Boston bound

Happy Last Weekend of October! 

It finally feels like fall here in Texas, with morning temps in the 50s and afternoons sunny and 75. Apparently, this summer's 75+ days of 100 degree weather were an anomaly even for Texas, but with changes to the climate becoming ever more evident, next summer will surely be similar, or worse. With temps in the 90s up until about 10 days ago, summer felt extra long. So we headed east to experience fall for a few days in early October. 

My family had not heard the term "leaf peeper," but I remember my grandparents talking about going to New England in the fall to do just that - peep at leaves.  But honestly, this trip to New England was planned back in July in order to peep at our son, not the leaves. The fall color was just a perk. 

We used the extended Columbus/Indigenous Peoples weekend to fly to Boston, spent a couple of days touring the city led by our indomitable tour guide/second son, and also drove up to Portland, Maine, for a couple of days to meet his lovely girlfriend's parents.  It was a perfect weekend: time with family, glorious weather, visits to historical sites, no travel hiccups, very minimum kid complaints - other than from the kids who didn't get to join us - and lots of interesting and beautiful things to look at. 

Not everyone would like the way we travel - we tend to be one step above frugal travelers. We stay with family or in budget hotels, walk a lot, eat one main meal a day and get the rest of our nourishment from small bites along our routes, which focus on highlights of history, art, and architecture.  We used to road trip everywhere, but now we have upgraded to budget flights. Because our 16 year old has flight anxiety, I try to book direct flights, and this time, I just happened to score a deal on Jetblue - maybe because we booked months ago.  Even though Dan is now retired, we still qualify for the perk of a couple free bags for military members and veterans on some budget airlines, so we don't have to buy bags.  So we aren't the cheapest of travelers, but we aren't luxurious.

Although I was prepared to scour travel sites for a place to stay because my son's place is too small, and to bachelor paddish to host five members of our family, we were able to stay at my brother-in-law's new house and borrow their car for the Maine excursion. That family has just moved to Boston - in fact, when I booked the trip, I didn't know they were moving there.  But the weekend we picked to visit is also their 20th anniversary, and they happen to have a friend who had rented a villa for a month, so they flew off for a more upscale experience. The perk is, we were able to use their house and car in exchange for keeping their dog company. A great trade, although we missed spending time with them.

I usually do more planning and reading prior to a bigger trip like this, but I didn't have as much time this fall, and I have been to Boston a few times before, although year ago.  Notable trivia: I went into labor in the Prudential Building with our first child 25 years ago. We were living in Newport, and Dan's brother was in Boston, and we came up to visit and meet up with some college friends. There was actually a business building chapel where we were going to meet them, but minutes after we entered, my water broke and I rushed to the bathroom.  We did not make it to Mass, but sped back to Newport. Fortunately, after I delivered, some nice Eucharistic Minister came by our room, and brought communion to all the Catholics at the hospital. 

Before this trip, we did read "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" a few times before setting out, and I read some stories to the 8 year from A Child's History of America, which made me realize how much more American history I did with our kids when home schooling than our private school is doing. Fortunately, one of those kids whom I home schooled was our tour guide, and he was happy to lead us on a tour of notable spots. 

Our itinerary, if anyone is planning a trip: 

Direct flight to Boston Thursday night - nightcaps and short conversation with the brother-in-law before collapsing for the night. Rose early to take him to the airport before beginning our tour of the city.

Friday morning: Started in their neighborhood with a walk through Harvard and Cambridge, met up with son for coffee, and then took the subway into the city. We got off near Beacon Hill, where I finagled a brief tour of literary figures' homes - Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne all had houses on Pinckney Street. We missed Robert Frost's home, and a few others because only one person in our party was interested in the literary tour of Boston, and I have to compromise...

Next we headed to Boston Commons and strolled through the park, where they were setting up for a road race. Our route led us through the Public Garden, but the Swan boats were closed for the season, so the 8 year old had to settle for a carousel ride and a few photos by the Make Way for Ducklings statue (an happy literary stop for everyone).

From the Public Garden, we worked our way to the Public Library along a lovely boulevard whose name is escaping me, but which has some statuary of revolutionary figures including Alexander Hamilton. We also passed some architecturally significant churches, but since they weren't Catholic, we didn't go inside to pray. 

We did go into the library to admire the McKim Mead and White side of the building, and the John Singer Sargeant frescoes upstairs - an allegory of religious history - fascinating and somewhat militaristic, so out of fashion. I made a quick trip through to the modern cafe on the Philip Johnson side of the library, where a podcast or television show was being filmed. Overall impression: a fascinating architectural specimen. Not as many stacks of books as you would expect in a library. 

After that we all were starved for lunch. I wanted to get fresh bread, freshly picked apples, local cheese and local hard cider from the farmer's market in Copley Square in front of the library, but I was overruled again. We did get very delicious bowls from a Mediterranean place, a chain I didn't know about. 

