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

Posted on July 15, 2023 by Steph

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Thursday

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

Friday: Pacific Ocean, Coquille River

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday: Coquille River, Pacific Ocean

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday: Sunset Bay

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday: Pacific Ocean

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

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

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

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

Tuesday: Pacific Ocean

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

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

Wednesday: Coos Bay

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

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

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

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

Posted on July 8, 2023 by Steph

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Saturday: Planes

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

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

Sunday-Monday: Cars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday-Thursday: Boats

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summertime, Part 2

Posted on July 2, 2023 by Steph

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Grad Who’s Going Places

Posted on May 28, 2023 by Steph

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Friday: Senior Splash and Arrival

Okay, settle in. This is a long one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday: Iconic Ithaca

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday: Commencement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday: Departure #1

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

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

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

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

Tuesday: Home

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday-Thursday: Departure #2

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

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

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

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

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

Dragons, and Seahawks, and Cats, Oh My! College Tours

Posted on April 8, 2023 by Steph

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Friday: Takoma Park, MD to Providence, RI

It took us over ten hours to make the six-state drive to Providence for the first of three college visits we did over North’s spring break. It could have been done more quickly, but we took a lot of breaks for lunch, restroom visits, and for those of us with hourly step goals to try to meet them. I also need to walk every hour or two to prevent leg cramps.

We ordered pizza ahead of our arrival, but apparently not early enough because when we got to the busy pizzeria, the friendly young man at the counter said it wasn’t going to be ready for another forty-five minutes. That was what the app said, too, but we thought it might have been a mistake because we’d ordered almost an hour earlier. I was hungry and it was almost eight and I try not to eat after eight p.m., so I bought a slice, or I tried to—he gave it to me for free, stage-whispering not to tell anyone. I ate it in the car. It was good.

We settled into the house and Beth went back to get the much-anticipated pizza. Beth and North ate their slices while we watched the first forty minutes of Do the Right Thing. I’d nominated this film for family movie night, back in February for Black History Month, and now on the last day of March, we were getting around to it. We were too tired to watch the whole thing, though.

Saturday: Providence and Environs

The next morning, we attended the open house for Johnson and Wales University’s culinary school. This school offers the only bachelor’s degree in Baking and Pastry Arts in the country, and it is currently North’s top choice.

The event began with a scavenger hunt in the Culinary Arts Museum. There were spaces to explore, like a diner built in the 1920s and a colonial era tavern. (It wasn’t clear to me if they were real or recreations.) North had a list of things to find, such as the jacket of a celebrity chef and a prototype of the microwave from the 1940s. It was fun and North found all the items on the list. Unfortunately, they missed hearing when you were supposed to turn in the paper, so they didn’t win a bag of cooking utensils and swag.

I sampled a small cinnamon roll from the table of student-baked treats, and we visited several booths, including one for study abroad and another for accessibility services. The woman at that booth was surprisingly discouraging about accommodations for a student with chronic pain and mobility issues.

We proceeded to a panel discussion. While we waited for it to start, we discussed how the school seems to have two mascots. The official one is the Wildcats, but the school’s logo includes the flag of Wales, which has a dragon on it (although at first, I thought it was a griffin). You actually see as many if not more dragons than wildcats in the graphics around campus. Depending on how far you can zoom in, you might see one on the right side of the chef’s jacket North’s wearing in the first photo, across from the words “Future Wildcat.”

At the panel, a dean and about a half dozen professors who described the program and explained how the different tracks in the culinary school are structured. A few of them stressed how JWU’s culinary school is unique in that it’s housed in a university and students also take academic classes. Toward the end, during the Q&A Beth asked about accessibility again and got a very different, more positive answer from the dean. So that’s something to investigate in more detail because except for this one concern, North is really sold on this school. At the discussion we picked up samples of student-made confectionary. I choose a bag of salted caramels that I saved for later—they were excellent.

We went on a tour next. There are two campuses, one in downtown Providence and another on Narragansett Bay. The culinary school is in the harborside campus, though students can also take any academic classes that aren’t offered there in the downtown campus. We toured the two main harborside classroom buildings, which were bustling for a Saturday morning. Several clubs were meeting—including a Latin American cuisine club that was holding a competition and a baking club. We were invited in to watch students present their meals and baked goods, and we were offered pastry samples. I had an almond cookie even though I’d already had a cinnamon roll and I did not regret it. (It reminded me strongly of a tart I used to get at the Portuguese bakery in Provincetown where Beth and I often travelled back in our twenties and thirties. That and the fact that something called “New England coffeecake” was on offer made me wonder if that day’s baking focus was New England regional pastry.)

We could have boarded a bus to tour the downtown campus at this point, but there wouldn’t have been time for lunch if we did that, so we decided to wander around downtown Providence on our own later. We checked out a food court-style dining hall where North could have used their visitor’s badge for 10% off, but they were in the mood for Panera, so we went to one just across the Massachusetts border, before walking around the downtown Providence campus. We tried to go to the Admissions Office and the bookstore, but they had both closed for the day.

While we were driving to Rhode Island the day before we’d glimpsed the ocean from the highway (in Connecticut) and that got me in the mood to see it again. We considered going to the beach that afternoon, but it was late afternoon by the time we got back to the house, and we were farther inland now, almost an hour away from the Atlantic, so we decided Greenwich Bay was a better idea.

However, North didn’t want to risk leaving the house during prime migraine time because they get one in the late afternoon more often than not these days and they were saving their last dose of the really effective medicine for the next night because we had evening plans. After some discussion, we decided to leave them alone in the house. We have not done this since they were hospitalized in October, though we’d been considering it for a while. It felt momentous and anticlimactic at the same time.

It was a short drive and a long walk to the bay. It was a scenic walk, though, along a wooded, riverside path. When we got to the beach, we sat on a bench and looked at the water for about fifteen minutes before we headed back.

When we got back, North had gone to bed with a headache after all, so it was just the two of us for dinner. After considering a few options, we ordered takeout from a Japanese restaurant the dean recommended during the part of his spiel in which he lauded the many fine dining options in Providence, where many alums work as chefs. His praise was not misplaced. We got several small dishes, and the garlic eggplant and crispy cauliflower were especially good. You should go there if you’re ever in Providence. It was very satisfying.

Sunday: Providence to New York, NY and Union City, NJ

Sunday morning, we drove to New York City. North was supposed to meet a friend from camp for lunch in Brooklyn, but the friend cancelled by text when we were right outside the city. That gave us enough time to reconsider our next destination and our lunch plans. We stopped at a pretty little park by the Hudson River, had a picnic, and regrouped.

We decided to go to Coney Island. It took us longer to get there than we thought it would—isn’t that always how it goes in New York?—and when we did there was no legal parking to be had anywhere so Beth kindly volunteered to stay with the illegally parked car just in case she had to move it and North and I took a quick jaunt to the amusement park and beach.

We had early evening theater ticket so we could only stay about forty-five minutes and we had different priorities. North was hungry for pizza and drawn to the wooden roller coaster and I just wanted to go to the beach. I bought two slices, one for North and one to take back to Beth, and North found it unsatisfactory as New York pizza. After they’d eaten the subpar pizza, I gave them money for the roller coaster, and they got in line. I took off my shoes and socks and walked on the beach for about ten minutes before North texted that the ride operators didn’t take cash. By that time it was too late to figure out how to get tickets and stand in line again, so we decided to get ice cream, hit the bathrooms, and meet up with Beth. The expedition didn’t go exactly as we hoped, but I did get to walk barefoot on the beach on a sunny day and eat strawberry cheesecake gelato, and that doesn’t happen every day.

We got to the theater (a converted church basement) where we were seeing Stranger Sings!, a musical parody of Stranger Things, a half hour before the show, which was a relief. If you’ve seen the source material (as North and I have), the show is funny and a lot of fun. If you haven’t (like Beth) it’s baffling, but she says she enjoyed it anyway so we will take her at her word.

We stopped at a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant to get a post-show dinner of vegetable and tofu stir-fried noodles for North. The food came really quickly, and we took it back to our AirBnB in Union City, New Jersey. North liked it so well they left a glowing Yelp review.

Monday: Union City and New York to Takoma Park

On Monday we had a busy morning planned. We had a mid-afternoon tour of NYU and before then we had three stops. First was the Catacombs by Candlelight tour at Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral. This consists of a guided tour of the outdoor cemetery at the Cathedral and the vaults underneath it. The guide gives a lot of historical information both above and below ground. It was a little less creepy than North was hoping for, I think—no stacks of skulls and bones like in the Paris catacombs they read about in a 39 Clues book in elementary school, just sealed vault doors lit with electric candles—but it was still atmospheric and interesting.

