January hit hard this year. We had locked down from Thanksgiving onward, due to the high transmissibility of the Omicron variant, which looked like a hockey stick in the charts – erasing previously visible peaks and trough with it’s through-the-roofness. So the holidays were lonely and quiet. In January, we had to even stop seeing the one family we’ve been able to spend time with through the whole pandemic. And the dark cold of New England winter – always a challenging time – felt downright impossibly claustrophobic. But a ray of light beckoned: if we could thread the needs of infection, we planned on doing something so impossible in the COVID era it seems beyond the realm of fantasy: travel to the Mediterranean island of Malta.
The view out the windowMy view of the view
A thousand things had to go right for this to work. We couldn’t get COVID. My parents couldn’t get COVID. No one could get a close exposure. The days leading up to my folks arrival and our departure felt impossibly fraught. I was terrified to take a test and have all hopes dashed, but the uncertainty begged for the reassurance of a negative test. But through a miracle, I found myself on a Friday night lifting into the oncoming night, sunset scattered behind us. I had bought an absolutely ridiculous journal for the trip – leather bound, and closed with a long strap and a charm, with extremely heavy watercolor paper. It’s the kind of journal that’s too nice to write in – and it came with a gorgeous box and amusingly a perfectly sized tiny backpack. Through the trip I journaled and drew on alternating pages.
Our first view of the Maltese archipelago
It was not as bad as I feared, flying transcontinental in a mask. We were tired, pulling the redeye, and it was so strange to find ourselves amidst other people and in places we’d never seen before. We found ourselves finally at the three room apartment we had rented, which was in the old city of Valetta and dated back an unkonwn number of centuries, but was likely at least 500 years old. The sandstone steps were well worn in the middle, and each room, though small, occupied an entire floor. The mandatory balcony looked out onto a street of stairs, and every morning at 9 am an old woman would lean outside her balcony and smoke a cigarette above the day’s drying laundry.
The 9 am view
What we wanted from Malta was novelty and change. Having looked so often at the same four walls, I yearned for something new to think about, to talk about, to imagine. I wanted to unlock doors of the mind that did not spring from the hallways of my everyday life. And so we did – carefully. We ate outside all but one meal, despite the cold, and did few things indoors. Masks and vaccines were rigorously enforced. But they did not inhibit our enjoyment a bit! Mostly what we did was appreciate the history and culture of the island. We didn’t see EVERY museum in Malta, but we did go to: The Archaeological Museum, the neolithic Hypogeum, the War Museum at St. Elmo, the medieval walled city of M’Dina (with the cathedral museum and a preserved ducal palace) and the catacombs of Rabat, the upper and lower Bukkarra gardens, the best Turkish hammam (only?) in Malta, the neolithic Tarxien temples, the Citadel in Gozo and the old prison and smaller Archaeological museum, the cliffs of the northern coast, the Roman era salt flats, Ġgantija (the oldest freestanding building in the world – older than the pyramids), the armory museum, a boat tour of the harbor, a horseback ride at sunset, the astonishingly ornate Co-Cathedral and the firing of the signal cannon.
This was so incredibly ornate that it was almost impossible to take it all in. Even the floor was comprised of detailed worked stone in pictures – mostly of sailing ships and skeletons.The catacombs were labyrinthine and there were stories about how people got lost in them when they were used as WW2 bomb shelters – which felt very believableWe were there to look at neolithic ruins, but the glory of green and blue and warm sun was equally captivating
We also attended a baroque concert and TWO amazing jazz trumpet sets in alleyway bars that made me feel MUCH cooler than I actually am. And everywhere we went there was emblazoned – in ironwork, or masonry, or marquetry, or paint – the Maltese cross.
I loved the live drawing of the concert.Adrian – the trumpet player – WAILED
As I wrote in many post cards: I have good news. The rest of the world did not disappear while we were all responsibly locked down. The sun has not hidden itself forever from a cold and weary world. There are new things to be seen, foods to be tasted, experiences yet to be had. Welcome back to the world.
Sunset in Valetta
If you really want to, you can see all 1000+ of our photos here.
There was a moment where Thane was born when I had an epiphany. It’s funny, I know when it happened and what it did in my life, but I don’t remember the actual epiphany at all. Maybe it was a gradual realization. Maybe I was doing dishes. Adam and I had spent our 20s trying to be grownups – being reliable, showing up on time, gardening, learning how to cook, reading books, staying at home. We didn’t make big money, but we lived thriftily. I started my 401k with my first professional job when I was 21 years old – before I even graduated college. We were dead set on Being Grownups (because of course, we didn’t feel like it). But then I had Thane and I turned 30 and I realized that this was my one and only precious life, and my life would only include the things that I did in it. Moreover, I really only remembered the things that I photographed and/or wrote about. I bought a digital camera. I bought a book on photography. I started this blog. And I started planning to do things that were important and memorable.
