Investigations and Celebrations

During the first two weeks of May we kept ourselves busy following up with a university we recently visited, touring another one, and having two celebrations.

Investigation #1: JWU Meeting

The first week of May was exhausting. I had more work than usual and North had a bunch of appointments, mostly medical. On Tuesday we were out of the house for six hours straight. It didn’t help that all three of us were sick with a cold that passed from Beth to me to North.

On the first Friday in May, we had a Zoom meeting with two professors and an administrator at Johnson and Wales to discuss the physical requirements of the baking and pastry arts program and what kind of accommodations North might receive if accepted into it. The meeting wasn’t definitive—the professors didn’t say North’s chronic pain and mobility issues wouldn’t be an issue, but they also didn’t say they couldn’t succeed in the program. It was more of an exploratory discussion on both sides.

The JWU folks seemed open to rest breaks at scheduled intervals but concerned that a cane or crutch might be in the way in a busy kitchen. We mentioned we are pursuing the possibility getting orthotics for North’s shoes, knee braces, and/or a compression suit for their torso that might allow them to stand and walk for longer periods without mobility aids. Finally, we said we were thinking of enrolling North in JWU’s two-day summer program for high school students at the Charlotte campus so they could get a real-world taste of what it’s like to work in a culinary lab. Everyone seemed to think this was an excellent idea, so we signed them up. They’ll be headed to North Carolina the last week in June.

Investigation #2: Towson University Open House

Towson University, which is located just north of Baltimore, about an hour from our house, had an Open House the next day. We left the house at 7:45 a.m., which is early for us to be out and about on a Saturday, or it is for me and North. Beth was up in time to eat breakfast and go for an abbreviated version of her usual morning walk, but North and I are not early birds. To ensure I’d eat breakfast, I made myself overnight oats, two boiled eggs, two vegetarian sausage links, and a thermos of red zinger tea to consume in the passenger seat of the car. I don’t think North had breakfast at all.

Towson is a large state school. We were visiting because I asked North to add another state school to the mix. The event started with an overview presentation in a ballroom. Then we went on a campus tour. North had requested a slower tour when they registered, but unlike at Saint Mary’s, nothing came of that request. Fortunately, North was able to keep up with the tour guide, but they complained a bit about the hilliness of campus. (I counted it as a point in St. Mary’s favor that they were more responsive to answers given on their own online form.)

Towson has a pretty campus, leafy, with plentiful green space and a lot of red brick buildings in different architectural styles. Their mascot is the tiger, and they are serious about it. Tiger statues abound. We didn’t go inside many buildings—no dorm room, dining hall or classroom, though we did go into a science building where we saw an anatomy lab full of plastic body parts, and a lot of spiders in glass cages and fish in aquariums. (We were not taken to the cadaver lab, but we learned there is one.) Beth and I both feel that campus tours don’t show you the inside of the facilities as extensively they did five years ago. She speculated it was a covid-era change that was never reversed.

After the tour we attended presentations on the College of Liberal Arts and the Honors College. We also visited tables to pick up literature about Accessibility and Disability Services and the school’s impressive selection of study-abroad programs. By twelve-thirty, we were finished. North said it seemed like “a nice school,” but they’re not sure they want to go somewhere so big (21,000 students). I made a plug for the Honors College, because if they got in, they’d be part of a smaller community (about 700 students), who take some of their classes together and live in the same dorm their first year.

Celebration #1: Birthday

I turned fifty-six the following Thursday. Until evening it was a normal weekday. Deciding I had time for one chore in the morning and deliberating whether to sweep and mop the kitchen floor, mow the lawn, or replant my sunflower seedlings into bigger pots, I went with the easiest and most pleasant option. When I went out to the patio table where the seedlings are currently living, I was surprised to see two of the six of the cucumbers, which I’d planted two and a half weeks earlier and which I’d about given up on, were poking up through the dirt. That felt like my first present. (Two more sprouts have since joined them.)

In the afternoon I worked on a blog post about astragalus for heart health in Traditional Chinese Medicine, but I knocked off early to meet North at their bus stop because we’d arranged to walk from there to Starbucks so I could claim my birthday reward. North got some kind of tea-juice concoction. They like to invent new drinks there, by customizing existing drinks on the app, often trying to maximize their stars. I got an iced latte and the new bee cake pop. I didn’t want anything too extravagant because there would be cupcakes after dinner.

North made both my birthday dinner and the cupcakes. We had vegetarian chicken cutlets with gravy and roast asparagus. (North had peas instead because they don’t like asparagus, but they roasted it perfectly nonetheless.) The cupcakes were chocolate with my favorite frosting—fresh strawberry buttercream. I request it more often than not on my birthday.