From there we visited a high-end chocolate shop, which was Beth’s primary goal for our day in New York. We all picked treats (mostly candy, but North got a jar of fancy olives). The only thing I’ve tried so far was a pistachio truffle, but it was so good it made me take the lord’s name in vain when I bit into it. I still have a dark chocolate-cherry bar to try.

North wanted a pizza do-over so we went to another place they’d found. Here I should mention that North planned a lot of our activities in New York and navigated us to them. It made them seem like someone who’s almost ready to go to college, maybe even in a big city. They found the pesto, olive, and fresh mozzarella pizza at Prince Street Pizza much more to their liking than the boardwalk pizza. There were outside stools and counters, though we needed to wait a while for other diners to vacate the stools. There’s a lot of open air or semi-enclosed sidewalk dining in New York. I’m guessing at least some of it was born of the pandemic. A lot of the spaces are quite decorated and festive, but this one was more utilitarian.

At NYU, students were only allowed one parent and as I enjoy these tours more than Beth does, she walked around Greenwich village and sat in Washington Square Park while North and I went on the tour. Oddly, there was no introductory information session, which I’ve come to expect. We watched a two-minute video and set out. The other strange thing was that the tour was almost entirely outside the buildings we visited. We didn’t enter a residence hall or dining hall or classroom, though we approached them. We did go inside the student center and the main library and it’s lovely, twelve stories with an atrium in the center and the floors all enclosed in glass with an abstract gold pattern painted on it. We learned that NYU’s mascot, the Bobcat, is named after the card catalog. Bobcat is short for Bobst Library Catalog. You’ve got to appreciate a school that names its sports teams after the library catalog. Our guide was affable and informative. North was especially impressed with the study-abroad opportunities.

By the time it was over, North was done in—between the catacombs, our perambulations through the neighborhood, and the campus tour, it had been a lot of walking. They were starting to drag, so they sat down at a table outside a café to rest while Beth fetched the car from the parking lot. I went inside to buy a flourless chocolate-walnut cookie to justify our presence, and while I was inside a young woman took the other chair at the table where North was sitting and did not leave when I stared at her, so I ate the cookie standing up.

It was around four-thirty when we hit the road. We had long drive home, so it was past our bedtime when we arrived, stashed our perishable food in the fridge, and fell into bed.

Tuesday: Takoma Park

We had a one-day, two-night pit stop at home. North rested and Beth and I worked. I wrote half of the April issue of an e-newsletter for a supplement company, did two loads of laundry, mailed a care package of Easter candy to Noah, and cleaned most of the kitchen (losing steam and leaving the kitchen floor un-mopped) and started writing this.

North got a migraine in the late afternoon and tried their new device which arrived in the mail while we were gone. You strap it to your arm, and it vibrates in a way that’s supposed to block migraine pain signals, but it didn’t work (at least this time) and they ended up napping the rest of the day.

Wednesday: Takoma Park to Saint Mary’s City, MD and Ridge, MD

Wednesday morning, we set out on the southern leg of our trip. We arrived at Saint Mary’s historic site around lunch time, so we had a picnic there. Saint Mary’s was the first settlement in Maryland and its capital in the seventeenth century. Now it’s a living history museum and archaeological site. All fourth graders in Maryland public schools visit it. The year North went, I chaperoned. Turns out I remember this trip a lot better than North does because everything there looked very familiar. We wandered around a little before it was time for our tour and decided to return the next day when we’d have more time.

Saint Mary’s College of Maryland is a public honors college that’s located right next to the historic site. It’s on the shore of Saint Mary’s River, which feeds into the Chesapeake Bay. It’s a gorgeous campus, full of red brick buildings, woods, and ponds. Their mascot is the Seahawks and we saw many actual seabirds, including ospreys, while we were there.

We listened to a presentation by an administrator and then set out for our tour. When North was registering for tours, Saint Mary’s was the only school that asked if the student had any accessibility needs, so North had requested a slower-paced tour. (They were able to keep up with the tours at JWU and NYU, but it was a concern ahead of time, and the NYU tour left them pretty wiped out.) We ended up with our own private tour, the three of us, plus two guides.

The tour was quite thorough. We went all over the small campus, and we saw the main dining hall, a dorm room (with a view of the pond), a townhouse (housing for juniors and seniors), the bookstore, and a classroom. We visited the boathouse where students can take out boats and paddleboards and saw students on the water and others sunbathing on the docks. We saw students wearing waders standing in the pond with nets and clipboards taking samples, presumably for a science class. The guide was attentive and at the end of the tour remembered to find out the answer to a question we’d asked that he didn’t know the answer to, even though we’d forgotten we’d asked.

After the tour, we checked into our AirBnB which was also on the water and had its own private dock on Saint Jerome Creek. It was so lovely we all sat out there for a half hour before we even unpacked. North went to bed with a headache soon after that, and I cooked dinner—vegetarian fish filets and roasted asparagus and carrots. Beth and I ate on the deck and then I went back to the dock to watch the sun set.

Thursday: Ridge and Saint Mary’s to Takoma

We didn’t have to be out of the house until noon, so we had a leisurely morning there. I ate my breakfast of yogurt, banana, and granola on the dock. North came to join me and we talked about the schools we visited and the college application process. Beth went for a walk and then went kayaking—the house had its own kayak you could use—and then I went for a walk. We got back about the same time and left the house to return to Saint Mary’s.

This time we bought tickets, and we took a guided tour of the Maryland Dove (a recreation of a seventeenth-century ship), a store, and a print shop, where we watched and participated in a demonstration of a printing press. We also wandered around some of the other buildings and read the historical signs about the people who lived and worked there. I was struck by the story of a woman who at the age of seventeen married a widower who had five children, and then bore him seven more. Being seventeen in the 1600s was a lot different than being seventeen now, I thought.

After a couple hours in Saint Mary’s, we left for lunch and our drive home. North’s considering a few more schools, so we’re not finished with college tours, but I think they’re off to a good start, with a lot of different ways to imagine their future—as a dragon/wildcat, a bobcat, or a seahawk.

Three Years, Coronavirus Chronicles, Part 79

Posted on March 16, 2023 by Steph

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Well, here we are three years after the world changed. With every update I do (and here are a few), covid impacts our everyday life less and less, though of course, it’s still with us. As of Sunday, the death toll in the U.S. is up to 1,119,000 (it’s almost seven million worldwide) and 2,000 Americans a week are still dying from it. The death rate has been very stable for over a year. Does that mean it’s endemic now? Apparently not, but it’s trending in that direction.

Falling Sick

The diminishing presence of the idea of covid in our lives makes it a little ironic that it was in this tail end (fingers crossed) phase that we actually got covid. North, Beth, and I all had covid in November—two years, eight months into the pandemic. You can read about that here and here if you missed it. North had it first, testing positive two days before Thanksgiving. We all had mild cases, though North’s was the worst, about like having the flu. Mine was like a cold and not even a bad one. We had a trip planned to Rehoboth for Thanksgiving and we went anyway, keeping to ourselves in the rental house, cooking, ordering takeout, and taking walks on the beach and boardwalk. Beth and I didn’t test positive until the day after we got home.

Traveling Further

Even though we got sick, in the past six months, our world has opened up considerably. We’ve traveled more widely than any time since the Before Times. Noah spent the fall semester in Australia, and I spent a week in Oregon while my mom was recovering from knee surgery in September. It was the first time flying since covid for both of us.

And there’s more travel on the horizon. Noah is looking for an internship in Los Angeles and he’s bought an airline ticket for three days after he graduates in late May. (A one-way ticket! I don’t even want to think about the implications of that.) North and I will be visiting family in California and Oregon in early July and Beth will be heading to Saint Louis for a convention while we’re gone.

Continuing Precautions

We still take precautions, though. We’ve all gotten the bivalent booster (Beth and North in September, me in November, and Noah in January). We test when we feel ill, and when required, though that doesn’t seem to happen as much as it used to earlier.

Of the four of us, Beth is the strictest about masking, as she always wears K95s in public buildings, whereas North and I often wear cloth or surgical masks. North still masks at school every day, one of a shrinking minority. Noah doesn’t mask at school, but he did when we went to the play last Saturday.

At the beginning of the winter, I started wondering when I would stop masking, but since there were big spikes the past two Januarys, it seemed prudent to wait until the end of the winter and see if it happened again this year. Well, it’s mid-March now and there hasn’t been a spike, so I’m thinking more seriously about it. I still notice when people are masked when they’re not and it can affect my behavior. Here are some examples. In this one I was trying to decide whether to go to book club shortly after having covid:

12/4

The average age of members is probably around seventy and some of them are in their eighties and frail, plus masking in the group has gone from almost universal to about fifty percent, just in the past few months. It didn’t seem responsible to go, so I stayed home.

