Category: Travels with a Daughter

I am a single parent with a teenager on the autism spectrum and travel is one of my passions. Travel is a wonderful, educational experience for typical children, and my hunch that Julia would learn and grow with travel experiences was rewarded last summer in Italy. So, I am on a mission to teach Julia about the world—one trip at a time!

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It is Indigenous Peoples Day. We are in Vermont, ready to leave today to return home. Julia’s day center is closed today. It will rain for most of today and tomorrow. I hope to stop to do some food shopping on our way home and make butternut squash soup for tonight’s dinner.

There the scene is set. 

It disturbs me greatly that trump proclaimed today a celebration of “the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization, and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth.” It goes on to say that “[u]pon his arrival, he planted a majestic cross in a mighty act of devotion, dedicating the land to God and setting in motion America’s proud birthright of faith.”

Why does he—or they because that man cannot speak a single coherent sentence. There are way too many grammatically correct sentences and way too much warped “history” to believe that trump had anything to do with the drafting of his proclamation.— but why does he need to lie ALL of the time?

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Shelburne, Vermont. Definitely morning frost. And thank goodness it also turned chili at home before we left. The extra sweatshirt thrown into the bags at the last minute will be used!

Ed and I are ensconced in a sweet and small B&B owned by an architect turned painter and her husband, who is very nice, but I haven’t drilled him on his work life. Yet.

Julia is at Zeno Mountain Farm for a five-day, four-night weekend. She went to their fall weekend last year and was invited back for this year.  (She has not yet been invited for summer camp, which is my goal for her. Once invited, she can come up every year for the rest of her life.  Everyone does, and thus, the wait is long for a spot.) She helped me pack her stuff and then re-pack when we found out how cold it was really going to be. The ride up was pleasant and uneventful until we got to the country road part that goes up and down a mountain for almost 30 miles, okay, a small mountain. Julia began getting angry, anxious, and extremely unpleasant.  At one point, she lobbed a sweater at Ed, who was driving. She spent a good deal of time swearing at the mountain, the road, and us. By the time we arrived at the Farm, I had to spend time with her trying to figure out what she wanted to do. (Not at all sure what we would do if she wanted to not go to Zeno altogether.)

I was unsure if we could leave her.

And then she went through the big farmhouse doors, and someone said hello to her. And in almost an instant, or at least a few minutes, she was all smiles. Hugging two people she knew, ready to hand off her meds to the nurse and go to her assigned room on the third floor. When she came downstairs, she was ready to have us leave. She gave us happy hugs and went off to a giant bay window with couches in front of it to watch the sunset. 

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coming home

Home.  I have chewed on the concept and the actual location of the place for a long time.  I have lived in places where I never felt at home, sometimes gradually finding enough of my people in those places to hold on and not wither away. I lived in places that felt like home, left them with every intention of coming back, never to return. There are places in-between—places where I felt some connection with the air of the place and made important friendships. Boston is one of those places. I moved from Jersey to Cambridge in the middle 70’s to live with David. He had been at Brandeis, dropping out to play in the pit band of the show, Lenny, and then just staying on.  I liked the city then and the neighborhoods in Somerville and Cambridge where we lived.  I was willing to move back to somewhere around here after we finished our degrees. David wanted NYC as home and very certainly, I fell in love with NYC and had no regrets. 

We never returned together to Boston, and when we left NYC for the midwest, I forgot that I had feelings for Boston, the place. 

And I did not quite realize, when I lived in Madison for twelve years, how much that had grown to be a home. It was a hard place to leave. Not the home that I came from, I will never be a midwesterner but the place with the people who supported me, and Julia, those first years of her with us and all the years after David left.  

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a visit

We are going to be in Madison for a few days very soon. If any of my dear Madison peeps are going to be around and available, I’d love to see you. Please let me know!!!

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morning walk on the beach 

Ferry Beach, Saco, Maine

Impressions in wet sand. Sneekers and boots, sandles and a few bare and naked feet. Just a few bare feet, it is october afterall.  Round impressions from walking sticks and baby feet every so often. But regularly, those baby feet. And I wonder why. I imagine a parent, scooping up a toddler into a piggy back ride and then letting the wiggling wee one down after a short riding respite. Dog prints in wild archs going in and out of the ends of waves, the line where the tide erases everything. 