I opened presents next. From the kids I got three books: Circe, Parable of the Talents, and Don’t Fear the Reaper. I later learned one of those last two was my Mother’s Day present from Noah and I shouldn’t have opened it then. Oh well. For further reading when I finish those, mom got me a gift certificate for a bookstore that opened recently in Silver Spring. My sister got me two jars of fancy nut butters (I’ve tried the chai spiced peanut-almond butter and it’s good). Beth’s mom had a tree planted for me in a national forest and Beth got a new cushion with an abstract leafy pattern for the wicker chair on the porch and a promise of a new hanging basket for the big philodendron that spends the summer and early fall on the porch. So now while I’m reading my new books and eating toast with nut butter out there, it will be even prettier.

I had to rush through the cupcakes and present opening a little because I had book club that night. In fact, I realized later that in my haste, when I blew out the candles, I forgot to make a wish. Because I knew time was tight, I’d asked ahead of time for someone else to do the dinner dishes, as an additional birthday present. I left it to Beth and North to decide who would do it and North stepped up. It was nice to eat dinner and leave to discuss So Long, See You Tomorrow, without having to squeeze in this chore or come home to sink full of dishes. (Thanks, kiddo.)

Interlude: Before Mother’s Day

Beth was out of town for most of Mother’s Day weekend. She went up to Ithaca to help Noah pack up some of his belongings and to bring them (but not him) home so when we travel back there next weekend for his graduation and then back home, there will be room in the car for the four of us. She left Friday morning and returned Sunday afternoon.

I was feeling kind of sad about not seeing Noah on Mother’s Day, but then late Friday morning Noah texted me during the last fifteen minutes of his final IT work shift, which was slow apparently, because we chatted for the next half hour, which felt like a nice, long time, and just what I needed. (I’m not sure if he stayed at work or texted while he walked home.) Right before work he’d turned in his last assignment, for Machine Learning, so the first and fourth texts read: “I’ve finished college” and “In 15 minutes I’ll be unemployed too.”

He didn’t get the internship he interviewed for on his birthday. What with the writers’ strike, it’s not a good time to be looking for a video editing internship in Los Angeles, but he’s going to keep looking. We talked about that, and I gave him some updates from home.

Over the weekend I got a lot of one-on-one time with North, who fortunately didn’t get a headache on Friday or Saturday. Friday night, we ordered pizza and watched the first movie in the Fear Street trilogy, which is not great art, but fun, and not the sort of film Beth would enjoy. On Saturday morning North had therapy in Silver Spring. They took the bus there and I swept and mopped the kitchen floor, then got on another bus and met them there. We went to the farmers’ market, where we bought some excellent strawberries, the very last two boxes for sale, as the market was closing soon. As I approached the stand, I saw a young woman grab the third-to-last last box and take off without paying for it. I’ve never seen anyone do that at a farmers’ market and it made me wonder how often it happens.

Next, we headed to the movie theater. We saw Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. North asked me afterward if it was faithful to the book, as they haven’t read it. I hesitated to answer because I haven’t read the book since the 1970s and my recall of it is not perfect. But I said it’s faithful to the way I remember it, both the plot and tone, plus the acting was good and the portrayals of Margaret’s relationships with her parents and grandmother are warm and endearing and wholesome. And as someone only eight years younger than Margaret, there’s some good 70s nostalgia there. North liked it, too—two thumbs up from us.

We got home and I made some applesauce because we had a couple apples with soft spots, and we each cobbled together a dinner out of leftovers and said applesauce. Not satisfied with two movies in one weekend, we watched the second installment of the Fear Street trilogy that evening.

Celebration #2: Mother’s Day

On Sunday morning I went to the Takoma Park farmers’ market in hopes of finding a few vegetables I couldn’t find in Silver Spring, but I couldn’t find them there either. To keep it from being a wasted outing, I bought myself a strawberry-yogurt smoothie and walked to the co-op where I bought a few items. Then I came home and mowed the lawn, finally finishing the chores I’d contemplated two days earlier. North had to go to school for a Cappies’ meeting to vote on year-end awards for the plays they’ve been reviewing all year. I took them there in a Lyft and waited in a nearby Starbucks where I wrote a lot of this.

Beth got home while we were out, bearing brownies Noah made for her Mother’s Day present. When North and I got back I helped her unload Noah’s things from the car, including a very large television he bought for himself several months ago. Then we ordered Mexican/Salvadoran takeout so no one would have to cook on Mother’s Day. Beth and I split an order of spinach enchiladas and North got bean pupusas.

Before we ate, we opened our presents from North. They got Beth some gourmet salt and a bunch of dark chocolate bars and they got me a jar of macadamia-coconut butter and this original painting from a photo of Rehoboth Beach, which I love. After dinner, we watched an episode of Gilmore Girls (we’re near the beginning of season 5) and then North and I talked to my mom on the phone and Mother’s Day was a wrap.

On Sunday afternoon when Noah finished at the Cappies meeting and let me know they were ready to go, I accidentally sent Noah a text meant for them that said “Okay. I’ll head over,” then told him to disregard it because I was not in fact heading over to Ithaca and he responded, “In less than a week you are,” which is a cheering thought. All the early-to-mid-May family celebrations—his birthday, mine, Mother’s Day—feel a little off without him. It will be good to see him for several days and celebrate his graduation before he flies off to investigate what Los Angeles holds for him.