First camping trip – Thane is only 9 months old.
We started camping. I ramped up the picture taking. We began to travel more, to visit more places and go on excursions. And I took more and more pictures of all of it (of course, the improvements in digital photography helped – taking pictures when you actually used film was a pain in the rear).
I suspect sometimes I now overdo it. Hundreds of pictures on a memorable day is not unusual. Last year, going through my pictures to put together a “Best of” album, I had over 10k pictures to review. And during precovid times we were exhausted and strapped by my insistence on constantly *doing things*. But then life hit the biggest collective pause button our generation has ever seen. In the year in which Adam and I celebrate 20 years of marriage (and 24 of sharing our lives), we were supposed to go on a romantic trip to Italy in April, which clearly didn’t happen. And as our anniversary approached, I was jolted by the realization that this really rather tremendous milestone was on its way to being lost in the sameness of these quarantine days (nice meal and dressing up aside). So I cast my mind for something truly memorable, something that wouldn’t erode with the currents of time, and was appropriate for a pandemic. One of those sorts of things you never have a good enough reason to justify the cost for doing.
And I had a brilliant idea
Despite a widespread fear of heights among the assembled family (not me!) I got very little pushback for my crazy scheme. Even the 4:30 am wakeup call was handled with grace, fortitude and coffee. (It turns out balloon rides are almost always at dawn, when the winds are calmest. One of our co-fliers had tried 4 times to get in a balloon ride to be stymied by high winds the previous three). We got to the site at 5:30 and watched as they unrolled the balloon, tested the gear and started inflating the vast room-sized, rainbow balloon. We first had to hold down the basket, and then we climbed in. As gently as an escalator, the balloon started taking off next to its competitor compatriot, and ascended into the quiet of the New England dawn.
Still waters and smooth sailing
For some reason, the heights in a balloon are much less scary than other heights. The basket is firm beneath you. The rates feel human-scale. The margins feel large. We skimmed across the tops of trees – close enough to grab a handful of needles from a pine. We swooped low over the water of a lake, catching our reflection. Then we rose up high high high until the cars were smaller than Matchbox cars. Differences in height changed our direction. Our pilot Andre, who appears to have trained every other hot air balloonist in New England, told a series of well practiced jokes and tales, his persistent love of his aeronautical craft seeping through his customer facing banter. He was like a magician, seeing things in the future. It takes a long time to make a hot air balloon change where it is (heat is not the world’s most efficient method of steering), but he was somehow always seeing ahead and moving us to these invisible air currents made somehow visible to him.
The balloon face of the other balloon only got creepier as it landed
The landing was rather exciting. They really only control up and down in a balloon, and to land they need quite a bit of cleared space, without power lines. New England is rather on the wooded side (Andre was vehemently anti-tree). So the cul-de-sac we landed in had seen balloons land there before, although the neighbors still turned out in delighted appreciation of the gem landing in their street. Except for one person, who was _BESIDE HIMSELF_ with anger that we would land there. He was hopping up and down with rage and cursing and generally making a scene, which shouldn’t have been funny, but absolutely was. The capper was when one of his long suffering and patient neighbors, in the midst of his profanity laden tirade against the balloon, greeted him with a very phlegmatic, “Morning Lenny”. Landing a hot air balloon does require a certain amount of diplomacy, and a canny and quick ground crew to literally sprint to catch the landing lines.
The mostly volunteer landing crew
We ended our adventure with a glass of champagne (I looked up only to realize my Very Tall son had one as well – ah well! Good time for a first glass of champagne, I suppose!) in balloon cups with good wishes (including “friendly landowers) and a history lesson on the first aeronautical adventurers. And Andre gave us this toast, in his muted French accent:
May the winds welcome you with softness.
May the sun bless you with its warm hands.
May you fly so high and so well that God
joins you in laughter and sets you gently
back into the loving arms of Mother Earth.
MOSTLY friendly landowners
It was a lovely, beautiful moment my friends. Much has been abandoned, or prevented, or cancelled. There is fear everywhere, and grief and anger. Many traditions have been broken, and others forever lost. But we are humans. We are at our greatest when what is called for is stamina, forbearance, patience, humor, creativity and wonder. If the old is no longer possible, we can ask ourselves – what new things has that created space for? When we account for our lives, what will we – in the end – remember?
Smile!
If you want to see all the pictures of our adventure, I’ve put them into this album for your enjoyment! I would definitely recommend A&A Balloon Rides in NH!
Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. -John Muir
I spent about 12 hours over the last week or so going through the pictures I took in 2019. I believe the tally is about 10,000 pictures, give or take. I’m deeply lamenting that Google stopped automatically syncing drive and photos, since now backing up my collection requires actual effort. But at the end of each year, I create a “Best of” album that I use for creating calendars, making physical prints (so that some hacker can’t erase my children’s childhoods), and as the background scenes for my screensaver at work.
I’m always struck at how the photographs work. In the moment, my kids start groaning when I take my camera out. There’s a fake-feeling when you arrange them artistically and cajole them to smile. When it’s just me, sometimes I wonder if I’m really seeing things when I have my phone out, or if I’m just postponing the seeing to some later date which may or may not ever come. The moments that surround those pictures have all sorts of feelings: annoyance, exhaustion, aggravation, anger, humor, relaxation, exasperation. But by the time I’ve picked my favorite photos, the entire year looks beautiful, joyful, peaceful and full of familial bonding.
This transformation of life from banal aggravation to beautiful memories is a miracle of modern alchemy. The best part is that, as you pull out your memories along with these pictures, they start to conform to what the photos say. It was a great day. We all had fun. We get along wonderfully. We spend most of our time doing meaningful things together as a family. Memories are not the truth of what happened, or of what we felt at that time. They are changed by, and even created by, what we do with them after they are first born. I work hard to make those memories largely lovely (although I do save a few less beautiful ones for authenticity’s sake, and because given enough time they usually become funny).
Presidential Traverse, near Eisenhower
During this marathon session of photographic goodness, I couldn’t help noticing something about my year. There were a LOT more mountain scenes than in past years. My memories of those moments don’t include aching knee-muscles (impossible to photograph) or the pounding heat on Chocorua. But they instead evoke moments of peace, majesty, and a bigger and more lovely world. I’ve recently begun hiking a lot with an old friend who is the same kind of crazy I am about hiking mountains. On grim, cold days we sometimes text each other pictures of where we wish we were. With his not-so-great example, I was recently talked into doing my first ever winter hike, which required a massive re-kitting for appropriate gear. (OK, by talked into, I mean I said “Hey, want to go hiking on Wednesday?” and he said, “Sure!”.)
New pants, new gaiters, new boots, new microspikes.
It was a beautifully soul-clearing hike, starting in the dark of the morning before dawn. We climbed to beat the weather, due in at some uncertain time of the afternoon (the forecasts were wildly inconsistent). The skies at times darkened ominously and scarves of white clouds wrapped themselves tightly around the necks of Lafayette and Lincoln, across the valley. But there were glorious moments, too. A perfect boulder, covered in pebbly ice. A southern exposure with bright moss shining through the white snow. The expanse of Lonesome Lake perfect below us. The sound of bitter winds whipping above our heads, with short summit-pines protecting us from the greatest heat-stealing wrath of winter’s icy breath.
The ice was fascinatingThe moss was shockingly vibrant amid all the monochrome of snow and sky
As Boston braces for our first real snow of the winter on Monday, the experienced yankee might feel a mild claustrophobia setting in, as the world begins its process of shrinking to the size of the shoveled path. But perhaps this year will be different. Perhaps this year, I’ll be able to brave snow and ice, and meet my mountains again before spring.
This summer was a remarkable one. I can think of few periods in my life where I crammed as much in (mostly great, fun stuff) as I have done the last four or so months. I’m honestly a bit daunted by the attempt to even summarize it all. Let’s see.
This summer’s motto for me
Hiking
This summer I hiked. A lot. I did four four-thousand footers (Osceola, Osceola East, Eisenhower and Pierce). I hiked Chocorua. I hiked Monadnock. I hiked Welch-Dickey. I hiked small trails centered around Tamworth New Hampshire, like the Big Pines trail, Mt. Major, the Boulder Loop Trail and the Castle in the Clouds. I bought a new hiking backpack and new poles. I did several long, full days hiking morning to evening. I was a founding member of the “Stoneham Mountaineering and Libation Society” (it started as the Stoneham Hiking and Drinking club, but these things tend to evolve over time). And this might have been my favorite part of the summer. I loved being in the woods, strapping on my boots, and heading towards the sky.
Travels
We went camping three times this summer, as is our custom. Nearly two weeks of the summer was spent in tents. We also journeyed back to near our family’s (and democracy’s) foundations in our trip to Greece. It was so glorious – the history, the food, the cool clear waters of the Aegean. I also sent my sons on a rather ill-fortuned RV trip to Canada, cut short due to mechanical failures. Grey spent four weeks at Camp Wilmot, Thane spent two. I took a week to myself in New Hampshire (wherein I mostly hiked…). Adam went to Gencon. It felt a little like a French Farce, where someone was always entering one door as someone else left through another.