The last time I went to book club, last week, I was the only one in the room wearing a mask.

Here I was picking Noah up at the airport:

12/23

We had some trouble finding the driver and when we did connect, the driver was irritated with me and rude and accused me of wasting his time. Then in the car when I cracked the window because he was unmasked, he rolled it back up. Also, he was vaping the whole time. It was the first time in my many times in a Lyft I didn’t tip the driver…

Speaking of tipping, when I get takeout coffee, I am still more likely to tip a masked barista than an unmasked one. And speaking of restaurants, eating inside them is another tough call. We don’t in general, though we make occasional exceptions, as you know from my last post. Here’s the dilemma: Right after we let North eat in a diner with friends in November, they brought home covid. Then when North ate in a café with friends in February one of the friends got covid, although they didn’t. It can be hard to balance caution with letting them have a more normal teenage social life. North’s birthday party is going to be in a restaurant that’s usually crowded but if the weather’s nice, we’ll have it outside.

Experiencing Normalcy

One time I especially appreciated not being in the grip of the worst days of the pandemic anymore was when Xander died in October. He got to die at home and had a much more peaceful passage than his brother.

10/17/22

When Xander’s brother Matthew was paralyzed by advanced heart disease three months into the pandemic, he was euthanized in the parking garage of the animal hospital and only one of us was allowed to be with him. This was much nicer and more peaceful. We were all petting Xander and talking to him, and he wasn’t scared. The vet was gentle and respectful. It’s some small comfort that his end was quick enough that he didn’t suffer much but not so sudden we didn’t get a chance to say a proper goodbye.

This used to happen more often, but occasionally something still happens for the first time since Before. The biggest one in the past six months for me is that I am back to swimming weekly.

1/31/23

I went swimming on Saturday afternoon at the pool where I used to swim weekly before it shut down first for the pandemic, then for extensive repairs. It re-opened in late November, but between being out of the habit, being salty about the fact that they were not honoring pre-pandemic punch cards, and the pool’s erratic schedule (it’s always been prone to unannounced closures and still is), I didn’t manage to show up at a time it was open until this weekend.

2/15/23

You may recall I finally got the Piney Branch pool to agree to honor my pre-pandemic punch card, but I wasn’t sure it would actually work until I successfully used it on the first Saturday in February. I am pleased about this, as I had $25 worth of swims left on the pass. It should last me the rest of the month and a week into March if I go every weekend. I’ve been swimming three Saturdays in a row now and it’s nice to be doing it again after an almost three-year-long break.

Turns out my pass lasted a little longer than that because in late February the boiler broke and the pool was closed for a week, but it opened again the first Saturday in March, and I used up the pass last weekend.

Another normal thing that happened at North’s school was that the Winter One Acts were put on… in winter.

1/18/23

It felt novel for the winter one acts to be put on in winter, as last year a covid surge and subsequent scheduling problems delayed them until May and the year before, of course, they didn’t happen at all, as school was closed for most of the year and there were no extracurriculars even when it opened briefly in the spring.

Questioning Normalcy

Sometimes it can be hard to know if things that didn’t happen did not happen because of covid or some other reason, as when I was trying to figure out whether there would be a Visitation Day at North’s school in on Columbus Day, like there used to be at every other MCPS school my kids have attended. (The answer was no.)

10/20/22

That made me think, okay, maybe this school has never done this, and it wasn’t a casualty of covid until another senior parent posted, no, visitation day did happen the last year before covid, so now I don’t know what to think about the past or the future, but it didn’t happen this year.

And it can also be hard to know if covid has caused things. At one point, I thought the leg cramps I started experiencing in late November could be an after-effect of covid.

12/11/22

We got back home just in time for me to attend a virtual meeting with my own health care provider about some mysterious leg cramps and pain I’d been experiencing. It had been worst while we were at the beach and right after and seemed to be resolving by the time I saw her, but I kept the appointment to talk about what to do if it comes back. I’m wondering now if it had something to do with having covid, because of the timing.

I do still have hints of them, mostly in the car, but they are much improved since I started taking magnesium for them, so I don’t question their origin as much.

Imagining Other Pandemics

In 2020 and 2021 I read a lot of books about real and fictional pandemics—the plague mostly, but also polio and the flu. By 2022, I guess I was over it and didn’t feel the urge to read any more. (Or maybe I just switched to pandemics on screen. Noah and I watched Station Eleven during his spring break last year and over the summer we watched the first couple seasons of The Strain. Earlier, in 2020, we watched Counterpart.)

My interest in reading about pandemics was piqued again as the third anniversary of covid approached. In February I read Hamnet and Love in the Time of Cholera (which has less to do with cholera than I expected) and I’m currently reading Sea of Tranquility. I don’t know if I’m finished with this particular obsession or not. Time will tell.

As for depictions of this pandemic, we only recently got up to the part of Blackish that portrays it.

1/18/23

[W]e got to the midpoint of season 7 of Blackish. We’ve reached the covid era episodes and while the first couple about it were excellent and very evocative, I was disappointed that it basically fell out of the plot after that, as if it barely happened and didn’t deeply alter our lives for years.

We’re still in season 7, up to the episodes aired in February 2021, and it continues to surprise me how the characters seem to be living in a parallel universe in which it’s not pre-vaccine (for most people) covid times.

How does covid still affect your day-to-day life? Or does it?

All the Good Things

Posted on December 30, 2022 by Steph

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Christmas Eve

We drove to Blackwater a day later than planned on a frigid morning. It was eighteen degrees when we left Takoma, and the temperature rose and fell between ten and fourteen for most of the trip. Beth thought the traffic would be bad because, like us, others would have delayed their travel and there would be two days’ worth of travelers on the road, but for whatever reason, we didn’t run into traffic at all. Maybe everyone who could drove early rather than late.

About an hour and a half into the trip we started seeing patches of snow on the ground and by the end when we climbed up into the hills, there was a several-inch layer, and high winds blowing it all around and the temperature fell to minus two. Negative numbers on a thermometer are a novel sight for us Marylanders, so that was exciting. There was also a bit of tricky driving for Beth.

We arrived at the lodge a little after three and I was glad to get out of the car because the leg cramps that were bothering me around Thanksgiving had returned on this trip and it helps to walk when I get them. We learned the power was out at the lodge and some of the cabins, but not the ones in our section of the park so we got the keys, drove there, and unpacked the car. I tried to shovel the porch steps before Beth’s mom arrived, but the snow was too hard packed to get off the risers.

Setting up the tree that had been tied up in our garage for weeks and then on top of the car for hours was a high priority. We wanted to give the limbs a few hours to fall so we could decorate it. Once I’d unpacked the food, North took over the kitchen, making chocolate-peppermint cookies, and Beth decorated the mantle with evergreen boughs she’d cut from the bottom of the tree, adding a string of lights and our figurines of characters from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and then the house was nearly Christmas-ready.

Beth’s mom, brother John, and sister-in-law Abby arrived an hour or so after we did, after a more challenging drive than ours, because they came from the opposite direction. We sat and talked until dinnertime. Beth heated up chili from cans (blending three different brands) and made almond flour cornbread and salad.

After dinner, Beth strung the lights around the tree, and the kids and I put up the ornaments. John and Abby had their own place in a nearby resort, and they left to go get settled in before we’d finished the tree. We watched Frosty the Snowman and Frosty Returns before bed. I skipped part of the latter one because I don’t consider it essential, and it was late, and I wanted to get a shower and go to bed.

In our rush that night, we inadvertently skipped our yearly reading of “A Visit with St. Nicholas,” which we all regretted when we remembered the next day. We also failed to put out cookies for Santa (which North often wants to do, even though it’s been a long time since any of us have believed in Santa) or to open one early present each. I have no strong attachment or objection to this last practice—it’s one we adopted only several years ago. Noah doesn’t like change, so he doesn’t like it and it often leads to sibling strife anyway, so that might have been just as well that we forgot.

Christmas Day

I was the first one up on Christmas morning, which wasn’t really a surprise. I’m sleeping better than I was a month ago, but it’s rare for me to sleep past 6:30 and that’s about when I woke. (Note: every other morning in Blackwater I slept past seven.) I went out to the living room to enjoy the tree lights and look at all your Christmas Eve Facebook posts. One by one, people got up and opened their stocking gifts.

North was responsible for Christmas brunch, so they set to work making scrambled eggs, various vegetarian breakfast meats, sliced fruit, and chocolate-peppermint muffins. Noah and I read while North cooked. John and Abby came over around ten and we ate. Everything was delicious.

