Category Archives: Family

Weekend Snapshots 17

I forgot my camera at my parents’ house a couple weekends ago, and have been suffering from withdrawal. Thanks to my sister and FedEX, I finally got it back today! I had my camera phone and an old camera to tide me over…

Parents’ Night Out! (See last post)!

Me and my old man
Picking up our helper elves…

We picked out our Christmas tree this weekend…

Note the nervous smile. This girl is scarred for life by the creepy singing Santa!

We made “gingerbread” (graham cracker!) houses at the Lorna Sundberg International Center…

Gingerbread House of Horrors
Proud homeowner
Gingerbread houses!

While the boys had their final piano lesson before their recital, my daughter and I ignored the NO TRESPASSING! NO PARKING! signs at Foxfield to admire the beautiful sunset.

Foxfield

Old People Dating

Thanks to our church, which hosted a Parents’ Night Out yesterday, my husband and I were able to go out on an extremely rare date night. Our daughter fit the target age for the participants, and I somewhat eagerly enlisted the boys to be helpers. My husband brought the kids from home and I left work so that we could all meet up at the church at 5.

As we signed the kids in, the kind adults who were supervising the evening asked, “So what are you guys going to do on your date?”

“Uhhh…we’re not really sure yet,” I admitted, “but I guess we’ll go out to dinner.”

“Where do you guys usually like to eat?”

I’m pretty sure they weren’t asking about our dashes into Subway between soccer and piano practices, or to Panera on a Saturday in the middle of a day of running errands with a minivan chock full of kids…It’s the kind of question that would be easier to answer if a date night was something that happened more frequently than say, the appearance of Halley’s Comet in Earth’s atmosphere.

The last time we had a regular date night was fifteen years ago, when we were married with no children. We were both singing in the church choir and practice was on Thursday evenings. I was pregnant with our first child at the time, (the boy who is now 6 feet tall), and I was always ravenously hungry. We would go to Ruby Tuesday, which was both close to our rehearsal, and had a menu that met both of our needs. While my husband demurely nibbled at his salad bar dinner, I would devour every last bite of one of those Pantagruelian platters groaning with three different kinds of meat. You know…the kind that would only be appealing to obese middle-aged men and me in my pregnant, callow youth.

Yesterday, as we got back into the car, we giddily pondered our restaurant options as wondrously as if we were contemplating a rare and precious diamond. We made a spur of the moment decision to go to an Italian restaurant, because we can be crazy like that. We showed up at 5:30 with all the other geriatrics.

Me and my old man

As I sat there in the warm and elegant ambiance, I drummed my fingers impatiently, my eyes darting around, wondering if the bread would arrive in my lifetime. After gulping down the bread and an appetizer that we rashly ordered in our expansive mood, we were both full.

“I guess it’s too late to cancel the rest of our dinner, right?” I asked.

We had a couple bites of our main courses, but took most of them home in boxes. This would have never happened in our Ruby Tuesday days! After polishing off my meat slab platter, I’d still be picking croutons off my husband’s salad.

Dinner was done and we still had a couple of hours to go before we had to pick up the kids. The restaurant is right next to Trader Joe’s, so that’s where we headed next. We got into an intense debate about the merits of Trader Joe Honey Nut O’s versus Honey Nut Cheerios.

“Their version tastes much better than Honey Nut Cheerios,” my husband told me, “It’s less sweet.”

“Well, it may taste better, but the misplaced apostrophe is burning my eyes,” I replied.

As we rang up our purchases, we still had an hour and a half before we had to pick up the kids.

“Well…what should we do now?”

“Oh, I know! Let’s go to CVS and pick up my prescriptions and get Epsom salt,” my husband said.

“OK, Gramps! Let’s do it!”

As my husband was paying for our purchases, I remembered I had a $5 coupon attached to a CVS receipt that was floating around in my purse. I pulled it out and tentatively showed it to the cashier. “Would we possibly be able to use this?” I asked doubtfully.

“Sure!” she said as she tore it from my receipt.

