One of these mornings
You’re gonna rise up singing
Yes, you’ll spread your wings
And you’ll take to the sky

From “Summertime,” (Porgy and Bess), by George Gershwin

End of School

It’s officially summer break now. School came to a slow, drawn-out end this year. North’s online classes finished a week before the in-person ones did and by the last week of in-person classes only one (Statistics) was actually conducting any educational activities and that class only on Monday. Yesterday, the last day of school, was a half day, and it didn’t seem worth Beth driving them to school for three shortened classes in which not much was going to happen, so they didn’t go.

The year ended on a high note, though. North was pleased to get straight As in their fourth quarter classes, especially Statistics because that was their most difficult class and they had to work for it. In their favorite class, painting, the last assignment of the year was a free choice project. They made a collage of tiny paintings based on photographs of things they’ve baked in recent years—chocolate-marshmallow muffins, an orange cake with candied orange slices on top, chocolate-peppermint cookies, a Black Forest cake, and banana pudding bars. They painted them on polaroid film and strung them across a piece of cardboard on golden wire with little white lights on it. The background is overlapping hand-lettered recipes for the baked goods. It’s very cool.

Speaking of art, North’s cherry blossom painting was displayed at an art show at a local mall last month. We missed it because we were out of town for Noah’s graduation. I was kind of bummed about that.

Even before school ended, we engaged in several summery activities:

Summery Activity #1: Dodging Wildfire Smoke

In one way, summer came early. The wildfire smoke from Canada drifted all the way down to our area about a week and a half ago. This isn’t something we normally experience though I know many of you in Western states and provinces live with it for much of the summer every year, and now it’s starting before it’s even really summer. We only had poor air quality for two days but what I hadn’t realized about living with smoke is how many decisions in entails. When is it bad enough to shut the windows, to mask, to refrain from hanging laundry outside, doing yard work, or sitting on the porch? I guess when it’s a fact of daily life, you develop a system. My sister, who lived in Oregon for many years, told me what her cutoffs were for all these activities, based on the Air Quality Index.

Summery Activity #2: Swimming, Swimming in the Swimming Pool

North and I went swimming two weekends in a row at the Long Branch outdoor pool because the Piney Branch indoor pool where I usually swim laps on Saturdays has been closed for lifeguard training. It’s reminded me how pleasant it is to swim outside. What deters me is that there are fewer dedicated lap lanes and kids are more likely to intrude on them. Also, it’s slightly less conveniently located.

But it’s been nice having North come along, except for one thing and it’s not a little thing. They’ve been harassed by the same two boys both times we went. The second time a lifeguard noticed and made them leave North alone. Because it had happened the week before, I’d been glancing up from my laps every now and then to see if anyone was bothering them, but I missed it when it happened. Apparently, the boys sang a song to them, which when North looked up the lyrics on their phone in the car on the way home caused them to exclaim, “This is a very sexual song… (reading a little further) …Eww!”

Summery Activity #3: Going to Pride

The weekend before school ended was Pride, both in Takoma and in D.C. North went to the D.C. Pride festival with Sol last year and they decided to do it again. They wanted a ride to the Metro, so we decided we’d all swing by Takoma’s much smaller Pride festival before dropping them off. We visited some booths and picked up pins and temporary tattoos. North spun a wheel to learn a trans fact at a trans booth and learned the pronoun “hir” was coined by a writer for the Sacramento Bee in the 1920s, “so it’s not new,” a person staffing the booth informed us.

The farmers’ market was in progress nearby, so we walked through it even though Beth had been shopping at the Silver Spring farmers’ market the day before. We ended up with the first local sweet cherries of the year and two little basil plants to replace a bigger one a squirrel destroyed by digging up its pot and snapping its stem. While we were in downtown Takoma, North got a cold brew and Beth and I got gelato. I went with cherry, to be seasonal. It was very satisfying.

A few hours later North called for ride home from the Metro. They’d amassed a lot of tchotchkes, including heart-shaped stickers with the colors of various Pride flags they’ve used to decorate their walker, a couple rainbow rubber bracelets, Mardi Gras beads, and some 3D printed animals. They said they had fun.

End of School Activity: Cappies Gala

The next day was the Cappies Gala at the Kennedy Center. North has been writing reviews of plays at DC area high schools all year. All the critics who reviewed at least five shows were eligible for vote on the nominees for the award ceremony and they’d voted. North only had two tickets and as Beth had driven North to most of the plays they reviewed, and she could drive other kids, she was the obvious choice to attend.

