Tag: travel plans

traveling companions, pt.1

Breakfast in Hanoi 2023

We are booked to return to Hanoi for more than a month in late spring. Airline tickets are bought. A deposit has been paid on the apartment we stayed in back in 2023. The official purpose of the trip is to attend the high school graduation of Giau, the son of the young woman Ed has guided since she was a teenager. It is sweet to be invited back for this moment, to witness a milestone in a family whose lives have been woven into Ed’s life over time and now into Julia’s and mine.

This time, planning feels different. With a place to stay arranged and a beloved pho shop just a stone’s throw away, I can already envision some of the more intriguing details.

One of the things I would like to arrange is a companion or guide for Julia while we are in Hanoi. I briefly flirted with this idea on our last trip, but became overwhelmed by the logistics and let it go. This time, I am sending out feelers and following up on any small clue that might lead somewhere. The hope is modest and specific: that Julia might spend a morning, an afternoon, or even a day exploring the city without me. Maybe a museum, a park, or a place to do art or crafts. Not every day. Just sometimes.

Independence is complicated to teach, and travel has always been one of the most meaningful ways Julia develops those skills. Since she is now 25, I would love for her to have opportunities to move through the world with a little more autonomy, even while far from home.

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Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 0

looking back at birthday weekends

Julia and I have birthdays a week apart. We have celebrated separately and together, had parties, and just stayed home.  It is January and cold. This year we’ve been out and about for both weekends.

We, our trio, spent Julia’s weekend in New York City. Friday evening to Monday morning.  We saw two plays.  “And Juliet,” a musical, is a wild romp. Lots of fun, old pop music that most of the audience knew by heart. Everyone sang, including Julia, who followed some of the audience and got up to dance a few of the tunes. The cast is splendid, and the script is very clever. Fireworks and confetti were the icing on the cake.

On Sunday, we saw “Liberation.” A memory play about a young woman of today confronting her deceased mother’s 70’s conscience-raising group. A seven-woman cast with a strong script. The nude scene at the beginning of Act 2 was only slightly shocking. Five minutes into the scene, having no clothes on was simply the costume that the characters wore. It was a pleasure to be in the theater that night. Unfortunately, the play is set to close on February 1.

On Saturday, we saw “All that’s left of you,” a new film set in the Occupied West Bank, tracing the life of one family from 1948 to the present. It is a small, quiet movie, emotional, and heartbreaking. With only a limited release, it will be hard to find but totally worth pursuing.  

Also, on Saturday, we did one of the tours at the Tenement Museum.  Julia and Ed had never been there. I was there a long time ago. We did the 1902 Women’s Tour that featured a story about the Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902, organized and led by the neighborhood’s women. It was as good as I expected it to be. We all would like to return for another tour. Julia wants to see a Chinese immigrant story from the 1980’s next time. The 80’s just doesn’t sound like history to this old lady! To Julia, ancient history.

Besides all that, we saw friends for Friday evening dinner and ate Korean and Mexican food, but missed the street of Indian food in Jersey City that our hotel was close to. I guess we will have to go back. We stayed in Jersey City and used the Path Train. The rain/snow mix was icky to walk around in, and so, we didn’t do much strolling around. However, the mix was so much better than just plain cold rain, about which I reminded everyone every few hours.

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time

Pause.  Perceive time.  Defined by ticking timers with bells at the end, clocks and calendars is one time.  Linear, predictable and plodding.  But time.  My time.  Our time.  Is different.  It rushes ahead, it slows to as thick slime over cobbles, it slides sideways, quickly, irreverently, without regard for wishes, dreams or clocks.  Over the long covid spring, summer, fall, winter and early spring, time lurched and sputtered.  Time lost themselves is a foggy reality of days that lost their names.  There was too much, not enough of it. It was not manageable no matter the breath and depth of my schedules and calendars.  There was no corralling it for me.  I did not write my Lear.  I did not read Proust.  I read and digested a few poems.  Very few, very short.  I was anxious and scared.  I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and grabbed onto a lot of outstretched hands.  I wrote some.  I dug two gardens.  I pushed Julia’s interests and her future doings along bit by bit. Like Sisyphus.  Didn’t he write emails and phone calls to agencies and people?  A modern Zeus would have surely assigned him to tackle DDS, SS and DIB.  Chasing genius ideas to the dead ends of realization—there should be a word for the feeling of frustration and failure when lots of energy has gone into a promising lead that is chased to an unsatisfying end.  

The quality of time was a small ball of clay that could be removed from the greater river of time in which we all swim.  We gathered via zoom with others but there was a sense of privacy—not cherished and beloved privacy but something like a hidden shame, even though there was no shame—we were visible in our small, regular zoom boxes with backgrounds of books that grew to be familiar and to a much lesser degree to the peopled world from noses up. 

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snow, travel & home

A jumble of thoughts, events and musings today.

