We went to Slow Train, which is North’s favorite place to get coffee in Oberlin, to get coffee, hot chocolate, and pastries (I got a spinach-cheese croissant). We lingered because it was hard to leave after such a short and fragmented visit, but eventually we said our goodbyes and dropped North off at Keep just in time for a lunch cooking shift before their last show, and hit the road.

The trip back was a little faster partly because we had lunch at a Noodles & Company, with a stop at The Milkshake Factory, instead of a sit-down restaurant. We listened to the same podcasts as on the way out, and got home around dinner time, so we picked up Indian to take home.

Rallies 3 and 4: Capitol and D.C. Attorney General’s Office

Two days after we got back, there was a rally in front of the Capitol, organized by the American Federation of Government Employees, which was holding its annual conference in D.C., so the focus of this one was to support federal employees. I met Beth at her office and walked down to the Capitol with about a dozen of her co-workers. As at Treasury, there were a lot of speeches by members of Congress (including both our senators) and a lot of American flags. I was given a small one, which I put in the buttonhole of my coat, along with a button that said, “Public Workers Work for Me!”

Where it Stands: Mass layoffs are in progress.

That week I was writing a one-thousand-word article on arnica, due Thursday afternoon, so I thought the AFGE rally would be my only outing into the city, but on Thursday morning around 9:20, Beth texted me to say there was a rally in support of trans youth at noon. Sara had already told me that if I really needed more time, I could send the article to her Friday morning and just I couldn’t skip that one, so I decided to go.

The rally was to urge the D.C. Attorney General to direct hospitals in the city not to deny gender-affirming care to trans youth. States attorneys general and hospitals across the country that provide this kind of care have had different interpretations of the executive order and different responses. In short, it’s not clear if it’s binding or even legal.

Disappointingly, Children’s National Medical Center, where North has received care, decided to stop prescribing puberty blockers and hormones (they never did surgeries on minors) but to continue with psychological and psychiatric care. Since appointments with a psychiatrist are the only kind of gender-related care North currently receives there, they are not directly affected, but it hits close to home anyway. (For a while, they were taking birth control to suppress their period, partly for dysphoria reasons, but there were other medical reasons, so it’s unclear if they still had the prescription if it would have been cut off, but it’s possible it would have been if the words “gender” or “dysphoria” were anywhere in the paperwork.)

I met Beth at her office, and we walked to the A.G.’s office. This was a smaller protest, because it’s a niche issue, compared to some of the others, but it was quite spirited. There were speakers (the mother of a trans girl, someone from an organization that works with trans youth, a doctor from George Washington Hospital who provides trans health care and who threw some shade at Children’s, etc.). Between speeches, we marched in a picket-style oval in front of the building and chanted. “A.G. Schwalb, do your job!” was the most common one. A reporter from the Washington Post talked to Beth and me, but I didn’t get the impression she was going to quote us because we don’t have a kid who is currently being denied care. Anyway, she didn’t take our names.

The rally got started late and Beth had to leave about a half hour after it did, but I stuck around for another forty minutes or so. Someone else who had to leave gave me her hand-painted “Protect Trans Futures” sign, which I decided to keep, as I may need it again. As always, a lot of people had homemade signs. I thought “Trans Kids Deserve to Be Trans Adults” was the most moving. I also liked the one that said, “Trans Rights. Trans Joy. All Day. Every Day” with what looked like blue and pink conversation hearts in the background. I thought that was a nice, seasonal touch.

Where It Stands: A federal judge has temporarily blocked the order restricting gender-affirming care for trans youth. And then another one did the same thing.

It’s important to note, there are losses in this round-up, but there are also wins. If you are going to protests or calling your representatives or giving money to organizations fighting for our democracy, please keep it up. It can feel overwhelming and hopeless at times, but I am trying hard to believe that it’s not.

Romance

Life does go on, outside politics. Our Valentine’s Day was low-key, but we did celebrate. Noah made a chocolate banana bread, with vertical slices of banana baked into the top. The banana strips were pleasingly sweet and chewy. Meanwhile, I fashioned our regular Friday night pizza into a rough heart shape, and we exchanged small gifts, all food. Beth got me a very thoughtful little bag of diabetes-friendly treats—some single-serve nut butters (walnut and pecan), an unsweetened raspberry-cashew dark chocolate bar, and some tiny paleo pies (lemon and key lime with coconut-nut crusts). Noah got dark chocolate caramel hearts, and Beth got dark chocolate hearts and dark chocolate-covered orange peel sticks.

I picked up that last item at a fancy chocolate store in Union Station on the way home from the AFSGE rally. Even as we are focused on justice, we can’t forget to take time for our little joys along the way.

