First Week
We got back from Wyandotte the third Monday in July and over the next few days I started to settle into a routine. I got back to work, writing web copy for a vitamin and mineral line and a purple tea product. I took walks in the neighborhood or Wheeling Park every day. I read two issues of The Atlantic cover to cover and realized I am more likely to read it when there’s a paper copy available. (I’d also read some of my mother’s copy of a different issue at the beach.) This has made me think we should switch our digital subscription to a print one.
On Tuesday, Beth’s aunt Carole and cousin Sean invited us to go to the public library to hear Palestinian poet Zeina Azzam read, and we didn’t go but it was streamed so Beth’s mom and I watched it while we ate lunch. Beth did water exercises in the condo complex’s pool most days and I joined her a couple times, but I found I wasn’t as motivated to swim laps without my Fitbit (it broke in June), so I ordered a used one, plus a kickboard in hopes that these purchases would help get me into a swimming routine.
Beth took her mom to a few medical appointments, and they also went to the farmers’ market in Washington, PA with Carole on Thursday, and to the Grecian Festival on Friday, bringing back food for dinner. We didn’t eat it until Saturday, though, because that night Beth and I went to What’s Your Queer History?: A Night of Storytelling and Comedy at the Capitol Theater Ballroom downtown.
This was a fundraiser for the Friendlier City Project and NAMI. There was a buffet dinner and seven local people, who ranged in age from a twenty-something to a senior citizen, did stand-up, based on their personal experiences, with photographs of their younger selves projected on a screen behind them. They were coached over the course of several days by a professional stand-up comedian, who did his own set at the end of the event. I thought all the amateurs did a great job, especially considering they were all brand new to comedy. Their sets were funny and moving and relatable (and some were on the raunchy side). Topics ranged from coming out and love stories to struggles with substance abuse and mental health.
Saturday morning Beth and I went to Goodwill to buy shorts. I’d packed light when I came to Wheeling, because I was trying to do it without checking bags and I soon realized I didn’t have enough socks or underwear. I ordered these online, and Beth bought me some plastic sandals for the pool because I hadn’t brought any pool-appropriate shoes. Then when one of the two pairs of shorts that I’d packed ripped, I decided I needed to replace them. I ended up with a pair of jeans, too, and Beth got a long-sleeved shirt. After that, I was set for clothes.
That afternoon Beth and her mom and I went to the Marshall County Fair (one county over). We wandered through the animal barns, looking at cows, sheep, goats, and rabbits; admired prize-winning vegetables, canned goods and baked goods in the 4H building; rode the Ferris Wheel; and got ice cream. We won’t make it to the much bigger Montgomery County Fair at home this year and I had no interest in the fake Great American State Fair on the mall earlier this summer, so it was nice to go to a real county fair. It was also a little romantic because the summer Beth and I were twenty and newly in love, we went to the similarly sized Lorain County Fair in Ohio, and we joked about running away with it. (I was about to leave for a semester in Spain, and I was half-regretting that decision because it would take me away from her.)
On Sunday morning we had a video call with the kids. We’ve been having these calls from three locations since mid-June, and I’ve been moving through the locales, the only one of us to have participated from all three—as of that day I’d done five calls from Takoma Park with Noah, one in Wyandotte with Beth and North, and now the first one in Wheeling with Beth. That felt like a strange little milestone.
After lunch Beth and her mom and I went to the Italian Festival in hopes of finding some food to bring home for dinner. It did not disappoint. We came home with an eggplant parmesan sub, gnocchi with alfredo sauce, apricot cheesecake, and a slice of chocolate-hazelnut cake. We strolled along the river past the craft booths and thought about staying to hear some music at the stage, but the next group wasn’t starting for a while, so we headed back.
Beth went to tread water in the pool that afternoon, as was her wont. By then my new (to me) Fitbit had arrived, though not the kickboard. I’d taken a walk in the morning and had walked around the Italian Festival as well, so I wasn’t short on exercise, but I joined her in the pool and swam for fifteen or twenty minutes anyway. Then I read in one of the lounge chairs until it started to drizzle and we left.