Iconic moment
Home Improvements
I’ve been deeply remiss in the whole blogging as autobiography thing. I think you’ll understand when I tell you that the week before we left for Greece, we finally got a contractor to come in and replace the (awful) carpet in our hallway and stairway with hardwood. There was a lot of panicked last minute moving, and since then has been a lot of painting etc. This was the first step on a long journey to built in bookshelves!
BeforeAfter
Friends
I’m just now coming back from a weekend spent with friends. While we were gone a lot this summer, looking at my pictures I see us at the newly opened restaurants in town, at BBQs and rock band nights, whitewater river rafting, tubing the Saco, catching live music, celebrating birthdays, watching the (incredible!) Women’s World Cup or running into each other in the climbing gym.
My selfie form leaves much to be desired
Exercise
My abysmal time in the Camp Wilmot 5k notwithstanding, I may be in some of the best shape of my life. I didn’t run a great race on Saturday (although I ran the race!) in large part because I’d hike 13 miles over ~10 hours with several thousand feet of elevation change the day before. Then slept in a puppy pile of air mattresses in a cabin with a bunch of my friends. This might not be considered optimal race preparation. But I have run, climbed, hiked, and biked to such a degree that I’m feeling stronger and more capable. That’s an awesome feeling.
Ask yourself: are you in top physical condition?
Filling in the corners
And in between all these bigger things were other things… like going to work every day. I’m engaged in some of the most interesting, difficult work it’s ever been my privilege to undertake. Even returning to the home sphere, there was jam to make (I didn’t manage to find any plums this year, alas!), spending time with my beloved husband, going to the beach with the boys and catching the book signing for the latest Randall Monroe masterpiece.
How To
I was once told that “Life is rich and full”. Life is so rich and so full, and I am so very grateful.
Last night, I drove to Camp Wilmot for what seemed like the umpteenth time this year. I was picking Grey up from his fourth week of camp, and he’d just returned from a remote Maine island where he’d spent time in a tent right near the beach with a small group of campers and counselors. The pictures looked amazing.
Beach cleaning day!
I’m incredibly impressed with what Camp Wilmot does. When I first dropped Grey off as a shy 8 year old (only five years ago? surely more!) I knew nothing of the camp, other than that it was the Presbyterian camp serving our Presbytery – and that summer camp was super important to me. In every year since, I have seen and understood more of what the camp does and offers than I did the year before. That first year, there were only about 10 kids in the second youth week of summer camp. The first week was bigger, with over 40 kids. We sent him to the smaller camp, to break him in.
Grey’s first Camp Wilmot dropoff
This year, there were over 60 kids in both two youth camp weeks, as well as Adventure Camp teen weeks on either side. “How” you ask me “Did a middle Protestant Christian camp go from a faithful few to a packed, month-long hive of kids buzzing with energy?” It really feels like an old-school, Hollywood-type miracle. We Presbyterians are not growing. The summer camp I attended as a kid has been shut down, as have many others. But here’s Camp Wilmot, thriving!
Camp Wilmot energy!
I haven’t fully gotten to the bottom of the secret. I think it might have something to do with the energy and dedication of the new generation of directors. They’re former campers who were passionate about the camp, enough to put their time and their youth behind the work of running the thing. I heard a story of them asking Presbytery not to give up on the camp – but to give them enough time to graduate and give back to the camp they loved. That love, I swear, runs through every board and blade of the buildings and grounds. I can feel it now, when I walk there.
A-cross beautiful White’s Pond
But that wasn’t all. They also realized that there was a tremendous need for high quality summer activities for kids who may not have as many options for how to spend their summers. So along with a very generous donor, they set up a campership fund and started working with the guidance counselors in local school districts to identify kids who would especially benefit, and make sure those kids were able to come. It turns out that almost half the kids who come to Camp Wilmot do not regularly go to another church. This is not a camp designed only to appeal to the Sunday School crowd, but to kids from city Boston and rural New Hampshire who have never sat in a pew before.
Adventure week closing ceremonies
And I’m watching it play out with my kids. That first year, Grey was alone. By the next year, he’d talked no fewer than four of his buddies into joining him. This year, our town sent 10 kids. I’m pretty sure that Grey would also fight, work, and commit to keep the camp where his heart lives open.
Grey’s second year. Thane didn’t actually get to join Grey for several years yet.
Are you excited by this camp? I am. In a world that seems full of bad news, watching scrappy young people fight for something they love and make it a haven of welcome for a whole new generation of children is exactly what my soul needs. I really want to support it, and I invite you to as well. So how can you support the camp?