Reenergized after lunch, we walked past all the high end shops on Newbury Street and made our way to the freedom trail. A stop at Granary Burial Ground to see the graves of Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, Benjamin Franklin's parents, John Hancock, and victims of the Boston Massacre, including Crispus Attucks, was entertaining, surprisingly, because of the tourist hawkers in costume. From there, I was able to make a quick stop in Brattle's Bookshop because others were promised a stop for a cold Sam Adams beer across from the cemetery - bad jokes abound on the placard out front. 

Still in motion, we headed towards Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall, crossing through the plaza where the Boston Massacre is memorialized with a star.  That's where the Samuel Adams brewery is, so that was another rest stop along the way.  At this point we had walked over 20K steps, so a cold beer never tasted better. 

Our journey was not yet over - we had to make it over to the North End, where our son lives. Through the discount fruit market where we bought a flat of raspberries and a flat of strawberries for $2 each - who cares that half of them were moldy.  Then past the home of Paul Revere, which was closed for the day, and then finally to our son's apartment which he shares with two other young men. You can imagine their decorating style tends toward curbside furniture, shelving made of 2x4s, beer signs, and dying plants. But it was clean and in an ideal location for young adults - restaurants down the street and a Catholic Church right across the road, so there is no excuse for missing Mass. The street level store was being converted to a clothing store after the former tenant, a psychic, passed away. 

The Old North Church (also closed) and the Skinny House - famous for being skinny - are also in our son's neighborhood, so we did a walk by before stopping off at his apartment for an hour's rest, and happy hour drinks - ginger ale for those underage.  We had a late reservation at La Famiglia Giorgio, one of many delicious Italian restaurants in the North End. Dinner was leisurely and filling - starters of bruschetta and calamari, overflowing bowls of pasta, a couple bottles of wine between the 6 of us over 21. I ordered the pumpkin ravioli appetizer and the waiter was afraid I would still be hungry but it was 8 or so large raviolis - so filling I could barely finish, but so delicious that I did. 

After dinner we ambled up to the cannoli shop that is NOT Mike's, the famous one. Even though we stuffed, and it was 10 pm, we waited in a fairly long line to order cannoli, that we took back to the cousins' house to eat for breakfast. After our walk back from the subway stop, the 8 year old was proud to report that her step counter watch had logged 32000 steps, which is about 15 miles. I am happy to report that the cannoli were not soggy the next morning. And the cappuccino flavored one was excellent with my morning espresso. 

Now to share photos and post- I'll have to come back to write about the rest of the trip or Halloween will be here and gone before I finish. 

Gates to Harvard

Harvard Chapel

Chasing geese near the JFK memorial

The bridge over the Charles River near Cambridge    

Home of Louisa May Alcott at some point

Near HD Thoreau's

Public Garden

Make way for ducklings

The Public Garden

Outside the library

Sargeant murals inside the library - an allegory of religion

The meeting of old and new in the library

Brattle's booksellers

Samuel Adams' Grave

Boston Massacre marker

Home of Paul Revere

The Old North Church

Peeking in the ONC graveyard

I

Book reviews

** I started this post before the queen died, and then thought I should compose some thoughts about this moment in history, when another chapter closed, not just in the life of the Royal Family, but in the life of Great Britain and in the perpetuation of the monarchy as it has been. So many firsts for the second Queen Elizabeth, but also many lasts, I am sure. While her loss does not seem tragic, it does seem momentous and heavy. I don't have anything remarkable to add to the tributes that have already been made, other than to add my admiration for her and my prayers for her soul to those of her many mourners,  ***

I just finished rereading Alice McDermott's After This. I'm supposed to be preparing for class, not writing book reviews, but her writing is so clean, so analytical, and yet it cuts so close to the heart. One minute I'm wondering how she gets her reader to care for these characters, and then I'm wondering how could we not? 

When I first read this book, I remember staying up till 2 or 3 in the morning, standing in the bathroom. I couldn't put it down. This time, I started it a couple days ago and read the first couple of chapters, but today I threw it in my bag when I left to substitute teach. While the students did their times tables flash cards online and Quizzizz and shouted all through their Blookit competition, I found myself forgetting where I was - I'd occasionally have to wrench myself out of the book so that I could walk around the room and make sure no one was surfing the internet. (Side note: Can I tell you how much students do online these days? I'd say 75% of the older students' days are occupied with online work - so much for fearing that home schooled kids won't be socialized. It's the school kids who are online all day that you might worry about...)

Anyway, what McDermott does well is write about the sorrows of life, the fallen sinners, the broken hearted, the dashed dreams, the deaths, the drugs, the mistakes, the loneliness and isolation and disappointments and cruelties that life inflicts and that worse, people inflict on each other, and then she makes life seem worth living after all.  The small putty hands of a child, the gratitude of a old musty virgin for friendship, the shared tears. She makes the big events and the small events - a son's death, a trip to the beach, seem equally momentous, equally graced with beauty piercing through. 

