Angela’s shoulder has been bothering her since she took a fall skiing this past winter. An MRI shows that the shoulder is fine, but they also take the opportunity to re-examine an old knee injury. She’d had her ACL repaired years ago, but the repair never really took, and apparently needs to be redone now. Bother.
We celebrate Angela Riu Gordon’s achievement of her teaching degree with Angela, Jason, and their families at Golden Gardens Park. It’s a beautiful evening, and the park is packed. The girls enjoy playing in the sand, but the sunblock is so sticky that everyone gets breaded in sand. We leave pretty late, and it’s long after their usual bedtime that we finally have everyone in bed.
Sabriya’s preschool class holds their end-of-year picnic at Madison Park. The fun local band called Recess Monkey entertains the kids.
Last day of first grade! Liya says goodbye to her teacher, Mrs. Amos. The teacher said Liya’s class was just about perfect—she refers to the group as her “golden class”.
Last day of second grade! Anya says goodbye to her teacher, Ms. Johns. On this, the last day, we tell Ms. Johns about the research poster Anya created on her own at home. The teacher asks, “You made your own special day talk poster?!” Then pumps her fist and exclaims, “Yessss!” Anya is so sad to be leaving second grade.
Liya is playing house with Bree.
Liya (as “Mommy bear”): Was that your good thing today?
Bree (as “Bree bear”): Yes!
When religious practices make it into make-believe, you know you’re doing a good job as a parent!
When Bree overhears Jan talking to Uncle Chris on the phone, she says she wants to talk to him too. She happily babbles for several minutes. Chris is talking too, although it’s not clear they’re having the same conversation.
East Coast trip, Day One. We haven’t seen some of our East Coast relations in a few years. Last Christmas, Marlee suggested we avoid traveling during the cold crowded holiday, and visit during the summer instead. So we’ve put together something of a whirlwind trip to New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut.
The airports and the cross-country flight actually go pretty smoothly. Bree plays games on Jan’s phone, and Anya and Liya manage to interact without fighting once. Angela also introduces Bree to Pez–and, shortly thereafter, Jan introduces Bree to Pez refills. We’re all pretty tired by the time we check into our hotel: an airport hotel just outside Newark Airport, with a lovely view of piles of shipping containers stacked in the Port of Newark. The place does have a pool, so Angela takes the girls for a dip while Jan orders up a Chinese food delivery. Everyone’s famished.
East Coast, Day Two. Despite the fact that we went to bed very late on East Coast time, the girls completely ignore the change in time zone and wake up with the sun. Jan heads back to the airport to pick up a rental car. Driving back to the hotel, trying to follow the directions of the GPS through the bewildering maze of twisty roads and ramps around the airport, feels more like playing a challenging level of a driving video game than an actual driving experience. We load up the mini van and hit the road, making our way up to Hawthorne to visit the home of Owen and Nicole Snyder. Owen was Jan’s junior high school social studies teacher, and they’ve kept in touch. The last time we visited, Anya was three years old and Liya was one.
It turns out that nothing can beat visiting the home of a kindergarten teacher like Nicole. She’s laid out paper, pencils, sidewalk chalk, and more for the girls to play with, and all three of the girls instantly feel at home. Not two minutes after we arrive, Anya and Liya set out to explore the whole house, from attic to basement. Afterwards they spend ages playing with a building toy, and then sketching a flower arrangement. They’re so occupied that Jan and Owen actually get a good chance to catch up.
Jan makes a short side trip to nearby Glen Rock to pick up his brother Chris, who’s also out on the East Coast for the week. The two brothers come back to the Snyders, and we enjoy a pleasant time under the backyard awning. The weather is hot and sultry, which the girls remedy by taking off all their clothes. Nicole brings out a water sprinkler, and Anya and Liya gear up in bathing suits for their first time running through a sprinkler. They run laughing through the sprinkler over and over again until it’s finally time to leave.
