the february cocktail hour: a month of walking & reading

Wednesday, February 28: Welcome to our February cocktail hour! Please, come in out of the cold and keep me company. This month I can offer you a special Mardi Gras Blackberry Basil Margarita, as our ice maker is now operational. I know it’s already Lent, so for those of you who honorably practice your faith, I can also offer sodas or seltzer water of various flavors.

I hope February has been good to you so far. February has never been my favorite month, except for Valentine’s day, which never quite lives up to the hype, and my husband’s birthday on the 26th. I’m happy it’s a short month. I always think of it as a grey and brown month, and my pictures below will confirm that view. It also is a month of preparation for the year. Since the outdoors is so uninviting, I tend to stay in a lot, reading and embellishing my dreams.

Have you read any good books, seen any good movies, binge-watched any television series? Have you learned anything new, taken any classes or just kept up with the news? Have you been to the theater or to a concert? Have you been planning your adventures for the year? Have you had any winter getaways? Have you sung along with any new songs? Have you dreamed any dreams? Gone to any exotic restaurants, cooked any new dishes? Have you undertaken any new exercise routines?

Preparing for upcoming travels

I’m enjoying immersing myself in my upcoming journeys. This coming weekend, Mike and I will visit Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Only a four-hour drive from here, it’s pathetic that I’ve never been. For many years, I’ve overlooked American cities as worthy travel destinations. Now, I keep adding them to my travel plans. Why not take advantage of places closer to home? When I was 23, I took a three-month cross-country trip around the USA and I figured I’d been there, done that. I guess I’ve taken my country for granted.

After all my travels abroad, and after coming to appreciate all the nuances of different cultures and countries, I can more fully appreciate the variations in American sub-cultures and American places. Even within our small towns and our national and state parks, treasures are waiting to be unveiled.

To prepare, I’ve read two novels and one memoir featuring the city, as well as Moon Handbooks Pennsylvania – the part about Pittsburgh. Here are the three books I’ve read that feature Pittsburgh:

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon
An American Childhood by Annie Dillard (almost finished)

These books have fueled my imagination and will surely add depth to my visit. We also watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which takes place in the city. The movie inspires me to stand up through the sunroof of our car as we drive through the Fort Pitt Tunnel. 🙂

I created a playlist on Spotify for the trip as well. Of course, one must have a playlist when taking an American Road Trip! Here are my Pittsburgh Tunes.

I’ve now postponed my Four Corners Road Trip to May, as parts of Mesa Verde National Park don’t open until May 20. Because of this, I’m working backwards from there, and have plotted out much of my trip, beginning my drive from Virginia on May 1 with a planned arrival in Denver on the evening of May 3 after three 8-hour days of driving. Mike will join me in Denver and will fly back home from Phoenix after 10 days; we’ll part ways in Flagstaff, and unless my sister decides to join me, I’ll be doing the rest alone. I have a long reading list around this area.

Finally, I’ve started preparing for walking the Camino de Santiago in September. I found out that the The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela only swings the large incense burners on certain days. I had mistakenly thought they did it every day. As I really want to be there for the pilgrim’s service where they swing the incense, I will aim to arrive there for the November 1 service on All Saints Day. This month, I’ve continued reading the three books I mentioned last month. I’ve also increased my walking distances and started going to the gym.

To immerse myself in the Camino experience, I shared Spanish tapas with pilgrims and wanna-be pilgrims at a potluck for American Pilgrims on the Camino in early February. This month, I walked 40 miles in my Keen Targhee hiking boots, 23 miles in Brooks Ghost running shoes, and 4 miles in Merrill trail runners, in an attempt to break in boots/shoes and decide which ones to wear on the Camino.

I hiked 4 miles on the Vienna bike trail.

It was a gloomy day when I joined the Mid-Atlantic Hiking group on the Gold Mine Area Trails and Great Falls, but at least it didn’t rain. I somehow twisted my knee on this 7.2 mile hike, which got me a little worried. To help build strength in that knee and in my shoulders, I’ve been to the gym twice a week for weight-lifting and doing calisthenics recommended by my son, Alex, who does calisthenics coaching part-time.

I also hiked 4.7 miles at Bull Run Mountains State Natural Area Preserve with the Mid-Atlantic Hiking Group and sipped wines at the Winery at La Grange afterward. We found an old cemetery on that hike.

On another miserable Saturday, I slogged 6.4 miles through mud and rain at Fraser Preserve and had coffee after with Susan, a Camino pilgrim I met on an earlier hike. We were covered in mud and our hair was plastered to our heads!

delectable treats, movies and celebrations

I’ve been whipping up experimental dishes, including a simple pasta with broccoli rabe. Mike and I ate Thai food at Kobkun Fine Thai Cuisine. We celebrated Valentine’s Day with sushi, sake and Sapporo at Yoko Sushi. I saw Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri for the second time, since Mike didn’t see it with me the first time I saw it. After, we enjoyed Malai Kofta at Curry Mantra. I learned more about the complicated Palestinian situation from the movie The Insult, where a Lebanese Christian and a Palestinian get into a vicious court case over an insult. After the movie, we tried a new restaurant, Havabite Eatery, where I scarfed down a white pizza. We shared blackened swordfish tacos and avocado super toast at Earls Tyson’s Corner for a mid-week treat.

Challenges… and life goes on

We stood by helplessly as my youngest son, feeling frustrated by his close friend’s emotional breakdown and the toxic environment at his job, walked out of work without telling his boss he was leaving. A week later, he announced he was taking off to live the life of freedom, or the “hero’s journey,” he envisions – a life where he will “sign no leases, fill out no resumes, work cash jobs, and treat each day as a holy-day.” I gently suggested that if it’s his philosophy to live that way, he should be a man and stop expecting his parents to bail him out, and he should not expect to come back home except to visit on holidays. That’s when he said, “Every day is a holy-day!” Oh dear. There are some things I will never understand, but I know he’s going to live his life how he sees fit, and there’s nothing I can do to change it. All I can do is choose how I will respond to what he does. As it was, we parted on good terms, and I wished him the best and told him I love him. I’m working on letting it all go.

Though feeling gobsmacked by our son’s surprise departure, we celebrated Mike’s 64th birthday by having dinner of Zucchini Babycorn Jalfrezi and Gobi Tak a Tin at Masala Art and then seeing Hold These Truths at Arena Stage, about Japanese-American Gordon Hirabayashi’s fight against the US government’s orders to forcibly remove and mass incarcerate all people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast during WWII. What an appropriate theme for today’s political environment, where immigrants are being excised daily from our society.

Reading

I finished reading seven more books (14 total for the year), especially loving: The English Major by Jim Harrison and the audiobook of Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann. I also finished reading The Girl in the Moon Circle by Sia Figiel for an A-Z book group that is reading, in alphabetical order, books from all the countries of the world. Our group mistakenly thought the book was about American Samoa, but it’s actually about Samoa, to the west of American Samoa. 🙂

Blogging

I’ve also been slowly working on posts about my travels, finally finishing up my time in Japan (catbird in japan); I’m getting close to finishing with Prague (in search of a thousand cafes). I’m planning to start a new blog in March, unconnected to any of my other blogs, which will encompass all things travel: inspiration, making an art of travel, and creating art from travel. I hope you’ll join me there when I start it. Once the blog is live, I’ll stop posting on all my other blogs except this one, where I’ll continue to share things not related to travel.

I hope all is well for you and I look forward to hearing what’s going on with you! I wish you a happy March!:-)

the january cocktail hour: preparing for adventure in the year ahead

Wednesday, January 31: It’s that time again – our January cocktail hour! 🙂 Please, come in out of the cold and make yourselves comfortable. I’m so glad the holidays are behind us and we can get back to the routines of everyday life. I would offer you a cocktail, my current favorite being a cucumber jalapeno margarita, but the ice maker in our two-year-old refrigerator has inexplicably stopped making ice. So, it’s either wine or beer. For those of you who don’t drink, I have sodas and seltzer water of various flavors. Or milk. There’s always milk. 🙂

I hope January has been good to you so far. Have you played in snow, gone skiing, ridden dog sleds or stayed in igloos? Have you read any good books, seen any good movies, binge-watched any television series? Have you learned anything new? Have you been to the theater or to a concert? Have you started planning your adventures for the year? Have you had any winter getaways? Have you sung along with any new songs? Have you dreamed any dreams? Gone to any exotic restaurants, cooked any new dishes? Have you undertaken any new exercise routines?

Our first two weeks of January in northern Virginia were wicked, with temps below freezing. A few light snowfalls made for icy messes outdoors. Although I’d made all kinds of exercise-related resolutions, I just couldn’t bring myself to crawl out from under my furry white blanket and leave my house. Mike has taken to calling me his Japanese snow monkey because he’s only seen peeks of my pink face enveloped in a swirl of white hair and fuzzy blanket. No matter. This cozy position under my blanket has been conducive to reading, as I finished 7 of my 45-book goal for the year. Of these, I especially enjoyed The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Whistling Past the Graveyard, and Follies.

The most rewarding and challenging thing I’ve been doing is preparing for my 2018 adventures. I have the following plans up my sleeve:

A road trip to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: March 2-4 (a three-day weekend).
A road trip to the Four Corners area, the only point in the USA where four states come together: Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. I plan to take a solo road trip to Colorado, visit my son in Denver and do some hikes there with him, then go on my way to visit Monument Valley, Navajo National Monument, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Hoventweep National Monument, Four Corners Monument Navajo Tribal Park, Chaco Culture National Historic Park, Mesa Verde National Park, Arches National Park, and Canyonlands National Park. If Alex could come with me for part of it, I’d be thrilled, but as he has to work, he may not be able to. Logistics will be tough, because I don’t want to drive him back to Denver once I leave there. I would also love it if my daughter Sarah or my sister Stephanie could join me for any part of the trip, but they have so many obligations, I’m not sure it’s possible. Mike does plan to join me for some parts of the trip, ending back in Denver, but we haven’t yet worked out those logistics either. I imagine the whole trip will take at least three weeks; I plan to do it in April.
A 4-5/day road trip to Buffalo and Niagara Falls, NY, possibly crossing the border into Ontario in late June. I might be able to meet my friend Mona Lisa for some part of this trip.
The pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago. I want to do the route that most pilgrims do: the Camino Francés (The French Way), from St. John-Pied-du-Port to Santiago de Compostela (769 km) or nearly 500 miles. I imagine it will take me at least 6 weeks, possibly longer, as I don’t plan to do it as a race! After I finish the walk, Mike plans to meet me in Santiago and we’ll visit Porto, Lisbon and Sintra in Portugal for our 30th anniversary. I even have an idea about renting bicycles in Santiago de Compostela and riding with Mike to Cape Finesterre, known in Roman times as the end of the world, but I haven’t researched yet whether that’s possible. I hope to do this in September-October.

I love preparing for trips as much as taking them. Here’s what I’ve been doing so far:

For the Camino, reading:

A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Camino de Santiago St. Jean – Roncesvalles – Santiago by John Brierly.
Camino de Santiago by Sergi Ramis
In Movement There is Peace by Elaine Orabona Foster

Watching:

I have already watched the movie, The Way, and we recently watched Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago, both of which I found inspirational.

Doing:

I attended a talk about the Camino by a fellow named Don Shaw at REI last night (luckily the talk made me miss the State of the Union Address, but I planned to boycott it anyway). He’s done the Camino five times using different routes. It turns out that he is also hosting a potluck at his house this Saturday to which I’ve already RSVP’d. He started the Mid-Atlantic chapter of the American Pilgrims on the Camino, which I joined in December. We have our first Camino group hike (8.6 miles) on Sunday, February 25.

Luckily, REI allows you to try out hiking boots and then return them if they cause discomfort. I bought a pair of size 8 Oboz Sawtooth low BDry boots and I wore them for a five-mile walk. My toes were hitting the end and my feet were killing me, so I’ve decided to return them. Last night, I bought a pair of Keen Targhee low boots in size 8 1/2 and walked in them today. They felt better, but I did feel my size 7 1/2 feet were sliding around in them a bit. I’ve been told that whatever boots I get, I need to put 100km on them BEFORE I do the Camino. So I need to commit to a pair and get busy walking!

I have stared increasing my walking distance as it has thawed outside. It’s not very inviting outside, as you can see from a walk on the Cross County Trail in early January. Drab, snowy, mottled and dirty, with mostly dingy skies: days like these simply don’t entice.

Difficult Run

Drab leaf

Cross County Trail

Walking in sub-freezing temperatures isn’t much fun, although a bit of blue sky does ease the pain.

I started an aerobics class to whip other parts of my body into shape: upper body, core, lower body. I’ve also asked my son to draw up a fitness plan of calisthenics and weight lifting to build strength to carry a 16-20lb backpack.

I’ve also finished planning our Pittsburgh trip and am reading now about The Four Corners area. I’ll write more about my planning on those later.