Her stories are peopled with clueless nuns and ambitious priests and parishioners who light candles and say prayers while they have unwed sex or say heartless things to each other. But that same nun reveals her knowledge of her father's infidelities, the priest says a wedding on a weekday evening for a couple of teenagers, and a young couple imagining a life of sweetness starts off their marriage by sacrificing their dreams. Will their vision see them through? Will they find comfort and happiness in their marriage and children 25 years later?  McDermott's novel makes it clear that no life escapes bruises and disappointments, but sticking around to see what happens next may just prove that the heartaches were what made the joys sweeter. Even poor Pauline, the spinster office friend, is given the gift of affection, from her young friend who wants her around. That then is incarnational love. 

Also just finished Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty for the second time. Here again is a story of brokenness, but also of moments of joy in shared friendship. The book is redolent with grief, and while it is clear that Patchett loved her friend Lucy Grealey, the poet who won fame with The Story of a Face, but later died of a heroin overdose, perhaps accidental, Lucy seems like a difficult person to love. While I was doing a little research on Grealey's book and poetry, I came across a letter Lucy's sister had published in The Guardian that disparages Patchett's book for profiteering from grief and for oversharing about Lucy's flaws. Perhaps Patchett's fidelity to her friend finds more sympathy once readers have finished Autobiography of a Face, because that book made people fall in love with Lucy Grealey. More than once Patchett mentions that she wished she had stayed with friend rather than leave to live with boyfriends in doomed love affairs. And maybe Patchett feels that by telling the truth about Lucy's neediness, and her inability to finish writing projects, her inability to let go of the desire to be beautiful by having one more surgery. on top of her need for reassurance, her audience will know Lucy better and forgive her more, or understand her more. Was the way she threw herself into relationships a thing of beauty? Surely her friends saw her as a beautiful person. 

I've been doing a lot of short story and poetry reading for my new classes. I'm really enjoying the new Norton Anthology - lots of new poets and poems arranged thematically, which is the way I like to read them. I have mixed feelings about some of the stories - I almost wish some were shorter, so I could assign more for a better understanding of literature and culture. As it is, I am only assigning 2 a week, and about 4-6 poems. It's not a lot, but not everyone is doing the reading as it is. 

Don't they know the truth and beauty they are missing out on when they forget to read? 

Back to school

Goodbye to August! Farewell to summer! Farewell, children, freedom, time!

All of the children who still go to school are now in school, and I have started teaching at a new school, as well. The start of a new school year is always exciting - new books, new pencils, new paper, new shoes, new teacher, new friends. . .  it a time marked with potential - to form relationships, to reform habits, to discover opportunities to serve and, of course, to learn.

And yet it is also marked with mourning, as we say good-bye to the big kids and the freedom of summer. 

Mrs. Darwin wrote about mourning her college kids' departures on her blog, and her description of finding a quiet place to cry struck a chord. I commented that I had a similar experience as I watched my husband drive away with our fifth child to take him to college. I had to sit down on the front step and catch my breath as the car pulled away and they were no longer waving back at me. I felt walloped in the gut. I needed one more hug. I had made him breakfast and helped go over his checklist, and then we had an hour or so of scurrying around the house and checking up on the to do list before it was time to head out the door. Why didn't we get one more hug in? Why didn't we sit and talk about important and meaningful things instead of loading the dishes and tidying up the kitchen? 

Usually I am the one that takes the kids to move in. This was the first send off I wasn't the parent driving off to the airport. The busyness of those weekends, checking off the lists of stuff, the physical labor of moving bags and boxes and catching flights and renting cars, usually is so exhausting that saying good bye is not so emotional - although I've shed a few tears in those rental cars. 

But seeing this fifth child off hit me hard. He's a part of the "littles." It was a hard year for him, and he had made it through, and we had grown closer in the process, I think.  So I called the boy up for one more goodbye, one more blessing, even though he and his dad weren't even to the highway yet. And good thing - they had driven off without the key to the storage locker where the older brother's hand-me-down futon, fridge, cheap carpet, and other sundries were locked up and waiting. So I got to speed off with the key to hand over and to grab that last hug at the interstate exit where they were waiting. 

I'm sure there's a meme about how saying good-bye doesn't get any easier with practice . . .

This past weekend, I was the one flying off and renting a car to help our oldest daughter move back into her apartment at college. She spent the summer in San Diego, couch surfing and house sitting and working for the rec center.  The moment of saying goodbye was back in June, when I was sad and hurt that she didn't want to spend the summer with us, but totally understanding of the reasons why. When I was 20, I wanted independence, too. In fact, that was the summer I spent in the UP working at a camp for kids with special needs. Bay Cliff Health Camp it was called, and it was a magical, wonderful summer, but that's another story.