Next it was time for presents. This year more presents than usual couldn’t be wrapped either because they were subscriptions—I renewed Beth’s to the New Yorker and we upgraded North’s to the Donor Sibling Registry to lifetime membership—or they had already been received—when my Fitbit broke in November, Beth got me a new one as an early Christmas present. But there was still plenty under the tree. Books, soap, socks and other clothing, tea, chocolate and other treats were popular. Plus, Noah got an extension kit for Settlers of Catan and YaYa got new earbuds.

After presents, John, Abby, and YaYa went for a drive to look at the snow. By early afternoon the temperature had risen into the double digits, if just barely, and Beth and I were both eager to get outside, so we went for a walk. The kids gave this activity a hard pass. At first, we thought we’d just go as far as the canyon overlook, but when we got there, we decided to keep going to the frozen lake, ringed with towering evergreen trees. As we walked over the dam, Beth turned to me and grinned.

I said, “This makes you happy.”

“It does,” she replied. “Look at this! It’s snowy, it’s cold—all the good things.”

We were out almost an hour and when we returned, the kids and I made gingerbread cookies from the dough I’d made at home and decorated them with colored sugar, raisins, dried cranberries, almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, and pecans. They came out just right and I reflected that it’s easier not to burn some when the kids are old enough to heed my directions to roll them all out to the same thickness. After gingerbread, North and I read a few cantos of the Inferno.

Just before dinner, North felt a headache coming on. They’d saved a dose of their rescue medicine for Christmas, just in case, so they were able to join us for Christmas dinner. YaYa made her famous spinach lasagna and afterward we sampled a chocolate Pandoro. None of us were familiar with this traditional Italian Christmas cake, and we found it a little dry, but it’s always good to try new things. John and Abby went back to their place and after a struggle to download it—the Wi-Fi was awful in the cabin—we watched Christmas is Here Again.

Speaking of the Wi-Fi, earlier in the day I’d had a difficult time getting my day’s photos onto Facebook, but I finally succeeded. I found myself surprised at how much this mattered to me. I had an even worse time the next day, but it seemed to matter more that I have a nice post for Christmas, partly because I enjoy the communal nature of holidays on Facebook, when many people are experiencing and sharing similar things, but also because I knew I’d like to see the photos pop up in my memories on future Christmas days. Ah, modern life…

Second Day of Christmas

John and Abby came over in the morning for breakfast and to say goodbye, as they were headed back to Wheeling. We were considering hiking down to the bottom of Blackwater’s eponymous falls, but John thought it was too cold—it was only ten degrees. He seemed torn and I think Beth could have used her older sister powers to sway him, but she didn’t.

I read with both kids in the morning and in the early afternoon, Beth and I set out to hike the Balanced Rock trail. It took about an hour and a half. We crossed a footbridge over a half-frozen creek lined with impressive icicles, traversed fields of little snow-covered evergreen trees and rhododendron bushes with their leaves curled against the cold, and finally climbed up to the two boulders that give the trail its name. About halfway there, Beth said, “Look at the wintry woods. Isn’t it the best?”

Answering automatically at first, I said, “Yes…well, no.” Beth made an indignant sound before I could explain. “The ocean is best,” I said, “but this is very, very nice.” And it was. In the whole walk, the only people we saw were two snowplow drivers when the trail crossed a park road. They were witness to the only time I slipped and fell.

We visited the lodge before going back home to see if its power was restored, because I was interested in swimming later if the pool was open and Beth thought people might want to go to the gift shop, but there was a sign on the door saying there was still no power.

Back at home, Beth heated up the Spanish drinking chocolate North got her for her birthday, and we enjoyed it with cookies. It was very rich and luxurious. I alternated between trying to get Facebook to agree to post my photos of the hike, with only partial success, and folding the last of three loads of laundry I’d done that day. (This is less than it sounds like—the washer and dryer were tiny.) Noah and I watched two episodes of What We Do in the Shadows and then I made dinner—cauliflower with cheese sauce and vegetarian Italian sausage.

North had a migraine and had hit the limit for their medication, so they went to bed in the late afternoon, and we didn’t see them until after nine. We’d planned to watch Glass Onion, but since North wanted to see it, we decided to wait. We tried to download The Fabelmans but it took so long we didn’t have time to watch it. This gave me a chance to read a few stray sections of the Post I’d brought and wanted to read before starting any of my Christmas books and to get this account of our adventures caught up. Just before bed, Beth wrangled the Wi-Fi into letting her post the rest of my hike photos.

Third Day of Christmas

Beth had to work in the morning, preparing for a press release for a video game workers’ unionization drive. I went back to bed after breakfast and started to read The Daughter of Dr. Moreau, which was one of three books I got for Christmas.

After a while I roused myself to do some dishes and from the kitchen window, I saw a young buck foraging for grass under the snow in the circular driveway in front of the cabin. It caused me to reflect that over the past couple days, I’d probably seen more deer than people. We were always seeing them in front of and behind the house. The snow behind the house was pocked with their hoofprints. One day when Noah was photographing a half-grown fawn, it came toward him up onto the back deck. This made me think people feed them, and eventually North and YaYa were feeding them Pandoro and apple.

When Beth finished her tasks, Noah wasn’t up yet, so the rest of us went to the upper overlook to see the falls around eleven-thirty. It’s a short, level trail, good for YaYa and North. It was lovely, as always. The falls were mostly frozen with two cataracts running down the icy surface. The nearby trees were all frosted with frozen spray and there were huge icicles, stained gold with tannin, on the rockface nearby.

We came home for lunch and Noah got up, so we did the other trail to the falls, the one that goes lower and closer. You descend a wooden staircase with viewing platforms at two different levels. The staircase was covered with packed snow, but that’s better than slush or ice, and we made it down to the bottom without much trouble. From that better vantage point, I could see big spheres of ice swirling around in the water at the base of the waterfall. The larger ones were big enough that if they were rocks, you’d call them boulders.

We visited the falls gift shop and dropped Noah back at the house before Beth and I set off on our longest hike of the day, along the ridge behind Pendleton Lake to the Pase Point overview. The trail has occasional views of the canyon and crosses little creeks, but mostly goes through woods and groves of rhododendron. It took about an hour to get from the cabin to Pase Point, where we emerged from the woods to stand on a ledge between boulders and take in a full view of the snow-covered canyon below.

We were wiped out from almost three hours of hiking, so Beth and I took a little nap before I got up to help Noah make soba noodle soup for dinner. Afterward we watched Glass Onion, which is fun film, especially if like me you went through an Agatha Christie phase in middle and high school.

Fourth Day of Christmas

Beth and I went on separate walks in the morning. Every day we were there it was a little warmer and that day it was just over freezing when I left the cabin, less bundled up than previously. I returned to the falls, finding them with slightly less ice and slightly more water tumbling over the ice, and quite a few more people on the staircase. I guess the warmer temperatures brought folks outside.

I climbed back up the staircase and continued up the park road to the bridge that crosses the Blackwater River, and stood on the span, looking down at the smooth ice with a current of open water wending through the middle. On the way back, I admired a decorated evergreen in a median I hadn’t spotted the first time I passed it.

When I got back to the cabin, I noticed Beth had managed to clear the porch stairs of snow as it had finally softened. She’d also taken some evergreen branches we had piled on a chair and woven them into the railing. It was a festive touch I hoped the park staff would leave up for the next people. I told her she’d spruced up the porch and she laughed at the unintended pun.

In a happy turn of events, the power came back on at the lodge and the pool was open. The sled run was open, too, but tickets were sold out, as were tickets for tubing. In the early afternoon, Beth took YaYa and me to the lodge, so I could swim and YaYa could use the exercise room. Beth floated and stretched in the pool while I swam sixty laps in the tiny pool. It’s in a pleasant, airy room with floor-to-ceiling windows that look out on evergreen trees. It’s nice to swim in a warm room and be able to see tiny icicles hanging from the gutters of the building and a dusting of snow on tree branches during the backstroke laps. After my swim, we soaked in the hot tub.

When we got back, North was excited to report they had hand-fed a deer an apple and even petted its head. I was surprised. The deer at Blackwater are very tame, but none of us had ever touched one

After a late lunch for me and an even later breakfast for him, Noah and I read and then watched a couple episodes of What We Do in the Shadows. Next in various combinations, we took ornaments and lights off the tree and dragged it into the woods behind the house, worked on the puzzle of movie posters (finishing it despite YaYa’s prediction that it wasn’t possible in the time left), and folded the last of the trip laundry.

We ate leftovers for dinner and afterward, Noah hooked his laptop up to the computer screen so he could show us a slideshow of the over six hundred pictures he took at Blackwater and people could select the ones they wanted. Then we spun off into different groups to read and watch television—North and I read a couple cantos of the Inferno. We got to the eighth circle of hell (of nine), but that’s not as far as it sounds because more than a third of the poem takes place in that circle. Beth and Noah watched Andor, and YaYa watched as much of Great Expectations as she could before the Wi-Fi gave out.