They’re hosting their second 5k Funderaiser in September, and I’m going to be running it! (It’s a hilly course – this 5k is no joke!) I invite you to:
I made a huge mistake in scheduling this year. Despite finally having enough tenure to have breathing room in the “vacation time” arena, when I planned the end of last year and the start of this year, I put all the fun stuff in the summer. I’d had a plan for a trip during April break, but when that didn’t quite work out I ended up not taking more than one day off at a time … between August of 2018 and June of 2019. This is what we call “a big mistake”. There’s no denying that I’ve been pretty crunchy-fried lately. So much to do at work. Lots to do at home. My obligations to my community… it all gets harder when you don’t give yourself periodic breaks.
When I realized this, in an exhausted fog, I immediately did the only sensible thing: I booked a getaway on the next weekend where it was plausible. This was still nearly two months ago, but finally the date came! The leaves are budding, the birds are singing and the vacation time is coming!
Our destination was Provincetown. I was there for an afternoon in September and found myself thinking what a lovely getaway spot it was – and nicely close to Boston! Going so early in May, we found that not everything was open yet (sadly, including the fast ferry). But it also meant the prices for a lovely tiny apartment were low, and everywhere we went all weekend, we could hear the locals and the seasonal crews all greeting each other and catching up after a winter apart.
We walked a lot, ate a lot of food, and did some mostly window shopping. The boys and Adam roleplayed for hours. There was reading time and puzzle time. And we watched The Matrix (Grey didn’t like it). It was absolutely perfect.
We climbed to the very top of the Pilgrim tower! It was a gorgeous view, and the day was unexpectedly lovely.I’m still not accepting that Grey is taller than me Any blue sky we saw was an unexpected blessing. We’d expected all rain, all weekend I walked most of the way down this breakwater. I got to watch seagulls breaking clams on the rocks! This was the only window where you could see the water, and the boys played a role playing game there the whole weekend Why do I let Thane talk me into these puzzles? I stayed up until 12:30 last night to get it finished enough that he could put in the last pieces this morning We visited a few spots on the National Seashore, but it was pretty rainy and cold
This Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, my family and I are holed up in a very scenic mountain lodge for a few days. I really like getting away on this weekend. The weeks after the beginning of the new year can be very dreary, with dark gray skies, the coldest weather of the year, and little to look forward to. Some years I have arranged it so poorly that I didn’t have a day off between Christmas and Memorial Day. But with a long, fun weekend in the snow planned mid January, it helps.
Last year, Adam took the boys skiing and snow-boarding. But we had this run where both kids ended up in the ER in a couple week period from snow sports. Thane broke his wrist, which really bummed out the rest of the winter and halted his nascent basketball career. This year, we planned to arrive right before a major winter storm broke (and leave after it does). So while we toyed with snow sports, we didn’t actually buy any lift tickets.
Yesterday, we lounged around the hotel, swam in the heated outdoor pool, and played lots of role-playing games. We took a midday trip on still clear roads to North Conway, where Adam and I enjoyed some time in some art galleries looking for pieces for our attic, while Grey enjoyed the practical joke section of the Five and Dime store there. He fell in love with a coffee shop that specialized in coffee, art, sarcastic sayings and jazz.
Scenic gaming location
Today, after the epic brunch the hotel is famous for, the boys played their role playing game for several hours. They’re deep into an adventure. With all this unexpected time on my hands, I started live-tweeting my reading of Steven’s “A History of Stoneham, Mass” from a beautiful copy given to me by a friend. I also – and this is epic – finished my draft of the book I’ve been working on for over three years. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the finished draft is about 44k words. Apparently that’s not really novel length. So either I’ve written a novelette (no market) a teen novel (not really) or I need to find more story to tell. Or it’s just unpublishable, which is the most likely outcome, but one likes to pretend there’s hope.
The shores of Echo Lake
In the bright light of afternoon, with 17 degree weather, we all put on our warmest layers and buckled on our snowshoes (thanks mom!) for a walking adventure. Although I’ve seen Echo Lake many times and know exactly where it is and it’s very near this resort I’ve stayed in often… I’ve never been. There’s a trail down from the resort, and we broke new snow. It felt like a foot of new powder, although it had switched over to ice pellets by that time. The lake itself was frozen hard – hard enough even for the most cautious of parents to be unafraid of their beloved children walking on it. And from the lake, perhaps no surprise, there is a remarkable echo.
If I didn’t know this was a lake, it would be hard to tell
Snow shoeing is quite a tiring activity. Right now Adam’s asleep, Thane is bopping around and Grey is working on a school project (theoretically). The snow continues to fall outside, and we have nowhere we need to be and nothing we need to do. Bliss indeed!
This morning the skies were blue and the mountains clear. Over morning coffee, the horizons were bounded only by mountains with snowy feet and bare crowns.
By noon, the clouds had covered the sun.
Here at the twilight of the day, the nearest mountains are nearly only memories, or abstract reminders as slightly darker parts of the undifferentiated horizon.