I think my daughter relished her summer, too. She went sailing and surfing and to the horse races and made dinners for herself and for her friends and got herself around town. She lived on her own dime and made it. When I arrived on Friday, we went for a walk and got lunch, did some shopping for apartment stuff, and then split up to spend time with our local friends one more time. Saturday morning we ran a fundraiser race together (with a couple of my mom friends along, too) and then drove up to her campus - after a stop at another friend's new house for lunch. Traffic through LA was a slog, so we had time to catch up and talk about the future, etc, before arriving for the move-in, which was much easier this time around, compared to last year, which was her sophomore year, but first year on campus.

This year she has an apartment on campus that she shares with 3 other girls. She stayed there Saturday night, but I drove up to the base, about 35 mins away to stay in the Navy Lodge, because I was too cheap to pay for a Malibu hotel and to worried about sketchy environs to get a more affordable hotel near the highway. (I was questioning that choice after the rental car company gave me a huge truck, the "upgrade" I didn't want, that was not cheap to fill up.) Then Sunday after Mass and brunch we did a little thrifting for kitchen items, but not too much, since the other roommates were still arriving and decorating will happen later.  We had a time for a short walk and sandwiches before I had to make the slog back to the airport.

The whole weekend felt somewhat surreal. I have now been back to San Diego 5 times since we moved a year ago. That's a lot - an unusual amount because of college moving, college visiting, and the graduation event. My friends were teasing me about when my next quarterly visit was going to be. I've practically socialized more with those friends far away than I have with people we are getting to know here. And perhaps it has prevented me from rooting here. I am still questioning the decisions we made last spring, and while everything is fine, good even, I miss the friendships that took years to develop, sunsets over the ocean with hills silhouetted in lavender, walking on the beach and to the library and Mass. I feel in limbo about investing in life here because I don't want to stay put.  Sometimes I just have to stop thinking.  I know if I read back over this blog, I would find post after post about feeling displaced, about looking forward to the next thing.  I am truly grateful for the opportunities we had to discover new places, and although I complained here about rootlessness - isn't that part of the purpose of journaling, to exorcise the complaints? - I did appreciate what we had at the time. But maybe not enough.  This lack of gratitude, this pining for elsewhere, is a sin, a failing, a fatal flaw, I'll spend my life fighting. 

Even now I am pining for the summer back. For the years back with the children small again. For the days when we took up a whole pew at Mass. Saturdays at the soccer fields. Friday night football. Camping trips. Beach days. Museum days. Birthdays. Reading at bedtime. Wasting time at the playground. Did I appreciate those years enough? Of course not, although I am grateful for being able to relive preschool days with the youngest, and now third grade... 

Ah melancholia.  This has been my little indulgence, now it's back to work. I have lessons to plan, poetry to read, grading, email, etc, etc. And then two more kids at home to enjoy for a short time. 

A last day outing: First the Elizabet Ney castle. She was a German sculptor who immigrated to Texas in the late 1870s. Made her career during busts of famous people and patrons.

Her home is now a museum. It's really a very small castle, but an interesting place to visit.

A life cast of an infant. Why didn't I do this with all our kids?

Last BBQ lunch at Blacks

And now a college student, doing his own laundry!

The third grader and junior off for their first day!

Posing

Feeling sad to say goodbye

Spending time with the older daughter

Apartment style living

Malibu waves and sunshine make it hard to leave

Reading notes

I've read two interesting books lately, both semi-autobiographical books of young people starting out in life: Chicago by Brian Doyle and Either/Or by Elif Batuman. Neither of these books were quick reads, but both were engrossing, so I read them hungrily. Despite the similarity of being semi-autobiographical novels about young people finding their way in life, they are quite different novels. 

I love Brian Doyle's writing, and Chicago did not disappoint. Doyle writes so lyrically and joyfully about places and people. The book is slim on plot, but it is rich in character sketches. The main character is a young college graduate who moves to Chicago to work for a Catholic periodical (very similar to Doyle's own path).  He finds an apartment in a building near downtown, where he gets to know his fellow renters, the building owner, the caretaker who is in love with the owner, and the caretaker's dog, who is the wisest individual in the book. The book has a touch of magical realism - the dog communicates clearly, people meet and form relationships easily and raise money for each other, the building inhabitants all get along magically well.  The main character, who remains unnamed, wanders the city and its alleys, plays pick-up basketball on inner city courts, discovers bars and restaurants and helps the sisters who live nearby. He forms a friendship with the caretaker and his dog, goes to baseball games with his neighbors, and falls quietly in love.  He walks the city for miles, exploring the place but also contemplating life. As with other Doyle books, Doyle's lyrical style of writing makes Chicago almost a poem, creating an image of a particular slice of life in the city, describing the people and the place as they enlarge both the narrator's understanding of life and the reader's. The narrator transitions from a somewhat clueless young man, to a young adult who appreciates kindness and generosity, who sees the goodness/light rather than the dark.  It's a book full of wonder.

