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.