We had a two-week interlude between our trip to the beach and the next trip, to Wheeling for a family reunion, where we are now.
The last weekend in July, a week after we got back from the beach, North came home from camp on Friday evening and stayed until Sunday morning, as per usual. Saturday was a busy day. North and El had breakfast in the city and then El came over and they watched a movie. After lunch, Beth, North and I went berry picking. Noah opted to stay home and participate in an online gaming event.
We intended to get blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries, but though all these berries were listed as available on the website and again when we checked in at the farm entrance, once we’d picked blackberries, we learned the blueberry fields were closed. I don’t know if they ran out while we were picking blackberries or if the staff at the gate didn’t have up-to-date information. We knew we were cutting it close, as blueberry season, which used to last until August when the kids were small, seems to end in late July now, if it lasts that long. I’m guessing it’s climate change.
But it might have been just as well there were only two kinds of berries to pick because we were kind of rushed for time. On arrival, we visited the snack bar and got a blueberry hand pie with ice cream to share and then we picked two quarts of blackberries and two pints of raspberries. In the blackberries, North and I were sharing a container, so we stuck together, and they told me amusing stories from camp. The berries were kind of sparse and we sometimes wished we had Noah with us to reach the high ones. I told North I was getting my stretching in for the day. It was easier picking in the raspberry field, and we were in and out of there quickly. We dashed into the farm market afterward and got blueberry jam, cheese, pretzels, a slice of blueberry cake for me, and a mixed berry slushy for North.
The reason we were on a schedule was because Beth was going on an evening kayak tour of the monuments on the Potomac, and she had to get there by six, which meant getting home by four-thirty. She said it was a lot of fun and she got some beautiful pictures. While she was gone, Noah and I made a soba noodle salad with shiitake, tofu, and broccoli, which North praised with unusual enthusiasm. I think they were getting tired of the food at camp after six weeks of eating it. After dinner, we watched Teen Beach Movie. They showed it at camp and North had to miss it to stay with a kid who was afraid to watch it (if you’ve seen it, you will find this as puzzling as we did—it’s a rated G Disney movie aimed at tweens). North had FOMO about it, so we indulged them.
The next morning, we said goodbye to North again until the following Friday. I had a nice, low-key summer Sunday. I took my daily walk in weather that was hot but not miserably humid, read, and napped. Beth made gumbo for dinner and then we watched the Olympics.
Another work week rolled by. Beth and I continued to watch swimming and diving and gymnastics every night through Thursday, and the kittens often watched with us, sitting on the coffee table in front of the television. When the U.S. women’s gymnastics team won gold and were all high fiving each other, Willow jumped up and put her paw on the tv screen right over their hands, then she chased the flag they were carrying around.
It only took us five days to eat up all the raspberries and half the blackberries (the other half I’d frozen for future baking plans). Not satisfied with our higher-than-average berry consumption, I made a blueberry kuchen with grocery store blueberries on Wednesday, freezing a quarter of that for North, who came home again on Friday evening.
That night, we watched a little track and field and talked about camp. North always needs to vent a little when they get home. They always enjoyed sleep-away camp as a camper, both at Scout camp and elsewhere, so they’ve been surprised at how many kids are homesick or don’t want to be there for other reasons. Those kids are a small minority, but they take up a lot of the counselors’ time and North had one in their group who’d been a handful. They did say all the others were “angel children.” Then they took a shower—something they sometimes only manage once in a week at camp because they are so busy—and emerged from the bathroom, exclaiming, “I feel so clean!”
Saturday morning Beth and I left a little after ten a.m. for our next adventure, leaving North to do laundry, play with the kittens, write goodbye notes to be distributed to other camp staff members at the end of the last week of camp, attend a belated graduation party for El Saturday night, and then to take a Lyft to the camp bus stop Sunday morning. I’d drawn up a page-long to-do list for Noah, divided into categories such as “Kitten maintenance: #1 priority—Don’t let the cats die” and “Garden Maintenance: #2 priority—Don’t let the garden die.”
It seemed very strange to drive away, leaving the kids and the kittens behind. It wasn’t a couple’s trip—we’d be in a group of several dozen people– but we haven’t taken a trip longer than a weekend getaway without the kids since before Noah was born. We really are entering a new phase of life, one in which the times when the four of us are together are more interludes than the stuff of everyday life. I am having trouble getting my head around that.