Disappearing mountains
At any moment now, the first of the flakes will begin to fall. Well over a foot will fall before these falling clouds rise again, having dropped the burdens of their great snow-hordes. The vaults of heaven will open and grant us a full share of winter.
We are safe at the footsteps of a mighty cliff, overlooking the Greek-inspired Diana’s Bath and Echo Lake. We have nowhere we need to go in the time before the clouds lift – although if we’re feeling adventurous the best of snow will be available on Attitash & Wildcat. The snow shoes are in the car. The outdoor pool is steaming in the chill. We are fully stocked with books and snacks, and the lodge has a full restaurant (and bar). The role-playing games are in full swing.
I suspect I say this every year, but man. A lot happened for us in 2018. Walking back through my pictures and notes, perhaps one of the biggest changes in our house and life was the transformation of our attic from a partially finished bedroom and unheated office into a palace of delights and things that work. We did a huge attic project, including adding plumbing, electric, HVAC, insulation and flooring (and walling) for a full bathroom, bedroom, closets & walk in closet. We’ve finally gotten the laundry room up and running (a sad & sordid story). But every day I’m delighted by living in such a beautiful space. Due to the eviction of cats and children from the floor, it’s also clean and peaceful. Ahhhhh.
Fun with radiation
We had an interesting spell last year where both children had ER trips in a three week period due to snow sports. My “medical notifications” folder is thick with 6 month late-arriving bills from random radiologists in that period. Grey took a tumble on the slopes which ended up being fine, but which involved the neck. Thane broke his wrist snowboarding. We’re headed out again in a few weeks to the Whites. I’m wondering if we’re going to end up snowboarding/skiing. Or maybe just tubing and snow-shoeing, which are not safe but have slightly lower risks.
Tropical Island paradise
Thane got his wrist brace off just in time for us to go to Cozumel. There was superb snorkeling and the weather (as always) was magnificent. The children also somehow just hit the age where it seemed fine to leave them in the hotel room while we went snorkeling, which meant that Adam and I got a lot more great swims in than we have in the past. Thane made friends with the iguanas, Grey was an all around good sport, and we played a decent number of board games. Alas, no beach vacation is in store for us this year. I’ll just have to gaze longingly at the pictures of previous trips.
First geocache
When we got home, Grey took up geocaching – which is an activity all of us love. Yes, let’s wander through the Fells looking for hidden treasure! Grey also set up his first cache, hidden in public lands near the soon-to-officially-open TriCommunity Bikeway (with all requisite permissions). We’ve hit about 40 caches in total. He often points out to me that he’d spend sooooo much more time geocaching if he had his own smartphone. I guess that’s something for him to look forward to!
Piemas
My parents came out to visit at Piemas time. We were lucky to see them a few times this year, including the week where they were blowing in insulation into the walls of the house which therefore became a death trap and we all (including cats) had to vacate it. Good times. But the pie was great and my mom claims that I’ve probably made more of them than she has! So I’m not complaining. Not too long thereafter my brother accepted a transfer and went from being one town over to living in Omaha. We miss him.
Desperate measures
As the winter posted a hard freeze after some warm weather, I started obsessing full time about my plum tree. There were several months there with multiple updates a week on the plum status. My over-the-topness began with this scene, where my long-suffering and loving husband is rigging up a heat reflector for a space heater for my plum tree so it doesn’t get too cold. I learned a lot this year – my tree blossomed beautifully, set out several hundred small plums and then dropped most of them. There were about 20 that survived that purge. Another 15 or so died off at the size of cherries. Three plums made it to maturity and were integrated into a mixed plum batch of jam. According to my consult with my cousin (whose husband is a orchard keeper), likely I insufficiently watered and fertilized my tree. I can assure you that will not happen again. I’ll come up with new ways to have my crop destroyed. Or possibly I’ll get a bumper crop of hundreds of plums and no way to handle them all. I keep hoping for that particular disaster. Better yet – I specifically bought a damson varietal because I read a book growing up that claimed they made the best jam. Most damsons are purple. The fruit from my tree is definitely greenish/yellow. So either it’s not a damson, or maybe it’s a greengage damson. And I have no idea which.
And yes, my plum woes was of greater interest to me most of the year than many other topics of conversation.
No, he didn’t get to drive it
For April break we sent the kids off to various grandparental residences, where they spent time eating foods we wouldn’t feed them and doing things we wouldn’t let them do and generally being spoiled. And a good time was had by all. Meanwhile, Adam and I got to *go to museums* together and have conversations about something other than whose turn it is to do the dishes. Fantastic.
They hit a home run just as I snapped this
Grey turned into a bona fide teenager this year. His shoes are bigger than his father’s. He’s taller than me. He and I went to a baseball game together and he was protective of me in the jubilant post-game crowds. It’s been amazing. He’s also grown his skills and abilities along with his height. He’s been cooking and baking pretty regularly. He transports himself by bike when the weather allows. He’s thoughtful and intelligent. And he’s started shaving. Heaven save us all.