Fifth Day of Christmas

Beth and I both took early morning walks. For me, this meant leaving the house at 7:55—Beth was out earlier than me and came back later. I decided on the canyon overlook as my destination as I’d already been to the falls and the lake twice each and other than those, the overlook is best short walk from the cabin. When I got there the sun was just rising over the top of the ridge and touching the top of the canyon with light.

I was back at the house a half hour later, ate breakfast, and started packing up the cabin. We checked out at ten and after about a half hour of driving, we passed the crest lined with windmills and crossed the Eastern Continental Divide, where we left the snow and our holiday behind.

Before the Holiday

Posted on December 23, 2022 by Steph

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Monday afternoon at 2:40, Beth and I left the house together. She was headed to pick North up from their partial hospitalization facility, and I was headed to pick Noah up from the airport. Beth dropped me off at the Metro stop, where I shared an elevator with someone who didn’t see fit to extinguish his joint during the ride, so the elevator filled with pot smoke. I was annoyed, but it didn’t diminish my excitement to see Noah for the first time in three and a half months.

Despite what I said before about not taking pictures of the Great Barrier Reef, Noah did end up sending me some cool ones, taken from the air when he was returning to Robina, where he lived this fall (well, spring). He had a two-week stretch between the end of classes and his homecoming. Aside from the trip to the reef, he visited the beach, did some Christmas shopping, and then travelled to Sydney a couple days before his flight home. He sampled noodle dishes in Chinatown and went to see the harbor and the Sydney Opera House.

Noah’s phone battery died on the plane home, so he didn’t know I was waiting for him at the baggage claim, but we managed to find each other. He was travel-weary and didn’t want to contend with all his luggage on the Metro, so I called a Lyft. We had some trouble finding the driver and when we did connect, the driver was irritated with me and rude and accused me of wasting his time. Then in the car when I cracked the window because he was unmasked, he rolled it back up. Also, he was vaping the whole time. It was the first time in my many times in a Lyft I didn’t tip the driver, but I didn’t report him either because I didn’t want to be a Karen.

In the car I alternated between peppering Noah with questions and letting him be. He looked very tired after a journey across the Pacific and the United States. I thought he might want to go straight to bed, but he consented to stay up long enough to eat the lentil-noodle-chard soup I’d made, to keep me company and chop cilantro as I put the finishing touches on the soup, and even to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas after we ate.

Once he did crash, though, it was an epic sleep. He went to bed at 10 p.m. and didn’t get up until 8:40 the following evening. When Beth and I left in the early afternoon to go to participate in multi-family group therapy at North’s facility and then bring them home for the day, I thought for sure he’d be up when we got back but he wasn’t. And because North had a migraine that night, it was just Beth and me eating the broccoli-cheddar-quinoa fritters I’d made because everyone likes them. By the end of the day, I was checking on him every couple of hours to make sure he was still breathing.

Having slept that long, Noah couldn’t sleep Tuesday night, and he ended up with this sleep dysregulated for several days, but I told him he needed to be up by late afternoon on Wednesday because we had a family activity planned.

It was the solstice and when we travel for Christmas (which we almost always do) we have a tradition of opening a few presents on the solstice to lighten our load a little. We’re spending the holiday with Beth’s mom, brother, and sister-in-law, so once North got home for the day we opened presents from my side of the family. We gathered in the living room, cheerfully lit with lights on the mantle and in the Christmas village I just inherited from my mom (who’s downsizing), and ate butter cookies decorated with red and green sugar and butter-pecan snowballs I bought at the bakery for the occasion while we unwrapped gifts. Beth got a set of pumpkin-carving tools she’d been wanting and fancy chocolate bars. I got two books and three jars of unusual nut butters. Noah got a book and a camera strap, and North got a check.

Beth, North, and I had a virtual family therapy session and after that, we had tofu-veggie bowls for dinner and then we went to Brookside Gardens to see the light display. We’ve done this a few times, but it’s just as magical every time to walk along the wooded paths, admiring the colored lights outlining tree branches or in the shapes of animals and plants. There were a few new features, a machine blowing bubbles made of liquid nitrogen, and steam issuing from the sea dragon’s mouth, but mostly it was the same as I remembered. That’s nice sometimes.

It was also nice that the outing wasn’t derailed by a migraine. It could have been because North’s still having them quite frequently, more days than not. From that we can gather that at the current dose, the new preventative medicine isn’t helping, but they’re not at the full dose yet. They’re building up to it. The good news is that the rescue medicine is very effective. Most of the time it heads the headache off in an hour or less. But…North is only allowed to take it twice a week, so they need to ration it. Every time a headache starts, they are forced to consider if it’s medication-worthy, based on what they have going on that day. Anyway, this time when a headache started right before dinner, they decided yes, it was a medication day.

As it turned out, it was Noah who was ready to leave the gardens before anyone else. He’s not only having trouble adjusting to a time difference of more than half a day, but he’s also having trouble with winter weather, having just come from summer, and he’d lost one of his gloves. It wasn’t super cold, around freezing, but that was too cold for him.

We were planning to leave for Blackwater Falls State Park on Friday morning. If you live in the U.S. or Canada, you’re aware of the massive weather system that derailed that plan. Most of our route would have been fine, but there was a stretch of road that was treacherous, with snow and very high winds, so after monitoring it all morning, an hour before we were set to leave we decided to stay home an extra day. Blackwater is one of Beth’s very favorite places in the whole world, and we’ve spent every Christmas since 2016 in a cabin there, so we were all disappointed to have our stay there cut a day short.

But there were some compensations. North and I took a walk to Starbucks. It was raining for most of the morning and temperatures fell rapidly as the day progressed, so it turned over to snow briefly before the skies cleared. It was over quickly, and it didn’t stick, but it was our first snow of the year, so I thought the occasion merited warm beverages. The walk there was fine, but the wind picked up as we were at a table outside, enjoying our hot chocolate and chai, and we decided to get moving again. North’s feet were wet because they’d stepped in a puddle on the way there and I wasn’t wearing gloves and wished I was, but it was still a fun outing.

At home, I read with both kids—The Inferno with North, while they inked a cityscape that they’re working on for art class and What Strange Paradise with Noah, his Christmas present from my sister, one of the gifts we opened early.

Beth and Noah watched Andor and we all watched a lot of Rankin-Bass Christmas specials—Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and The Year Without a Santa Claus, the last one while we ate cheap delivery pizza, which as I ate it, I realized was just what I wanted. And even if we weren’t where we wanted to be, and with all the people we wanted to be with, it was still good to have an idle day before the holiday, with just the four of us.

A Wild Ride: Coronavirus Chronicles, Part 77

Posted on November 27, 2022 by Steph

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Tuesday: Hello, Covid

It was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, parent-teacher conference day at North’s school. I was in between my second conference (French) and the third (Foundation of Tech) when I got a text from Beth informing me that while I was gone, North, who’d woken that morning with a cough, headache, stuffiness, slight fever, and dizziness, had tested positive for covid. It sounds kind of obvious in retrospect, but I was surprised. After two years and eight months of dodging this virus, I guess I was feeling we were invincible, even though my mom got it in the spring, and my sister’s whole family got it earlier this month.

Two days earlier we had let North leave the house without adult supervision for the first time since they got back from the hospital. They’d had brunch at a crowded diner with several friends. It was an exception to our no-eating-inside-restaurants policy, though we don’t know for sure that’s where they got it. Given that the incubation period is two to fourteen days, the second most likely option seems like the school play, which we attended about a week and a half before they started to feel ill. And I suppose there was the cat café, and we did go see a movie (Ticket to Paradise), but neither the café nor the theater had very many people in it. Ironically, they’d been around people less than usual during the two weeks before they got sick, first on a closed hospital unit and then at home.

I wondered whether I should bail on the rest of my conferences, being an official close contact of someone with covid. That might have been the ethical thing to do, but I was already there and masked, and given that North’s been out of school for several weeks, I really wanted to touch base with each of their teachers to explain what’s going on and discuss various possible paths forward for North academically. It seemed important, and the conferences were less than fifteen minutes each, so I went through with it.

When I got home, Beth said, “I feel like the degree of difficulty of our lives just keeps getting higher,” elaborating that we were like the proverbial frogs being slowly boiled in a pot. There were a few reasons this was bad timing for our family’s first bout with covid. (Is there such a thing as good timing for it?)

We were supposed to have an in-person intake interview at one of the partial hospitalization programs to which we’ve applied the following morning.
We were leaving our annual Thanksgiving-at-the-beach trip immediately after the interview.
The next day was also Beth’s birthday.