Elif Batuman's narrator considers becoming a flaneur, or a walker about town, also, but despite a few similarities in curiosity and exploration, the two narrators are very different personalities.  I had not read Elif Batuman's books before, but Either/Or kept me engaged because it was such a curious presentation of the mind of a young woman on the cusp of adulthood. The semi-autobiographical work is a follow up to her book The Idiot, which I have not read, and now I'm not sure if I will since I was able to piece together what happened in that first novel, the story of Selin's first year of college, so there would be no suspense about the outcome of the book.  

Batuman's narrator, Selin, is Turkish American, a sophomore at Harvard trying to make sense of life. She is naive, but also very book smart, and becomes cynical about her classmates' obsession with pairing off, even as she herself is recovering from heart break and interested in discovering what makes sex so fascinating. She turns to books to discover the meaning of life and Kierkegaard's Either/Or, which contrasts the moral life and the aesthetic life, is a formative book for Selin. She begins to experiment with living an aesthetic life, and continues to find insights and guidance from the books she reads for class and for pleasure that help her escape the malaise she has been in since her boyfriend form the first novel broke up with her. She chooses classes based on how interesting they sound and whether they will help her become a novelist.  Her roommates and best friend, who is also Eastern European, drag her out of her room and out and about so that she will get over her broken heart, but they are continuously pairing off with guys they meet at drunken parties, which doesn't appeal to her while she is still in mourning. But eventually she discovers someone is attracted to her, and so she decides to leave a party with him. Since she is seeking experiences while testing the aesthetic life, she barely questions the morality of what she is doing when she calls him back a week or two later so she can lose - or just get rid of - her virginity.. 

The second half of the novel follows Selin as she travels Turkey as a writer for Let's Go - which funds her visit back to visit extended family. Soon after she heads out to the locations designated by the Let's Go people, she finds herself in a relationship with a guide, who turns out to be not a decent guy, but then she falls into the clutches of several questionable characters whom she tries to shake, but doesn't always succeed. Her inability to stand up for her own feelings allows her to be victimized by some creeps - Selin talks herself into letting them have her way with her because she can't think of a reason to say no. Even though she studies Russian, she must not have come across Ivan Karamazov's rationalizing that if there is no God, everything is permitted. Or maybe that's what she is testing out. 

The novel ends in such a way that I suspect future sequels are in the works. No terrible tragedy befalls Selin in Turkey, and she should have lots of material for her own novel, or at least for a Let's Go Guide to Turkey.  As a reader, I both pitied Selin and also recognized similar twisty ways of thinking about what I was reading and how I should apply it to my life - which is the big question she is trying to decide.  A peril of reading too much is having no way or too many ways of determining a map to life. But then if someone reads too narrowly, perhaps some wisdom or insight might be overlooked. And then there's all that knowledge and potential wisdom to be found in relationships and experiences . . .  or the confusion/loss of sensitivity when one has too many experiences...

Other readers' insights: 

https://www.pastemagazine.com/books/chicago-by-brian-doyle-review/

https://www.upbeacon.com/article/2016/04/brian-doyle-chats-with-us-about-chicago-his-new-novel

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/may/18/eitheror-by-elif-batuman-review-adventures-in-literature-and-life

https://www.wsj.com/articles/either-or-book-review-elif-batuman-finding-herself-in-books-and-life-11653057395

What I did on my summer vacation

My friends, we have one more weekend of summer vacation left. The kids start school on Monday. All of those plans for summer?  We only accomplished a few. Where has the summer gone?

But those few events were pretty major.  For example, we just returned from North Carolina.  We spent the week before last week in Charlotte and Greensboro (staying at an inn in Elon), where we traveled to watch our daughter run in the Junior Olympic National meet. Initially, I thought it might be a trip that involved the runner and a parent, but because we have cousins and college friends in the area, the meet provided impetus to take the whole family for a summer vacation trip.

The meet started on Monday and ended on Saturday, and our daughter was supposed to run Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and maybe Saturday, which gave us Sunday and Tuesday and part of the other days for visiting. So we spent most of the first part of the week enjoying the company of our cousins, talking, laughing, swimming, and eating some delicious food. These are cousins on my husband's side, a set of five siblings who have kids all roughly in the 6-16 year old age range, and who all, miraculously, live within 5 miles of their parents and each other and get along. They have a family band and lots of projects. We have seen them rarely since we moved from Virginia in 2009, about the same time that the "wedding years" of our generation of cousins petered out, but over the last couple of years, we've reconnected - travel is easier, my husband designed a mountain house for them, and they came to Coronado and Austin a couple of times. And now we are starting to enter the "funeral years" of our parents' generation, sad to say - but soon enough the wedding years of our kids simultaneously, offering more opportunities to gather. 

On Tuesday, we went out to eat with our college friends, a couple who started dating about the same time we did. It was like no time at all had passed between the last time we saw each other, which was back in our Chicagoland days nearly 20 years ago, when we all lived in the suburbs and occasionally met up when our babies were little. We were pregnant together a couple of times in those years. Over delicious food - all the vegetables! - and drinks, we laughed and talked and parted reluctantly with the comforting knowledge that good friends are for a lifetime.