First Steps

Posted on January 6, 2025 by Steph

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North is back at school. While I was cooking dinner on New Year’s Eve and listening to Roseanne Cash sing “Everyone But Me,” the line “It goes by real fast” jumped out at me. I thought of the kids’ childhoods, of course, but more immediately, North’s three-week break.

The first two days we were home from the beach North was wiped out by a cold—they tested for covid, and it was negative—and they spent those days mostly in bed. By Monday they’d recovered enough to take a short walk with me to Koma and get a chai (them) and a latte (me). On Tuesday, they delivered a tin of homemade Christmas sweets to Maddie and Miles and spent most of the afternoon at the twins’ house. Then Noah and North stayed up to see in the New Year, finishing a season of Queen’s Gambit, and consuming a lot of snacks while they waited for midnight. Meanwhile, I’d caught North’s cold, and Beth and I were abed by 9:45. If I could have roused myself from the couch—where I was feeling sick and listless—I would have gone to bed earlier.

New Year’s Day: First Hike

On New Year’s Day Beth and I went on a Maryland State Parks First Day hike, as we often do. I was quiet in the car on the way to Merkle Natural Resources Management Area. I was still sick and fatigued. Also, the persistent dread I’d been feeling since the election, which lessened a little over the holidays, was settling back down around me, if anything worse than before because it was finally 2025. After hearing so much about Project 2025 for so long, the very name of the year sounds menacing and dystopian. Is that going to wear off?

But we got there, and we took the hike, and it was nice to be walking outdoors, and it lifted my spirits a little. It almost always does. The park is a Canada goose sanctuary. Some geese live there year-round, but most of them winter there from October to March. We saw a lot of geese on the drive to the parking lot and hundreds more in the fields surrounding the visitors’ center, but we didn’t see any on the actual hike, because it was mostly on a wooded trail, and they prefer water and open fields.

The ranger pointed out a beaver dam and beaver-gnawed trees and identified tree species as we walked past streams and ponds and a heap of garbage that he said was eighty to a hundred years old. There was an upside-down car, what looked like an oil tank, some appliances, something made of porcelain that might have been part of a sink or a toilet, and what I think was the torso of a rocking horse. There was also the rusted frame of a banana-seat bike, which made Beth speculate some of the trash was from after the 1940s. After the hike we went into the visitors’ center and watched turtles swimming in a tank. It was the first day I was wearing my new Fitbit, and it was novel and interesting to have something counting my steps and zone minutes again after an almost six-month break from that.

Back at home, we had a lunch of fancy cheeses, crackers, fruit, and sparkling juice. This is another New Year’s tradition for us. And I made black-eyed peas for dinner because there is no way I am skimping on luck this year.

Thursday to Sunday: First Road Trip

Thursday morning, we hit the road for Oberlin. The drive took eight and half hours and we passed the time with music and podcasts (a couple episodes of Handsome and one each of Normal Gossip and Where Should We Begin). Somewhere in Western Pennsylvania I fell asleep and when I opened my eyes the first thing that I saw was a sign that said, “Trump. Fuck Your Feelings,” so that was a rude awakening… literally.

We arrived in Oberlin around six. We dropped North’s things off at their new, possibly temporary, first-floor single room in Keep, which they requested because it was empty for Winter Term and it’s easier for them not to have to climb two flights of stairs. We helped them move some of their stuff down from their third-floor room into the first-floor room.

It’s still trippy for me to be in Keep, where I lived for a year and a half. To intensify that feeling, North’s new room used to belong to my sophomore year boyfriend, so I once spent a lot of time in it. I also spied a picture of myself North added to the “Keeple of the Past” display, a collage of photos of people who once lived in Keep. Can you spot me? The Christmas tree was still up in the lounge, and we noticed the ornaments we gave North over Thanksgiving on it.

We went out for Thai at a very festive-looking restaurant, all strung with colored lights. I got a green curry the waitress warned me was hot and she did not lie. I ate all the tofu and vegetables, but I had to leave half the broth, and it got my nose running and knocked all my congestion loose. Beth said that was good for me and maybe it was because the next day my cold was almost gone.

North came back with us to our Air BnB, took a shower, and hung out for a little while and then Beth drove them back to Keep for their first night in their new room.

Friday morning, we woke to a couple inches of snow on the ground and snow falling through the air. It wasn’t a surprise, it had been forecast, but Beth was delighted anyway (even though now she had the cold we were all passing around). We’d had flurries a few times at home and a dusting of snow over Thanksgiving weekend in Wheeling, but no accumulation anywhere we’ve been this fall and winter so far. After breakfast we walked through the snow to CVS to get a comb since Beth had forgotten hers and vitamin D and magnesium because I’d forgotten mine. Then we met up with North for warm beverages and pastry at their favorite coffeeshop in Oberlin.