As we walked back to the car, we were both jubilant. My husband said, “I can’t wait to try my Epsom salts!” I said, “I think this might just be the best day of my life. I feel like I just won the jackpot! This is the first time in my whole life that I’ve actually been able to use one of those CVS coupons. I’m so inordinately happy, I think I could dance a jig right here on the sidewalk! Could you smell the scent of victory, crackling like ozone in your nostrils when I got to use my coupon? Because I sure did!”

Flush with my unexpected success, I had another idea…

“HEY! Let’s go to the CoinStar at Harris-Teeter!”

We drove over to the grocery store and my husband obligingly lugged in the heavy container full of change that I had stashed in the car.

Have you ever used CoinStar? It’s mesmerizing to watch the sum grow from piles of pennies that have just been lying around the house. We didn’t want the magic to ever end. After emptying our container, we pulled out every last penny from our pockets and wallets until the clinking of the coins finally stopped.

“Wow. This is the best date ever,” I said with a sigh of contentment, “First, the coupon and now this!”

It was now 8 o’clock.

“We still have half an hour. We’re supposed to pick up the kids at 8:30.”

“Yeah, but I’m sure it will be fine to pick them up early. And then we can get home, so I can try my Epsom salts.”

And that’s what we did.

Picking up our helper elves…

And it was good. Really, really good. I can’t wait to do it again next year!

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky…

Read the rest of Starfish, by Eleanor Lerman here.

 

Brussels through her eyes…

I just had a look through the photos my daughter took of Brussels during a longish layover en route to England…

Maison du Roi, which houses the Museum of the City of Brussels, La Grand Place
She caught her dad hobbling along in front of Maison des Ducs de Brabant
She was intrigued by the famous Manneken Pis…
…as well as the chocolate shops!
Sharing her photos with her cousins on Saturday.

Giving Thanks for Crazy, Part III

I was in my first year at college and things weren’t going so well. I felt like an alien in a land where everyone already seemed to know each other from their days at Groton, Exeter or Andover. This blandly good-looking tribe wore the same uniform with only subtle variations.They would languidly call out to each other by their last names as they regrouped every Wednesday and every weekend to drink themselves blind at the frats.

I was a long way from home: a ten hour drive from Arlington to Hanover, New Hampshire, to be exact. We couldn’t afford a ticket to get me back home for the short Thanksgiving break, especially with the longer Winter break just around the corner. The campus was completely deserted. I was all alone in my big empty dorm, and all alone for my first Thanksgiving away from home.

I thought about that first Thanksgiving as I drove up to Arlington to be with my parents this Tuesday evening. The memory of it made me shake my head as I inched my way up 29 North, which was clogged with all the other weary travelers trying to outrun the 5-8 inch snowfall that was predicted for the next morning. On that Thanksgiving evening many years ago, my parents showed up at my dorm room after hours and hours of driving with my younger brother in tow. If you’ve ever driven along the Northeast corridor around Thanksgiving, you’ll know that a ten hour drive can easily become a twenty hour drive. I was appalled and aghast that they had done this for me, and also – so, so glad. We ordered pizza for our Thanksgiving dinner and ate it off paper plates in my room. It was a feast fit for a king and queen.

As you might expect, no amount of coaxing or pleading could convince them to stay the night. We ate our dinner and they headed off into the snowy night to drive all the way back to Arlington. I know my parents are crazy like I know the earth is round, but I also know that I have been incredibly lucky in my life to have experienced their love. I’m thankful for it every single day. May each and every one of us know that crazy, unreasonable, outrageous love, and may we put it right back out there into the universe.

Happy Thanksgiving to you!

Giving Thanks for Crazy, Part II

For the first year of our marriage, my husband and I lived in my parents’ house in Arlington, Virginia. They were living in Korea at the time, and during that year, they made a couple of trips back home. On one of their return visits, we went to the airport to pick them up. Their flight was arriving late at night and we imagined they would be exhausted after their brutally long trans-Pacific flight. We figured we would bring them back home and that they would spend the next 24 hours in a deep, coma-like sleep.