Beth called the hospital and to our surprise, they said we could do the interview virtually, so that was a relief. After a brief discussion, we decided we would go ahead with the beach trip. It usually involves Christmas shopping on Black Friday at the shops in downtown Rehoboth and we’d have to skip that, but I said it would be worth it to me to go if all we did was hang out at the house, have Thanksgiving dinner, order takeout the other nights, and take walks on the beach. That was what our first pandemic Thanksgiving trip to the beach was like anyway. (On our very first pandemic beach trip North was paralyzed, and we didn’t cancel then either. We are hardy travelers.)

There were risks, of course. Driving there would mean several hours of close contact with North and if Beth got sick in Rehoboth, then the drive home would be difficult or we could even get stuck there, but if you know how we feel as a family about the beach (me most of all), you’re probably not surprised that we went.

So many of you have shared your covid experiences on your blogs or on Facebook that we’ve had a range of models for whether or how to isolate infected family members from non-infected ones. We didn’t even discuss isolating from North. Given their current situation, it didn’t seem like a good course of action. We began masking when we were in the same room with them, but we weren’t avoiding them, and most of the time we even ate together inside, so that made the decision to spend a few hours in a car together slightly more rational.

After that was decided and after we’d filled out some pre-interview forms to scan and send to the hospital, I made Beth’s birthday cake, a chocolate cake with coffee frosting I’ve made many, many times. You’d think I’d remember the recipe well enough that I wouldn’t almost forget to add the egg, actually forget the vanilla, and accidentally turn the frosting into a glaze by halving all the ingredients except the coffee, but you’d be wrong. What can I say? I haven’t been sleeping well and I’ve had a lot on my mind. It was comforting to make it anyway, because it smelled good baking and there were batter and frosting bowls to lick, and it made the stressful day seem more festive.

Wednesday: Happy Birthday, Dear Beth

The next morning while we were packing for the trip prior to the interview, Beth got a call from the hospital informing us it was cancelled because that health care visits can’t happen over Zoom across state lines. The hospital is in Virginia and we’re in Maryland. Later I remembered we’ve run up against this rule before while travelling. I guess there’s some sort of exception for D.C. because we’ve had a lot of virtual meetings with providers in the District. This was quite frustrating. We couldn’t get a new appointment until the second week of December, and we won’t even be on the wait list until we have the interview. But there was nothing we could do about it.

We hit the road around eleven and arrived in Rehoboth around three-thirty, with a stop for a lunch of drive-through Taco Bell and Dairy Queen eaten at the tables outside the DQ near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. We masked in the car and kept the windows partially down. It was a warm day—it got up to sixty degrees—so that wasn’t a hardship.

Near the end of the drive, Beth got a call from another partial hospitalization program where we’d been waiting for an intake interview since North got out of the psychiatric unit almost two weeks earlier. It’s in Annapolis, but they are opening a new location in Prince George’s County, which is closer to us than Annapolis, and they wanted to know if we’d like to interview for that location. Beth said yes. They’re supposed to call back by Monday to arrange it. So, on that front, it was one step back, one step forward. Because the facility is new, we’re hoping there will be less of a wait there.

We got to the house, a two-story yellow frame cottage with pale blue shutters, a living room and kitchen on the first floor and three small bedrooms on the upper floor, a narrow staircase between them, and a screened porch in front. We settled in, unpacking food and clothes, making up the beds, and deciding on our order of Japanese takeout for dinner. I was on the beach by five to see the sunset. When I got back Beth left to get the food and we ate her birthday dinner around the kitchen table.

After dinner, she opened presents. There was imported Spanish drinking chocolate powder from North, three fancy chocolate bars from Noah (one from Colombia, one from India, and one from Tanzania), and a bottle of French olive oil from me. It was all very international. Beth’s a fan of good chocolate and olive oil, so she was happy. Next, we ate cake and ice cream, and watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and The Mayflower Voyagers.

Before bed, we took a walk down to the beach to see the stars. We could see Orion’s belt and one of the dippers– we weren’t sure which one. Beth stayed on the boardwalk while North and I went down to the sand. While we were separated, my sister’s family called Beth on her cell and sang “Happy Birthday” to her and let her know her present was on the way.

As we were going to bed, I asked Beth how her birthday had been, and she said it was “a wild ride,” but that it ended well. In my card I’d written (before North came down with covid), “I hope it’s better than getting deloused, or getting your gallbladder out, or getting a flat tire.” I suppose this one will go down as one of Beth’s many memorable birthdays.

Thursday: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving started for me at 4:49. Remember how I said I’m not sleeping well? I stayed in bed until six, trying to get back to sleep, and then I relocated to the living room couch so the light from my cell and laptop where I was reading Facebook and blogs wouldn’t wake Beth. Around 6:45, I decided that as long as I was up, I might as well see the sunrise on the beach, which was only a five-minute walk away.

I used to watch the sun rise on the beach more often, when the kids were younger, and we all used wake at ungodly earlier hours. Well, I can’t exactly say I’m thankful for my recent insomnia, even on a day dedicated to gratitude, but… I was genuinely grateful that morning to see the orange ball of the sun rising over the ocean, touching the beach grass with faint light, putting touches of pink in the sky, painting the wet sand silver with streaks of gold, and making a big, ruffly, clear jellyfish I found at the waterline seem to glow from within.

I walked on the beach until the dawn colors had all drained away from the sky and the sand, went back to the house, ate breakfast, and made a batch of low-sugar cranberry sauce before anyone else was up. Everyone cooked a little throughout the day. Beth made the mushroom gravy and finished the broccoli-cheese casserole that North started. (North felt well enough to cook at first and then got dizzy and had to go lie down.) I made the basting sauce for the tofu roast and Beth made mashed potatoes. We’ve pared down our traditional feast a little over the past couple years since I got diagnosed with diabetes. I stopped making the brandied sweet potatoes because I was the only one who liked them, and we longer make breadcrumb stuffing because the roast comes stuffed with wild rice and Noah was the one who liked the original stuffing best.

Late in the morning, we all made our traditional turkey table decorations from apples, toothpicks, raisins, dried cranberries, and olives. “Will you make these with your kids?” I asked North.

“Yes,” they said. “Will you make them with them?”

“Yes,” I said. It was a cheering vision of the future.

Beth and I had lunch out on the screened porch—leftover Japanese, crackers, cheese, nuts, and fruit. Then we all had overlapping naps. I didn’t manage to fall asleep, but I came close, and it was nice to rest. North slept most of the afternoon. We’d hoped to take our Christmas card photos on the beach that afternoon, but they weren’t up for it. After my nap, I put the roast in the oven and went for another walk on the beach and boardwalk. When I came back to baste it again, Beth went for a walk of her own.

We ate a little after six and everything was delicious. Before we ate, we offered thanks for North being out of the hospital, for being together, for the fact that though we wished Noah was with us that the reason he wasn’t was that he was studying in Australia, something he’d wanted to do for years, and for the vaccines and boosters that kept North’s case of covid mild and that had protected me and Beth so far.

Speaking of Noah, at seven we had a Zoom call with him. It’s only the third time we’ve done it since he’s been abroad. The first time, with me and Beth, was to let him know North had been hospitalized and the second, with all four of us, was the last night North was in the hospital. He’d been trying to call them at the hospital and between the fifteen-hour time difference, difficulties with his changing between domestic and international SIM cards, and the fact that all the kids on the unit shared one phone and it was usually in use, he had not managed it until we linked him into one of our pre-scheduled Zoom calls.

We asked him if he’d done anything for Thanksgiving and he said no. It reminded me of studying in Spain the fall of my junior year of college and how it’s strange to be abroad on this very American holiday. My celebration that year consisted of a sweet potato boiled on a hot plate in a dorm room. We also found out his last school assignment is due the first week of December and he has two whole weeks of free time before he comes home. Beth and I both urged him to travel. He’s already planning a trip to the Great Barrier Reef, but he hasn’t explored much outside the town where he’s living, so it seems like a good opportunity to see more of the country where he’s been living since September. He mentioned in a puzzled way that a lot of the international students have been taking trips to New Zealand and Bali and missing class to do it.

It was good to talk to him. It was the first time I’ve been to Rehoboth without him since before he was born—in fact I think the last time we went without him might have been the trip when we brought printouts of sperm donor profiles to pick out his. It was also the first time we haven’t been together on Thanksgiving, so I was missing him a lot.

After the call, we watched an episode of Gilmore Girls, and then North and I walked to the beach again to look at the stars. There were seabirds resting on the waves, visible only as white spots bobbing up and down in the distance or occasionally taking flight and streaking across the dark sky.