Family, photo outings, and restaurants:

Sarah went to her dad’s for Christmas, so even after we took our Christmas tree down, her pile of presents still sat in a pile in the corner of our living room. Laden with gifts, I visited her in Richmond on the 19th. She has been busy doing freelance work for Richmond Magazine, and she had an article due, so she couldn’t spend much time with me. Before I showed up at her house, I wandered through Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden so I could get my winter dose of color.

I especially enjoyed the cacti and succulent collection is on display in the West Wing of the Conservatory.

cacti and succulents

cacti

cacti and succulent collection

fern

plants in the West Wing

cacti and succulent collection

cacti and succulents

In the central Palm House, I enjoyed the palm and cycad collection.

palm and cycad

palm and cycad collection

tropical plants in the Palm House

Palm House

And in the semi-tropical East Wing, I wandered through tropical plants, including the orchid collection.

orchids

the semi-tropical East Wing

Outside, I walked through Asian Valley, which displays plants native to Asia and offers a place for quiet contemplation.

Asian Valley

wicked witch on the Woodland Walk

pond

When I arrived at Sarah’s, we enjoyed a glass of wine while she opened her presents (lots of cookbooks and a toaster oven), and then we went out to dinner at Sabai, which serves authentic Thai street food. Sitting at the bar, we shared an appetizer of Larb Gai: minced chicken seasoned with red onions, lemongrass, Thai chilies, basil, and mint in a spicy lime dressing. Sarah ordered Koa Soi Gai: Northern Thai style curry with bone-in chicken and egg noodles served with pickled mustard greens, red onions and spicy chili lime oil. And I ordered Pad Se Ew: Flat rice noodles stir-fried with egg, black bean sauce, shrimp and broccoli. The atmosphere was lively and the food was delicious.

drink at Sabai

Sabai – at the bar

Pad Se Ew

Koa Soi Gai

As for the rest of the family, Alex moved successfully to Denver and is trying to adjust to his new life there. Adam is working long hours at his job and, surprisingly, he loves it. It’s good to see him so busy and so enthused about work. As for me, I’ve been still attending Al-Anon and keeping the focus on myself, as no one else is my business (I keep having to remind myself of that). Overall, I’m thankful that everything is good for the moment. Taking life one day at a time.

Urban hikes & museum-going:

Mike and I did an urban hike in downtown D.C., stopping first at the Renwick Gallery. Our goal was to see the exhibit of miniature crime scenes called “Murder is Her Hobby: Frances Glessner Lee and the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.” The exhibit was packed and the crime scenes so small that it was impossible to see anything. So instead, we just walked around the gallery, enjoying the other exhibits.

While waiting in a fast-moving line, we walked past The Blair House, the home of Francis Preston Blair (1791-1876), founder and editor of The Globe (1830-1845), a newspaper which championed democratic causes and vigorous journalism notably during the administration of President Andrew Jackson in whose “kitchen cabinet” Blair loyally served.

At the end of this post are descriptions of the places, statues and art we encountered today. If you’re interested in them, you can read about them based on the picture captions.

Parallax Gap

I loved this fabulous Monopoly game made with fired clay.

I love this delicate piece that evokes a quiet forest in Japan.

Notice – Forest (Autumn)

The Renwick has a fabulous variety of art and installations.

Untitled #192 – burdock burrs & apple wood

Woman and Child

Reclining Dress Impression with Drapery

Raft

After the Renwick, it was quite a hike to the National Gallery of Art.

Rochambeau

Hotel Washington

the Willard

General Casimir Pulaski

Ollie Burgers

Harry’s Bar

The FBI

Regal building

Typewriter Eraser, Scale X

Puellae (Girls) by Magdalena Abakanowicz

ice rink in the Sculpture Garden

National Archives

AMOR

Aurora by di Mark Suvero

Newseum

At the National Gallery of Art, our goal was to see the exhibit “Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry.” How foolish it was to attempt to see such an exhibit on the last day it was open. Hundreds of people were in a long snaking line curled all around the perimeter of the museum. Instead of standing in that line, we opted to drop in on a small Edvard Munch exhibit.

Man’s Head in Woman’s Hair

Head by Head

The Vampire

Madonna

Across the hall, we also dropped in on another small exhibit: “Posing for the Camera.” Many photographers were featured, but I especially loved two by Lee Friedlander of the photographer and his wife.

Los Angeles

Vernal Falls, Yosemite National Park, California

After this, we left by way of the fountain and began our trek back to the Renwick.

On our way back, we stopped for tapas and wine at Jaleo, one of my favorite D.C. restaurants.

As we continued on our way after lunch, we passed by the SunTrust Bank headquarters, where I used to work (the bank was called Crestar at the time) as a credit analyst.

I share the sentiments of this protester!

Movies & plays

As for movies, we haven’t been to many this month, mainly because we didn’t feel like going out in the cold. We loved The Post, which told the story of how The Washington Post, and the press in general, went up against the U.S. government during the Vietnam war over the Pentagon Papers. The press, a vital pillar of our democracy, is under attack these days by our divider-in-chief, so I’m happy when the press wins over the government. Especially in the case of Vietnam, the government lied to the American people for years; it was the press that finally revealed to the public the extent of those lies. The audience, a full house, cheered at the end of the movie.

Another movie we saw on Netflix was a quiet Japanese movie called Sweet Bean, which told of a doryaki pastry maker who hired a 76-year-old woman and the relationship that grew between them. I love Japanese movies for their delicate portrayal of human emotion.

Finally, at the end of the month, we went to a matinée showing at Theater J of Everything Is Illuminated; the play was based on the book of the same title by Jonathan Safran Foer. The main character goes to Ukraine in search of a woman who possibly saved his grandfather during the Holocaust. Some parts were hilarious, some sad; we loved it overall.

Then we went to Logan Tavern for a delicious early dinner. I took a picture of the Butternut Squash and Ginger Soup, but I was so hungry, I didn’t think to take pictures of my Trumpet Mushroom ‘Risotto:” cauliflower and squash “risotto”, chimichurri, fig balsamic, & crispy Parmesan. It was so delicious, I polished it off in one fell swoop.

Other stuff:

I’ve been reading a lot, working on my memoir, and still trying to catch up on editing pictures and blogging about all my travels to Japan and Czech Republic. I haven’t begun to write about my solo trip to Cape May, NJ and Mike’s and my trip to Nashville, TN in December!

I hope you’ll tell me what you’ve been up to in January. I can’t wait to hear of your plans for the year, as well as your everyday lives and what you make of them. 🙂

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Here are some of the details about the art shown above, as taken from signs at the museums, unless stated otherwise:

The Renwick

The Final Stop by Rick Araluce. Visitors find themselves transported to an anonymous subway station, an eerie subterranean world nestled within the gallery, where flickering lights and distant rumblings suggest the passage of trains and cavernous tunnels seemingly stretch for miles.

Parallax Gap by architects David Freeland and Brennan Buck. To create Parallax Gap, nine ceilings from iconic works of American architecture were drawn, printed at large-scale, and then suspended in layers above the Renwick’s Bettie Rubenstein Grand Salon. The architects have challenged the medium’s typical role by transforming their drawings from two-dimensional illustrations to three-dimensional installations.

Shadow of Amboseli (2016) by Wendy Maruyama.

Monopoly (2007)- paint and ink on unfired clay by Kristen Morgin: Morgin’s illusionistic sculptures resemble found objects weathered by time, but they are in fact meticulously crafted assemblages made from unfired clay. Inspired by abandoned objects from people’s pasts, she investigates age, nostalgia, and value in culture – themes rooted in the mythology of the American Dream.

Notice – Forest (Autumn) 2002 – McDonald’s Neverland paper bag and colored pencil by Yuken Teruya born Okinawa, Japan. Teruya transforms paper bags into magical tableaux. He cuts the silhouette of a tree into one side, then bends the paper inward to seemingly take root, leaving the lacy holes above to evoke mottled sunlight. Teruya’s reuse of these discarded materials memorializes the trees in ingenious floating worlds and suggests a cycle of renewal.

Untitled #192 (1989) burdock burrs and apple wood by John McQueen.

Woman and Child (2002) by Akio Takamori, born Nobeoka Miyazaki, Japan 1950.

Raft (1997) by William Morris.

Downtown D.C.

General Casimir Pulaski is a bronze equestrian statue at Freedom Plaza,13th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. Pulaski immigrated to North America to help with the American Revolutionary War. He distinguished himself throughout the revolution, most notably when he saved George Washington’s life. Pulaski became a general in the Continental Army and reformed the American cavalry as a whole. At the Battle of Savannah, while leading a daring charge against British forces, he was gravely wounded, and died shortly thereafter (Wikipedia: Casimir Pulaski).

At the National Gallery of Art

Edvard Munch: Man’s Head in Woman’s Hair: It is unclear whether the woman is imagined by the man, or if the man’s head floating in the woman’s hair is a figment of her mind…Perhaps she is thinking of him sympathetically, or he is recalling a woman he encountered. One figure conjures the image of the other, producing the image of the thought.

Lee Friedlander: Los Angeles: Friedlander and his new bride, Maria, seem eager to embark on their journey together through life.

Vernal Falls, Yosemite National Park, California: Maria Friedlander candidly wrote in the introduction to her husband’s 2004 book, Family: “There are no photographs of arguments and disagreements, of the times when we were rude, impatient, and insensitive parents, of frustration, of anger strong enough to consider dissolving the marriage… a book of pictures doesn’t tell the whole story.” Nevertheless, she concluded, Friedlander’s pictures are about “the celebration of the small moment that only Lee saw. [They are] Lee’s gift to me of my own private memoir in pictures. I look at it and feel the moments both revealed and evoked, the joy and the hard times – it’s all there.”

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Happy February, everyone! 🙂

twenty-seventeen

In twenty-seventeen, I: Taught English for one semester at a university in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Traipsed around Hungary, Austria and Czech Republic with my ever-patient husband. Took a solo road trip to Cape May, New Jersey. Listened to country music in Nashville, Tennessee. Read 26 books out of my goal of 40, the best being Burial Rites, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The House at the Edge of Night, Truth & Beauty & The Ginger Tree. Lost 10 pounds while in Japan, and gained them right back when I returned to the U.S. Attended several online seminars about visioning and business planning and mulled over my idea for a travel/writing-related business. Worked in earnest on my memoir.

From January to March, I: Visited Harper’s Ferry and learned about John Brown. Dove into teaching English at Virginia International University for a seven-week session. Enjoyed a long-overdue dinner with classmates from my Master’s program at George Mason University. Enjoyed La La Land and Hidden Figures. Took a course on Creating Complex Characters at the Writer’s Center. Visited my children in Richmond, stopping at Lewis Ginter for a brief glimpse of spring before taking off to teach English to second-year university students in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Moved into a rabbit-hut apartment near Fuchinobe Station.

Click on any of the pictures below for a full-sized slide show.

Harpers Ferry

my former GMU classmates

flowers at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens

me at Dulles International Airport on my way to Japan

In April, I: Was carried by a tidal wave of crowds through Ueno Park during hanami, the “watching blossoms” season. Encountered a geisha while listening to “Kabuto Music and Manners” at the Toki-no-kane bell. Was gently nudged not to cross my legs at a Buddhist temple while sitting under pink sakura. Watched Japanese university students playing a boisterous oversized card game. Wandered through raindrop-covered blossoms at Shinjuku Gyeon. Broke an umbrella in the wind while walking around Shinjuku’s skyscrapers. Presented a “shock lecture” about genetics and Mendel’s pea plants to jolt my Japanese students out of complacency in their Applied Skills course. Visited a yakitori grill surrounded by Hello Kitty paraphernalia and unopened packages of vintage stamped postcards and miniature toys. Learned to take my shoes off and put a hood over my head before trying on clothes in Japanese dressing rooms. Visited the colorful and lively Kantei-byo in Chinatown during a 10-mile walk through Yokohama. Admired peonies at the Monument to U.S. – Japanese Friendship and marveled at Yokohama’s skyline with its iconic Ferris wheel, sail-shaped Yokohama Grand Intercontinental, and Landmark Tower. Wandered among peonies shaded by parasols at Genji-ike in Kamakura. Watched faithful Japanese worshipers cleanse themselves, bow, clap their hands, ring bells, make offerings and pray at Kamakura’s temples and shrines. Admired age-old royal buildings at the Imperial Palace Outer Gardens and enjoyed lunch and wine at the Hibiya Beer Garden. Discovered temizuya, ema, teahouses, Japanese gardens, dragon-painted ceilings, carp flags, Chinese gates, and tales of shoguns while taking endless rambles from my trusty book: Tokyo: 29 Walks in the World’s Most Exciting City. (catbird in japan)

geisha at 1666 Toki-no-kane bell

a lively oversized card game at Uneo Park

Sakura at Kan’ei-ji Temple

Sakura and yellow blooms at Shinjuku Gyoen

cypress knees and trees at Shinjuku Gyoen

raindrops on blossoms at Shinjuku Gyoen

tea house under pink at Shinjuku Gyoen

umbrellas on a bridge at Shinjuku Gyoen

view from the Kyu Goryo-tei Pavilion at Shinjuku Gyoen

Cherry blossoms at Shinjuku Gyoen

textured scene at Shinjuku Gyoen

Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower in Shinjuku

Kantei-Byo in Yokohama’s Chinatown

peonies in Yokohama at the Monument to U.S. – Japanese Friendship

tulips in Yokohama

Sculpture near Landmark Tower in Yokohama

Ferris Wheel at Yokohama Cosmo World Amusement Park

Nippon Maru training ship in Yokohama

peonies, pergoals and umbrellas at Genji-ike in Kamakura

ema at the shrine to the Shinto deity Benten

Shimo Haiden in Kamakura

Egara Tenjinsha Shrine in Kamakura

statue of Senju-kannon in the Hatto of Kencho-ji

dragon on the ceiling at Ryuo-den, the Dragon King Hall, in Kencho-ji Zen Temple in Kamakura