The next few days were spent mostly at the track. My parents drove down to join us in cheering, and we stayed at a cute inn on the beautiful campus of Elon University, which looks just what a southern college should look like with big, shady trees and red brick buildings, about 30 mins from the track. We picked Elon because all of the affordable hotels in Greensboro were booked by the families of the other 14,999 athletes.  It was hot and muggy, but the sun was out, and I love a good race, so the days went by quickly. Our daughter placed 8th, which gets a medal, in the 800 m and 4th in the 4x 800 relay, which also earned a medal. In the 4x 400, her team placed 16th in the semi-finals, so no medal, and they did not place high enough to get a spot in the finals, which were supposed to be on Saturday. 

Our original plan was that we'd fly the 5 members of the family living at home this summer out for the first part of the week for a visit with the cousins, and then my husband and the 2 kids not running would fly back on Thursday evening to return to work/life and to save money, since we knew the runner might not run on Saturday.  As it turned out, their Thursday flight became one of the summer travel cancellation statistics, so they were able to stay one more day and watch the Friday race. 

When we found out their flight was changed, and we knew that she wasn't running on Saturday, I called the airline to find out their rescheduling policy. After waiting and waiting to talk to a live person from the airline, I made the decision to rebook on the same flight as the rest of the family since when the receptionist said there was no charge to change. As soon as I did, though, I had a sinking feeling about cutting short our vacation. NOOOOO!, my inner critic yelled, What have I done?!  I had just canceled our second visit with our college friends, with whom we were planning to stay Saturday night! I could have rebooked for Saturday afternoon, so I would still have had the rest of Friday for a day of relaxing, potentially going for a hike in the woods of North Carolina, and then meeting our friends for dinner. Now I had just cancelled my fun!

So for a few days I wallowed in a cesspool of self-pity - or maybe it was just post-party depression - because our most recent summer vacation trip was cut short by a day and a half. Why do I second guess my decisions all the time? While I had been waiting on the phone to speak to someone, I had been doing calculations -- I figured there would be a fee to rebook the flight, so I wasn't really thinking about the reality of the decision. I also knew I would save money on a night in a hotel if I was able to rebook. Then I was balancing spending the extra time with friends whom we had already had dinner with earlier in the week with spending the extra time with the kids, who had some invitations for the weekend, and I have a list of stuff to get done before school starts, as well.  When the airline phone attendant said there was no fee and asked if she should go ahead, I said yes, not thinking about how disappointed I would feel to give up the extra visit and the time alone with just the one daughter. 

As I am writing this, I am questioning why I am still ruminating on this decision - there is a lesson here for me. I often choose what seems to be the responsible thing to do, but isn't always the thing I want to do. We are at the point that we can spend money on a vacation and the kids don't need as much hands-on supervision, and yet I haven't mentally released myself from that mindset of saving money and watching kids. I am frustrated by missing out on the last day of vacation, but also for overthinking my inability to think clearly about decisions like this. I need a policy - like always say YES to friend and family time! But then, it's also family time back here. . . so while having a policy sounds good, it also is hard to apply. I still need to practice not overthinking - perhaps by setting priorities based on values to help guide decisions, and sticking with those values by deciding without rethinking.  As someone who chronically second guesses decisions, knowing WHY I decide something would help me decide and move on. 

The fact that I was sad to go is evidence of how much we loved North Carolina - it was so green and lush, and the family time was restorative. It was a wonderful way to end the summer. 

Reading on our early morning flight - which also had to be rebooked when our original flight was cancelled on the way to NC - fortunately, we were able to rebook on an earlier flight, although getting up at 3:30 am was painful.

 

Backyard adventures - tree climbing and swinging. Not pictured: Badminton, trampolining, koi feeding, and mosquito swatting

Track fans with big heads!

 

Pool time with the cousins

 

Riding small vehicles and hiding cousins behind the lintels when parents aren't aware...

 

Scenes from the campus of Elon - including our hotel balcony

The inn provided bikes for touring campus

Visiting a Greensboro botanical garden

The UNC- Greensboro art museum. A rubber band in a corner helps you conceptualize space, in case you were wondering.

Other artwork at the museum

Medalist!

Discernment

 I mentioned in the last post that I have a new teaching position in the fall. I am going to attempt to juggle teaching at three schools - ESL at the Community Colleg, Comp and Lit at a local Lutheran university, and an adult ed Nature Writing course at my old school, which will be entirely remote, and probably asynchronous, so I'll mostly just be grading. Oh wait! I'm also still teaching in the military ed program online - a class starts in just over a hwe;! I likely will also pick up some substitute shifts at the kids' schools. And I volunteered for the parent-teacher organization. I also would like to continue going to my ecumenical Bible study on Thursday mornings, walk-jogging regularly, attending once a month book club, and then I'll be doing all normal the mom stuff: cooking (thankfully my husband does a lot, even most, of this), cleaning, carpooling, and cheering at various sporting and extracurricular things.  We've signed up to be Eucharistic ministers, once a month or so we boil eggs for the lunch truck for the homeless that our church helps sponsor, and I am thinking about volunteering for some other ministry or something community service minded. 