Second Week
Beth’s mom had a couple medical appointments, including a late afternoon one in Morgantown on Monday, so she and Beth had dinner there afterward. I had the house to myself for five hours. Left to my own devices, I had grilled cheese and leftover green beans for dinner and finished reading The 1619 Project, which felt like a satisfying way to spend an evening.
Over the course of the week, I wrote web copy for creatine and silicium and started a blog post about heart health. I’d been working on my laptop from a recliner and later a camp chair in our bedroom and on Wednesday, Beth’s mom fetched a card table from storage and Beth set up a nice workspace for me. I swiped a chair from the dining room, and it was complete. It’s nice to have room to spread out papers, and the table faces the green space in the middle of the condo complex.
That same day after I finished working, I was walking from the condo to the pool to meet up with Beth and her mom when I spied Carole’s daughter Meg, who had recently arrived for a two-week visit, on Carole’s porch. So, I dropped in on them and chatted with Carole, Meg, and Meg’s daughter Holly. When I got to the pool Beth and her mom had left, but I decided to stay to soak my feet and legs in the water and then read my next, lighter book in one of the lounge chairs. My kickboard arrived Thursday evening, so I got a chance to use it on Friday.
Removed from domestic chores (except laundry and cooking, which Beth and I have been sharing, much to her mother’s delight), and I guess because I wasn’t reading the Post every day, I found I had more time to read other things. I finished The Formidable Miss Cassidy Thursday afternoon at the pool and found myself almost out of books. Partly this was because Beth and her mom were watching The Residence at night and I bowed out of that because I just couldn’t bear to watch a show set in the White House. It’s set in the future but was written before the current occupant of the White House tore down a third of it, and Beth says she thought the intact East Wing might have been too much for me. Anyway, she says it’s good if you’re interested and not as sentimental about iconic D.C. architecture as I am.
We went on a couple evening outings—for ice cream on Wednesday night and to a weekly free concert in Wheeling Park on Friday night. They have these at the bandstand in Wheeling Park from late May through early September. We got pizza from a stand and listened to a country singer called Gage Joseph sing covers (one by Zac Brown) and originals. It was a pretty evening, warm but not hot, and it was nice to listen to live music.
While we were listening to the band, I was watching a gaggle of middle and elementary school-age girls trying to execute a shaky cheerleading-style pyramid, with the smaller girls taking turns on the top. From their execution, I’d guess they had some but not a lot of training, maybe a week of cheer camp. They were giving it the old college try, though, and I had to admire their persistence and enthusiasm. When we got home, we watched the first half of Enola Gay 3, which was entertaining.
Saturday was a busy day. In the morning Beth and I went on a very productive series of errands—to the farmers’ market, the public library where I used her mom’s card to check out Lord of the Flies and Emma (feeling like a teen tackling her summer reading list a few weeks before school starts), a fruit market, a cheese shop, a bakery, and a coffeeshop, where I got a latte to bring home. The last three stops were all under one roof, in a charming old market house.
Soon after returning with our spoils, we headed back to Wheeling Park for the Wheeling Arts Festival. It was bigger than I expected, with food, multiple stages with live music and other acts, craft booths, and readings. We got vegetarian hot dogs and ice cream for lunch. I took a risk on a strawberry shake because I’d been craving one and I hadn’t had a milkshake in the almost five years since my diabetes diagnosis. I went rather high on it but not out of range (a fifteen-minute walk four times around the little pond in the park soon after probably helped), so I considered the experiment a success. Beth’s mom bought a Mothman magnet for Noah because he was into the West Virginian mythical creature when he was a kid; Beth got some reusable cloth bags for bulk food with patterns of corn and flowers block printed on them; and I got four stickers to put on my water bottle. I chose one that reminded me of each family member: ocean waves for me, a mountain stream for Beth, a turtle for Noah, and a heron for North. (These animals were their symbols in preschool, and I have remained attached to them as totems for each kid.) I got the bottle at Niagara Falls, so it has a picture of the falls on it, which gave me the idea to build a pleasing watery theme around that image, plus it’s a water bottle.