Camping Trip 1 of many
By my count, I slept in a sleeping bag on 7 different occasions this summer, mostly outdoorish (but sometimes rustic indoors). We did get in our traditional three trips with the boys for Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day. Thane said today that he loves camping, and he wishes we did more camping. I’m utterly thrilled that I’ve so thoroughly corrupted him with my insanity. We’ve continued to add to our crazy camping gear, including hammocks for the whole family, new tents and insulated camping mugs.
My beloved congregation
I’m still recovering, I swear, from the pastor search process. This year has been less work, although interesting challenges have arisen for our congregation. I admire and respect the hard work, patience, loving-kindness and humor of my community.
The mulberry bush
All winter long I read books on foraging. In the spring, I manage to get one or two harvests in. But by the time there is so much to be eaten in late summer I’m drowning in farmshare produce and completely out of my mind with busy-ness and I never go foraging. This year I managed to get a few good trips in, including turning some early stage knotweed into jam. Thane helped me harvest these mulberries, and has declared them by far his favorite fruit. I made mulberry pie and mulberry jam, although the harvests were not vast. I need to find more supplies…
Tubing the Saco
One of my best investments of the year was a higher quality underwater camera. It allowed me to take pictures of tropical reefs, shenanigans in White Lake, and the scenic hours we spent lazily drifting down the Saco.
Camp Wilmot
Grey spent three weeks at Camp Wilmot this summer. Thane spent two. Adam and I spent that off weekend camping in the White Mountains. I think that weekend was a fantastic one for all of us, even though we didn’t spend it together per se. The kids are going back to Camp Wilmot for the maximum possible time, and Grey has stated a policy that he’ll be at Camp Wilmot any time he can be. Sneak peak to 2019 – it turns out they’ve added a fourth week (which how amazing is it to watch a Christian Camp growing and thriving like that??!) So between that and Camp Gramp I will not see my 13 year old for FIVE WEEKS this summer.
Baby’s first Backpacking
In August we headed out to Washington State for Camp Gramp, just as the wildfires washed the west in ash and smoke. I’d spent considerable time trying to find a way to go backpacking for a few days without my husband (since our vacation time isn’t quite synced up). I reached out to a bunch of tour groups etc. but to no avail. So in desperation I looked at my man-shaped teenager and conscripted him for his first ever backpacking trip. It was a short trip, but we had an excellent time! He said he’d go again.
Surreal theater in the smoke
Adam and I then went down to Ashland for the Shakespeare Festival, where all our outdoor shows were moved indoors and everyone was respirators. The mountains were obscured and the air was uncomfortably visible. Still, we had a great time seeing some amazing theater. We caught up with an old college friend we hadn’t seen in nearly 20 years and his lovely family. And we ate some superb food.
My little trumpeter
After one more camping trip to White Lake, school started again. Grey entered 7th grade (WAT?!) and Thane started 4th – his last year in elementary school. Thane took up trumpet, to my great pleasure. Then began one of the busiest falls I’ve ever had.
There was a girl’s weekend on the Cape (I only came for one day – after running a 5k in Stoneham) Amazing ladies
The following weekend I ran a hilly 5k at Camp Wilmot, where I spent Friday with Grey. I was really happy to get to know this place my son loves so much a bit better!
Two 5ks in two weeks!
Then on Saturday I returned home in the afternoon to a 40th birthday party thrown by my husband, where he made all my favorite dishes and invited all my favorite people who all wrote nice things about me and read them out loud. It was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had. Even my sister was there!
Her poem was entitled “The Brendigo”My crew
The week after THAT I went to a camp in the wilds of Connecticut to do a not-quite-a-LARP called Otherworld, which was profound and amazing.
Excellent looking ranger
The week after that, I got news my nephew had died, which cast a long pall over otherwise happy times. Still, Grey celebrated his birthday (sleepover), we went to King Richard’s Faire, did our annual apple picking, finally moved into the attic and Adam celebrated his birthday (gaming). I snuck in a sleepover for Thane’s birthday before I had to miss Halloween to head off to Singapore for a work trip.
Singapore
Seriously, I barely survived October.
November and December slowed down a bit, and there was so much catching up to be done. Of course through all of that, Adam and I worked two demanding full time jobs (both of us are lucky to have jobs that require us to be at the top of our games!). The kids went to school. And there is always and has ever been laundry to be done.
Here’s my “Best of” photo album. It was an incredible year. Here’s hoping 2019 is as full of as much good, with no bad to leaven it!
