newport cottage: the elms
Tag: Photo Gallery
newport cottage: rosecliff
newport cottage: the breakers
baby shower
Finally today, I have caught my breath. From the long holiday weekend and the catch up week that followed. I still have an overdue phone call to my advocate at Healthcare For All and another call to MassHealth. I’m saving that which I know will be frustrating until Monday.
It was a good weekend.
Justin’s mother and I threw a baby shower for our children and their impending baby boy. It was a bigger shower than it would have been had there been had there been the planned-for wedding. We invited more people and people from further away than we might have. Still, there were those from too far away who were missing.
Still, it was a good party.
tulips and small steps`
I meant to write yesterday. What happened?
10:00 a.am. I get a email from Julia’s inclusion facilitator that Julia is upset that she left her wallet at home. I am more or less ready to do some errands, so I jump in the car and bring the wallet over to the program. I want Julia to have as good a day as she can. She has had some very good days this week . . . talk about that later.
First.
I read a blog post (and I can’t find it now to link it) about a mom who has a child with autism who had reached middle or high school and was more independent than he had been a few years prior. The mother felt some room open up, some possibility of freedom for herself, and asked a trusted therapist if she thought that the mom could enter the regular work force again. She had cobbled together part-time work through the years but missed a full-time job and building a career. The therapist, who knew her kiddo, told the mom that if she “needed” to work, she should, but that kids with the best outcomes have full-time moms.
nyc 2
Day 3, if you are counting Monday evening.
We are in a diner on E. Houston. Julia eating eggs and sausage and I with a bowl of oatmeal. Why is oatmeal always, at least in my experience, better than it is at home. When I visited Chicago often, I had a favorite breakfast spot, a chain, that had the best oatmeal. What I am having this morning is pretty close. I have opined in the past that it is because they make a very large batch in an old thin metal pot. Commercially oatmeal is made with water and they skimp some on the oats. Or not. It is delicious.
As we eat, a young couple come in with a little girl, I’d say about 18 months old. They are all taller and better looking than we were, except for the little girl, and it is the woman not the man who wears glasses. They remind me of David and Cheshire and I when she was about that young. The little girl walks around as they wait for their breakfast. Dad follows her. The wait staff greet the Dad and girl. We are close to our old neighborhood. We too had a breakfast spot that we frequented—Kiev, which closed a long time ago—and the wait staff—mostly middle aged Ukrainian ladies—entertained Cheshire.
This is a journey of remembering. Not surprising—I have not stayed in Manhattan often since we left when Cheshire was 3.5, and Julia and I have not been to NYC since we moved. This kind of memory walk was a challenge to me years ago—our travels in Italy when there seemed to be a memory and a pain around every corner. Now, there are just memories, and taking back the city a street and restaurant at a time will smooth the wrinkles of that very old life.
late winter break
Whenever I have the time to write, I swear I have nothing to write about. It is when I have a dozen other things, when I have to ignore something very important that inspiration hits. I am also pretty good at working up to a deadline, missing it by a day or so, and laboring as if all hell will break loose if I don’t do as I promised. This seems to me an undesirable lack of moderation, of discipline, of getting into that Buddha inspired journey of the middle way.
But this was not what I sat down to write about.
Quick summary: We are in an okay place.
Julia had the week off—never sure if it is late winter break or first spring break. My plans for the week were to do what needed to be done and meet with those needing meetings especially therapies at the beginning of the week and then go somewhere—we settled on Salem where Julia has her eye on a few punk/goth stores—for Friday and Saturday. And if we were having a good time, staying until Sunday.
Big however!
unlaid plans
“[W]henever well-laid plans are unlaid in an instant . . .”
Melissa Kirsch wrote in the NYTimes two days ago in How We’re Holding It Together: “These lines keep coming back to me — when a long-anticipated trip is shelved indefinitely, when my family decides to postpone gathering for the holidays — whenever well-laid plans are unlaid in an instant”
By the time I read her lines, our holiday plans had already been upended. Julia and I went up to Conway, New Hampshire, as planned, to spend time in the enchanting land of snow with the good company of Justin’s family; however, absent from the gathering were Cheshire and Justin due to positive Covid tests.
Justin who has worked from home for years (and not just since the 2020 shut down), travelled for work for the first time in two years two weeks ago and came home with a bad cold. A take home Covid test the day before we were all to leave for NH was positive and Cheshire followed two days later but only after a P.C.R. test, her rapid test was negative.
maine
I keep my journaling in files month-by-month. It is not as satisfying as the various soft covered writing books that I wrote in and then lined up on book shelves but far more practical and convenient. I still carry a small paper journal but it is for quick jottings that, if I am still interested in hours later, I transcribe to this screen. Where I was once meticulous to finish each journal before moving on to a new one, I am likewise meticulous about keep each month’s scribblings in its own computer file. And so, it is odd for me to still be writing in the August 2021 file on September 3. I know the intent yesterday was consolidate what I had written during our days in Maine and to publish something with the Maine photos, but I could not concentrate on a vacation summary. Descriptions of charming towns and water and sky slipping away into explanations, systems of ideas explaining our present reality. Trying to make sense of my own present “where.”
china sisters
It is telling that after two years I only noticed on Friday morning at 4:30 a.m. that my street has no street lights. We are catching a 6 a.m. plane Boston to Philly and then a later plane to Dayton, Ohio. It was China Sisters Reunion weekend. A Facebook post announced that this is the 16th reunion if our trip to China is included.
Ah, a trip to China. I am still marveling that Julia and I have not gotten on a plane for more than 2 years. How is that so?
And yet, we were picked up and dropped off at Logan and entered into the swarm of early morning travelers. The check in lines and kiosks buzzed with people. People everywhere! Carrying and pulling, asking questions and commenting excitedly, making people noises that made something of a soundtrack as we made our way to the departure gate. I remember but I am hearing it all for the first time. Like riding a bicycle, we quickly adapted to the old routines—printing boarding passes, finding security, getting into the TSA line, showing identification and pulling down each of our masks for a moment to make sure that the picture on the ID matched the person carrying the ticket. Julia asked if she had to take off her shoes and we both forgot to take our phones out of jacket pockets.
Chasing Joy 