Kara-mon, the Chinese Gate of 1646 in the Song Style, at Kencho-ji Zen Temple in Kamakura

walkway at Tokei-ji Temple

Tatsumi-Yagura at the Imperial Palace Outer Gardens

Nijubashi Bridge & Fushimi Yagura at the Imperial Palace Outer Gardens

carp flags in front of the Ministry of Finance near Hibiya Park

In May, I: Fell in love with artistic displays of flowers, Japanese landscapes and calligraphy on Meiji Shrine’s sake barrels during Japan’s Golden Week. Slid like a fly in slow-moving honey with crowds down Takeshita-dori, a fashion haven for teenage girls. Ate vegetarian and fish tacos at Guzman y Gomez in Harajuku, downtown Tokyo. Surreptitiously snapped photos of a young Japanese couple in Yokohama’s Sankei-en while they posed for their photographer. Was charmed by iconic umbrellas on a bridge leading to Nakano-shimo Island. Wandered around sixteen historic buildings from central Japan at Sankei-en, or Three Glens Garden. Enjoyed quilts with kimono, cranes, and cascading blossoms at Funiko Endo’s quilt exhibit at Tomyo-ji Main Hall. Fondly remembered China as I visited Shanghai-Yokohama Friendship Garden. Climbed Mt. Takao with hordes of people during Golden week, and soaked in an outdoor onsen afterward. Followed the cues of the Japanese and visited gardens during special bloom times – a wisteria festival at Kameido Tenjin and rabbit-ear irises at the Nezu Museum. Wandered around the Imperial Palace East Garden on a gloomy day. Smelled fragrant roses, visited a folk house museum, & pondered over strange sculptures in Kawasaki on a steamy day. Visited Odawara Castle, followed by a weekend in Hakone, where I traipsed through an outdoor sculpture garden, a moss garden, quirky Rakan statues, a botanical garden, and a torii gate in Ashi Lake.

sake barrels at Meiji Shrine

the Honden at Meiji Shrine

socks for sale on Takeshita-dori

Main pond & Nakano-shimo Island at Sankei-en

bride & groom at Sankei-en

Rinshun-kaku Villa at Sankei-en

Tenzui-ji Juto Oido at Sankei-en

Choshu-kaku Teahouse at Sankei-en

Shanghai-Yokohama Friendship Garden

Buddist figures at Mt. Takao

Izuna Gongen-do Hall at Mt. Takao

view from Mt. Takao

ema at Kameido Tenjin

drum bridge at Kameido Tenjin

Wisteria at Kameido Tenjin’s Wisteria Festival

stone face at the Nezu Museum Garden

rabbit-ear irises at the Nezu Museum Garden

Cherry blossoms at Yoshino and Maple Leaves at Tatsuta (detail) at Nezu Museum

fish sculpture at Ote-mon gate

Imperial Palace East Garden

Water Mill at the Japan Open-Air Folk House Museum in Kawasaki

The Yamada House at the Japan Open-Air Folk House Museum

The Emukai House at the Japan Open-Air Folk House Museum

curved ceiling beams at the Sakuda House

The Kiyomiya House

Kokagesan Shrine

pink house in Kawasaki

sculpture by Tarō Okamoto

rose garden in Kawasaki

Odawara Castle

Sheriff Woody at the Woody Bar in Hakone

Buzz Lightyear at the Woody Bar in Hakone

La Pleureuse (1986) at the Hakone Open Air Museum

floating sculptures at the Hakone Open Air Museum

Fairy Chapel

Symphonic Sculpture – Produced by Nobutaka Skikanai

all dressed up and no place to go at the Hakone Open Air Museum

moss garden at the Hakone Museum of Art

Sekiraku-en Garden at the Hakone Museum of Art

tempura and udon in Hakone

rakan statues at Choanji Temple

rakan at Choanji Temple

rakan statues at Choanji Temple

Hakone Botanical Garden of Wetlands

Hakone Sightseeing Cruise

Hakone Shrine’s torii in Ashi Lake

In June, I: Enjoyed numerous happy hours outside the Family Mart near campus with my friends Graham and Paul. Spent a weekend exploring the Mt. Fuji area near Kawaguchiko. Climbed the rock-island of Enoshima and then went to Hasedera in search of elusive hydrangeas. Missed the Hydrangea Walk at Hasedera twice. Mingled among Japanese folks wearing yukata at Tokyo’s oldest shrine, Senso-ji. Got hooked on The Good Wife on Netflix. Joined hordes of people at Meigetsu-in during the peak of hydrangeas. Hiked the 3km Daibutsu Course from Kita-Kamakura to the Great Buddha. Finally encountered the Great Buddha of Kamakura. Explored the shopping area, temples and cemetery of Yanaka. Ate eggplant and barracuda as a regular customer at Kiyariya, a Japanese fish restaurant run by Kenji, an excellent chef. Listened to Paul McCartney and John Lennon sing “Imagine” and “Listen to What the Man Said” at Curry Naan while eating vegetable curry & huge pan-shaped naan.

Chureito Pagoda

Chureito Pagoda & Mt. Fuji

Kawaguchiko

Mt. Fuji at sunrise

Mt. Fuji from Kawaguchiko

manhole cover at Mt. Fuji

Fuji Omuro Sengen-jinja

painting of Enoshima

Bronze torii gate at Enoshima

Octagonal Hall for the Statues at Enoshima

Enoshima Yacht Harbor

Red character at Enoshima Daishi

Sea at Enoshima

hydrangeas at Hasedera

Jizo statues at Hasedera

Kannondo at Hasedera

Buddha’s footprints at Hasedera

view of Sagami Bay from Hasedera

Japanese themed flip flops

the Yukata stroll of Nakamise-dori

The Hondo of Senso-ji

plastic food at Kappabashi-dori

Buddha cradling hydrangeas at Meigetsu-in

bamboo forest at Meigetsu-in

Hydrangeas at Meigetsu-in

Purple & white hydrangea at Meigetsu-in

Kuzuharaoka Shrine on the Daibutsu Hiking Course

creature among hydrangeas at Zeniarai Benzaiten

ema at Zeniarai Benzaiten

Daibutsu, the Great Buddha of Kamakura

Statue of Nichiren at Myohonji

Yanaka Ginza

Cute stuff at Yanaka Ginza

restaurant at Yanaka Ginza

small shrine at Yanaka-reien

Yanaka temple

hydrangeas in Yanaka’s temple area

Hydrangea in Yanaka

In July, I: Wandered through the delightful streets of Kagurazaka. Had my senses assaulted at Akihabara Electric Town in Tokyo. Finally managed to do the famous Hydrangea Walk at Hasedera on the third try. Sweltered as I slogged through Kawagoe, an Edo-era town. Enjoyed vegetable curry and beer in the cool dark atmosphere of Curry Naan while listening to “Eleanor Rigby,” “I am the Walrus,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” and “Lucy in the Sky with the Diamonds.” Got eaten alive by mosquitoes at the gardens of Rikugi-en and Koishikawa Korakuen, which are probably beautiful in spring and fall but were mediocre in the heat of summer. Explored the charming Tokyo neighborhoods of Shimo-kitazawa & Harmonica Yokocyo. Enjoyed Hiroshi Yoshida’s fabulous paintings at the Seji Togo Memorial Sompo Japan Nipponka Museum of Art and explored Omoide Yokocho and Kabukichō in Shinjuku with my Instagram friend Yukie. Enjoyed my first Okonomiyaki with Yukie and then was nearly flattened by a lion on a bicycle at Golden Gai. Escaped the heat by going to a contemporary Southeast Asian art exhibit at the Mori Art Museum, and then stood atop the building for encompassing views of Tokyo. Enjoyed beer and fish & chips with my friend Graham at the Aldgate British Pub in Shibuya. Fell in love with the Japanese postal system, which makes appointments to deliver or pick up packages. Felt dwarfed by tall bamboo at Hokokuji (the Bamboo Temple) in Kamakura after visiting the huge Guanyin Bodhisattva at Ofuna. Hiked around Yamate Bluff in Yokohama. Celebrated with my students during end-of-semester parties. Got soaked in continuous rainfall during a long weekend in Nikko. Enjoyed a monk’s diet of yuba prepared in multiple ways. Took a muddy rainy day walk through Aihara with Graham. Laughed and made toasts over wine and tapas at Vinul’s, near Ueno, with Graham and Paul after our end-of-year meetings. Encountered abundant lotus flowers at Shinobazu Pond. Enjoyed a celebratory dinner with Tobi and Reiko at Dai Trattoria. Packed my suitcases and sent them to the airport to be held for a week while I traveled around Japan.

Street art in Kagurazaka

Akihabara

Jizo statues at Hasedera

Buddha’s footprints at Hasedera

view from the Hydrangea Walk at Hasedera

view from the hydrangea walk at Hasedera

kimono and rooftops at Hasedera

Oyster wishes at Hasedera

Dragon ceiling at Engakuji

Engakuji in Kamakura

Engakuji

Kawagoe

Rikugi-en

Shimo-Kitazawa

stickers at Shimo-Kitazawa

Shibuya Crossing

my Instagram friend Yukie

Harmonica Yokocyo

Koishikawa Korakuen

a man on the train

Mori Art Museum

Tokyo from the rooftop of Mori Art Museum

Ofuna

Hokokuji (Bamboo Temple)

Yamate Bluff in Yokohama

Monk’s meal in Nikko

the monkeys of Nikko

Toshogu Shrine in Nikko

Taiyuin in Nikko

Shinkyo Bridge in Nikko

Yutaki Falls in Nikko

hike near Yutaki Falls

Kanman-ga-fuchi in Nikko

Bake Jizo in Nikko

Jokoji Temple in Nikko

Tamozawa Imperial Villa Memorial Park

In August, I: Handed over my blue bicycle to Graham and my apartment to Westgate and took my first Shinkansen to Hiroshima. Watched an aerial view simulation of the A-bomb that exploded over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Cried when I saw the before and after pictures of Hiroshima. Marveled at thousands of folded paper cranes, symbols of world peace, at the Children’s Peace Monument. Saw the A-bomb dome, surprisingly left somewhat intact after the bomb exploded overhead, although everyone inside was killed. Sweltered while walking around Miyajima and wading around the “floating” O-torii Gate at Itsukushima Shrine. Ate grilled oysters in Miyajima and Hiroshima’s version of okonomiyaki, washed down with a cold beer. Stood in awe of the Great Buddha of Nara at Todai-ji Temple. Befriended Nara’s cheeky deer. Ate kaki-no-ha, individual pieces of sushi wrapped in persimmon leaf, in Nara. Stood under lanterns on the verandah at Nigatsu-do and admired the city of Nara from above. Ate a vegetarian meal at a shukubo (temple lodging) in Koyasan. Prayed with monks at a beautiful pre-dawn Buddhist ceremony at Kongo Sanmaiin. Got a big hug from a friendly monk at a pagoda in Koyasan after pulling on a chain of beads where I got the fortune: “Great blessing.” Walked among 200,000 tombs for people of all classes in the shade of soaring cedars at Okunoin. Admired the design and sheer number of rocks in the rock garden at Kongobuji. Left in a rush from the second temple lodging, Kumagai-ji, in Koyasan, when we were alerted while eating our vegetarian dinner that a typhoon was coming and the cable car might not be running the next day to take us down the mountain. Stayed in a ryokan across from the delightful Naritasan Shinshoji Temple in Narita. Returned home to find a despicable Nazi Supremacist gathering in my home state, in Charlottesville, VA, where a girl was killed, and then had to listen to our “president” fanning the flames of hatred and arguing that there is moral equivalency between neo-Nazis, the KKK, and white supremacists and the “alt-left,” a made-up term lumping counter-protestors and Antifa, or anti-fascists, into one big boat. Found my son Adam had boomeranged back home after his year in Hawaii. Took 4-hour naps each day as I tried to reverse my internal clock after 4+ months in Japan. Enjoyed The Glass Castle, The Big Sick, and Wind River after four months of not watching any movies at the cinema in Japan.