We had a busy morning and early afternoon. We took North to two different grocery stores to stock up on fresh and dried fruit, olives, bagels, cream cheese, yogurt, cereal, milk, and frozen foods. Keep’s kitchen will be closed over Winter Term so North will be living there but eating in a different co-op and it seemed like a good idea to have some food on hand where they live. This was in addition to the tote bag full of instant oatmeal, hot chocolate mix, toaster pastries, and popcorn we had presented them with before we left home. I don’t think they will starve, even though their play rehearsal schedule may cause them to miss meals sometimes. After the first grocery store, it was snowing so hard there were almost white-out conditions, and we had to stop at Keep so we could wait out the squall before proceeding to the second store.

Next, we took a walk in the arboretum. I promised Beth I would not break up with her there. It’s an old joke—I once took a “yes, we are really breaking up” letter from a quite recent ex-boyfriend there to read and I broke up with two other boyfriends there in person, so it does have a break-up vibe for me, but it’s a pretty place and I do have other memories associated with it. The reservoirs were partly frozen, and the snow was lovely on the tree branches and cattails. We were all rather cold after that walk, though, so it was nice to warm up with a tasty lunch of Mexican food.

We picked up some medications that had arrived at the mail room for North. Beth and I walked a little more on campus after that, passing by Noah Hall—it wouldn’t be a trip to Oberlin without at least walking by the dorm where we met—and then we picked North up at Keep and drove the building where their first rehearsal was starting at two, and we hit the road for Wheeling.

It was sad to leave North, of course, but happy at the same time because I think they’re going to have a good Winter Term. I always loved Winter Term, being able to focus on one intensive class or project for four weeks before the spring semester. Rehearsing a play seems like a perfect project and we’ll be back in Oberlin in a month to see it performed.

The snow was heavy and blowing across the road at the beginning of the drive, but it cleared up, and we got to Wheeling around 5:15. We were staying at a hotel that night because Beth’s brother and his wife were at her mom’s house. They’d been there for Christmas and had gotten sick with norovirus and had to extend their stay because they were too sick to fly. They had since recovered and were leaving early the next morning. After Beth and John consulted with each other on the phone they decided not to visit with each other, just in case John and Abby were still contagious. Beth and I brought pizza back to the hotel room and had a quiet evening—she read, and I wrote much of this.

Saturday morning, it was quite cold, in the teens, so Beth didn’t want to go out with wet hair, and we stayed in the hotel room until it was dry. We ran some errands and then arrived at her mom’s house in the late morning. We all sat in her mom’s bedroom, and she caught us up on various members of the extended family, who was doing well and who wasn’t. It made me think how people’s lives are kind of like a microcosm of a family’s or even a nation’s life, alternating good times and bad times, always a mix of both, even as the ratio shifts.

Beth and I went to Oglebay Park to walk in the snow. When we set out the wind was blowing hard and it was so cold my face ached and I thought I’d made a mistake coming along, but it died down and then I was fine. I had on a new pair of boot socks we’d purchased that morning because my feet had been cold in the arboretum, and they helped. It was quiet in the park other than occasional honking geese. You know how smell travels farther when it’s very cold? Even when I was walking a few feet behind Beth, I could smell the cherry cough drops she was sucking.

We walked from the lodge to the mansion and around Shenck Lake and saw a big flock of geese hunkered down, motionless on a snowy hillside. Afterward we got coffee and hot chocolate in the lodge. I stared out the window watching the falling snow, still feeling pensive and a little melancholy.

When we got back, we went to visit Beth’s aunt Carole, who lives two doors down, and Carole’s son Sean, who was visiting from Ireland, and shared more news of family. Then we had a late lunch and settled in for a quiet afternoon of reading and writing and watching the falling snow.

Sunday morning, we ran some more errands and hit the road for home a little before ten. We took our time on the drive. We stopped for lunch at a café in Cumberland—where I got a cozy meal of tomato soup, grilled cheese, and chocolate-peppermint tea—and for a walk in Rocky Gap State Park. There wasn’t much snow there on the ground there, or anywhere after Cumberland, but Lake Habeeb was partly frozen. There were ducks on the water and a couple beaver-felled trees.

In the first five days of the new year, we walked in four different parks in three different states. I don’t know where the year will take us as a family or as a country, but for better or for worse, we have taken our first steps.

Seaside Christmas

Posted on December 28, 2024 by Steph

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Arrival

I set foot on the beach late Monday afternoon just as the sun was setting, after an uneventful drive to the beach. Based on the vibrant pink clouds I could see in the sky as I walked toward the beach, I may have missed the most dramatic part of it, but it was still beautiful down there, with a band of coral-colored clouds right over the horizon and puffy pale pink ones higher in the sky.

I walked up and down the boardwalk for twenty minutes or so, not lingering because it was about a mile from the boardwalk to the house and it would be cold and dark soon. The colored lights on the bandstand, on the giant Christmas tree, and all along Rehoboth Avenue had come on while I was on the beach, and it warmed my heart to see them.