Drive up to Ellenville. After saying goodbye to Owen and Nicole, the five of us plus Chris drive up in the mini van up to visit stepbrother Stephen, who has a vacation place in Ellenville, NY, at the edge of the Catskills region. It’s been a number of years since we’ve had a chance to see Stephen, and we catch up over a nice dinner on the grill. It’s perhaps slightly cooler up here than in New Jersey, but still rather hot outside. In the evening, the girls enjoy a proper East Coast evening: hearing crickets chirping for the first time (we don’t have them in Seattle), and watching fireflies (ditto).
East Coast, Day Three. We all pack a picnic lunch, and then Stephen takes us out and about. We drive through the tiny town of Ellenville, NY, then continue to Minnewaska State Park. We walk down a short trail to a nice little beach on Lake Minnewaska, a beautiful mountain lake, surrounded by forests and rocky cliffs. The five of us and uncle Chris brave the waters; Uncle Stephen demurs. Sabriya’s happy to sit at the water’s edge and toss in pebbles, or else stand up and chase fish. We walk back up to an overlook and have our picnic lunch.
After spending a bit of time back at Stephen’s place, in the late afternoon, Jan, Chris, and Stephen make the short drive to Sam’s Point Preserve. We make the modest hike up to the Ice Caves: a series of giant cracks in the exposed rocks of the Shawangunks Range, some of which have been covered by shifting boulders to form caves. Although the late afternoon weather is still sultry, inside the caves it’s deliciously dark and cool, and water running inside the caves is freezing cold. The loop through the caves, and the hike back to the car, bring us home later than expected, so we throw together a quick dinner on the grill.
East Coast, Day Four. Stephen’s house is only an hour and a half from the tiny hamlet of Fishs Eddy, NY, where Jan’s great uncle (or second cousin once removed or something) Sasha owned an old farmhouse. Jan, Chris, and Stephen fondly recall weekend trips to the farmhouse when they were young. Part of the place’s attraction was that it had no electricity. It had a wood-burning Franklin stove for heat, a gas stove, a gas refrigerator, kerosene lamps, and only cold running water. Since we’re now within driving distance of the place, Jan and Chris thought a quick visit would be fun, and before the trip, Jan had reached out to Sasha’s children and confirmed that it was okay to stop by and visit the farmhouse. Stephen’s up for it too, and Anya and Liya are also curious to see it.
The drive doesn’t take long, and the last 15 minute take us on the long winding road through the small rural town and then farmland that’s reverting to forest. At the foot of the long unpaved driveway are a family descended from Victor, an old farmer we had met there when we were kids, so we stop by to say hello. We end up speaking with the Victor’s grandson, Ethan, who tells us where we can find the key to the farmhouse. Ethan’s family has maintained the long dirt driveway well enough that it’s not much trouble to drive the minivan up to the house.
The farmhouse has seen much better days. It’s been 11 years since Jan’s seen it, 19 for Chris, and close to 30 for Stephen. It’s paint has almost peeled off, the overgrown lawn and garden is now indistinguishable from the surrounding meadow, and the wooden front porch, which once commanded a beautiful view of the opposing valley, has collapsed. Still, it’s a profound nostalgic experience to see it again. Through the tall grass we can still find the rock stairs, and a tiny brook which still runs alongside the house. We find the key to the house and gingerly let ourselves in.
Even without occupants, the house still smells exactly the same. The main entrances passes through a workroom, the walls still lined with axes, hand tools, and farming implements. From there we go into the farmhouse kitchen, with its gas refrigerator, stove, and oven. We’re surprised at how many things we remember: a tin tea kettle, a primitive stove-top toaster, a kerosene lantern on the wall, a row of colored glass bottles on the window sill. Entering the living room, there’s the table where we used to read by lanternlight, the day bed with a big soft red pillow which Jan and Chris used to fight over. There’s the old Singer pedal sewing machine, and old telescope, and an oblong wooden hoop hanging on the wall. Sasha once challenged us all to a game of Twenty Questions to identify the hoop’s purchase, and no one even came close: it was used by railroad workers to snag bags of mail when the train had to pass through a station without stopping.