(Not So) Black Friday

I managed to sleep until 5:30 the next morning, a slight improvement. Because my daybreak walk at the beach had been so rewarding the previous morning, I decided to do it again. It was cloudy and drizzling so there really was no sunrise to watch, but I never regret a walk on the beach.

I came home, made myself breakfast, and then left again to go pick up a few books I’d pre-ordered from Browse-About before North got sick. I double-masked and was in and out in a few minutes, resisting the temptation to stay and shop a little. On the way home, I detoured to the beach. It was high tide and an extensive network of little pools and channels of water had formed all over the sand. It was very cool, but I had to wend my way carefully to avoid getting stranded somewhere that would soon be covered by an incoming wave.

There was a family on the beach with preschool-aged twins running around, one in a ladybug rain slicker and one in a bee slicker. The hoods of their jackets had antennae. They were adorable and made me miss my little ones, who are not so little now.

When I got back home, Beth drove out to Route 1 in Black Friday traffic to get Grandpa Mac takeout for North. They’d slept all morning, so it was their first meal of the day. (Then Beth drove back when the order was wrong to get a replacement. This is a testament to Beth’s love for North.) I blogged and read and did laundry so we could bring home mostly clean clothes. It felt odd, not to be busy on the day I usually either start or get serious about my Christmas shopping.

In the late afternoon we had our Christmas card photo shoot on the beach. North and left ahead of Beth and went to the boardwalk where we purchased a frozen custard for North. We all met up and took pictures on the sand and jetties. While Beth and I had our backs to the ocean a rogue wave caught us by surprise and we both got our feet soaked. North took a series of photos of us running out of the ocean. I am considering using one of them on the card. After all, we haven’t had a picture-perfect year.

Beth and North went back to the house while I went to Grotto’s and ordered a pizza and mozzarella sticks for pickup. While they cooked, I went back to the beach to watch the sunset turn a bank of clouds in the northern part of the sky vivid pink and color the water and sand with swirls of pink, gold, and blue. I brought the pizza back home and after an hour or so, I heated it up and we had an early dinner before heading back to the boardwalk for the holiday sing-along and Christmas tree lighting.

When we reached downtown, Beth went to get soft pretzel bites for North while North and I found a place to sit away from the crowds near the bandstand. We found a bench on the boardwalk where we could hear the singing and see the tree but without standing shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of celebrants. We noticed someone was flying a drone near the tree, presumably to get an overhead view when the lights came on.

Although the other people sitting on boardwalk benches and passing by weren’t singing, we did. The first song was “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” and for a half an hour, there was a series of mainly secular Christmas songs like “Jingle Bells,” “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” At seven sharp, the lights on the tree flashed on, just as they always do. The sameness of this event is deeply satisfying.

On the way home, Beth confirmed that the orange light North and I had been seeing in the sky over the ocean the past two nights was in fact a planet—Mars. We marveled that you could see its color from so very far away.

That night before bed, because I’d had a sore throat all day and I was getting stuffy, I took a covid test. To my surprise, it was negative.

Saturday: Goodbye, Beach

Another morning, another early waking, this time around 5:40, another lovely sunrise on the beach, which I enjoyed along with parents with kids, people with dogs, walkers, runners, and people camped out on the sand wrapped in blankets watching the fiery sun hover at the horizon over the ocean. It’s quite the perq if you have to be up before dawn.

I came home and had breakfast and we packed up the house. Even though he’s busy with end-of-semester projects, Noah texted me the pictures of himself wearing a green t-shirt and standing on an Australian beach that I’d requested. We’ll juxtapose one with our beach photos on the Christmas card.

We stayed in Rehoboth for about an hour after we vacated the house. Beth took her daily walk and North and I had a slower ramble along the beach and boardwalk, with a long rest on a boardwalk bench. It was a wild ride getting to the beach, but once we got there it was actually a sedate couple of days, with more naps and less bustling about in shops than we usually have on Thanksgiving weekend, but I’m glad we went, and I hope it will prove restorative.

Note: Beth and I both tested positive for covid on Sunday morning.

Oregon Equinox

Posted on September 25, 2022 by Steph

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Two days ago, I got back from a week in Oregon, where I was staying at my mom’s house as she recovered from knee surgery. While I was gone, North had their own medical adventure.

Friday: Arrival

The alarm went off at 5:30 so I could catch an 8:30 flight. Medford is small airport, so it always takes two or three flights to get there. I was lucky to only have one layover, in Denver. As I mentioned earlier it was my first flight since covid. The last time was in February 2019, when Noah and I flew to Boston to tour Boston University.

The flights were uneventful. The most notable thing about the first one was that there was a passenger dressed as a jester, complete with the stick with ribbons on it (but no hat) and the most notable thing about the second flight was that I spilled half a can of seltzer all over myself. I also managed to read about a third of Stephen King’s latest, Fairy Tale, which was a nice way to pass the time. There was a tight connection between the two flights, but I made it and arrived in Medford early in the afternoon local time.

My sister Sara, who had been looking after my mom the previous week, picked me up at the airport and took me on a series of errands. We went to Home Depot for mulch because, though she lives in Davis, California now, she and her husband haven’t sold their Ashland house yet, and they’re trying to keep the property looking spruced up. We spread the mulch and she got the sprinklers watering the lawn and fruit trees and then we tried to go to Trader Joe’s, but it was closed because of a power outage.

We went to Mom’s house and socialized for a while. Sara had more errands to do and while she was gone, I took an hour-and-fifteen-minute nap—I’d been up since what would have been 2:30 a.m. in Oregon and I was exhausted. I woke around seven and I could have easily gone back to sleep for the night, but I needed to adjust to Pacific time, plus Sara had made pizza from a kit, so I got up and had dinner with Mom and Sara.

Starting when I was in my early teens, Mom, Sara, and I had pizza every Friday night. My mom was a single working mom, and she was in grad school to boot so she was busy. I’m surprised we didn’t eat takeout more than once a week honestly. The Friday night pizza tradition lived on after my mom married my stepfather and then in my adult family, but it’s been a long, long time (maybe almost forty years?) since it was just me, my sister, and my mother around the table eating pizza on a Friday night. It was nice, like old times, except completely different.

Sara showed me how to help Mom with her PT exercises and how to massage her leg and where things were in the house and then they watched a movie, but they started it at 9:30, and I was considering it an accomplishment to stay awake until ten, so I had a shower and went to bed.

Weekend: Settling In

The next morning, I woke a little after five, which was earlier than I would have liked, but not surprising. I stayed in bed until almost eight, first trying to get back to sleep, then looking at Facebook and blogs and texting with Noah. He’d sent me two dozen pictures he took at a wildlife sanctuary he’d visited with Ida, the other boarder at his house, and some of her friends. There were koalas, kangaroos, capybaras, an ostrich, a lemur, a red panda, a Komodo dragon, a crocodile, and other animals, and the photos were gorgeous. It made me happy he’s getting out and doing things besides going to class and hanging out at his house because he tends to be a homebody.

Sara got up around eight and once we’d both eaten breakfast and talked some she went grocery shopping for me and Mom before heading back to Davis. I went for a walk and got a latte and a small chocolate cookie from a nearby coffeeshop and picked up some things Mom needed from the drug store all the while admiring the mountains that ring Ashland. There’s one arid ridge and one covered with evergreen trees. I knew there were wild blackberry canes all over Ashland from previous visits, but I was surprised to learn they’re still producing edible (and quite tasty) berries in mid-September. I sampled them all week during my rambles.

Over the course of the day, I helped Mom with her exercises twice, massaged her leg, folded laundry, swept the leaves off her porch and driveway, and walked with her to her mailbox (which is in a bank of them a short block from her house). She also folded some laundry and said with satisfaction, “We’re getting things done today.”

It rained a little in the afternoon, which is not so common in Ashland until the fall, but it was almost fall. The equinox was my second to last day there. Fall did seem closer in Ashland than at home anyway. It was cool enough for long sleeves most days and a few vanguard trees were already turning red or orange. Mom and I settled down with our books in the living room and read while the dryer hummed, and rain ran down the windows that look out on her back patio. It was very cozy, and she even dozed in her chair for a bit.

I made chili for dinner, and we watched State of Play, which was the movie Mom and Sara had started but not finished the night before while I was in bed. (Mom wanted to see how it ended so we started it over from the beginning.) It’s a twisty journalistic thriller, good but not great. Because it takes place in D.C. I was occasionally forced to say things like “No one calls it the subway, it’s the Metro.”