It's enough to fill more than one calendar. Why do I do this to myself? I fill up the hours because I'm not sure what I really want to be doing.  So here I am writing another post about discerning what to do in this next phase of life. I am in the last year of my 40s. We will only have two kids left at home, a junior in high school, and the 8 year old.  Not that the young adults in the family won't need love and attention -- I spend quite a bit of time on the telephone catching up with them most weekends. I'm a bit old for starting a new career, but too young to be retired, don't you think?  

If we had bought a farm, or at least a little more property, I think I could have thrown myself into focusing on planting and parenting, maybe sticking with the parttime teaching, maybe trying to write more.  But we didn't. So no more ifs. And I haven't used my time over this past year to write anything more than a research paper, blog posts, and scribbles in a diary. 

After I didn't get accepted into the PhD program at UT, which I was intimidated about anyway, I haven't been able to focus on any one thing, really. Substituting and working at the community college this past spring were supposed to help me discern whether I wanted to transition to full time teaching in high school or to adult education at the community college.  And on top of that, the pay is terrible for part time work. Teaching as an adjunct pays so little; substituting pays better. But although I enjoyed working in the kids' schools, and I enjoyed being in the classroom, working as a substitute has its drawbacks. Do I get certified to teach and work full time? Do I apply to another Ph.D. program? While I enjoyed both, I'm not sure the fit is just right. 

I can't even make an easy decision about chairs - new chairs or reupholster old chairs? I think I will reupholster the old ones, but I've spent hours looking at fabric and can't decide if I want to order greens or blues, solids or patterns, a velvety texture or a twill? 

All of this busyness, but I still feel restless. What it is I really want to do? Just get a paycheck? Although my husband is making more than ever, our expenses have kept pace - tuition, taxes, car issues, house issues, a/c bills when it is 100+ degrees every day for 6 weeks, traveling to see the older kids - oh, and we are being sued for the car accident our son had in February! Our insurance will take care of it, but not a happy moment to see the police pull up to the house and deliver a notice. All privileges come with burdens. That's another story, but one that is a part of this decision, in that when we moved here, we took on this huge mortgage and all of the house issues that came with it.  I've set aside berating myself for that decision for now, but perhaps a part of my restlessness is rooted in not wanting to settle here. 

And this is fruitless thing to ponder. We are here now, and we've decided we won't leave for a time, at least until our daughter graduates and/or the dream job/place opens up. 

So really this discernment is not really about what to do, but how to be, how to exist in a new space, without the crowd of children around me to give me purpose and direction about what to do next.  Filling up the calendar avoids the empty time and space for recollection and reflection. I seem to prefer doing than just being, but at some time I'll have to answer for who I am, who I've come to be through all this action. 

Anyway.  Here's something more cheerful: Joni Mitchell's surprise appearance at the Newport Folk Festival this past weekend. I've been drawn into looking at the videos from the weekend - an amazing line-up, topped up with Joni Mitchell's return to the stage after almost dying from a brain aneurysm five years ago.  Wouldn't it have been incredible to have been there? I need to add going to live music performances to my to-do list ... I'm only linking one video, but set aside some time - you could spend some hours listening to the set. 

Paul Simon and Rhiannon Giddens were probably amazing, too: 

Is she thinking about what she has to do next or just enjoying her cute children?

Summer Reading

 The eight year old and I entered the summer reading club at our library. It just ended - which seems early to me, but here we are at the end of July and all of the summer activities are winding down, even though we have three weeks of vacation left. Only!

Neither of us won a prize. Instead of cheap plastic toys and coupons for ice cream cones, the prizes were gift cards and educational sets. I earned something like 17 tickets and entered almost all of them in the drawing for the HEB $100 gift card, but didn't win. The 8 year old spread her tickets around, but mostly wanted to win a little robot that draws. She was pretty disappointed not to get a call from the library yesterday. She was sure she was going to win. She was motivated to log hours and write book reviews to earn more tickets, so the incentive worked, but we'll see if the crushing diappointment of winning nothing deters her from participating next year. She can be a bit dramatic in her responses to even very minor tragedies.

Despite winning nothing, we have done a bit of reading over the summer. I have spent much too much time pouring over the Wall Street Journal in the mornings. since we aren't rushing anywhere. Too much bad news about economic downturns and inflation. On our recent road trip, I read Joseph Bruchac's Rez Dogs, a young reader book about a young girl named Malian who is visiting her grandparents on a reservation and gets stuck with them when the world shuts down for Covid. A stray dog provides companionship and protection for her as she struggles with loneliness and internet connectivity and missing her parents. Bruchac is a writer I discovered when doing my research for the nature writing class. He has a number of young adult books out that primarily feature main characters who are Native Americans.  This is my first, and I give it two thumbs up. It may be a bit lacking in drama, but it provided a peak into a strong grandparent- grandchild relationship, a look at life on a reservation, and a small peek into some of the hardships experienced by young people growing up on a reservation 60 years ago. Both of Malian's grandparents were taken as children and sent to boarding schools. The book is written as narrative poetry, so it reads quickly. Despite the backdrop of suffering, the book had a hopeful tone - Malian's grandparents don't dwell on bitterness, and Malian is unusually appreciative of her circumstances. 