We take a peek upstairs at the old bedrooms, then we’re done with our tour. Whenever we came here, we used to go for long walks across the meadow and through the woods, so now it seems appropriate that we at least take a walk across the north meadow. At the edge of the forest, Chris searches for the gravestone marking the place where we had buried our childhood dog, Vicki. It’s impossible to recognize the exact spot, though, because in 20 years even the edge of the forest can move. Ultimately we give up. Heading back across the meadow, the girls complain about the scratchy thistles and brambles in the meadow, and Anya says she wishes for a nicer path—but the adults are happy that the meadow is still just as wild and open as it was years ago. Looking across the valley, we can see other meadows we used to hike through, and are grateful those are untouched as well.
We drive back to Stephen’s, have lunch, and then it’s time to pack up and drive back to New Jersey.
Dinner with David and Tanya. We drop Chris off at the train station in Orange, NJ, so he can head into New York City, and we make our way to a hotel in West Orange where we’re spending the night. We have time for a quick dip in the surprisingly nice (and empty!) hotel pool. After changing we take a short drive to the home of our friends David and Tanya, and their children Olivia, Atticus, and Phoebe. We eat dinner on the upstairs deck. Anya and Liya hit it off with Olivia, and after the girls have polished off their dinner, they run outside to play freeze tag and hide and seek. Bree happily splashes in the inflatable wading pool and inevitably ends up soaked. As dusk falls, the fireflies come out. David produces some improvised firefly collection jars, and the girls madly run about chasing fireflies. Anya proves to be a formidable firefly hunter, at one point bringing back four at once. When it’s finally time to head back to the hotel, we let them all go.
East Coast, Day Five. After a nice breakfast, the girls agitate for another dip in the hotel pool. In the late morning, we pack up and drive to the nearby town of Maplewood, where Jan grew up. Jan points out various landmarks: his old elementary school, his junior high school, the homes of various friends. We stop at the house where he and his siblings did most of their growing up, and take pictures. For lunch we drive to Maplewood Village, and have pizza at the Roman Gourmet. This is the pizza Jan remembers most from his childhood; it used to be the only game in town, so pretty much every child’s birthday pizza party involved pizza from this restaurant. Luckily it’s quite good, and it turns out the same people still own the place. After lunch we take a walk around nearby Memorial Park. A nice little river flows through the park, passing under several picturesque bridges. The girls use these as an opportunity to play Pooh Sticks: each person drops a stick on the upstream side of the bridge, then races to the downstream side of the bridge to see whose stick comes out first. We make our way back to the village for some ice cream and shopping at the bookstore, then pile back into the minivan for the drive to New York City.
We check into our hotel at Columbus Circle, and shortly thereafter are joined by our friend Fiona and her one year-old girl Tallulah. It’s a beautiful day to walk across the street and into Central Park, and the weather has finally cooled off. Just inside the park, we stumble across a section of the park called the Heckscher Playground. This turns out to be a playground Jan remembers fondly from trips to New York as a kid, and which he had thought had been replaced years ago. Apparently the playground had only been remodeled, not replaced. The girls immediately begin racing around the rather large playground, and climbing over its interesting bridges and through its little tunnels. Since Chris had been trying to find the location of the (presumably destroyed) playground the day before, Jan sends him a message with the playground’s location. It turns out Chris is only a few minutes away, so he comes over to take a look.
In the meantime, we discover that the intricate structures that make the playground such a hit with children also make it something of a challenging place for parents—it’s virtually impossible to see all three girls at once, and at we lose track of each of them at various points. Fiona’s husband Peter joins us at the park just about the time Chris arrives, and we all take some photos to commemorate our rediscovery of the long-lost playground. Chris heads off again, and then we join Fiona, Peter, and Tallulah in a walk through the park to the Boathouse. There’s a nice restaurant on the pond, but we grab some simpler food from the takeout window and have a pleasant dinner outside.