Sunday was similar. I did little chores around the house, read, and took a longer walk. I wandered through a cemetery, walked along the railroad tracks, saw a community garden, and ended up near the same coffeehouse where I’d been the day before. This time I got chocolate ice cream with slivered almonds and whipped cream. I made a cream of mushroom soup and salad for dinner, and we watched the first episode of Ken Burns’ The U.S. and the Holocaust. I so seldom watch broadcast tv it felt strange to have to be ready at a specific time. Mom had been experimenting with different levels and timing of her painkillers, trying to balance pain relief and side effects, but as a result of skimping on it, she had some pretty bad pain that evening.

Monday to Thursday: A New Routine

Monday was the first morning I managed to sleep until a time that started with 6, which correlated to feeling rested for the first time, and that was convenient as I started working that day. There was no reason not to, as I had my laptop, a little office with a door that closes (which is more than I have at home) and enough time. Sara left an extra monitor for me, but I found I missed having a mouse. It also would have been nice to be able to figure out how to get my laptop to communicate with Mom’s printer because I am the sort of old school person who likes reading things on paper and marking them up with a pencil.

Monday morning while I was out on an errand to drop off an application for a handicapped parking permit at the DMV (a failed mission, as it turns out that location is closed due to staffing shortages), Mom went for twenty-five-minute walk with her walker alone. One the one hand, I was encouraged she was able to do it, but on the other I wished she’d waited for me to come home so I could accompany her, just in case.

Mom had a physical therapy appointment that day and the good news was her pain and mobility were improving and the swelling in her leg was completely gone. The bad news was she and the therapist thought she wasn’t getting enough flexion in her knee and that scar tissue might be the culprit. They decided to reduce the frequency of PT appointments until she can get a doctor’s opinion about whether she needs a manipulation (or worse, more surgery) so as to save some of the appointments her insurance covers for after further treatment, if needed.

That night I made a stir-fry for dinner, and we watched a PBS show called Animals with Cameras, which is just what it sounds like. We saw footage from cameras mounted on cheetahs’ heads, seals’ backs, and baboons’ necks. The point is to learn something about the animals’ behavior, sometimes just for the sake of science, but sometimes to learn how to possibly alter it (as with baboons who raid farmers’ squash fields and who are in danger of being shot if the scientists can’t get them to stop).

The days rolled on. I worked two or three hours a day and took walks, short ones with Mom, and longer ones alone. I got coffee or tea most days, sometimes at the coffeehouse, once at a Dutch Brothers kiosk in a parking lot because I understand that’s a quintessential Oregon experience, and sometimes at a Starbucks inside a supermarket because it was the closest coffee-selling establishment to Mom’s house. I made a homemade tomato sauce with garden tomatoes a neighbor brought by to eat on whole-wheat spaghetti Tuesday, burgers with side dish of cauliflower, broccoli and carrots with cheese sauce on Wednesday, and a curried zucchini soup Thursday night. We finished watching the Holocaust documentary series and watched some more Animals with Cameras. Whenever Mom introduced me to anyone (a friend from Peace Choir who came by, a neighbor we encountered on a walk, her housecleaner) she told the person I was her daughter who came “all the way from Maryland” to stay with her. She raved about my cooking, even though it seemed pretty run of the mill to me.

By the end of the week, Mom was walking much better, not using her walker at all and only using her cane on walks outside the house, but she was still concerned that if she did need a manipulation, it would set her recovery back.

Meanwhile, At Home

Things were more eventful… Beth and North got the new covid booster on Saturday, the day after I left, and North was tired and achy for days afterward. On Saturday they made a plum pie for the Takoma Park farmers’ market annual pie contest (held for the first time since covid), but by the next day they were feeling too unwell to attend, so Beth delivered it for them. It didn’t win but it was delicious—Beth bought and froze a slice for me so I could have it when I got home. North missed school Monday and Tuesday, mostly because of lower back pain. Then late Tuesday afternoon, North lost the ability to urinate.

If you’ve been reading this blog at least two years, you probably remember this affliction. We still have catheter supplies, but they had expired, I suppose because they can’t guarantee sterility beyond a certain point. Beth and North went to the emergency room, where they had an excruciatingly long wait to be seen. They had an ultrasound in the evening and an MRI the following morning to rule out physical causes. As expected, there was nothing. They arrived in the late afternoon, and it was the middle of the night before anyone would use a catheter to empty North’s bladder so they were quite uncomfortable.

Both Beth and North brought phone chargers to the hospital because this was not their first rodeo in the ER. At first, they couldn’t find an outlet but then North did so I was able to communicate with them throughout the evening and the next day. I felt a little guilty going to bed that night when I knew Beth was likely going to be up all night in the ER (and she was) but not as much as I would have in the past. We learned two years ago how to spell each other by taking turns on hospital nights and while I expected and hoped North would be at home when I got home three days later, I knew there was a small but non-zero chance that I’d be taking a turn sleeping (or not sleeping) in their hospital room at some point.

What I didn’t expect was that Beth and North would be in the ER, not admitted, from Tuesday afternoon until the wee hours of Thursday morning. Apparently, one of the doctors thought they could not be sent home with catheter supplies without retraining both Beth and North on the procedure and this could not happen unless they were admitted. And they could not be admitted because the hospital was over capacity. By the second night, I was starting to feel guilty I wasn’t there. North managed to get several hours sleep here and there but Beth didn’t sleep for forty-three hours, when they were finally trained (without being admitted after all) and sent home with supplies.

North slept most of Thursday and stayed home Friday as well. Beth made arrangements with the school for them to be able to use the nurse’s bathroom when they return next week.

Friday was North’s half-birthday. We always celebrate the kids’ half-birthday with cupcakes, and this year was no exception. Early in the week I asked North to save me one and they said I had to eat one on the right day, so I got an almond flour cupcake with rose frosting from the natural foods store near Mom’s house and sent North a picture of it, as proof I’d honored the day that they tipped closer to seventeen than sixteen. I’ve always enjoyed the fact that their birthdays and half-birthdays occur on or near the equinoxes as the Earth is making a similar transition.

Thursday to Friday: Departure

Thursday evening Sara returned to Ashland, with Dave and Lily-Mei. They were all attending a wedding on Saturday, so they were staying the weekend with Mom (who was also going). Sara drove me to the airport Friday morning. My flight was delayed by twenty minutes, then forty minutes, and finally an hour and twenty minutes, which was concerning because my layover in Denver was exactly that long.

There was plenty of time to observe my fellow travelers before we boarded the plane. I think the prize for most interesting went to the young man wearing a graphic t-shirt with a plague mask (but no mask for our current plague), a necklace with a plastic bird skull, leather bracelets with hardware, and knee-high leather boots with a spider design embossed on them. He was painting with watercolors in a tiny leather-bound book.

I had a window seat and the flight from Medford to Denver was beautiful, with many mountains and canyons. I didn’t read at all and just looked at the landscape unfold beneath me. As the plane approached Denver and then as we sat on the tarmac waiting for an open gate, various passengers with tight connections commiserated about their chances of making their flights. Mine was scheduled to take off about ten minutes after my seatmate’s, so I don’t know if she made her flight to Wisconsin, but I did make mine to Baltimore, even after getting turned around in the airport and having to figure out how to take a train from one concourse to another.

I wasn’t the only passenger with a late flight (or even the last one to arrive) and they held the plane for us. I got to the gate about ten or fifteen minutes after the plane was supposed to have taken off. Then there was a lot of confusion about seat assignments, with someone in my assigned seat and someone else in the next seat the flight attendant thought should be empty. I ended up seated between a woman in a Mennonite-style prayer cap and a man in a ball cap who was cursing and loudly protesting the delays and who later tried to order more than one alcoholic drink (you can only have one). Once the plane took off, he was calm and friendly, but I was nervous about him for a while.

We ended up sitting on the ground for an hour after I was seated because another passenger had to be removed from the plane under mysterious circumstances. Rumor was spreading through the plane that he was on the wrong plane—but how could that even happen? At any rate, he wasn’t belligerent, but he did appear impaired in some way, possibly sick, drunk, or on drugs. I saw him while the flight attendant was taking me all over the plane trying to find a seat for me and his seatmate piped up that she thought he was in the wrong seat. Another mystery—why would you even look at anyone else’s boarding pass—but she said she had.

But the happy ending was my second plane landed around 11:45 p.m. in Baltimore, only about thirty-five minutes late, and even though she was still dragging from having missed a whole night of sleep a few days earlier and I told her I could take a Lyft home, Beth was there to pick me up. Our family may have been scattered between Australia, Oregon, and Maryland on the day the light and dark were equal but being with Beth always helps me feel balanced.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Category Archives: Travel

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

Summertime, Part 2

The Grad Who’s Going Places

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Three Years, Coronavirus Chronicles, Part 79

All the Good Things

Before the Holiday

A Wild Ride: Coronavirus Chronicles, Part 77

Oregon Equinox