view down the Motoyasu River to the A-Bomb Dome

Memorial Cenotaph

The Peace Flame

Paper cranes for peace at the Children’s Peace Monument

A-Bomb Dome

Kokeshi Dolls in Miyajima

Socks in Miyajima

Five-Storied Pagoda

Senjokaku Pavilion

Painting at Senjokaku Pavilion

Deer in Miyajima

O-torii Gate

Itsukushima Shrine

O-torii Gate

Itsukushima Shrine

Daishoin Temple

Todaiji Temple

The Daibutsuden

The Daibutsuden (Great Buddha)

Kokuzo Bosatsu

view of Nara from Nigatsu-do

Nigatsu-do

small shrine at Nigatsu-do

Todaiji Temple

pond at Todaiji Temple

gate at Todaiji Temple

deer in Nara

Toshodaiji Temple

moss garden at Toshodaiji Temple

lotus at Toshodaiji Temple

Yakushiji Temple

pagoda at Yakushiji Temple

lanterns in Nara

Kasugataisha

lanterns at Kasugataisha

lanterns on the way to Wakamiya-jinja

Kofuku-ji in Nara

pagoda at Kofuku-ji

deer of Nara

pedestrian street in Nara

bridge at Dai Garan in Koyasan

Konpon Daito at Dai Garan in Koyasan

white pavilion at Dai Garan

Konpon Daito at Dai Garan in Koyasan

Kondo at Dai Garan

Kongo Sanmaiin

monk’s meal at Kongo Sanmaiin

a monk’s blessings

pagoda to honor those who died in WWII

Okunoin

cedar trees at Okunoin

Okunoin

figure at Okunoin

washing the Buddhas at Okunoin

figures at Okunoin

Kongobuji Temple

Banryutei Rock Garden at Kongobuji Temple

Shojoshin-in

the garden of Hozen-in monastery

Kiyotaka Inari Shrine in Koyasan

cedar trees at Kiyotaka Inari Shrine

garden at Kumagaiji

monk’s meal at Kumagaiji

sushi in Narita

Somon Gate at Naritasan Shinshoji Temple

lantern at at Naritasan Shinshoji Temple

Three-storied pagoda at at Naritasan Shinshoji Temple

Naritasan Shinshoji Temple

Ukimido Hall at Naritasan Shinshoji Temple

cool cat at at Naritasan Shinshoji Temple

Great Pagoda of Peace at Naritasan Shinshoji Temple

Hall at Naritasan Shinshoji Temple

Narita

In September, I: Walked all around the Cleveland Park neighborhood in Washington. Visited the Pentagon Memorial for the first time ever in remembrance of September 11, 2001. Enjoyed Ethiopian injera and lentils in Herndon. Finally got my two boxes from Japan after 60 days. Flew Lufthansa in miserably uncomfortable economy class aisle seats for 7:55 hours through a six-hour time zone change and across the north Atlantic to Frankfurt, then on to Budapest. Got hooked on Big Little Lies while on the flight. Stayed in an Airbnb apartment on Kazinczy utca, the ruin bar street. Climbed 146 steps up the dome of St. Stephen’s Basilica for 360-degree views of Budapest. Watched men playing chess in the Szechenyi Baths as we soaked in water not quite warm enough for the cold temperatures outside. Took a hydrofoil up the Danube to Ezstergom and climbed up a narrow spiral staircase for views of the Danube and the town. Climbed an endless mountain to Visegrad Citadel. Admired beautiful paintings on the interior and Zsolnay ceramic tiles on the roof of Matthias Church. Scampered all around Fishermen’s Bastion. Visited the Great Synagogue and the Great Market Hall, and came away with a few goodies. Listened to a mini-opera at the Hungarian State Opera House. Had beers in the crazy ruin bar, Szimpla Kert. Climbed the Firewatch Tower and wandered among Roman ruins in Sopron, Hungary and enjoyed a fabulous meal (chicken paprika with homemade gnocchi!) with five wine tastings at the husband-and-wife run Vadászkürt Panzió és Étterem. Took the Ringstrasse Tram tour in Vienna, Austria. Fell in love with the zig-zag roof tiles and the Gothic south tower of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. Trekked out to see Hundertwasserhaus, an apartment building designed to celebrate “forms of decay” in architecture. Felt overwhelmed by the oppulent Imperial Porcelain and Silver Collection at the Hofburg Palace. Sampled peppers stuffed with cheese at the Naschmarkt. Wandered all around the elegant Belvedere Palace. Sampled a huge variety of wines on a bicycle tour of wineries in the Wachau Valley (in search of a thousand cafes).

St. Stephen’s Basilica

view from St. Stephen’s Basilica

chess players at Szechenyi Medicinal Baths

Szechenyi Medicinal Baths

Esztergom Basilica

view from Esztergom Basilica

Visegrad

view from Fellegvar in Visegrad

Fishermen’s Bastion

Matthias Church

inside Matthias Church

Hungarian Parliament

The Great Synagogue

inside the Great Synagogue

Great Market Hall

The Great Market Hall

chili peppers in Budapest

Inside Great Market Hall

lace in Budapest

Szimpla Kert

inside Szimpla Kert

Hungarian State Opera House

inside the Hungarian State Opera House

Terror House

Firewatch Tower in Sopron, Hungary

Sopron, Hungary

view of Sopron from the Firewatch Tower

chicken paprika with homemade gnocchi

Vienna Opera House

horsedrawn carriage in Vienna

St. Stephens Cathedral

St. Stephens Cathedral, Vienna, Austria

Vienna, Austria

Vienna architecture

Hundertwasserhaus

Museum in Vienna

Hofburg Imperial Palace

Imperial Porcelain

Imperial Tableware Collection

Nachshmarkt

Shloss Belvedere

District Heating Plant Spittelau

Durnstein in the Wachau Valley

the Danube in the Wachau Valley

Durnstein in the Wachau Valley

Wachau Valley

winery in Wachau Valley

Durnstein in the Wachau Valley from across the Danube

Mike on our bicycle wine tour

me with my bicycle

Weissenkirchen

Wachau Valley

In October, I: Mingled with thousands of Chinese tourists in Český Krumlov, Czech Republic. Climbed the Český Krumlov Tower for views of the charming town and countryside. Walked all over the quaint town and climbed a small mountain for not much of a view. Studied colorful graffiti on the Lennon Wall in Prague. Climbed the bell tower of the Church of St. Nicholas and Petrin Tower, where we enjoyed marvelous views of Prague. Admired the beautiful ceilings of the Strahov Monastery Library. Met St. Bearded Woman, the patron saint of unhappy marriages, at the Loreta. Admired a Mucha stained glass window at St. Vitus Cathedral. Ate an outrageously expensive meal at the Golden Well in Prague (my sea bass was sadly mediocre), with fabulous views over the city and the Vltava River. Was tempted to tango with the Dancing House, dubbed the “Fred and Ginger Building.” Passed the time with Prague’s famous Astronomical Clock. Found Gothic and Czech Art Nouveau architecture at Powder Tower and the Municipal House. Took a boat ride under the Charles Bridge on the Vltava River. Met my son’s girlfriend, Maddy, who he brought back with him from Australia. Celebrated my 62nd birthday for a week in late October. Enjoyed the play Native Gardens at Arena Stage, about our current antagonistic political environment. Met my little nephew, Elliott, and my sister in Baltimore. Encountered moss, ferns and bits of yellow on the Hawksbill Summit Hike in the Shenandoah Mountains.

Český Krumlov

me in Český Krumlov

Mike in Český Krumlov

Český Krumlov

Český Krumlov at night

Český Krumlov

Mike in Český Krumlov

Český Krumlov

Prague

The Lennon Wall

view from Church of St. Nicholas

Church of St. Nicholas

inside Church of St. Nicholas

Philosophy Hall at the Strahov Monastery Library

Theology Hall at the Strahov Monastery Library

The Loreta

St. Bearded Woman at the Loreta

view of Prague (St. Vitus Cathedral & the Vltava River) from the terrace beneath Strahov Monastery

view of Prague from Petrin Lookout Tower

Vltava River

View of the Little Quarter

Dancing House

Prague’s Old Town Square

Gothic Tyn Church

Astronomical Clock

Powder Tower

The Municipal House

Ceremonial hall near the Old Jewish Cemetery

Charles Bridge

The Vltava

Heading to Charles Bridge

statue on Charles Bridge

upside down horse in Prague

Grand Hotel Europa

Stained glass in Prague

St. Vitus Cathedral

Hawksbill Gap hike

view from Hawksbill Summit

In November & December, I: Voted for “alterations” in our current government. Visited my father in Yorktown and my daughter in Richmond. Celebrated our anniversary (29 years minus a handful of gap years) at Maple Avenue Restaurant. Met my friend from California, Leah, for bottomless mimosas at Pearl Dive Oyster Bar. Enjoyed the musical, The Pajama Game, at Arena Stage. Enjoyed Lucky, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Victoria & Abdul, and Lady Bird in the cinema. Stressed out over my son’s problems, and began the process of learning to let go through Al-Anon Family Groups. Escaped for some alone time on a road trip to Cape May, New Jersey, where an icy wind assaulted the windows of The Pink Cottage, howling and groaning all day and night.

November leaves in Richmond

me on our 29th anniversary

Maryland Heights hike

The Merry Widow in Cape May

Cape May Point State Park

Memorial to Fishermen Lost at Sea – Cape May

After Christmas, from December 27-31, Mike and I took a road trip to Nashville, Tennessee. It took about 10 hours to drive there, so two days were spent on the road and 3 days in Nashville.

Overall, we survived our first year of the Trump Presidency, and I had a great time on all my adventures. My biggest hope for 2018 is that my children will finally grow up and take responsibility for their lives.

Happy New Year, and may all your wishes be fulfilled in 2018! 🙂

the december cocktail hour: letting go & moving forward

Thursday, December 28: It’s time for our December cocktail hour, so please, come in out of the cold and get cozy. Though Christmas is behind us, I can still offer up some holiday cheer, possibly a classic eggnog (will it be bourbon or rum?), a cranberry mimosa, a pomegranate Moscow mule, or just some red wine. For those of you who don’t drink, I have sodas and seltzer water of various flavors.

You may wonder why I’m even serving alcohol in my house. Maybe you’re even wondering if our alcoholic has been miraculously cured. No, because once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. It’s just that I’m slowly but surely learning that I must live my life as I see fit, that I cannot fix another person or make them into what I want them to be. I’m trying hard to let go and let live, and simply to move forward, one day at a time, asking for help from my “higher power.” Someone recently told me something wise: I have my higher power (however I choose to define that power). My son has his own higher power, and I’M NOT IT. Even though I like to think I can see clearly how to fix his problems, I have to let go and let him make his own decisions, even if they’re detrimental. Mainly, I need to work on myself, and figure out what I can change and what I can’t. What I can change is myself, and what I can’t change is everyone else.

I hope December has been good to you so far. Have you read any good books, seen any good movies, binge-watched any television series? Have you been to the theater or to a concert? Have you had any winter getaways? Have you encountered any new songs? Have you dreamed any dreams? Have you had any massages? Gone to any exotic restaurants, cooked any new dishes? Have you embarked on any new endeavors? Have you been drinking enough water?

Over Thanksgiving, my daughter encouraged me to add an app to my phone to calculate how much water I should drink every day; it helps keep track of how much I actually drink. It’s called Plant Nanny, and I’m happy to say, I’ve been drinking more water than ever because of it. Normally, I have been drinking about one tall glass of water a day, mainly because I never get naturally thirsty, so I never think about it. I also don’t like to drink water because when I do, I’m always running to the bathroom! But now, since Thanksgiving, I’ve been doing pretty well. I don’t always drink the 6 large containers a day I’m supposed to, but I usually get to five, a big improvement. 🙂

I’ve been keeping track of area hikes organized by the Mid-Atlantic Hiking Group. I ended up joining a 7.7 mile hike around Burke Lake on Saturday, December 2 with a fun group. I met a lady named Susan who has walked the Camino de Santiago. She belongs to a group called the American Pilgrims on the Camino – Mid-Atlantic Chapter. She told me about an event scheduled for Saturday, the 9th: a hike followed by a wine-tasting. I was thrilled to learn about this group and am now on their mailing list. The group is for anyone who has ever done the Camino or who wants to do the Camino.

Susan is the lady in the green jacket. Sadly, it turned out the Camino group hike on the 9th was cancelled because of snow and, since that was the group’s last event of the year, I’ll have to wait until they start meeting again in 2018.

The Mid-Atlantic Hiking Group at Burke Lake

On Sunday, the 3rd, Mike and I went to a special showing of a Belgian movie called Sum of Histories. It was being shown on this one Sunday as a pilot to see if American audiences would like it. The director and producer hope to release it in the U.S. next year. The director talked to the audience about the movie after we watched it. I loved it. It was about two professors who figured out how to send emails back in time. Rather than attempting to change big historical events, they send an email to alter what happened to one of the professor’s wives; she had been paralyzed by an accident as a child and he wanted to change what happened to her so she would live a normal life. It shows the domino effect that changes in the past have on the present and future, and how messing with the past can have unforeseen consequences.

