May Day
Often on May Day I will go to downtown Takoma Park in the morning, get a coffee and a pastry and watch the Morris Dancers usher in the second half of spring. During the first spring of the pandemic, back when North was more actively Wiccan, we built a Maypole and promenaded around it. This year instead of celebrating the pagan aspects of the holiday, we embraced the more political side of May Day and attended not one, but two protests.
The first rally was in support of immigrants. I met Beth at her office, and we took the Metro to Franklin Square where the rally started. It was supposed to go from 11:30 to 3:00, but Beth needed to work before and after, so we showed up at Franklin Square at noon. The sound system (which had been working early on, we learned from one of Beth’s colleagues), had given out and speakers were trying, with limited success, to make themselves heard with bullhorns and microphones.
But it was a warm, sunny day and there were a lot of people Beth knew from work, and interesting people-watching, as there often is at these events. I especially liked a cardboard cutout of Trump labeled “Liar” with flames that emerged from and retracted back into his pants. It was operated with a lever, I think.
I noticed a lot of images of butterflies, abstract purple ones on little hand-held signs and big fabric monarch butterflies that people were carrying. You can see one in the middle ground of the first photo—between me and the White House. I asked one person with a little sign what it meant, and she said she didn’t know, someone had given it to her. Beth guessed that it was probably a symbol for migrants because some species of butterflies migrate and it turned out she was right. (I married a smart cookie.)
Around twelve-thirty, we began a long, round-about march to Lafayette Square in front of the White House. It took an hour and a half to get there, and we walked through our old neighborhood, where we lived from 1991 to 2002, a time span that included the first year of Noah’s life. When we passed within a half-block of our apartment building, we peeled off the march to pay homage to it. Beth noted that in the twenty-three years since we lived there, the gingko trees that line the block have grown taller. It wasn’t the only change—the commercial blocks of 14th Street have an almost completely different set of businesses than when we lived there. Beth suspected we were walking down 14th Street so we could chant “What’s disgusting? Union busting” at a restaurant that’s been trying to stops its employees from unionizing.
Once we turned onto R St, the gracious townhouses and old apartment buildings looked more familiar. On 16th Street we passed NEA and AFL-CIO headquarters, where staff stood outside their buildings with signs. We cheered them, they cheered us, and then they joined the march. (There was support from passers-by along the route, too.)
We didn’t stay long at Lafayette Square once we got there because Beth needed to squeeze in a couple hours of work before the next rally. I had brought my laptop, thinking I might work, too, but I forgot the notes I needed at home, so I ate the lunch I’d packed, read a few sections of the Post I’d brought with me, and started writing this.
By four-twenty, Noah had arrived at the office to accompany us to a labor rally. Beth was in a meeting, but we left as soon as she was ready. We proceeded to Freedom Plaza. As we approached, I noted that there was an ice cream truck and that I had already walked 18,000 steps that day (by bedtime, I was up to 21,000 steps) and according to my monitor, my blood sugar was getting low and falling quickly. “Do you need ice cream?” Beth asked. I said I did, and I got some for myself and Noah, too. Beth had been so busy at her office she had only just eaten lunch, so she abstained.
The sound system was better at this rally so we could hear speakers from various unions and workers who were organizing. We heard from a kindergarten teacher, a bartender, a flight attendant, and others. There most notable Trump cutout at this rally portrayed him as a vampire, with blood running down his face. We left around six, though the event was supposed to continue until eight. We were footsore and my legs had chafed from all the walking, and I needed to get dinner started.
Birthday
Two days later, Noah turned twenty-four. We got the party started a day early by going out for our traditional Friday night pizza at his choice of restaurant—Roscoe’s, followed by gelato, and then we came home and watched La chimera. I’d asked Noah if he wanted to draw a movie from the pile of index cards on which we’ve written the names films we’ve agreed to watch (this would be the normal procedure) or if he’d like to watch the one that he’d contributed. He opted to leave it to chance. Beth said later, “I could have predicted that,” and pleasingly, it turned out he picked his own movie.
Saturday morning Beth made the cake, chocolate with fresh strawberry buttercream, and Noah watched car racing. In the afternoon, Beth and I both painted the fence—this project is ongoing—but we excused him from fence duty since it was his birthday. We took a break in the mid-afternoon to eat the cake and for him to open his presents. He got an upgraded membership to a podcast he likes, a t-shirt from a show he likes, and three books (two from the Discworld series and one from the Murderbot series) with more presents still to arrive. Over the course of the day, he talked and texted with both grandmothers and North.
That evening we set out for the city, to have dinner at a Chinese-Japanese-Peruvian fusion restaurant Noah chose and to the D.C. Film Festival to watch an Icelandic film. (Noah had been to the festival earlier in the week to see a movie, in his words about “a Turkish phone sex operator who has to coordinate a disaster response.”)
At dinner we got several dishes to share—yucca fries, cilantro dumplings filled with squash, Brussels sprouts in a chili glaze, cauliflower, a deep-fried egg (crunchy on the outside and soft inside), and fried rice decorated with watermelon rind cut into the shapes of little airplanes. The dish is called “Aeroporto” (Airport). For dessert, Noah and I tried the national dessert of Peru—a custard made of sweetened condensed milk with passionfruit shaved ice and meringue sticks on top. Everything was very good. If you’re local, it’s worth a visit. Our only complaint was that the fried rice dish was supposed to come with egg noodles and none were in evidence.
The movie was about a middle-aged trans woman, the main cook at a seafood restaurant in a fishing village, and how her relationship with her best friend, the owner of the restaurant, changes when she comes out. The friend is also coming to grips with his own struggling marriage and his relationship with his gay teenage son and the restaurant is undergoing significant changes, too. It was well done, and I recommend it if it’s streaming any time soon.
Beth and I are early-to-bed types, so the movie kept us up past our bedtime, but it was a fun evening and worth it to celebrate the birth of our eldest. And with my birthday and Mother’s Day in less than a week, more celebration is on the horizon.