Category: Reflection

Eat the Peaches

The mornings hover between spring and summer, just where I like it. The temperatures are low enough that there is a slight chill, the air is dry from having released its humidity in a midnight rainstorm, leaving wet grass and the smell of rain. Yet the earth has tilted so the sunlight is early and direct, warming out faces as I walk the kids to school, and our backs as I walk home after drop off. I know that soon, 8am will be suffocatingly humid and 80 degrees, so I remind myself to savour these favorite mornings.

The other day, I made a to do list for the week. Yes, I’m slowly getting back into the habit, dumping out my brain like the linen closet and putting things back folded and neat, and maybe putting aside those tasks that are no longer useful. The week’s to do list read:

-pay bills
– sort bills from [rental property]
– figure out summer camp
– eat the peaches

One of summer’s greatest gifts is fresh peaches. Bought by the bushel from farmer’s markets, they are so plentiful and sweet, the seconds barely discernable from the firsts. Sometimes I like to go pick them myself, although prime peach season is typically August, when the weather is at its hottest and most humid, so the labor is never as enjoyable as the fruits of said labor. The boxes of peaches pile up in the house and we eat them as fast as we can, then turn to making pies and turnovers and eating them wrapped in ham with a slice of basil and also the peach shortbread recipe from Smitten Kitchen. But inevitably the we can’t eat them fast enough and I end up canning several jars of them and tucking them away in the basement.

Canned summer peaches are a present from my summer self to my future winter self. In the depths of winter, to open a jar of peaches and remember what summer tastes like is like eating nostalgia and warmth wrapped together. Even peaches that I remember being not quite sweet in the heat of summer, taste perfectly sweet when I spoon them into my mouth as I stare at the snow blanketing bare limbs in January.

Of course the kids always want to eat the peaches right away, after they have been put up. But I tell them, no. I want to save the peaches for that moment in winter when it feels like we have been in it for so long that I can’t remember what summer is like. Then, when I feel like summer is so far away, do I bring out a jar, and crack it open, unleashing glistening deep yellow mounds of edible sunshine.

This winter, though… it was unseasonably warm. I thought about my peaches sitting on the filing cabinet in the basement and always said to myself, “Nah. It’s not cold enough yet to bring them out. It surely will get colder and more miserable this winter.” And whether I was having a fit of asceticism, denying myself peaches, or whether the winter truly was a mild one, either way I now found myself mid May and the peaches still had not been eaten.

And so as we turn the corner into May, and I started to make my summer fun list, I realized that the peaches were still sitting in the basement when soon it would be time to bring home more bushels of peaches and can them for next winter. And what would be the point of eating canned peaches in August when the fresh peaches were so abundant?

So I put it on my list – “Eat the peaches”

As if it were a chore. But it’s not a chore. Quite the contrary. It’s just sometimes I need a reminder to do the thing that brings me joy.

Or also, bring the kids joy. The moment I brought the jars up from the basement, their faces lit up. “Peaches!” they exclaimed and crowded around as I popped open the jars, the vacuum sealed lids coming off with a satisfying sucking sound. Thuuuwack!

The baby, in particular, loves to drink the liquid that the peaches were canned in. “Potion!” she calls it, lifting the entire jar to her mouth and chugging greedily. It reminds me of Zero and Stanley in the book Holes, drinking centuries old canned peaches, calling it “Sploosh”.

So we are now down to a couple peach halves floating in “potion” in the fridge, and that is all that remains from last year’s batch. I don’t know what I’m saving those last two peach halves for, why my reluctance to eat them. Perhaps I’m holding on to the memory of last summer, wanting to draw it out as much as possible. Not anything specific at all, even. Just the idea of warm and sun and padding barefoot in my kitchen and the luxury of leisure time. (How strange that canning peaches, once a necessity, is now for me almost a leisure activity.) I have this irrational sense that once I finish those last bits of last year’s peaches, I will have lost last summer, released it into the ether of memory and time.

This is silly, I tell myself. Be practical. I need to clear that jar away to make room for the incoming crop of peaches. Besides I will be so sad if I hold on to those last few peaches so long that they spoil and then I can’t enjoy them at all. Perhaps practicality and planning is the only thing that can overcome my sentimentality over a bit of canned fruit. So I write it on my list:

-Eat the peaches.