Thursday, December 7 was Adam’s 25th birthday, and though we’d hardly seen him since our big altercation the previous week, I asked him if he’d eat his favorite fruit pizza if I made it. He said he would, so Mike and I took him out to dinner at Artie’s and then presented him with the fruit pizza. This has been his favorite treat since I started making it when he was a child. It has a sugar cookie dough crust topped with whipped cream & sugar, and various fruits, including strawberries, raspberries, bananas, crushed pineapple, and blueberries.

When he ordered a beer at dinner, I didn’t flinch. I’m no longer going to comment or even act like I notice when he drinks. I realize now it doesn’t help for me to try to control him, but I can remove myself if a situation gets uncomfortable for me. It was fine, and we all actually had a nice time together.

I continued taking my 3 mile walks. Scenes below are from a walk around Lake Newport and Lake Anne in Reston. I call it my two lakes walk. You can see it’s getting pretty drab and gloomy here these days.

When we had a snowfall on December 9, I took a walk around the neighborhood and found a little snow on the bushes.

On another late afternoon walk, I found a beautiful sunset. I love the spindly silhouettes of winter trees against the pink-tinged sky.

trees at sunset

trees in my neighborhood

a tangle of trees

From December 12-14, I went on a solo mini-escape to Cape May, New Jersey. It was about a 4-hour drive. I think I must have picked the most miserable days of the year to go. It was about 33F degrees, near 0C, and fiercely blustery. The wind assaulted me with a vengeance as I walked around the town and on a trail at Cape May Point State Park. It didn’t let up at night, where I stayed on the third floor of the Pink Cottage, but groaned and hissed and sent the house swaying, shutters banging, all night. I was freezing with the small wall heating unit in the room, insufficient heat for this kind of weather. The second night, I luckily found a space heater in the closet, which helped. I loved this little getaway, as I always enjoy a solo road trip. 🙂 I’ll write more about this trip in January.

The Pink Cottage at Cape May

The Red Cottage at Cape May

My hike around Cape May Point State Park was wonderful and invigorating, but my fingers, toes and cheeks were stinging in the icy wind.

Cape May Point State Park

Memorial to Fishermen Lost At Sea, Cape May

On December 17, as we approached the winter solstice, I took another walk through the woods. It had become more drab and gloomy than it was in early December. That same evening, Mike and I went to see the Swiss movie, The Divine Order, about a young housewife who organizes the women in her small town to petition for the right to vote. We enjoyed it.

the woods in winter

the drab woods

tangled webs

the gravel trail

At least there were some glorious sunsets.

We’ve still been watching Longmire, Easy, A Place to Call Home, Curb Your Enthusiasm and the Ken Burns documentary on The Vietnam War, all of which we are enjoying.

I finished three books in December: (1) Call it Wonder: an odyssey of love, sex, spirit and travel, by Kate Evans (I met Kate virtually after I left China and she went to China to teach at SCIC, the same college where I taught); (2) The House at the Edge of Night by Catherine Banner; and (3) Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett. I enjoyed all three of them; you can read my reviews on Goodreads, hopefully by clicking on the links.

Finally, we celebrated Christmas. On Christmas Eve, we went for a fabulous dinner and gift exchange at my sister-in-law’s house, which, as always, was beautifully decorated.

My sister-in-law’s mantle

close up of mantle

butterfly decor

Barbara’s tree

The table setting

beautiful ornament display

We should be better at taking pictures of the whole family on Christmas, but all we managed to get was a picture of Mike and me.

On Christmas Day, we opened gifts, ate my traditional Christmas brunch, and then played Rummikub, a game we found under the tree from Santa. We had a wonderful day all around.

On Wednesday, December 27, Mike and I took off on a road trip (10 hour drive) to Nashville, Tennessee. I’ll have to write more about this trip in 2018.

Alex, our oldest son, is taking off on December 30 to start a new phase of his life in Denver, Colorado. He has a friend there with whom he’ll share an apartment, and he already has a job lined up. I’ll be sad not to see him as much, but I hope it will be a good move for him, a fresh start.

In the meantime, I wish you all a Happy New Year and I’ll see you again in twenty-eighteen. 🙂

happy holidays!!!!

Happy holidays, however you celebrate them, from our house to yours! I wish you all a multitude of blessings as you celebrate with family and friends and as you move forward into 2018. 🙂

the november cocktail hour – sans cocktails

Thursday, November 30: It’s time for our monthly cocktail hour again, but this time I’m afraid I can’t offer you any cocktails. It will have to be a non-alcoholic gathering, as our family has now come face-to-face, in the most unpleasant way, with the full-blown realization that we have an alcoholic in our midst. I’ll tell you more about it later, but for now, please come in and keep me company. I could certainly use a listener, and I’d love the distraction of hearing what’s happening in other people’s lives.

I can offer you soda, hot tea or coffee, or even hot apple cider, since it’s getting cold now. We also have tap water, of course, with a twist of lemon or lime, or I can offer you La Croix grapefruit flavored sparkling water. You all know I love my glass of wine, but I have to save that treat for when I’m outside the house.

“There’s not alcoholic in the world who wants to be told what to do. Alcoholics are sometimes described as egomaniacs with inferiority complexes. Or, to be cruder, a piece of shit that the universe revolves around.”
― Anthony Kiedis, Scar Tissue

I hope November has been good to you. Have you read any good books, seen any good movies or performances, binge-watched any television series? Have you encountered any challenges or jumped any big hurdles? Have you welcomed any visitors? Have you wandered or journeyed; have you dreamed any dreams? Have you had any massages? Gone to any exotic restaurants, cooked any new dishes? Have you embarked on any new endeavors?

Our month started out well enough. My son’s girlfriend Maddy was still here and he was occupied with her, though he still hadn’t returned to work. I think they had worked out Maddy would pay for everything while here, as he had spent all his money in Australia. He wasn’t working so had no income coming in.

I was trying to play catch-up with some free webinars offered by a friend of mine, Pooja, under her business name of Daring Daydreamers. I hadn’t been able to attend the live versions, so I was trying to catch up on the first two replays: “Vision Boarding for Success” and “Intentional Mind Mapping,” in preparation for the third one, “Communicating Your Vision with Ease” on Friday, November 3. After attending this webinar live, I signed up for the two-hour “Business Planning Workshop” which was on the 16th. Pooja had given all attendees a Business Planning Worksheet to complete prior to the webinar, which was fairly easy to do as I had started creating a business plan before I left for Japan.

I also set a goal for myself to write two draft chapters of my memoir each week, and except for Thanksgiving week, I did just that, although I must admit they are very rough drafts.

I saw a lot of movies this month, probably to make up for not seeing a single movie in the theater in October, and to escape the house. I go often to Cinema Arts Theatre in Fairfax on Senior Wednesday for $5.50. I went to see the adorable movie Lucky, about a 90-year-old atheist who, after a sudden collapse in his home, has to accept that his good health may be declining and that his life may be coming to an end. He’s a gruff but endearing character who gets up every morning and does a few yoga poses in his underwear, puts on one of the five identical plaid shirts he has in his closet, and goes out for a walk, smoking cigarettes along the way and encountering his fellow citizens in his small derelict town. He questions his neighbors’ beliefs and fine-tunes his own along the way.

Mike and I enjoyed a fun vegan taco dinner with our friends Karen and Michael on Saturday, the 4th. This was the first time we’ve visited them in their new house and we had a great time. On Sunday afternoon, we went together to see The Florida Project, a depressing and hopeless story about poverty and generational problems in the shadow of the make-believe land of Disney World in Florida. It definitely gave us something to talk about, especially how the mother’s behavior in letting her daughter run rampant translated into a bratty spoiled child who didn’t have any likable qualities about her.

November 7 was Election Day and in Virginia, it was an important election as we were voting for a new Governor (Ralph Northam won!), Lieutenant Governor (Justin Fairfax), Attorney General (Mark Herring) and a new delegate for the 67th District (Karrie Delaney). It turned out to be a Democratic sweep, thank goodness, a clear message to Trump that Virginians want nothing to do with his brand of hatred.

After I voted I went to my tailor and asked her to take a picture of my “I Voted” sticker; it was recommended we put pictures on social media to remind others to vote. It just so happened the picture showed her “Alterations” sign on the window, and I noted on my picture that I voted for “Alterations” in our current government.

Election Day – hoping for ALTERATIONS in our current government!

I found a picture on Pinterest, which I don’t often look at, of a meal that inspired me to make this meal of quinoa, black beans, roasted butternut squash, avocado, arugula & yellow tomatoes. It was delicious!

my concoction: quinoa, black beans, roasted butternut squash, avocado & yellow tomatoes

On Wednesday, November 8, I went to see Victoria & Abdul, about the aging Queen Victoria and her unusual friendship with a young Indian clerk. I always love Judy Dench, and she was her superb self in this movie. We’ve also recently watched the first season of the TV series, Victoria, about Queen Victoria’s early life. Now we just need the middle part filled in.

On Thursday, November 9, I went to visit my father and his wife in Yorktown, but I stayed less than two hours. I have a fraught relationship with my father and I haven’t seen him since I threw a birthday party for him in September of 2016. At that party, his wife Shirley told me Dad wanted to cancel three weeks before the party, despite the fact that I did everything in my power to get everyone together for that party, even my sister in California who hates to fly and rarely travels. Luckily, Shirley talked Dad out of cancelling or I would have been furious. He told me at that party that he would never make the trip to northern Virginia again (about a 3 hour trip by car under the best of traffic), yet he continues to travel about 30 minutes south of here to visit his wife’s family. He’s also a Trump supporter and a racist, so I really can’t take much of him. I know he’s getting older and more frail, so I try to do my daughterly duty periodically.

After a tense conversation, I left his house and went to Richmond where I met Sarah and Alex at Joe’s Inn, where Sarah has worked as a bartender and waitress for nearly 10 years. They were finishing up their drinks and Alex had to run off to meet someone, so we shortly left. Sarah and I went by ourselves to share a lovely dinner at Demi’s Mediterranean Kitchen.

On Saturday morning I went for a walk in Sarah’s neighborhood of Woodland Park while she took her dog for a slow walk. The trees were beautiful in her neighborhood. Then we had a delicious lunch at Chopt Salad at Willow Lawn.

Woodland Heights Baptist Church

Yellow leaves

purple berries

fallen leaves

I loved all the fallen leaves in Woodland Park. I don’t know why it makes me so happy to shuffle through colorful fallen leaves in autumn.

colorful leaves on the road in Woodland Park

We celebrated our anniversary (29 years minus a handful of gap years) at Maple Avenue Restaurant in Vienna on Monday, November 13. Earlier that day, my son’s girlfriend Maddy left to return to Australia.

This night, though fun while we were out, marked the end of innocence for our family. Little did we know this would be the beginning of a spiraling decline in our son’s life.

At this point, still foolishly believing life was good, we enjoyed our dinner. I had an appetizer of crispy broccoli with panko breading, gold raisins, caraway, and yogurt herb sauce. It was a little too heavily breaded and deep-fried for my taste; I was expecting a light dusting of bread crumbs. Mike’s appetizer of house spreads was much better: burrata, liver mousse, bacon jam, herb ricotta, currant jam, and crostinis. For dinner, I somewhat enjoyed my Arctic Char Fillet with fresh herb spaetzle pasta, oregano, and smoky tomato sauce. Again, Mike’s meal was better: pork confit steak with fingerlings, brown butter, sweet potato, eggplant caponata, and chimi churri. I’m not generally a pork eater, but this dish was lean and flavorful and surprisingly good.

Finally, to top off our meal, we had fried apple pie with lavender honey, dulce de leche, and old-fashioned ice cream. This time mine was better than Mike’s Lithuanian Honey Layer Cake with cinnamon, allspice and caramelized honey, and whipped sour cream.

crispy broccoli

fried apple pie

Lithuanian Honey Layer Cake

fried apple pie

I continued to take my 3-mile walks all over the place, but on this Thursday after our anniversary, on a walk around Lake Audubon, the trees were glowing.

On Friday afternoon before Thanksgiving, I met my friend Leah in D.C. at Pearl Dive Oyster Palace for brunch and bottomless mimosas. She lives in San Francisco but comes home to D.C. to visit her father each year around Thanksgiving. Leah got the most delicious Chopped Salad with Buttermilk-Jalapeno Dressing, Market Vegetables, and Popcorn Crawfish, while I enjoyed a small portion of 3 Cornmeal Crusted Chesapeake Oysters served over Andouille Sausage & Sweet Potato Hash. It was a tiny meal but delicious. No matter, I was mostly focused on the bottomless mimosas for $20. This Bottomless Mimosa Brunch is hosted every Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm with Reggae tunes playing in the background. We had a great time all around, catching up on our lives while also bemoaning the state of our government in the last year, with the despicable and greedy Republicans in charge.