When I asked how it was, what Beth and North both said first (in separate conversations) was that it was very loud. Apparently, the audience screamed for every nominee and kept it up for three hours. Beth’s ears were still ringing when she woke up the next morning.

Perusing the program, I learned there were awards for: marketing, props, costumes, hair and makeup, choreography, special effects, sound, orchestra, lighting, sets, stage crew, stage management, ensembles, dancers, various kinds of actors (in male roles, female roles, featured, supporting, in a musical, in a play, comic, etc.), vocalists of various kinds, critics, best play, and best musical. There were performances from different shows interspersed between the awards. Beth says the vocalist who sang “I Hate Men,” from Kiss Me Kate was very talented and the scene from Dracula was quite creepy. There was a brief quote from North’s review of Eurydice in the program.

An actor from North’s school won for Vocalist in a Male Role, apparently the first time someone from the school had won a Cappie since 2009. He’d been the lead in My Favorite Year this spring.

Cappies has been a good experience for North. They’re thinking of doing it again next year and if they do, the theater director told them they might be lead critic for their school.

End of School Celebration

Thursday afternoon North came home from school, finished with eleventh grade. They folded laundry, rode the exercise bike, made a tofu and broccoli stir-fry for dinner, watched an episode of Gilmore Girls with us, and took a bath.

The next day they mostly took it easy, and I knocked off work early so we could go to the movies. We took the bus to Silver Spring, North started the festivities with a chai, and we saw North’s friend Norma, who came over to chat while they were drinking it. (Silver Spring was hopping that day. Later in the expedition we saw Zoë.)

Then we went to see The Blackening. We decided on this film because North wanted to see it and Beth doesn’t like horror, so she wouldn’t be missing anything. It was fun. I liked the way it played with horror movie tropes (especially, but not entirely, racialized ones). There was some commentary, too, about the social and personal cost of trying to determine who or what is Blackest. That was the point of the movie, but I think I missed a few African American in-jokes because a few times the (about half Black) audience was laughing and I had no idea why. I didn’t mind that, though. That’s what makes something an in-joke.

When the movie was over, we met Beth at Matchbox and had pizza on their patio. It was a pretty evening to eat outside, warm but not hot or humid, and predicted rain did not materialize. From there we went to Ben and Jerry’s (where we saw Zoë) and then home with a detour back to Ben and Jerry’s when I realized I’d left my backpack hanging off a chair—much to my relief no one stole it. 

At home we watched the first hour of Sister Act. I’d nominated this for family movie night in hopes that we’d watch it before North reviewed Sister Act for Cappies, but that happened in April. Based on what we’ve watched so far, North says the plot is about the same in the musical.

Dispatch from Los Angeles

Noah’s internship seems to be going well. It’s at a production company that makes documentary films. He’s been on a couple shoots I know about so far. One was interviewing a lawyer who specializes in the Americans with Disability Act. The last one was in San Diego at the Lacrosse World Games where they filmed an indigenous lacrosse team.

The company is very small operation—a filmmaker plus an intern (currently Noah) on the smaller shoots, and temporary crews hired on an as needed basis for bigger shoots. The filmmaker told him he was used to interns being “slower and less capable” than he is, which is an oddly backwards way to give someone a compliment, but there you go. The filmmaker also went out of his way to secure extra funding so Noah could come along on an out-of-town shoot.

The timing of the shoot means Noah won’t be able to come up to Davis while North and I are there visiting my mom and my sister’s family in early July, which I’d been hoping he could do. I’m sad about that, but also happy that he has this opportunity. Some of his peers from Ithaca who came to L.A. haven’t been able to find internships yet—the writers’ strike has made it very difficult—so I’m glad he did.

When he’s not working, he’s been exploring his environs and socializing. He attended a few plays at an experimental theater festival in Hollywood and he went to a birthday party for another Ithaca student, someone he knew from his IT job at school.

Noah’s summer is underway, and North’s is beginning. Next week they’re volunteering at a day camp at their old preschool and the week after that, they’re headed to the Johnson and Wales University campus in Charlotte, North Carolina, to participate in a two-day culinary program for high school students. It should give them an idea what it’s like to work in a culinary lab.

Both kids are spreading their wings and taking to the sky for trips long and short. I am very proud of both of them.