I also just finished a book for the lit class I'll be teaching next year: Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie. The department chooses a novel for the intro to lit courses, and this one is paired with Antigone, of which it is a retelling. I wasn't familiar with Shamsie, although she has a large number of novels to her name. Home Fire follows the plot of Sophocles' classic loosely, but places the two sisters in contemporary London, where their family immigrated from Pakistan. In this case, the two sisters are Muslim and must confront the actions of their brother and father, who both joined extremist organizations. Somehow the family survived the death of their father, but when their mother dies, the siblings struggle to stay unified. The oldest sister raises her two siblings, but eventually leaves to study in America, while the two younger siblings, twins, start to make their way separately after they graduate from high school. The sister pursues a degree, while the brother picks up a job, but falls into the grip of jihadist recruiters. Add in a love interest who happens to be the son of the home secretary who is monitoring the movements of the brother, and tragedy is sure to follow - and of course, knowing the source story, tragedy is expected.  An interesting and engaging read, with lots of themes overlapping, which is good for an assigned book. For a book I have to assign to first year students, it has an overly descriptive passage with a love scene that I probably won't discuss in class, but it's in there, and will probably keep students reading. 

I can't remember if I mentioned that I went on an Ann Patchett spree - This is the Story of a Happy Marriage and Commonwealth and some articles in between. Enjoyed both the memoir/book of essays, This is the Story, which I listened to as a book on tape on the trip to California in June, and the novel, which is a riff on Patchett's early life. Had I not just read Patchett's memoir, I might not have caught that. Commonwealth is the story of a broken marriage, the secrets children keep, family connections, and the possibility of reconciliation. A bit melancholy but a redemptive ending. Maybe kids whose parents are messed up end up closer because of their neglect.

After many weeks, I finished Peter Wohlleben's The Heartbeat of Trees, a companion to The Language of Trees.  I enjoyed them both, a mix of popular science, environmental writing, and personal memoir. Not fast reading, though. I'd read a chapter and then set the book down for several days before reading another. Wohllenben was a German forester who now devotes his time to writing and promoting good forestry practices, among other environmental pursuits. His writing voice is friendly, encouraging, and even hopeful, despite the degradation he sees of the natural world, For instance, one of the oldest trees in the world is threatened because of tourists hiking to its remote location to view it. On the one hand, it would be terrible if this tree died from people stamping around it to view the oldest tree. On the other hand, the reverence showed to this little alpine tree is encouraging. Wohlleben's own story of shifting  practices in German foresting is hopeful for future conservation efforts that allow commerce and conservation to complement each other to an extent. 

I also finished a book for my book club reading challenge called Tomorrow Will Be Different by Sarah MacBride. MacBride's memoir tells of her transition from male to female late in her college career, early in her political career. She is now a delegate to the Delaware state government, one of the first openly trans politicians to serve in that governing body, if not the first. The tone is upbeat, despite a section describing the death of Sarah's husband, who was also trans, from cancer not long after they married.  The reading challenge has several categories that are outside my normal reading trends, and this one was interesting, but not one I'd normally choose, partly because I don't really read political books, and this one read a bit like promotional material for the next election. 

I've also been reading my Bible study book, Encountering God by Kelly Minter, which describes different spiritual practices all familiar to Catholics - prayer, fasting, confession, adoration, meditation. I appreciate the immense number of Biblical references to these ancient practices, but the book is written for a reader who is unfamiliar or unused to these practices, so it's geared toward beginners and those who need convincing that fasting or confessing to others is worthwhile for spiritual growth.  The conversations have been enriching with my group, an ecumenical bunch I was introduced to by one of my Navy spouse friends. 

I've also been catching up with the newest Norton anthology of literature, shorter version. I'll be teaching an intro to lit class this fall. New school, new textbook, new syllabus. Thought I would be further along with developing that than I am, but classes don't start until the end of August - which will come all too quickly.

Reading with the 8 year old: My Father's Dragon, Dragons of Blueland, Pippi Longstocking, and various picture books from the library. This suburban library doesn't have the quaint appeal, the quantity of books, or the familiar librarians from our old library, but we are getting used to it. It's not a four block walk, either, but this month we have been going about once a week, since our schedule is more open. 

In the meantime, I've got a stack of books to read that are waiting for me. I thought I would get more reading done on our recent trip to OKC, but instead shopped upholstery fabric, chairs, flights, and hotels for upcoming travels. More to come!