We passed by Birch and Barley, which looked to be closed but I found out later is not. I recognized it as the place where my CELTA class colleagues and students went to celebrate after our last day of class in October of 2015.

Leah with bottomless mimosas

Me and Leah

Pearl Dive Oyster Palace

Birch & Barley

Mike and I went to Arena Stage to see the musical The Pajama Game on Saturday, November 18 after eating at Masala Art, our favorite Indian restaurant in D.C. Here’s the review in the Washington Post: Splashy ‘Pajama Game’ at Arena Stage Aims to Seduce with 1950s Style. It was fun, and some of the music was great, especially “Hernando’s Hideaway,” which I played on Spotify on the way home.

The Pajama Game was first produced in 1954, with catchy tunes and sexy dance numbers. The musical’s themes revolve around protest and inequality in the workplace.

I finished reading three books this month: first, I finished Water from heaven: An American woman’s life as an Arab wife, by Anne Schreiber Thomas. I met Anne and her husband when I lived in Oman and she and her husband lived in Abu Dhabi. The story tells of an American woman, Cindy Lou Davis, who met and married Mohammed Ali, a Muslim from the oil-rich United Arab Emirates. Anne knows Cindy Lou and she did a great job of capturing Arab culture in UAE, not too dissimilar from Oman’s. I also finished Losing Julia by Jonathan Hull, which I really enjoyed. Lastly, I read the bizarre book, The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris, by Leila Marouane. I started reading this book because I planned to join a book group that is reading books from all the countries of the world in alphabetical order. The story actually takes place in Paris but it was chosen as an Algerian book, since the protagonist Mohamed Ben Mokhtar, who has Frenchified his name to Basile Tocquard, and his family are Algerian. If you’re interested in reading my reviews of these books, you can probably find them by clicking on the title links above.

On Sunday, November 19, Mike and I took a walk along the Fairfax Cross County Trail. It was a beautiful crisp fall day, but I was feeling a little anxious about the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. Worried about our son’s drinking, I had counted the number of wine bottles, and was certain that two had gone missing. I knew when Sarah and Alex came for the holiday, the wine would be flowing and I didn’t know how Adam would cope.

On Tuesday morning before Thanksgiving, I woke up to hear a tense discussion in the basement between my husband and son, and I found a note under my empty wine rack. I had hidden all the wine bottles on Monday, but on Monday afternoon I had bought two more for the holidays and thought, He wouldn’t dare take these when they’re the last two. The note said, “Sorry for taking wine. I love you. Thank you.” Apparently he had drunk the two bottles over the night and was drunk first thing in the morning. A huge argument ensued with screaming and yelling. Things got so nasty that I threatened to call the police.

Slowly, we all calmed down and had a long talk, made up, cried and hugged. Later in the morning, I invited Adam to walk with me, again on the same Cross County Trail. We had such a wonderful day, talking about everything, about how difficult it was for him when in every social situation people are pressuring him to drink, and how he felt powerless. He talked about wanting moderation, being able to have just one or two drinks, but how he couldn’t seem to stop once he started. We talked about how it was important for him to go to AA so he wouldn’t have to go it alone, so he could have a community of people who also struggle with addiction. We could send him to rehab, I could drive him to AA, he could join some Meetup groups of people with similar interests so he didn’t feel so isolated. We talked about how he’d cope over Thanksgiving when people were drinking. We loaded him up with Kombucha, so he could drink that while others were drinking wine. He seemed receptive. After our walk, we went to Mom’s Organic Market so he could pick out some healthy food (he’s very picky about the kind of food he’ll eat) and we shared some healthy bowls at the Naked Lunch Cafe.

See how much help I tried to offer?! See how foolish, and how crazy, I was?

On our way home, Adam told me how he’d like to make some suggestions to his boss to improve his business so his boss wouldn’t be so angry all the time. It sounds like the business is growing and needs more employees, so I immediately thought of ZipRecruiter, an advertisement I hear every day on Modern Love: The Podcast. (Again, I’m so full of helpful ideas!) I told Adam that I listen every day to Modern Love and they play the same two ads: ZipRecruiter and Iconundies.com, about pee-proof underwear for women. We laughed about those and then he was interested in hearing the podcast to hear the advertisements. It just so happened the next podcast up on my list was this one: “Take My Son To Jail: Modern Love 72.” The essay, read aloud on the podcast, was about a son who was diagnosed with various things over the years, from autism to schizophrenia, but nothing ever seemed right. It turned out the son had told his mother at 18 that he wanted to be treated like an adult. Then he went through a stretch of time where he lied about everything and then stole his mother’s car. When the police in their small town called the mother, she told them to take him to jail, because he’d said he wanted to be treated like an adult and she was sick of all the lies and his behavior. She did it lovingly. Sadly, many years later, the son was found dead in his apartment at age 28 with no known cause of death.

We weren’t finished listening to the podcast when we pulled into our driveway, but Adam wanted to finish listening to it after we got in the house. As I had just threatened to call the police this morning, maybe he could identify with it. I hoped that maybe he understood where I was coming from.

We hadn’t shared a day that wonderful in a long time. All seemed good. And hopeful.

“I felt empty and sad for years, and for a long, long time, alcohol worked. I’d drink, and all the sadness would go away. Not only did the sadness go away, but I was fantastic. I was beautiful, funny, I had a great figure, and I could do math. But at some point, the booze stopped working. That’s when drinking started sucking. Every time I drank, I could feel pieces of me leaving. I continued to drink until there was nothing left. Just emptiness.”
― Dina Kucera, Everything I Never Wanted to Be

But. Hope is fool’s folly when dealing with an addict. This is the dilemma. As his parents, we love him and want the best for him. We want him to be happy and productive and responsible. We want him to be a man. We are willing to do anything to help him. And this is where the problem lies. WE CANNOT HELP HIM UNLESS HE WANTS TO HELP HIMSELF. And though he SAYS he wants to help himself, he doesn’t actually take action to do it. This is where we want so desperately to believe, but we’re fools for doing so. In our belief that we can fix him, we’re as insane as he is.

Before he left for Australia in mid-September, he was doing so well. He was working, saving money, paying his debt, working solidly on a podcast which I thought was very well done. He was proud of himself for being clean for 70 days. But once he got to Australia, he was pressured constantly to drink, and apparently he did drink, so much that he didn’t like how he was feeling and acting, so he quit cold turkey. He said that weekend after he stopped was hell because everyone else was partying like their lives depended on it and he felt outside of things.

While in Australia, he lost his momentum on his podcast and spent all his money. And then he brought Maddy home with him, and he promptly got sick and didn’t go back to work. He and Maddy broke up and she left earlier than she originally planned. Maybe their relationship was doomed because of the hopelessness of being on opposite sides of the world. Maddy doesn’t want to leave Australia and he doesn’t want to leave the U.S. He has no career and no direction and knows he needs to get his life together, but he just can’t seem to muster what it takes.

This is the nature of the addict.

“A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can’t predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

Thanksgiving actually went pretty well. Sarah and Alex arrived, they drank wine and Adam drank Kombucha. We enjoyed chatting and we all watched several episodes of Fresh Off the Boat together, all bundled together under blankets on the couch in the basement. The next day, we worked together to prepare dinner, enjoyed our huge meal, and then played a rousing game of Malarky together. It was great fun; I haven’t laughed so hard in ages. But where all of us could laugh, make fun of ourselves, and relax, Adam seemed on edge, testy. He always wants to win and takes it personally when he thinks he’s going to lose. He can be condescending and difficult to be around.

The day after Thanksgiving was worse, with Adam staying mostly to himself and Alex working out. Sarah was her easy-going self. I suggested we all go see Lady Bird together and everybody was up for it. I enjoyed it. Sarah said it reflected perfectly the struggles of her generation. I’m sure all my kids could relate to the mother-child struggles, with the mother pushing her child to be the best she could be.

But later, Adam sat in front of the TV, lost in his own thoughts, not talking to Alex or Sarah or any of us. He was supposed to go to work Friday night, but called in sick. He should have gone Saturday, but he didn’t then either. Sarah and Alex left around 11:00 on Saturday, and Adam went back into his shell, seeming more depressed than ever.

“I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn’t have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn’t make for an interesting person. I didn’t want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. On the other hand, when I got drunk I screamed, went crazy, got all out of hand. One kind of behavior didn’t fit the other. I didn’t care.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

the CCT

Oak leaves

berries

bracket fungi

Difficult Valley Stream

On Sunday, Adam got up early and went to work. He was at work from 7 in the morning till 7:30 at night.Mike and I went for a fun hike at Maryland Heights. In the evening, we got a text that he was going to his friend’s house. I know he needs to have friends, but I know these friends like to drink. I was on edge all night. He never came home until 9:30 Monday morning. I didn’t know if he’d been drinking but I couldn’t help but suspect it. He steered clear of me and later in the day, I found him sleeping the day away in the basement. I asked if he’d been drinking last night and if he was going to an AA meeting we’d told him about on Monday evening. He answered no to both and said not to bother him, he was napping.

Later in the evening, I was determined that we talk to him together. We went downstairs and told him we wanted to talk to him about going to AA. Highly on edge, he said he wasn’t going and he didn’t want to talk about it. We insisted that we need to talk about it because our agreement was that he would start going to AA if he lived in our house. Tempers escalated and things got ugly, ending with him pounding a hole in his door, another hole in the wall, breaking his computer, and picking up an ottoman and trying to throw it at a TV. He said horrible things to us and was out of control. He told us he was more powerful than us and he became threatening. I threatened to call the police.

When things escalated even more, the decibel level nearly explosive, I did just what I threatened. I called the police, telling them we had a domestic situation. Adam left the house and sat outside waiting for the police. He wanted to tell his side of the story first, I guess. It was a horrible night. I told the police I wanted him out of the house. They told us we couldn’t just throw him out at that moment. They told me there was nothing they could do unless he actually hurt us. Wow, that might be too late, mightn’t it? The officer was a good man, kind and sympathetic. He said, with all his experience over 20 years with this kind of situation, there is nothing we can do to help our son unless he wants to help himself. He told us our options; we could go to the Sheriff’s Office and file eviction papers, post them on our house, and have him evicted in 30 days. We could file charges for property damages. He suggested we should wait till our tempers had calmed to continue our discussion. Then he left the house. I stood up, said I was done talking for the night, and went upstairs to bed, saying I had nothing more to say. But. I couldn’t sleep because I could hear Mike and Adam talking for two more hours, voices raised.

Later, Mike told me that in two hours of talking, our son said that when he came home from Hawaii, he spent two full weeks trying to detox by sleeping and spending a lot of time alone. He said Mike didn’t know how much he suffered because he was at work all the time (I was in Japan). He said he really does want to change.

I won’t believe it until I see it. I’m ready to file eviction papers at a moment’s notice, but I said I’d see how it goes over the next week. I hate the thought of evicting him in the middle of winter, but I don’t know what else to do. We have absolutely no control over him and I actually feel threatened in my house.

“You’re walking down Fool’s Street, Laura used to say when he was drinking, and she had been right. He had known even then that she was right, but knowing had made no difference; he had simply laughed at her fears and gone on walking down it, till finally he had stumbled and fell. Then, for a long time, he stayed away, and if he had stayed away long enough he would have been all right; but one night he began walking down it again – and met the girl. It was inevitable that on Fool’s Street there should be women as well as wine.

He had walked down it many times in many different towns, and now he was walking down it once again in yet another town. Fool’s Street never changed, no matter where you went, and this one was no different from the others. The same skeletonic signs bled beer names in vacant windows; the same winos sat in doorways nursing muscatel; the same drunk tank awaited you when at last your reeling footsteps failed. And if the sky was darker than usual, it was only because of the rain which had begun falling early that morning and been falling steadily ever since.”
― Robert F. Young, The Worlds of Robert F. Young

On Tuesday night, we watched the DVR of Madam Secretary we had recorded on Sunday. In the show, President Dalton was upset because his son, a drug addict, had checked himself into rehab. After an international incident in which the U.S., at the President’s insistence, tried to negotiate with Mexico to turn over an imprisoned drug lord to the U.S. to be prosecuted, Secretary McCord tells the President she’s sorry about his son. He says the worst thing is that no matter how many times his son goes to rehab, and how often he gets clean, he’s always going to have that demon on his shoulder, threatening to send him spiraling again.

Why has it taken us so long to face the fact our son is depressed and an alcoholic? Sure, we’ve had our suspicions. But I have tried to normalize it. I know depression runs in our family and all of us have grappled with it. I remind myself how many young people drink, how much I used to drink when I was in my 20s. But, then I never drank alone. I was always able to get up and go to work. Could I quit after two drinks? I often didn’t, but could I have?