Back at the rental house, we ordered takeout Japanese from a restaurant just around the corner. They didn’t have any reservations available for that night or we would have eaten there. It’s lovely inside, with koi ponds built into the floor and a lot of greenery and fairy lights. Beth and I went to pick up the food and brought it back home.

After dinner, the kids and I decorated the tree that Beth had set up and strung with lights. We have a large and eclectic collection of decorations, and it always seems as if they can’t possibly fit, but they always do. It’s our annual Christmas miracle.

Christmas Eve

I was up at six o’ clock—I often wake early at the beach. I wanted to go to see the sun rise, but I couldn’t quite rouse myself. It was cold out, just a little below freezing, plus I am not a morning person and I would have liked more sleep, but after dozing for forty-five minutes, I got up and dressed and was out of the house by seven and on the beach at seven-fifteen, just as the edge of the sun was peeping out from behind dark clouds. Then it rose and cast a line of molten gold across the silver sea. I walked along the beach and boardwalk, noting how the early morning sun turned the dry dune grass a reddish-brown color. Right before I left, I saw a huge flock of white birds, probably snow geese, flying from over the ocean, toward the land. It had been well worth getting out of bed.

We were planning to eat breakfast at Egg, but we hadn’t set a time and neither of the kids was up when I got back to the house at eight, so I had some yogurt with almond butter and banana to tide me over. We didn’t end up leaving the house until around ten, so it was a good thing I ate.

After breakfast, Beth braved the grocery store on Christmas Eve (she said it wasn’t too bad) and the kids and I started on the first baking project of the day, making cookies out of the gingerbread dough I’d made at home. We cut them into various shapes, trees and hearts being the most popular, and made four initials (B, S, and two Ns) and decorated the cookies with colored sugar, hard candies, pecans, pepitas, raisins, and dried cranberries.

Later Beth set out on a walk, and the kids and I had lunch at Grotto. We usually have our weekly Friday night pizza there when we’re at the beach, but this trip would not include a Friday night, so the kids thought we needed to have lunch there. I suggested Friday lunch right before we left town and that we not have pizza for dinner that night, but this blasphemous idea was summarily rejected. I didn’t want to spend the carbs on pizza when there were so many sweets in the house, so I had a salad and a couple mozzarella sticks. North had pizza and Noah had stromboli.

After lunch, North and I went for a walk on the boardwalk, stopping to see the Christmas decorations in the Victorian-themed Boardwalk Plaza hotel. There are a lot of nativity scenes, but we are especially fond of village with the train and little merry-go-round that Santa rides. There is also a little ballroom in which tiny mechanical figures dance. Next, I accompanied North on some last-minute Christmas shopping for Beth and Noah at two candy shops, and then we got tea and coffee at Café a-Go-Go.

At the house, Noah and I read two chapters of Dracula with breaks for me to trade texts with the property manager of the house about the non-functioning gas fireplace. (This troubleshooting exchange had begun the night before and never did result in a fire, but did net us in a $100 apology Visa gift card when we finally gave up. We ended up making do with a fireplace video that we played over and over on the tv.) Meanwhile, North made chocolate-peppermint cookies. Beth made chili and almond flour cornbread for dinner, and we watched Christmas is Here Again and Noah read “The Night Before Christmas” to us, a Christmas Eve tradition.

Christmas

North was the first one up on Christmas morning. After they emptied their stocking, they started making Christmas breakfast: an orange-cranberry loaf, eggs scrambled or fried to order, vegetarian breakfast meats, and fruit salad. It was delightful.

While North was cooking, I wrote a small batch of postcards for a special election in the Virginia Senate and took a short walk down to the post office to drop them in a mailbox.

We opened presents after breakfast. We had not really consulted with each other about what we were getting Beth, and we all went heavy on chocolate, possibly for the comfort value. She got seven dark chocolate bars and one disk, two dark chocolate barks (almond and orange) and two hot chocolate mixes (dark and caramel). When we were laughing about it, she said she did not mind at all. “I am a simple woman,” she said. She is serious about chocolate at any rate, and she did get other presents (peppermint foot lotion, a wallet, a gift certificate for e-books, etc.)

My biggest present was a new Fitbit from Beth to replace the one that broke last summer, but I also got a lot of tea. North got me my favorites from the tea shop in Rehoboth and Noah got me something called “A Feast of Tea,” a tower-shaped box with eight kinds of tea he bought in London. He also got me a book. I started to read the blurb on the back out loud but when it turned out to be about a dystopian cannibalistic future, I decided to spare my squeamish wife the description. North got both of us of a white squirrel ornament, because I’d said it would be nice to have an Oberlin ornament. Beth also got me a foot file, which I thought was kind of funny since I got her foot lotion. We both battle prickly heels in the winter and have been married long enough to get each other this kind of gift.