They came through the gates with a man we did not recognize. This in and of itself was not particularly surprising. My parents were always springing this sort of thing on us. Throughout my childhood, strangers drifted in and out of our lives all the time. Some people collect tchotchkes, my parents collect people. Our family was large, and we lived in a cramped house. As the smallest daughter, I would always be the one who would have to share my twin bed with the visitors when they happened to be women. It wasn’t particularly comfortable to sleep in bed with a stranger, especially since I could speak no Korean, and they usually spoke no English, but it was all part of the landscape of my childhood.

It was around 11 pm once we got everyone’s luggage and were finally on the road. As we drove back to the house, I brought up the question of sleeping arrangements with my mother.

“Oh, we’re not staying!” she said, as if this should have been the most obvious thing in the world,  “We’re driving to Tennessee as soon as we get back to the house. We have some business there.”

I looked at her with blank incomprehension. “Hunh?” was all I could stupidly muster.

I knew they were crazy, but this? This was beyond the pale. Surely, she was so tired, so delirious, that she was simply talking nonsense.

As soon as we arrived, they hopped out of the car and transferred the luggage to the back of their own car. At their behest, we’d driven it around the block periodically while they were away to keep it running. It was then that I realized they really and truly did mean to drive for ten hours after just stepping off a nineteen hour flight. I pleaded with them to see reason.

“But that’s crazy! You can’t be serious! It’s dangerous to drive when you’re so tired! Why can’t you sleep for just one night and then go? I’m sure your friend doesn’t want to sit in a car for another ten hours after flying for an entire day either.”

“He can sleep in the car!” my mom said.

“Well, what about poor DAD?! How’s HE going to manage all of that driving all by himself?! I’m sure he’s exhausted!”

“Oh, don’t worry about me, Adrienne. I’ll be fine!” my dad said with exasperating nonchalance.

“Well…when are you coming back?!” I asked, completely frustrated by these two utterly irresponsible, unreasonable parents of mine.

“In a couple of days,” they said. “We’ll see you some time on Friday!”

I watched them drive away, wishing I could spank them.

The next night, around 2 am, I woke up to violent pounding on our front door and the doorbell being rung over and over again. Terrified and trembling, I shook my husband awake.

“Someone’s at the door!” I whispered, “You have to go see what’s happening!”

I cowered in bed, my heart thumping, ready to dial 911. My husband shambled out of bed, still half-asleep and clad only in a pair of boxers. He swung open the door to discover my parents grinning like a couple of Cheshire cats on the doorstep, waiting to be let into the house. (Have I mentioned that they don’t believe in carrying keys)?

“We decided to come back early!” they announced cheerfully, politely pretending that they didn’t notice the fact that my husband was standing before them, nearly naked. This, by the way, is just one of the many reasons that man and I are bonded for life…We’ve both experienced the trauma of having been seen by each other’s parents naked! To be honest, I think it was actually more painful for me than it was for him that my parents saw him naked. But I digress…

Come back tomorrow for the conclusion of Giving Thanks for Crazy!

Giving Thanks for Crazy, Part I

I love my parents deeply, but I’ll be the first to admit, they can be crazy, and I mean CRAZY. Their maddening eccentricities often revolve around travel. My theory is that distance becomes less of an issue for people who leave behind their life in one country for another one that is literally on the other side of the world. My parents’ cavalier attitude towards long distances is legendary.

I would estimate that at least two thirds of my childhood was spent rolling around in the cargo area of my dad’s beloved Malibu station wagon. Every Sunday at the crack of dawn, we’d drive a couple hours from our little town in Pennsylvania to New York City for my dad’s preaching gig. Besides being the minister of a church, he also had a full-time professorship in Pennsylvania. He would nevertheless drive back into New York City several nights a week to work on another doctorate at the New School for Social Research. In all the free time he must have had at his disposal, he would cart us all across the country to visit far-flung friends and relatives. It was only when I got a little older that I realized this was not normal, but in fact, totally, completely, utterly: nuts.

Many years later, when I was grown and married and living in Charlottesville, I got a call from my mother announcing that my parents were going to drive down from Arlington to visit us. This rarely ever happens, so I was delighted to hear the news.

“We’re coming this afternoon! We’ll have dinner with you and head back home,” my mother announced to me over the phone.