Snow day for Julia. During the last big snow, there has been only one serious snow before this one, Newton decided not to call a snow day but to merely go all remote for classes that day.  I think that most students were zooming in from home anyway, so it was only the high needs students (of which Julia is one) and some very young students who would have their school day changed.  However!  However, there was an uproar from all corners of town! How could NPS steal precious snow day activities from children already deprived of so much of their normal? The children should have been building snow people and sledding down hills, not stuck in front of computers all day.  I don’t know what the internal (or external) politics were, but the next day a traditional and completely unnecessary snow day was declared.

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letting go

I wrote the following yesterday.  It doesn’t have an ending that I am satisfied with; however, the week will only get busier.  So, I’m posting it today.  Perhaps some ending will come.  Perhaps not.

An online friend suggested we keep our expectations low. Which ones? The expectations that I usually hold close are diminishing, falling like leaves after the first frost.  Truth be told, I’ve always juggled such a plethora of hopes and dreams, long and short term goals complete with due dates, many expectations, many hopes for possible futures.  I have lived for long periods of time holding expectations as a nervous bride clutches her bouquet.  But today, after a year away from my old Wisconsin home and loving community, after 10 years away from the love of my life, after 17 weeks of quarantine, I bear witness to an increasing number of plans, goals and expectations dramatically dashed upon rocks or quietly slipping away. If there be a life lesson here, it must be that living in the present is what is essential.  Life can be, at times, gently shaped, tended more like an orchid than a row of sturdy marigolds.  

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Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 4

travel update

IMG_1532
Beginning of our Alaskan cruise last summer!  This summer, a new adventure.

8 Weeks until we go ‘down under’!  Down under what?  I have to look that up.  Eight weeks before we go to Australia!  The count down has begun in earnest! 

And so have the tasks.  

Julia had the day off on Friday, so we went to the post officer and sent in the documents for her new passport.  This time it is an adult passport (her first) and valid for 10 years.  Her current passport, a kid’s edition which is good for only 5 years (and yet costs the same), expires a week after we return from Australia.  I asked the postal clerk why a passport must be valid for six months after a planned trip out of the country.  She responded directly and cheerfully, “Just in case of a terrorist attack.  You could need to stay somewhere for awhile.”  I may have lost just a bit of color in my cheeks.  And that’s what you get for asking questions! Continue reading →

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camp awesum

IMG_6143Camp Awesum. Monday morning.

Independence. Julia wants it. I think she is ready for some. The question is always how to arrange it and keep her safe. An opportunity at camp has arisen.

There is coffee in the mornings starting at 6:30, breakfast is not until 8:30. I made it down for coffee at 7:30. Before I left the cabin, I told Julia, mostly asleep, that I would telephone her. Hopefully, she will wake up, get out of bed and start getting dressed.

I called, explained what I wanted and she wanted to meet me by the beach, dressed and ready for breakfast. T minus 15 minutes. Continue reading →

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noticing

Julia’s interpretation.
The garden.

I notice rain. Just after dawn, coming down in buckets, like cats and dogs, teaming.  Or is it teeming?  It thundered and lightened and made an awful fuss before coming down.  This rain has been in the offing for 24 hours, announcing itself over and over again with two brief showers yesterday, neither long enough to be “rain” and mounting humidity until I turned on the air in the late afternoon.  We’ve slept in the cool, manufactured air for which I am grateful. Continue reading →

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lessons, gardens & travel plans

The days just move along and move along.  It is all a-whirl.

Seventh grade ends tomorrow.  This is only the second time that Julia has greeted summer with enthusiasm.  She understands enough about time to appreciate breaks.  I find the transition from school to vacation unnerving.  Work in school has been on the wane.  Her big “country project” for social studies was finished two weeks ago.  Her last book review and spelling test about a week ago.  Math has dribbled to a close. Continue reading →

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curmudgeon cracking

 

julia swinging in the apple orchard.
 

I’ve been wallow-y lately.  Lots of stuff going on and little of it easy or smooth.  Last week, I cried to the universe: Can’t anything in my life go smoothly!?  I think the universe answered: no.  Honestly, when I get like this, I’d really like to climb out of my skin and give it away.  Who in their right mind would take it?  

Self pity.  Ugly, messy stuff.  A gaggle of quotations run through my mind.  I get it.  Self pity. A dangerous elixir.  

Pouts:

The school year is not winding down gracefully.  Julia was late to school six days in a row.  A lack of focus on doing the tasks at hand is the raison d’être — redressing a doll, picking up some reading, working on a lego piece has all taken precedence to getting washed, dressed and ready.  The loss of focus happens in an instant, my back turns, I make my bed, I run downstairs to start the kettle.  And Julia has been disrespectful to teacher twice this week — refusing work, speaking inappropriately, being generally mean.  I live in dead fear that this will escalate and mark her as a trouble maker.  I fear alienating the very people, her teachers, who are her lifeline to the world. Continue reading →

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