Noah got a portable charger, some sweets, and a pile of books. North got lavender earrings, lavender lip balm, and a lavender bath bomb, and a lot of gifts designed to keep them warm and dry during an Oberlin winter (long underwear, an umbrella—we also got them a new coat, but didn’t count that as a present). For fun, we got them an Oberlin gift certificate that can be used at a host of businesses in town.

By the time we finished opening gifts it was almost noon, but we’d had a late and large breakfast, so we weren’t hungry for lunch. We all went for a walk on the Gordon’s Pond trail. I’ve never seen as many herons as we did that day and there were also egrets and ducks on the pond and a noisy flock of geese flying overhead, continually breaking out of and reforming their V formations. Noah took a lot of pictures. There were other people on the trail who inevitably said, “Merry Christmas” and it was hard to get irritated about them assuming what holidays we celebrate since Beth was wearing a Santa hat.

There’s a path to beach off the trail parking lot so we rambled on the beach for a while. My mom called from her sister’s house in Boise, and we handed the phone back and forth as we walked around the barnacle-encrusted rocks and the piles of sea foam on the sand.

Back at the house we had lunch. North had spicy ramen noodles and orange sections while I made a board of cheeses (baked Brie and Gouda), crackers, apple slices, olives, and nuts for everyone else. We all looked at the pictures my sister posted on Facebook of all the Goth-themed presents Lily-Mei got and the whole family posed together in skull pajamas. Beth said she thought that when your parents dress up in Goth pajamas it kind of takes the rebellious edge out of it and I said I think that’s the difference between going through a Goth phase at eleven versus at sixteen.

North took a bath with their bath bomb and the rest of us read or watched tv for the rest of the afternoon until it was time to make dinner. Noah and I made spinach lasagna, garlic bread, and vegetarian sausage. We watched the Dr. Who Christmas special and Christmas was over.

Boxing Day

I was up before the sun again and went down to the beach to see another sunrise. I found a little Christmas tree, about two feet high, decorated with ornaments and candy canes, on its side on the beach. I tried to right it, but it wouldn’t stay up.

I came back to the house, ate breakfast, and North and I made plans to go back to the beach mid-morning. I had some retail errands to run on the way (but not returning anything as so many people do on the day after Christmas). My phone screen has been cracked for a year, and I keep putting off getting it repaired, though it makes me nervous whenever I’m out in the rain that moisture will get in and kill it. Anyway, I’d seen a sign in the window of a shop saying they fix phone screens, and I thought I might just get it taken care of, but I wasn’t sure if the store was closed for the season or not because it had not been normal business hours when I passed it. Turned out it was closed, so my phone is still cracked.

Next, we visited the soap shop because I wanted a bar of their pine-scented soap, partly because I like it and partly because I have often read it’s Joe Biden’s favorite from this store and I am feeling sentimental about the end of his term, like many others in town. We kept seeing “Thank You, Joe” signs around. But then to remind me of the limitations of political moderates, North spotted a Blue Lives Matter flag in the store (which Noah had reported seeing earlier and I’d looked for before going in and didn’t see). By the time North saw it, I’d already started my transaction. So, I have my soap, but I might keep away in the future.

We stopped at Café A-Go-Go and got tea and coffee again, before hitting the beach. I tried to find the little tree to show North, but someone had taken it away. We walked and then headed home for lunch, stopping at the Christmas store, not to buy anything for “for the vibes,” as North said.

That afternoon Noah and I read Dracula and then he embarked on a television binge— an episode of Queen’s Gambit with North, two of What We Do in the Shadows with me, and one of the new Star Wars show with Beth. While he and I were watching our show, Beth and North went out for ice cream.

While Noah and Beth were watching their show, I left for my third trip to the beach of the day, just in time to catch the sunset. One advantage of short winter days at the beach is later sunrises and earlier sunsets, making it easy to take in both in one day. While I was walking along the beach some seagulls flew over me and their white bellies were stained a rosy shade of pink. On my way home, I detoured to wander through the neighborhood near our house and admire people’s lights.

Back at the house, it was laundry and a dinner of leftovers and packing and stripping the tree of its ornaments, only three days after we put them on. Beth said that’s always the saddest part of leaving a Christmas vacation house.

Departure

And, sadly, it was time to leave. The next morning, we packed, swept up the needles, and vacated the house. We parked near the boardwalk so the kids and I could say goodbye to the ocean. As we walked down to the sand, Noah wondered if the water would be colder in December than in November (when we more often visit Rehoboth).