How many times have we deluded ourselves? I’ve lost count. I had a wonderful day with my son on Tuesday before Thanksgiving, my sweet and brilliant son who was once so close to me. Now, less than a week later, we are in dire straits. I never know when another bomb will drop; it’s like I’m living in a war zone. He is depressed but refuses to seek help because he doesn’t trust doctors and he refuses to go on anti-depressants, yet he continues to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol. He is isolated and lonely, but he won’t go to AA. He thinks he’s more powerful than we are and we can’t force him to do anything. And he’s right about that. If he won’t help himself, how on earth can we help him?

Plainly and simply, we can’t.

But we can’t let him drag us down into his abyss. That I know. I am considering options. I am leaving open the eviction option. I am considering leaving the house and going to stay somewhere else until he’s out of the house. I am figuring out ways I can take care of myself and stop offering him help and solutions. He doesn’t want our help anyway, and in fact resents our meddling. I will work on myself, as I’m the only one who is any of my business.

“There are millions of people out there who live this way, and their hearts are breaking just like mine. It’s okay to say, “My kid is a drug addict or alcoholic, and I still love them and I’m still proud of them.” Hold your head up and have a cappuccino. Take a trip. Hang your Christmas lights and hide colored eggs. Cry, laugh, then take a nap. And when we all get to the end of the road, I’m going to write a story that’s so happy it’s going to make your liver explode. It’s going to be a great day.”
― Dina Kucera, Everything I Never Wanted to Be

I grew up with a mother who was paranoid schizophrenic and who attempted suicide (and failed) too many times to count. The first time, she walked in front of a neighbor’s VW van when I was 13 years old. Another time she drove into a tree. She was in and out of mental hospitals, undergoing electroshock therapy, and she was constantly on cocktails of anti-psychotic drugs. She was also an alcoholic. I survived those years by detaching and I’ll have to survive this by detaching. I love my son deeply, but I’m going to stand back for now. I have to, to keep from going crazy. Until he gets his life together, I need to keep distance between us. The whole environment is too toxic and too heartbreaking.

It may seem strange to be writing about anniversary celebrations, going to movies, reading books, meeting friends, and celebrating holidays in the midst of the hell we are going through. But that is life, isn’t it? We can choose to sit around wringing our hands in desperation, hoping that something good will come of all this or, alternatively, bracing ourselves for something horrible to happen. Or we can try to eke out moments of happiness in whatever ways we can in the midst of it all. I’m going to try to do the latter, for my sanity, which I’m determined to preserve. I did it when growing up with my mentally ill mother, so I’ll do it with my son as well.

We are at a stand-off now. I haven’t laid eyes on our son since Monday night, and he lives in our basement. Mike goes down once a day to check to see if he’s still alive. I cannot forget our terrifying Monday night and I’m sure he is furious at us. He probably feels hopeless, and that makes my heart break. But we feel hopeless too. Forgiveness will be slow in coming.

On Wednesday, November 29, I went again to Senior Wednesday to see Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. This may have been one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. The characters were complex and grew and learned from their experiences. It gave me a little hope for all of us.

Friday, December 1: I went to an Al-Anon meeting today at an Episcopal Church I used to attend. This group works on the 12 steps, one step each Friday at noon. Today, it so happened that they were working on Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. It helped me to listen to nearly 20 people share their struggles with the alcoholic or drug addicts in their lives. It helped me feel part of a community, that all is not hopeless, and that I need to focus on myself and to ask for help from a Higher Power. One thing I learned in Al-Anon today is that I have to trust in my Higher Power, whatever that means to me, and then I have to let go and believe that my son has his own Higher Power who will take care of him. They said to me: “Keep coming back.” I’ve dropped into Al-Anon meetings in the past, but only periodically, when things were in crisis mode. This time, I need to commit to going regularly, at least once a week, if not more.

Many people may be put off by my sharing of something so personal. But I am a strong believer in deep sharing, rather than superficiality. Looking at social media, one would think everyone’s lives are fine and glorious things. There is deep shame in society about talking about mental illness, depression and addiction. But I believe if we don’t talk about it, and we continue to sweep it under the table, it will continue to infect our societies, generation after generation, ad infinitum.

One day, you might be able to read all about all of this in my memoir.

In the meantime, I hope you’ll tell me something about your November, your life, your experiences, whether exciting or challenging. Anyway, I wish you all a fabulous December and a festive holiday season. 🙂

the october cocktail hour: of pumpkins, birthdays, autumn leaves and halloween

Tuesday, October 31: It’s time for our October cocktail hour, and I’m ecstatic that the weather is finally getting cooler, the air is becoming more crisp, and the leaves are shouting their last vibrant hurrah before winter sets in. Farm market displays are bursting with fresh apples, pumpkins, gourds and pumpkin & apple butter. Everywhere in suburban yards, straw scarecrows stand on sticks, ghosts float overhead on tree branches, gravestones and skulls lurk in the shadows. It’s my favorite time of year, and on top of the normal October pleasures, I celebrated another birthday on October 25. I’m now the venerable age of 62, but still feeling much younger than that truth-telling number.

Topping off everything else, yesterday morning, there were the Mueller indictments. I don’t plan to say much about it here, but suffice it to say, this was a fantastic belated birthday present. I hope it will be the gift that keeps on giving!

Please come in and take one of my Pottery Barn furry blankets. Wrap yourself up; we’ll sit out on the screened-in porch. It’s cool but not yet too cold. While on our trip, Mike and I became a bit addicted to local Czech beers, especially Pilsner Urquell and Budějovický (Budweiser) Budvar. Mike managed to find the Pilsner Urquell here in the U.S., so I have those to offer. We also have red and white wines, seltzer water and orange juice (always a refreshing combination for those of you who don’t drink), Vanilla Coke Zero, sparkling water and of course my old standby, Bud Light Lime. 🙂

I hope October has been good to you so far. Have you read any good books, seen any good movies, binge-watched any television series? Have you been to the theater or to a concert? Have you encountered any new songs? Have you welcomed any visitors? Have you wandered or journeyed; have you dreamed any dreams? Have you had any massages? Gone to any exotic restaurants, cooked any new dishes? Have you embarked on any new endeavors?

Our first week in October was the second week of our two-week holiday to Hungary, Austria and Czech Republic. From October 1st on, we were in Czech Republic, namely Český Krumlov and Prague, and we returned home on October 7. I’ve been writing, slowly but surely, about our trip on my Europe blog: in search of a thousand cafes.

At the same time, I’m alternating writing about my last 10 days in Japan (catbird in japan). It’s all slow going, but eventually the story will be told. 🙂 Throughout the month, I continued to follow Jill’s Scene, who just completed the Camino de Santiago in late October. She and her husband started the 800km walk in early September; I still have dreams of doing it myself in September-October of 2018. I continued to add to my notes about her journey, the weather and challenges she encountered. I haven’t wavered in my dream to do this next year.

As for books, I’m way behind on my goal to read 40 books in 2017. I basically didn’t read much of anything the four months I was in Japan. I was simply too busy. But as of this month, I’ve managed to read 20 books, finishing Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner, which I enjoyed, and How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway, which was okay.

On the plane to Budapest and the flight back from Prague, I binge-watched the Emmy-award winning HBO mini-series Big Little Lies, which I loved. Listening to the opening credits soundtrack repeatedly, I became enamored of the song Cold Little Heart by Michael Kiwanuka. Now I’ve added it to my October playlist on Spotify. On my daily 3-mile walks, I listen to my various soundtracks, including that song, ad infinitum, as well as the podcast Modern Love from the New York Times column of the same name, hosted by Meghna Chakrabarti (WBUR).

Strangely, I haven’t seen one movie in the cinema this month, but Mike and I did see Native Gardens at Arena Stage in Washington on October 14. Appropriately themed as a reflection of our current antagonistic political environment in Washington, the play is about two neighbors, an older stodgy white couple, the Butleys and a young couple of Latino background, the Del Valles (the husband is Chilean and the pregnant wife a native New Mexican). There’s a generation gap, a cultural gap, and a gap in the actual property line; when the Del Valles want to quickly replace the decrepit fence between the properties so they can have an outdoor BBQ for the husband’s law firm, a surveyor finds their property line goes another couple of feet into the Butleys’ yard, encroaching on Frank Butley’s beloved garden. A huge altercation ensues addressing issues of race, environment, and politics. Entertaining as pure surface comedy, it didn’t address in a serious way the actual political divisions we face in our country today.

Here’s a great review of the play: Washington City Paper: Arena Stage Skewers Neighborhood Drama in Native Gardens.

Our youngest son Adam left for Melbourne, Australia right before we went on our holiday. He went for nearly a month to visit his girlfriend, Maddy, who he met in Hawaii. He informed us the day before he returned that he was bringing Maddy home with him. He had hinted at this before he left, but I didn’t know if it would actually happen. I went to Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI) to pick them up on Wednesday evening, October 18, and since I arrived early to avoid the Beltway traffic, I spent an hour or so having a light dinner at Season 52 at Columbia Mall. Here’s a musical sculpture at the mall.

at Columbia Mall while waiting for Adam and Maddy to arrive at BWI

Adam, keen to show Maddy all around in one fell swoop, wore himself out quickly and ended up in excruciating pain from rupturing his eardrum, leaving poor Maddy to fend for herself. I told him that no matter how bad he felt, she was his guest and he was obligated to take care of her.

Despite the fact that, before he left for Australia, he was being disciplined, working hard, saving money and doing some interesting podcasts while taking a course on making podcasts, after he returned, he was suddenly ill, making no effort to return to work, and had his girlfriend here (who is very nice and seems to have a good head on her shoulders, by the way!). In my eyes, he was shirking all his duties and the promises he made to us to have a full-time job if we allowed him to live at home. Every day that he’s not moving forward in his life, career-wise, makes me feel like he’s completely irresponsible and we are total failures as parents, not demanding enough from him or having high enough expectations. Not only that, but feeding into the tension I feel is my fear he will be as indecisive as I have always been about my career. All of this has made for a tense atmosphere in the house since October 21, although I had to force myself let go of my anger and frustration and just accept that he is sick and his girlfriend will leave soon and he can get back to figuring out his life.

It’s so challenging to be a parent, especially when I had such horrible role models and when I seem to have no natural instincts for parenting.

Alex came down from Richmond and since Adam was sick and Maddy wanted to stay with him, Mike, Alex and I enjoyed a pleasant evening at Artie’s in Fairfax on the evening before my birthday. On my birthday, a Wednesday, Adam and Maddy invited me to go with them to sit at a park and then pick up pumpkins, but I can’t say I enjoyed it as the day was on their terms and I felt annoyed that I didn’t do what I wanted, which was to go see a movie.

The day after my birthday, I escaped the house and went to Baltimore to see my sister Joan, who was babysitting her 9-month-old grandson Elliott at my niece Kelsey’s house. It was fun to finally meet my little great-nephew, to have lunch out with Joan and Elliott, and to see Kelsey when she got home from work.

Kelsey and Elliot

Kelsey, Elliot and me

After my visit, I stopped in Bethesda, Maryland to have White Sangria and tapas at my favorite restaurant there, Jaleo. After dinner, I went to the Writer’s Center to hear an interview of author Alice McDermott by Bob Levey of The Washington Post. I always get inspired listening to writers talk. 🙂

On Friday night, Mike and I went out on our own to celebrate my birthday at Nostos Restaurant, which, according to the website presents a “fresh, modern take on Greek culinary culture.” “Nostos” is at the root of the word nostalgia and means a return to one’s origins, a longing for a special time in the past; the restaurant attempts to stimulate senses with a variety of traditional and new Greek dishes.

We ordered an array of mezedes, including: Avgolemono Soup (traditional chicken soup with egg lemon finish), Greek Beans (northern beans with scallions, parsley, olive oil and lemon), Garides Saganaki (sautéed shrimp with feta cheese, tomatoes, pine nuts and raisins), Haloumi Skaras (grilled Cypriot sheep and goat cheese served with greek style taboule).

Mike ordered an entrée of Mousaka (layers of thinly sliced baby eggplant, zucchini, potatoes and seasoned ground beef topped with a rich béchamel).

Mousaka

Greek beans

GARIDES SAGANAKI

We shared all the dishes, accompanied by wine and dessert (Portokalopita: orange cake with vanilla ice cream). They brought out the cake with one candle, which I had to blow out. I was glad there weren’t 62 candles!

me blowing out my one candle (I”m so young!)

On Saturday, Mike and I went on a hike at Hawksbill Gap in Shenandoah National Park. Here are a few pictures of our hike, but I’ll write more about it in a separate post.

Hawksbill Gap

Hawksbill Gap summit

yellow trees at Hawksbill Gap

Hawksbill Gap

At the summit, we had great views of the valley. It has been unseasonably warm this October, so it didn’t seem the leaves were yet at their peak.

We went out to Lebanese Taverna for yet another family birthday dinner on Monday night, this time with Mike’s sister Barbara, Adam and Maddy.