“Really?! You’re going to drive five hours in one day just for dinner? Couldn’t you at least spend the night? Please?”

“Oh NO! We’ll be fine! We’ll just have dinner and go back!”

Besides being crazy, they are immune to reason, not to mention – stubborn as mules. There was no point in arguing any further. I would have to take what I could get.

They arrived and settled themselves on the couch. We bustled around getting dinner ready. Fifteen minutes after their arrival my mother stood up and said, “Well! It was so good to see you! We’ll be going now!”

There was nothing I could say or do to stop them from leaving. Believe me, I tried. No dinner. Fifteen minutes on the couch. And then those rolling stones rolled the two and a half hours right back to Arlington. See what I’m saying? CRAZY.

Come back tomorrow, because it gets even crazier…

Weekend Snapshots 16

We drove up to Arlington on Saturday. My husband is taking two of the children to England to see their grandparents. Because the flights are so expensive, we decided our twelve year old, who got to spend an extra week in England the last time around, would stay home with me.

Future Geezers In Training

I had made all kinds of rash promises to The-Son-Who-Got-Left-Behind to spoil him rotten, but as soon as I got back from dropping off the traveling trio at Dulles Airport, I was taken down by a nasty bug I’d been trying to fight all day. I collapsed in a feverish, headache-y heap at 6:30 pm and didn’t wake up until the next morning.

I woke up to this texted photo of our travelers on their long layover in Brussels, where they got to hang out with my husband’s cousin…

I was still feeling weak and wobbly, but it was clearly time to up my game. The spoil-a-thon had obviously not panned out on Saturday, but maybe I could make it up to my son by taking him on a trip of our own to an exotic locale…

We ended up at Tyson’s Corner. We sampled French cuisine at La Madeleine. We elbowed our way past the hordes and multitudes to visit the Apple Store shrine so he could get his laptop ministered to at the genius bar. And then he got pampered with a massage at that Wonderland, otherwise known as Brookstone:

OK, so maybe the spoil-a-thon will officially start tomorrow.

Bloody Good

I brought my nine year old daughter to the hospital last Friday morning for her quarterly blood draw.

She took her seat and warily waited for the phlebotomist to begin.

“How are you doing?” the woman asked my daughter in a cheery voice as she readied her equipment.

“I’m fine,” my daughter mustered, valiantly trying to hide her misery, “How about you?”

The phlebotomist seemed genuinely surprised. She stopped what she was doing to say, “I’m fine! Thank you so much for asking! You’ve made my day!”

As we were walking back to the car after the blood draw, I launched into the entirely predictable, tedious, teachable moment speech that tiresome parents such as myself simply cannot resist inflicting upon their children:

“I was SO proud of you for being so polite to the lady! And did you hear what she said to you? You made her day! Do you see how easy it is to make people happy, by just…”

She cut me off and said, “Of course I’m going to be nice to someone who’s about to stab me with a sharp object!”

I guess we can all have teachable moments…

Cheese

WARNING: If you haven’t had dinner yet, DO NOT READ! And, I apologize in advance for this post.

As you might imagine with a husband who teaches philosophy for a living, conversations around our dinner table tend to be rather highbrow. Here, for example, is what the professor had to say when he finally made it back home in a cast after his fall down the mountain our family now routinely uses air quotes to refer to as: “Mount Pleasant.”

“You think the leg cheese under your shin guards is bad after a soccer game,” he said to my daughter, “Imagine how bad it will be when my cast comes off. My leg will probably be completely coated in a slimy layer of ripe brie.”

To put what happened next into context, you need to know that my fourteen year old boy lives to shock us with gross stories he’s heard from his fellow pubescents or gleaned from the bowels of the internet. He is also going through a growth spurt that makes him ravenously hungry. You can’t even imagine the staggering quantities of food he eats. All this to say, it takes some high octane intellectual firepower to both disgust him and cause him to lose his appetite.

He recoiled in a rictus of visceral horror, dropped his fork with a loud clatter, and pushed his plate away.

“DAD! We’re eating! And this salad has feta in it. I seriously can’t eat any more.”

Pray for me, friends. It’s going to be a very long few months…