Why did the water temperature matter? To say goodbye to the ocean, the kids stand barefoot by the waterline and let twenty-four frigid waves (of whatever number corresponds to the last two digits of the year) run over their feet. When they disagreed about whether a small ripple counted as a wave, North insisted, “We have to do this right,” then wondered if they would still be doing this in the winter of 2075. Noah said it might end in a trip to the emergency room.

I don’t do this barefoot in November or December. I wear rainboots, but as often happens, a rogue wave surprised me and filled them with icy water near the end of the ritual.

We met Beth on the boardwalk where I took my boots off and turned them upside down to empty the seawater out of them and Noah attempted to remove every grain of sand from his feet before putting his shoes and socks back on. Beth asked if we needed warm beverages to warm up and after Noah made a quick stop at Candy Kitchen, we proceeded to the nearest coffeeshop. North actually got their coffee iced because that’s the only way they drink it, but I got a warm latte and Noah got hot chocolate, and then we piled into the car and drove away from the beach.

“Goodbye, see you next summer,” North said, as we drove down Rehoboth Avenue.

Three hours later, just past the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, we stopped for a picnic lunch at Sandy Point State Park. We spied the Sandy Point Shoal Lighthouse in the middle of the bay and watched a container ship clear the bridge. Some hardy paddleboarders were setting out on a chilly adventure. Beth said they were “crazy” and then in her very next sentence wondered if she should get a dry suit to extend the kayaking season.

“The bay is nice, too,” I said as we walked back to the car.

“The bay is great,” she said. “I love the bay.”

So, we will be back to both, paddling in the spring, and swimming in the summer. I hope you get to do some things you love in the coming year as well, whatever it may hold.

Ten for December

Posted on December 10, 2024 by Steph

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The Trouble with Christmassing

Last week, Swistle wrote a blog post, called “Having Trouble Christmassing” that really hit home with me. A lot of you have already read it, but for those who haven’t, here’s how it starts:

I am having some trouble Christmassing. Which is not surprising, given the state of Everything, and really I am doing better than I did in 2016. But: I am having trouble. I have a to-do list that gets longer every day. I feel as if I might genuinely not be ready in time, and also that I am highly likely to feel regret that I didn’t enjoy this last holiday season enough before it was bleak, bleak, BLEAK late January, which is scheduled to last for many years. I have not started the Christmas cards. I have not been listening to Christmas music. I have not brought down the Christmas dishes, or put up any decorations except for the tree, which I was highly motivated to get up and decorated while the twins were home for Thanksgiving. I have bought very few presents. I am getting that quiet, dazed panicky feeling I get when I seem to Simply Not Be Doing something that needs to be done.

When Swistle posted this, we’d completed our Christmas card photo shoot, Noah had edited the finalists, and I’d written the text, but we had trouble making a final decision about the picture and the project stalled. I had only bought gifts for one person. The only decorations I had up were the few cards we had received so far and a green dish towel with a Christmas tree topped with a sea star on it that I hung from the oven door handle.

I’m thinking we may go minimalist with inside decorations this year, not so much out of political despair but because of the kittens, who knock everything off everything else all day long and who are such good jumpers and climbers (especially Willow) that there’s nowhere we could put anything that they could not reach. I am certainly not setting up the Christmas village I inherited from my mother, which has many small, fragile pieces and is important to me. But here’s what we have done in terms of preparation and celebration:

10 Efforts to Christmas

It took me longer than usual to start listening to Christmas music. Beth and Noah wanted to on the long drive from Oberlin to Takoma Park the Sunday after Thanksgiving and I didn’t mind, but whenever it was my turn to choose the entertainment, I went with podcasts. I eventually started to listen to some at home, but until today when I really dove into it, my ratio of Christmas to non-Christmas music was lower than usual. I listened to a lot of music that’s Christmas-adjacent, like the soundtrack to Rent or albums with one Christmas song on them, like Dar Williams’ Mortal City.
The first day we were home from Wheeling, with grim determination to be festive, I put on a pair of reindeer and holly socks, went on a walk, and took pictures of the neighbors’ Christmas decorations. The two skeletons that change costumes with the seasons are a perennial favorite—one has a Santa hat right now and the other one has a Christmas light headband—but I also like the inflatable Santa riding a shark. Who wouldn’t?
Noah left for London the first Wednesday of December. I asked him to send me at least one photo every day and most days he has. Many of them were of Christmas lights in the city. He attended the lighting of the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square and had this to say about it: “It took forever to get to the tree lighting. People had to sing and play music and give speeches and Jesus and WWII.” If this sounds crabby (especially coming from a musician), it was his first day there and he had barely slept the night before on the plane and because he didn’t check in by the deadline at his hotel, they cancelled his reservation (which was for a whole week!) and gave away his room and he found himself exhausted and without lodging in a strange city. The hotel eventually found him a room in another one of their properties, but he’d had a stressful day.
Before he left, Noah wrapped his present to Lily-Mei, and he found the perfect paper for a preteen Goth—black with gold snowflakes in white circles—in the closet. I wrapped the rest of the gifts in the same paper and mailed them on Thursday. It was pleasing to have one person checked off my list.
Beth and I finally picked a photo for the card—by this point we’d forgotten which ones of the final three the kids preferred, and to make it less complicated, we decided not to ask them to remind us. After all, the four of collaborated in the narrowing down from almost forty to three so everyone had already had a substantial say. Beth designed the card and ordered it.
On the first Saturday of December, Beth and I went to Agricultural History Farm Park. The idea was to take a walk somewhere new and to take in some Christmas cheer. We walked on trails through woods and over a creek and along harvested cornfields in golden late afternoon light. In the barn, there was live music (oddly, someone playing guitar and singing Tears for Fears “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”) and free hot cider and gingersnaps plus more treats for sale. Outside the barn there were people taking a hayride and there were goats in a pen and a man giving a blacksmithing demonstration. (It made me nervous that he was not using any eye protection, and it wasn’t because he was in period costume because he wasn’t.) On the way home, we stopped at a coffeehouse where we got coffee, hot chocolate, and macarons (peppermint for me, chocolate-hazelnut for Beth) and we picked up a wreath at a grocery store. It was a pleasing outing.
That night, Beth and I went over the kids’ lists and decided what to get them and which ideas to farm out to relatives. Over the rest of the weekend, I communicated with my mom and sister about who was getting what. This exchange is still in progress and it’s not Christmas shopping exactly, but it’s a precursor to shopping.
Sunday Beth put up the wreath and started the outside lights, both the candy cane lane and the strings of lights that go in the trees and on the porch. She finished on Monday.
On Monday morning as I was walking in a chilly drizzle, I got a text from North, asking, “Hypothetically, if you were getting an Oberlin ornament,” if I would prefer one of three options. I’d asked for an Oberlin ornament for Christmas, so this was not exactly a surprise, but it was cheering, nonetheless. I chose the white squirrel, which is Oberlin’s unofficial mascot because of its small population of albino squirrels. North had been waiting impatiently to see one and finally did recently. (Before that they saw gray one with a white tail, probably the offspring of a mixed-color squirrel couple.)
Monday evening, in a flurry of focused online activity, I nearly finished my shopping.

So, things are moving along. Cards on are their way to us, most presents have been purchased, decoration is partly complete. When both kids are home later this week, we’ll decide which if any indoor decorations to put out, get a tree, and walk through the lights display at Brookside Gardens.

I’m looking forward having everyone home and to the tree and lights outings. As I prepare for Christmas, I’ve been oscillating between feeling I’m dutifully going through the motions and enjoying the tasks. I think that’s okay. We can’t always feel the same way and sometimes duty slips into merriment when I give it a chance. Either way, we will manage to Christmas.

Waiting for Joy

Posted on December 7, 2024 by Steph

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We’ve been home from our Thanksgiving week trip for almost a week now, but once I got back into the swing of work and chores, I never did get around to blogging about the last few days, so I thought I’d finish that before switching gears.

Black Friday

On Friday morning Beth and I lingered at the hotel long enough to have a soak in the hot tub after breakfast. It seemed it would be a waste to stay there five days and not use it. We showed up at Beth’s mom house in the late morning and took separate walks in snow flurries that persisted on and off all day and gave the day a festive feel. (The snow never did stick in Beth’s mom’s neighborhood, but when we went back to our hotel that night there was a dusting there. Wheeling is a hilly town and apparently it has microclimates.)

Most of us ate Thanksgiving leftovers for lunch and then Noah and I finished The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires and Beth went ice skating at Wheeling Park. In the mid-afternoon, Beth, North and I left to do a little Christmas shopping. We went to the Artisan Center and Centre Market. We got a few small gifts for my niece Lily-Mei, who at eleven and a half is redecorating her room in a goth theme. This turned out to be the holiday project I didn’t know I needed. Maybe because it seemed more like Halloween than Christmas it was the only gift buying that interested me (and even now it’s the only gift buying I’ve done). We got some little figurines of cats in goth outfits, a painting of a raven, and picked out a wooden statue of another raven (though by the time we returned to that store to buy it, it had closed).

We went into a vintage clothes and record shop to look for a warmer winter coat than North currently owns. Since the thin down coat that served them for a couple winters in Maryland seemed to be about right for November in Ohio, they suspected they will need something heavier for winter, but they couldn’t find anything at this store. Next, we stopped at a coffee kiosk and got a half-sweet gingerbread latte for me and chai for North and headed home.