And finally, to end the month, Adam and Maddy carved their Halloween pumpkins.

Adam’s pumpkin in front and Maddy’s in back

We had a couple of visitors on Halloween night, including one particularly funny group of dinosaurs.

Happy Halloween and happy autumn. Please do tell me about your month! I hope it’s been a good one. 🙂

shenandoah national park: hawksbill summit loop

Saturday, October 28: Today is a crisp fall day, just the kind of day I love and the kind that has been slow in coming this year. It’s been unseasonably warm throughout October, and now, thank goodness, it’s finally cool. Not cold, but cool enough for a hike.

Mike and I head early to Shenandoah National Park to get ahead of the crowds, arriving at Hawksbill Gap parking lot, already overflowing, by 10:15. We start our hike at the trailhead by 10:30 a.m.

We’re doing the Hawksbill Loop Hike, a 2.9 mile circuit with a 860-feet elevation gain and a 2-hour hiking time. This is a rather short walk in Shenandoah National Park, but it’s just right for our first hike of the season. Everyone who knows me knows I don’t hike in summer; I despise the heat and would rather stay indoors all summer long!

Sadly, the colors of the leaves are not as vibrant up here in the mountains as I hoped they’d be; people say the colors aren’t great because it’s been so warm and wet. Many of the trees are already bare and the leaves underfoot are mostly brown and dead.

I love the rocks covered in moss.

I love the weathered misshapen trees found in the mountains; their shapes are a testament to their steadfast resistance to the elements.

I always love bracket fungi, also known as shelf fungi, with their fruiting bodies, or conks, of interconnected rows. They are mainly found on living or dead trees or coarse woody debris, and sometimes look like mushrooms.

I love the ferns, moss and lichens on the rocks.

Some trees are so hardy that they grow on top of boulders.

ferns and moss

talus slope

strange tree

mini-white flowers

rocks in moss and ferns

a little autumn color

leaf pile

rocks, moss and leaves

the path ahead

moss and leaves

We continue along the path, with moss-covered rocks all around us.

bracket fungus

fern and moss

Nearing the summit, we find a lone yellow tree glowing amidst the bare trees.

Many trees and branches are all a-tumble and askew in the forest.

And some of the trees have very strange and convoluted shapes.

strange-shaped trees

We reach one overlook where we can see the valley with Massanutten Mountain on the other side.

view of the valley

muted colors

orange trees

silhouettes

the valley

views from Hawksbill

Hawksbill is Shenandoah’s highest peak at 4,051 ft. We finally reach the summit, which is packed. People are sitting around eating their picnic lunches. We didn’t bring a lunch because we plan to visit Old Bust Head Brewing Co. for a beer, accompanied by lunch from a food truck.

due north

cairn

I love the white trunks and branches of some of the bare trees.

After making our way back down from the summit, we hop in our car and drive along Skyline Drive, stopping at several of the overlooks.

Hawksbill Summit

Mike at an overlook

Every once in a while, we find some brighter splashes of color.

At Old Bust Head Brewing Co., we eat nachos and chili from a food truck. Mike has a Chukker, or Czech Style Pilsner, which he got addicted to on our trip to Czech Republic, while I have an Apricot Belgian Wit. There’s a lot of activity at the brewery today because it’s overflowing with bikers from The Great Pumpkin Ride. This ride is sponsored by the Fauquier Trails Coalition, a non-profit organization, and is a fundraiser to extend and connect existing trails in scenic Fauquier County. It has options for 32, 53 or 67 miles.

I’m glad I got an October hike in before month-end. Steps today: 11,108 (4.71 miles). Now we have to find one for November!

a september mini-cocktail hour

Friday, September 22: Cheers! It’s time for our early September mini-cocktail hour, but I’m afraid you’ll have to enjoy it without me. You can lift your glass of sparkling champagne as we fly off into the skies for our holiday in Eastern Europe: Budapest, Sopron, Vienna, Český Krumlov, and finally, Prague. 🙂

I hope September has been good to you so far. Have you read any good books, seen any good movies, watched any hilarious comedy shows? Have you wandered or journeyed; have you dreamed any dreams? Have you had any massages? Gone to any exotic restaurants, cooked any new dishes? Have you embarked on any new endeavors?

I’ve been spending most of my time editing pictures and writing my Japan posts (catbird in japan), and I’m still nowhere close to being done. I also recently started following a woman named Jill at Jill’s Scene who is doing the Camino de Santiago. She and her husband started the 800km walk in early September; I have dreams of doing it myself in September of 2018. I’ve created a spreadsheet and am taking notes about her journey, the weather and challenges she encounters, anything notable about her experience. I want to be purposeful about it, as I’ve dreamed of doing it for a long time and I need to make that dream a reality.

I’ve been bingeing on spreadsheets. I used to keep my travel wish list in a yellow spiral notebook which I’ve somehow misplaced. I always wrote it in pencil and had to keep erasing things and changing them. It was a mess. In September, I finally created a big spreadsheet called My Travel Wish List. The column headers are: Time of Year (the four seasons), Months, Year, My age, Mike’s age, Region, Countries, Places, What to do there, Who with, Estimated Cost. The spreadsheet covers the places I’ve already been and the places I want to go each season until I’m 90 years old! The places I’ve already been are highlighted in blue, while the spreadsheet from age 80-90 is highlighted in purple. Frankly, I’d like to believe I’ll still be traveling from age 80-90, but realistically, I know anything can happen. Besides, two gurus in India once told me I’d only live to 88, so if they’re right, I won’t even be on this earth then!

At the same time, I’ve been reading guidebooks on Hungary, Austria (Vienna), and Czech Republic. At first I was just reading the guidebooks and highlighting what I’d like to see. All the places were becoming a jumbled mess in my mind, so I decided to organize my thoughts. Voila! I created another spreadsheet with our itinerary. How I love spreadsheets! 🙂

Besides my obsession with spreadsheets, I’ve been reading a most uninspiring book, How to be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway. It’s not very compelling, so I only read a few pages each night; however, it’s not so boring that I’d give up on it altogether. I went to see the cute movie, Home Again, starring Reese Witherspoon, but I haven’t had time for many other movies this month. Mike and I did watch The Third Man on Netflix. It’s a 1949 film noir in which pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Harry Lime. Though it’s all in English, we had to put the subtitles on to understand it! I admit I fell asleep 3/4 of the way through, but we did continue it the next evening. It’s supposedly quite the rage in Vienna, where there is even a Third Man Museum.

We tried out an Ethiopian restaurant not far from us in Herndon, Enatye Ethiopian Restaurant, which doesn’t have much in the way of atmosphere, but it has excellent food. 🙂

On Labor Day, Mike and I took a long walk through a neighborhood called Cleveland Park in Washington. It was a beautiful day, and we ended up having lunch outside at Cafe Deluxe. I haven’t yet written about it, but I intend to soon after we return home.

Mike on the ground trying to capture the whole memorial

And, as you can see from the pictures in this post, we also visited the Air Force Memorial on September 10, the same day we visited the Pentagon Memorial. I figure the soaring wing-like shape of this memorial is a perfect symbolic send off for our trip to Europe.

The United States Air Force Memorial honors the service of the men and women of the United States Air Force and its heritage organizations. Three stainless steel spires soar into the sky from the promontory overlooking the Pentagon, reaching heights of 402 feet above sea-level. Granite walls contain inscriptions describing valor and values of aviation pioneers supporting the Air Force and its predecessor military organizations.

The inscriptions for Sacrifice remind us of what brave men sacrificed during World War II to fight the same white supremacist ideas that have reared their ugly heads in today’s world.

One inscription here reads: “We better be prepared to dominate the skies above the surface of the earth or be prepared to be buried beneath it.” ~ General Carl A. “Tooey” Spaatz.

From the hill, we can see the Washington Monument and the Pentagon.

As for our struggles during August, we’ve all recovered. Adam got over his flu and has flown off to Melbourne, Australia to visit his girlfriend for a month. Alex has started classes in a new major, Business Administration, in the hopes of learning how to start his own business one day. He’s also moved into a new apartment.

Sarah’s knee is slowly healing and she’s back at work, after being incapacitated for nearly a month. She’s waiting to hear about a job she applied for with a Richmond magazine. I’m hoping and praying she gets that job. The redness and pain from my spider bite first spread all around my wrist and up through my hand before I started taking an antibiotic. My joints and neck were aching, but a couple of massages helped that. Mike has been healthy throughout the month.

Aviation pioneers and the Air Force Memorial

I also went to Richmond to see Alex and Sarah and did what many moms would do: treated Sarah to dinner, took both of them to lunch, and took them both shopping for necessities at Target and Trader Joe’s. 🙂

As you read this, I’ll be in flight over who knows where, in route to Frankfurt. We’ll arrive in Budapest at 9:50 a.m. on Saturday, ready to hit the ground running. If I do manage to post anything about our trip, you’ll find it here: in search of a thousand cafés.

I hope you all enjoy the rest of your September, and I’ll see you back here in early October. 🙂

in memory of september 11, 2001 — a visit to the national 9/11 pentagon memorial

Monday, September 11: Today, we remember the terrorist acts committed on U.S. soil. The events of September 11, 2001 are ones that we as a nation can never, and should never, forget. The United States experienced the worst terrorist attack in its history — “the coordinated hijacking of four commercial planes, the planned attack on symbolic targets, and the murder of innocent people” (The National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial: 9/11 at the Pentagon).

Numerous memorial services are being held today. As we visited the Pentagon Memorial not far from our home in northern Virginia on Sunday, we saw officials setting up for a Monday ceremony. This is the first time we’ve visited this memorial, and we found it very moving.

According to the Pentagon Memorial‘s website, “one-hundred-and-eighty-four lives were lost at the Pentagon that day. They were men, women, and children. They were mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, daughters and sons. They came from all walks of life: administrative assistants, doctors, educators, flight crew members, military leaders, scientists, and students. They came from towns and cities, large and small, across the United States and around the world. The youngest was only three years old; the oldest, 71.”

Click on any of the photos below for a full-sized slide show.

The day, I remember clearly, was much like today, sunny, cool, and crisp. Fall was in the air. I remember wishing every day was as beautiful as that day.

I had put my children on the bus for school early. My two sons were 8 and 10, and my daughter, who lived in Virginia Beach with her father, was 17. I was 45 years old. I was driving my car down Reston Parkway on my way to a book group at my church, St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, when I heard the news about the first plane hitting the tower. Newscasters were debating about the size of the plane; they seemed to think it was a small plane gone astray. Then I heard the news about the second plane crashing. I stopped at Barnes and Noble in Reston to get a coffee, and felt palpable tension and anxiety in the air; fear was etched on people’s faces. I called my brother in New York to make sure he was okay. Then I heard the news of a plane hitting the Pentagon.

When I arrived at church, everyone was in a panic over the news. Our pastor, who was to lead the book group, was frantic because her husband was in the Pentagon and she wasn’t able to reach him. Thankfully, it turned out he was fine, though we’d find out later that many were not. We watched the TV in horror as the twin towers fells, and as the Pentagon went up in flames.

memorial wreath from the Association of Flight Attendants

The book group was not to be; we all dispersed to our homes in shock. I sat spellbound in front of the TV the rest of the day, and when my children came home from school, I told them what we knew so far of the horrifying story. We watched TV together as news channels replayed the planes hitting, buildings collapsing, people jumping off buildings, dust-covered people walking like ghosts through the streets of New York. It was surreal and terrifying.

According to the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial: Design Elements: the Pentagon Memorial serves as a timeline of the victims’ ages, spanning from the youngest victim, three-year-old Dana Falkenberg, who was on board American Airlines Flight 77, to the oldest, John D. Yamnicky, 71, a Navy veteran, also aboard Flight 77 that morning.

3-year-old Dana Falkenberg, the youngest victim

Each Memorial Unit is a cantilevered bench, a lighted pool of flowing water, and a permanent tribute, by name, to each victim, in one single element. Each memorial bench is made of stainless steel and inlaid with smooth granite. Each Memorial Unit contains a pool of water, reflecting light in the evenings onto the bench and surrounding gravel field.

Within the Pentagon Memorial, 85 Crape Myrtles are clustered around the Memorial Units, but are not dedicated to any one victim.

The Memorial’s stabilized gravel surface is bordered on the western edge by an Age Wall. The Age Wall grows one inch per year in height above the perimeter bench relative to the age lines. As visitors move through the Memorial, the wall gets higher, growing from three inches (the age of Dana Falkenberg) to 71 inches (the age of John D. Yamnicky).

Each Memorial Unit is also specifically positioned in the Memorial to distinguish victims who were in the Pentagon from those who were on board American Airlines Flight 77. At the 125 Memorial Units honoring the victims of the Pentagon, visitors see the victim’s name and the Pentagon in the same view. At the Memorial Units honoring the 59 lives lost on Flight 77, the visitor sees the victim’s name and the direction of the plane’s approach in the same view.

The benches facing this direction are the victims of the Pentagon.