Going to work is the break

Rejected!

There was a day last week which, on paper, looked to be almost leisurely. Rehearsal didn’t start until 11pm, so I had the morning to catch up on things, and I had scheduled the kids’ passport appointments to get them out of the way before I headed in to work.

But… it didn’t turn out that way.

For one, I had been up late the night before filling out the passport forms – my own fault for procrastinating. But it did mean that I didn’t get much sleep.

Then the jar of bean soup that I had pulled from the freezer to thaw in the fridge cracked as I was getting it out to pack for lunch. The bottom of the mason jar just fell clean off and there was a flood of bean soup everywhere, even in the little crevices of the refrigerator door. Curses and clean up followed. I was a little sad because the bean soup had been in the freezer for over two years and I was excited to finally eat it in a show of frugality. Oh well. But this was an added level of mess I didn’t need in the midst of packing everyone else’s lunches and breakfasts.

It was also the morning that our County summer camp registration opened and at 8:25a, I was glued to my computer waiting for the system to open at 8:30a. The camp slots go quickly, so this is the kind of thing that goes in my calendar and I set the alarm for. Luckily I was able to get the ten year old into the same camp as her friend from last summer, but the whole registration experience made me realize that there are some inherent equity issues with this system. I mean, 8:30am is an absolutely terrible time for camp registration to open. I was lucky that my mom walked the kids to school that morning, but if a working parent has to do school drop off or what not, they might not be able to log on right at 8:30am. It’s like you need childcare to sign up for childcare. Also – internet.

Anyhow, after that was done, I had an hour to get dressed, eat some breakfast, pay a couple bills, and make dinner in the InstantPot for the family to have when they got home since I had to work late. I actually felt pretty good about that hour. But of course, pride goeth….

9:30am, I had the two little kids in the car on the way to our passport appointment. I pull up twenty minutes early, get out to pay the meter and realize I had left my wallet at home, having taken it out to pay for summer camp. So I get the kids back in the car, drive back home, hit terrible traffic on the way home due to a malfunctioning traffic light, try not to panic, get home, find my wallet after some searching – I had left it in the bathroom of all places – arrive back at the post office only five minutes late for the passport appointment. I get to the passport window, pull out my wallet … and can’t find my ID. I realized that I had taken it out of my wallet the night before to make a scan of it to submit with out papers. I can’t freakin’ believe it.

Well, as long as I was there, I asked the postal worker taking passport applications to look at the baby’s passport photo just to make sure it would pass muster. And it doesn’t. Apparently, the baby giving her skeptical side-eye, was not looking straight into the camera enough. I felt like yelling, “Do you know how hard it is to get a two year old to stand still for a picture, let alone stand and look straight into a camera?!?!” Or maybe it’s just my two year old.

So I guess the appointment wasn’t all wasted, because now I know that her picture would have been rejected and I would have had to come back again anyway.

By the time we left the post office, it was only 10:30am. I was pretty much drained for the day.

This is life though, right? I don’t have a job that I can just take a personal day to do these things. And things do still have to get done. I mean there is plenty that doesn’t need doing, but even still, sometimes the scheduled list just seems packed. (A friend and I joked that next year we should get together on camp registration day and have breakfast and mimosas.) On the other hand, I do have lots of time between gigs that I can probably be better about planning when some things (ahem passport appointments) get done so that it causes the least amount of friction and stress.

And truth to tell, even though I felt depleted at 10:30am on that day, by the time I got to work there was something refreshing about putting on a different hat and solving different problems and shelving the disaster of a morning. Not that my job doesn’t have it’s challenges… But I go to work and listen to people with gorgeous voices sing Mozart. It’s not terrible. And no one whines at me or cries because I won’t let them put their egg in their cup of milk. It’s certainly easier to get fifty choristers onstage with the right prop than it is to put three kids to bed.

I had a text exchange before I started this gig with a friend. She wrote:

How are things with you? Is the job still on or do you have a break now.

And I wrote back:

Oh, man – going to work *is* the break!