When we got home, Beth’s mom was watching a WVU-Arizona basketball game (WVU won) and then Beth, North, and I watched an episode of Gilmore Girls. Beth went to pick up pizza for us to eat in front of Hot Frosty, which was Noah’s pick for a Hallmark-type Christmas movie. It was just what you’d expect from this kind of movie. I don’t think I need to say more.

Small Business Saturday

In the morning, Noah and I started Dracula. I taught this book for years in my horror class and I’m deeply gratified to be sharing it with him. We went out for lunch at Later Alligator. (The promise of crepes was how we enticed Noah out of the house for the first time in a few days.) I didn’t read the description of my crepe carefully enough and when it arrived, I was a little dismayed to find it had white rice in it because rice tends to spike my blood sugar and unlike a lot of other things I was eating that week, it wasn’t worth the splurge. I did my best to eat around it.

We met up with Beth’s mom for more Christmas shopping at the Schrader Environmental Center gift shop in Oglebay park. Because of the rice and because I wasn’t really in a good headspace for more Christmas shopping, I decided to take a walk in the park while everyone else shopped. Next, we proceeded to the park lodge coffeeshop for coffee and pastries. Beth and I had noticed lavender lattes there earlier in the week and they are North’s favorite, which was part of the reason we returned. (Thanks to the walk, my blood sugar was low enough so that I was able to have half a slice of gingerbread cake.)

Back at the house I did laundry and made cranberry applesauce out of our apple-turkey centerpieces and some leftover cranberries. But before dinner, we headed out to Oglebay to drive through the light show. We haven’t been to Wheeling for Thanksgiving or Christmas for a long time—this was the last time—because in recent years we’ve been going to Rehoboth for Thanksgiving and Blackwater for Christmas, so we haven’t been to the light show in nine years either, though when the kids were small we went almost every year.

I think a lot of people who live in Wheeling think of the Festival of Lights as a touristy thing, and find the traffic it attracts annoying, but I am quite fond of it. It’s been around for forty years, and I probably went for the first time in the late eighties or early nineties, so I’ve seen it grow bigger and bigger. I like seeing the old familiar lights, like the candles surrounded by poinsettias, and the newer LED displays. I only took one picture and didn’t ask Noah to take any because it’s hard to take pictures from a moving vehicle and I didn’t want ask Beth to stop the car repeatedly. I knew which one I wanted, though.

Back when North was in preschool and knew their letters but couldn’t read, they used to insist every word that started with a J was their name because their birth name started with a J. So, the year they were two and a half, when we drove through the Festival of Lights, they saw the word JOY and got very excited about seeing their name in lights, so to speak. For years afterward it became a family joke to say the sign said North’s old name. But we hadn’t been through since North changed their name and when I said, “Look, it says North,” everyone laughed.

There are several tunnels made of lights along the route, and these fixtures also inspired nostalgia. I reminisced about how the kids used to try to hold their breath in them. The tunnels are not long but when traffic is slow, which it generally is, it takes a long time to get through them. I remembered how this used to lead to conflict and tears. When they were nine and fourteen for instance, when Noah was trying to hold his breath and North wasn’t, he claimed they had “forfeited” and he had won, which made them mad. So, at the next tunnel, North retaliated by breathing as loudly as they could to torment him while he tried to hold his breath. Reminded of this tradition, of course, both of them held their breath and it took so long to get through one of the tunnels I thought they would pass out, but they didn’t. And no one cried, so I guess that’s improvement.

That night after a dinner of leftovers and cranberry applesauce, Carole came over to say goodbye because we were leaving the next morning.

Advent

Even though I am not Catholic, it always pleases me when Advent starts on December 1 and the little chocolate-dispensing calendars are accurate. This was one of those years. We didn’t buy an Advent calendar this year, but I thought of it anyway.

On Sunday we were one the road for fourteen hours, first driving North back to Oberlin, making a lunch stop there, and then driving from Oberlin home. On arriving in Oberlin, we helped North carry their luggage up to their third-floor room and they hung some ornaments they’d asked us to bring from home on the tree in the Keep lounge.

Next, we stopped at a grocery store to get them some food because meals were not starting up at Keep for another day and a half and we had brunch at a restaurant in town. Everyone but me got pancakes—sweet potato-cranberry for Noah, chocolate chip for Beth, and blueberry for North. I had a broccoli-quinoa omelet, salad, half the potatoes that came with my meal, and some hot tea, and I did not feel too deprived. I put this photo of Beth and the kids at the restaurant on Facebook and North saw it and texted me, “I like this picture where none of us are smiling and only Beth is looking at the camera.” Believe it or not it was the best of four pictures I took.

After eating we took North back to Keep and said our goodbyes. It was not nearly as hard as when we left them there in August, partly because we’re getting used to being apart but mostly because we were going to see them again in less than two weeks when they come home for winter break. (And now it’s less than a week.)

If Advent is a time of waiting for joyful things, even in dark days, it truly has begun.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

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