We ran into Carole’s family at the festival and sat with Carole, Sean, Meg, and Holly to listen to series of bands. There was a jazz trio, a Latin band, and a hip hop group. During the Latin band’s medley of “Guantamanera” and “La Bamba,” I was watching two kids dancing on the back seat of a paddle boat on the pond that a man, presumably their dad, was paddling. I found it amusing that they were wearing life jackets while engaged in this risky behavior. Anyway, they didn’t fall into the water. We did get a little wet, though, because it started to sprinkle, and kept it up on and off for a couple hours. It was the lightest possible rain, though, and kind of refreshing.
At four we all left the music stage and went to see a reading of selected works by Edgar Allan Poe by an actor dressed as Poe and accompanied by another man carrying a giant raven head and wings on a stick. He read mostly poems: “Annabel Lee,” “The Raven,” “Lenore,” etc., and one story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and in between took questions, mostly autobiographical, from the audience. He was committed to his role and quite dramatic in his readings. I used to teach Poe and most of what he read was deeply familiar and close to my heart.
Toward the end the rain started to come down harder and the audience crowded under a nearby tent with the actor as he continued. Carole, Meg, Sean, Holly, and I were either under the tent or under the shelter of a nearby tree, but Beth and her mom were further away on a patio where they’d settled because the chairs were more comfortable. They couldn’t hear much after the reading moved into the tent, so they took advantage of a break in the rain to start their walk home. We ordered Italian that night and finished watching Enola Holmes 3.
Sunday was more low-key. We had a call with North, which Noah couldn’t join because he had to work. Beth went grocery shopping and I read half of Lord of the Flies. My reason for reading it was that Noah and I recently watched the television adaptation and as I hadn’t read the book since I was a teenager, I wanted to see how the show compares. Pretty faithfully but more fleshed out, is my judgement, at least as regards the first three-quarters, which is how far I am now.
Sunday evening Carole celebrated her eighty-ninth birthday with a dinner at the Garden Bistro at Oglebay Park with two of her three sisters, both of her children, one of her six grandchildren, a cousin, a niece, a nephew, and a couple in-laws. Holly (the grandchild) took the picture of the rest of us.
We were to be seated on the patio, then rain caused the restaurant to push our reservation time back because earlier outside diners had to be moved inside and that created a shortage of tables. The rain had cleared by the time we arrived, and we had hoped to eat outside and be able to hear the Eagles tribute band playing at the amphitheater adjacent to the restaurant, but at the very last minute, the show was canceled. People headed back to their cars carrying camp chairs, thinking we were going to the concert, kept telling us the show was canceled as we made our way to the restaurant. We were initially seated outside, but when the rain started back up, we moved inside, but not before taking pictures of the big rainbow in the hills behind the restaurant. A couple people commented it was a good omen for Carole’s upcoming ninetieth year.
Several of us (including me and Beth) got the burrata-stuffed tomato, which sat on a bed of rye crumbs with a puddle of pesto and pine nuts next to it. The chef came to the table to cut them open. It was quite the production and tasty, too. For dessert, Sean, Meg, and Holly brought a beautiful cake from a local bakery, lemon with Swiss meringue frosting. We all thought the flowers pressed into the sides were real, edible flowers at first, but the eventual consensus was that they were made of paper. It was a lovely effect, though.
During dessert, Carole and her cousin Richard told stories about how both of their sets of parents met, how both of Richard’s parents served in World War II (she was an army nurse), and Carole’s memories of traveling to see Richard’s father off when she was five or six and how eating ice cream in a hotel seemed like a special treat back then.
The restaurant staff offered Carole and those traveling in her car a ride to the car in a golf cart, which I think she enjoyed. As we left, we admired the mist wreathing the hills in the aftermath of the rain.
Upcoming Travel
We might be leaving in a couple days to take a brief trip home. After we moved North from Oberlin to Wyandotte in May, we took some of their stuff home and we need to fetch it so we can bring it back to Oberlin when North’s job ends in a few weeks. We were originally thinking of doing it all in one massive road trip (WV to MD to MI to OH to WV). But since Beth needs to get the car that she bought before I got here inspected and the title transferred in Maryland and she has appointments to do those things Western Maryland on Thursday, she’ll be partway home anyway, and it made more sense to do this part of the trip now. It will also give us a chance to spend a couple days with Noah, and the cats, and the garden. I am looking forward to seeing all of them.