Light moments

The light as we walk to the bus stop this week has been especially gorgeous, all soft and golden, bathing everything with a special glow. Well, at least when it wasn’t raining. It seems like this is the time of year when the light is beautiful at the moments when I most need it. The sun’s warm rays touch the baby’s hair, as I rush down the street, turning her dark locks a burnished auburn. I’m worried about missing the bus, I’m worried that I yelled at the kids too much to get them out the door, I’m worried about forgetting something back at the house, I’m worried that the ten year old who runs ahead might forget to look for traffic before crossing the street. All these things. And then I see the sun kiss everything and turn it all gold and I remember to breathe and see beautiful things.

And then in the evening, as I’m trying to rush the kids home to pull dinner out of thin air, the sun, only this time coming from the opposite directions, once again tells me that I don’t need to rush quite yet. I can take the time to walk slowly and talk to my kid who I sometimes feel is is growing too quickly and maturing too slowly for my liking. After three weeks of driving to school, she says to me on our walk home, “I’d forgotten how nice it is to walk home in the fresh air!”

I know the way the light falls is just how the earth spins and tilts, but it seems like there is some cosmic plan here. Why else would the world look so beautiful just when I don’t feel like I have the time to slow down and not miss it? I mean now, when it is so cold outside and the dirty slush soaks through my poor choice of footwear? When all I want to do is be back inside my house, something is telling me that, “No, actually, what you need is fresh air. There is plenty out here if only you will pause and look and breathe.”

Of course I know that in a few weeks, the sun will hit that special horizon spot at a different point in my day. It will be there slanting through the kitchen window as I make breakfast, lunch and prep dinner. Morning activities that once felt practically nocturnal when carried out in the pre-dawn darkness will now feel very much part of the day. Maybe then, I’ll feel like the sunlight is saying, “This food that you are preparing is important. Take time to realize that!” Then in the evening, the light will come through the living room and stab us in the eye as we sit down for dinner and say grace, lighting up the one moment in the day where all five of us sit down, hands folded and quiet.

And then come summer, the inviting light will be there late into the evening, beckoning the kids to come out and play even though it is well past bedtime. And in the morning it will stream through their windows as they laze in bed, blankets pulled over their heads, exhausted from staying up late the night before.

I guess the sunlight will always peek through the trees and over rooftops twice a day. The rays will come through the kitchen window in the morning and flood the living room in the afternoon. It’s a predictable yet moving moment. Moving in the sense of changing from day to day, but also, I think in the sense of sentiment. These moving beams serve as a nice reminder, highlighting different moments of my day. As the year progresses and time marches on, the light reminds my distracted self not to take these moments for granted, even if it isn’t part of some larger cosmic message.

The weekend – Where the Music Comes From

I spent much of the weekend working. Yay work! I had gotten a call to do another supertitle gig, this time for a vocal recital. The contract had me create the PowerPoint for the supertitles in addition to running them during the recital. Creating the PowerPoint and putting the slide placements in my score ended up taking much of Friday night and all day Saturday. At some point, after I was deep into typing the slides for the first half of the concert, the Husband, data organization genius, figured out a way to take the translations that I was given and put them directly into the PowerPoint. It involved moving the data set (as he called the lines of text) into an Excel file, then into a Word document merge file, and then finally into the PowerPoint. While it seemed complicated, it was loads less time consuming that typing everything out. This is probably incredibly nerdy, but the Husband and I had much discussion about whether it was better to proof your data set then merge, or to merge the given data set and then correct the final PowerPoint. It is so interesting to me that even after twelve years of marriage I’m still discovering ways in which the Husband and I think differently, especially on such a conceptual level.

Anyhow, the recital itself was magical. The first half was songs by queer American and British composers, and many of the songs were favorites of mine. The second half was songs by Spanish and Latino composers and full of fun and feeling. I had forgotten how much I love a song recital – the simplicity of a singer and a pianist and the music they want to share. No sets, no costumes… just music and text and heartfelt emotions of that moment.

One of the songs in the first half was a song written by Lee Hoiby, called “Where the Music Comes From.” I had sung it when I was in college, and judging from YouTube it is extremely popular in college song recitals. Nonetheless it is one of my favorite songs; I loved the piece for it’s elegant long lines, full of hope and yearning and joy. I get the sense that in the classical music world, songs that are so unabashedly melodic are somewhat out of style – critics tend to dismiss them as artless pastiche pieces or overly sentimental. Maudlin, even. I would definitely say that “Where the Music Comes From” is sentimental, and sentimentality is perhaps frowned upon these days. People want smart and ironic and clever.