I won an all expenses paid trip to Singapore. That’s how I’ve been positioning it to myself when it became clear a few weeks ago that I would definitely need to fly out to Singapore for a big presentation I’d been working on. It’s really hard to figure out how long is the right amount of time to go for a work trip like this. On the one hand, it’s 50 hours of travel (a full work week’s worth!) to get here! On the other hand, I only have like a day or two of stuff I need to do here. I settled on pretty much a week – landing in the weekend to get acclimated.
So far I’ve had that weekend part, wandering the city and trying taking a million pictures. I’ve come up with a few observations.
If you’re unfamiliar with Singapore, a quick background might be useful. It’s a former British colony that gained independence in the 60s. It’s a city state – only a few square miles – at the tip of Malaysia. It’s home to about 6 million people, roughly 3 million of whom were born elsewhere. It’s extremely diverse, with key populations coming from China, Malaysia, India & England.
Working on my selfie game
1) The entire city was built for selfies
You know the Sydney Opera House? The Singapore equivalent was built to look like Durian fruit. You can see it across the man-made bay, right next to the iconic Mer-lion. And floating soccer field. But right before the 40 story, three pillared ship-building that hosts the casino. Everywhere you look has beautifully composed views of the city with fascinating architecture. And people have definitely gotten the message, also everywhere you look are hordes of people all taking pictures – mostly selfies. I saw probably 20 people today who’d even hired professional photographers (or had friends with fancy cameras) to follow them through their touristy stuff and take pictures of it. It’s wild.
You know you’re really short on space when…
2) Singapore is basically a spaceship
Imagine if you have a ton of people in a very small, closed environment from many backgrounds. You need to keep them healthy, clothed, fed, exercised and doing the work you need them to do. You also need to give them that human psychological need for greenery, space and outdoors. Well, Singapore is already working under many of those constraints.
World of cacti?
They call it the City in a Garden, and they’re not wrong. Every space that can have greenery crammed in has greenery crammed in. There are trees, vines and flowers at every single opportunity. I spend my day at the Gardens By the Bay which are so clearly nature for people who haven’t ever actually seen nature. As I went from “The world of palms” to the desert cactus exhibit it dawned on me that one of the many kids growing up entirely in Singapore… well, this is what they’d know of nature. All prettiness and near infinite variety, carefully planned and executed. No randomness. No repetition. Entirely unnatural.
They also use every inch. On my drive from the airport my exceptionally informative taxi driver told me that there was a defense troop nearby and that they could clear every single plant off the road in less than 45 minutes to convert it to an emergency runway. Here in Singapore space needs to have one or two or three uses – just like it would on a colony ship. This also might explain why the rules and regulations here are so strict. If you’re going to cram this many people into this little space you need very clear rules governing behavior and interactions, or pandemonium might ensue!
These women in yellow are clearly together
3) People dress to match each other
They’ll all wear the same color (like 6 people!) or the same dress (2 or 3 people). Some of them wear the same dress in complimentary colors (black and white). And it’s not just like bridal parties or something – it was all sorts of people from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds. I was talking to a native Singaporean colleague about it (she’s spent several years in the US) and she had no idea what I was talking about until we started walking around and she saw it for herself.
4) Jaywalking rules explained
So the typical statement about law abidingness in Singapore is that they’ll ticket you for jaywalking, which sounds ridiculous. In reality, the way the streets are set up it’s both very tempting to jaywalk and rather dangerous to do so. That’s because pedestrians really navigate the city in a series of subterranean mall-tunnel (and sky bridges). So you’ll be on a major thoroughfare with a broad sidewalk that just …. stops right when you get to a big road. If you know what you’re doing, the underground entrance is right behind you, but that’s not intuitive. So you jaywalk, which is bad and unexpected.
You rake your yard, but do you rake your rivers?
Not that the rules aren’t actually pretty strict! I had a “Singapore Moment” shopping in a gift store at a museum. They had tshirts and I wanted to get one for my kids so I picked one up and shook it out to look at it. It wasn’t the right size so I carefully refolded it (the display was extremely neat) and picked up another one. A tap on my shoulder “there are sample t-shirts you can view on that rack”. No picking up tshirts. Got it. This is why the very cute adorable outfit I bought for myself does not fit. Siiiiigh. In the same gift shop I’d gathered a number of things and was clearly making the staff uncomfortable. I thought they were too large to fit into the teeny tiny shopping baskets they had – which was true. But they squirmed and finally came up to me and “offered” a basket and crammed all the stuff in somehow. There is definitely a right way to do things, and woe betide the ignorant!
7-11 has dim sum but zero gum
I’ve put together an album of my hijinks so far here. Tomorrow I have to “go to work” or something, so that’s probably the bulk of my touristing on this trip! The folks in the photos with me are coworkers.
My Truant Pen 