And I imagine how sooner or later, tonight and tomorrow early morning, a tide will come in and take away all traces of our shod and unshod animal prints. Flood the prints with the waves coming ashore, leaving the sand smooth and pristine again. 

What if the bits of sadnesses, stresses, worries and longings of our lived days were left in the prints we leave during our walkings. Left to be swollowed up by the lapping water. As if by intention, as if what we could not carry any longer could be returned to some universe. As if by returning to the sea what we could not bear, we might be comforted and even healed by the rhythmn of the to and fro, in and out, of the salty waves. 

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because it’s june, june, june, june . . .

I am a gardener.  

I’ve begun at least four memoir pieces with that sentence but honestly, I wondered if I would ever really feel like I was that declaration again.  At the blue Victorian that we moved to from Madison and in which we spent the Covid years, I cultivated a small vegetable patch that was shaded part of the day by the houses around it.  It is never a glorious garden but it gave us something to do that first summer of shut down and there were tomatoes and greens and peppers and a small pumpkin. 

Early on in my tenancy at our present house, I asked the landlord if I could garden.  The foundation planting was sparse and old. There must have been other shrubs and bushes at one time but what was left was four plants spread far apart and planted up close to the house.  

My landlord said I could do what I wanted to do and even volunteered a bit of help—his landscapers trimmed bushes that needed the trimming and even took the grass up when I decided on the shape of the front garden bed.  

I started planning the front bed while I was sick and unable to do much running around.  As I began the planning, I wondered if it made sense to invest in a garden that would take a few years to develop and cultivate in a rental house but I came to the idea that I have made three gardens, each in a house that I owned.  But that after planting and tending and loving those gardens, I sold the houses and left those gardens. And it wasn’t so much the beauty of the gardens that I was/am most attached to, it is the process of making a garden and making a garden in the front of this house that we live in would give me pleasure.  

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coming home

Coming home: Get on a bunch of planes. Watch a bunch of movies and eat the weird combination of what is airplane food—My favorite food during our longest flight today from Tokyo to San Francisco was two saltine crackers with a pat of cream cheese. Exactly like something I’d eat when there was nothing else to eat in the house. Try to sleep mostly unsuccessfully and ultimately stumble from plane to plane to immigration/customs to plane and to a lovely friend who drove us home.

After thirty hours traveling, those beds in Newton were incredibly comfortable!

But to back up —

On our last night in Hanoi, we had a hot pot supper—various kinds of meat and vegetables that are brought to the table raw along with a pot of boiling broth on a heater.  It’s good and I’ve liked the idea both back home and in Hanoi.  We’ve eaten it a number of times in Vietnam, but truthfully, when I go out to eat, I’d much rather have the cook do the cooking instead of one of us at the table. Still, it seems like a favorite with the people of Hanoi, including our friend, Tra My. 

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last weekend

We’ve been walking a little slower, trying to savor, trying to memorize, and still, at the same time, trying to stay in the present. We know that we are looking at things we’ve grown use to for the last time. So many streets we haven’t walked down and restaurants we haven’t eaten in. We have gotten better at crossing streets with and without traffic lights and drivers of motor bikes and cars that consider lights, lanes and one way signs as mere suggestions. We are regulars at that pho restaurant on the sidewalk half a block away from our apartment and enjoy so much all the fresh fruit juices that we drink every day.

Lots of flowers were planted during out week away in Hoi An. So nice to see them.

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Hoi An in the rain

And I am missing home stuff.  After a month and six days, I will allow myself such feelings.  Mostly missing is of three varieties: First, I miss Cheshire, Justin and Wilbur, and being a small part of their lives.  Pictures of Wilbur attests to six weeks of him growing.  Even at home, I don’t have an independent relationship with Wilbur—yes, he is one—and so it follows that so far away feels like I will be a stranger when I return.  Or at least, I believe so right now.

Yes, a bit of self-pity. Even during high adventuring.

Second, I miss my church community.  I get the emails!  The list serv with announcements.  A few weeks ago, I felt like I was keeping up with the goings on.  Now, I feel cut off and missing—the Ferry Beach weekend, a special choir concert, the early November Music Sunday music, the 175th birthday of the church lunch.  And lastly, I miss my HILR community—course work, lunches, special concerts and lectures.  I am grateful and happy that I’ve kept up with the one zoom class that I have—those late night class meetings have been an interesting comfort.

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