(Also, I just noticed that I had always sung the third verse incorrectly… there is a phrase of music that is just different enough from the previous two verses that you need to pay attention or you’ll sing it wrong. I had an internal mortifying moment wondering why my voice teacher and art song coach never said anything to me about this and let me perform it in a recital incorrectly!)

There is something strange about hearing someone else sing a piece that you are so intimately familiar with that it is carved into the heart of your memory. When I heard it in the recital on Sunday, I got goosebumps because it sounded familiar and new all at the same time. But – and here is the wonder of this particular singer – I have loved this song for over twenty years now, and he made me re-think the piece. (I’ve put the text below.) I had always thought of the three verses as three different wishes, but there was something about the way this singer sang the song that made me realize, that actually, it’s the same wish – the song is a wish for a place where all these things can come together.

Where the Music Comes From
Music and Text by Lee Hoiby

I want to be where the music come from,
Where the clock stops, where it’s now.
I want to be with the friends around me,
Who have found me, who show me how.
I want to sing to the early morning,
See the sunlight melt the snow:
And, oh, I want to grow.

I want to wake to the living spirit
Here inside me where it lies.
I want to listen till I can hear it,
Let it guide me and realize
That I can go with the flow unending,
That is blending, that is real;
And oh, I want to feel.

I want to walk in the earthly garden,
Far from cities, far from fear.
I want to talk to the growing garden,
To the devas, to the deer,
And to be one with the river flowing,
Breezes blowing, sky above.
And, oh, I want to love.

There is so much about the text that speaks to me, but I think listening to this now, during a pandemic where isolation is a survival tactic, I really grasp on to the imagery of needing to surround oneself with joyful nurturing things, whether it be friends or nature or even just thoughts – and being able to recognize and merge these things into your life.

Happy 2022! My year that was 2021

Happy New Year!

I started off 2022 by making some bad choices, staying up until 4am, seduced by a Law & Order marathon and then a 2am Hallmark holiday movie that was expectedly saccharine, but surprisingly engaging.

The Husband, the nine year old and I had stayed up on New Years Eve to watch the ball drop. The baby tried, but fell asleep on the couch. The four year old put himself to bed around 9:30pm, after we watched Empire Strikes Back for movie night. Everyone who was awake went to bed after the ball drop. I, of course, didn’t want to leave the baby asleep in the basement by herself… hence being sucked in by the Law & Order marathon.

When I was single, I used to watch Law & Order all the time. Not any of the spin offs, just the original. I don’t watch enough cable tv these days to watch Law & Order anymore – I feel like with all the streaming services, one has to be pretty intentional about consuming content these days, and Law & Order is one of those shows you can take for granted and never watch because it seems to always be on. But once in a while, I’ll find a marathon on and before I know it, half the day is gone. Actually, I seem to remember doing this last New Year’s Eve.

At any rate – It’s a new year, but I thought I’d look back and pick my highlight reel for 2021:

January: Positve COVID test for the baby and our first isolation experience. Two weeks. Good things: Grocery delivery, Zoom, a birthday cake sent in the mail, a new President, a multi-racial female VP, and Georgia flipping the senate. Hard things: Capitol riots on January 6th, distance learning.

February: Organizing a fun Zoom birthday party for the Husband involving Husband trivia. Taking my last milk donation to the Breast Milk Bank – kind of bittersweet, but glad to be done pumping. Good things: some wonderful snow days. The baby says, “Mama!” Hard things: distance learning.

March: Led a virtual class on stage management for kids via Zoom for a local opera company. Took the kids to stay in a Lockhouse along the C&O Canal – our first overnight since the pandemic started a year ago. Good things: The nine year old goes back to in person school, the Husband got his first dose of COVID vaccine. I finally caved and bought Airpods and it is life-changing. Hard things: Lost the four year old at Best Buy (found him again, but it was scary). Atlanta spa shootings. Favorite news story: The Ever Given stuck in the Suez canal. Riveting drama.

April: Spring trip to Longwood Gardens. Got my first vaccine shot! Good things: kite-flying and Easter eggs. the four year old staying dry at night. Listening for the first time to this little thing called Hamilton and realizing that it’s pretty good. Hard Things: homework battles.

May: Trip to the Air and Space Museum. Got my first haircut in a year and a half. Worked for pay! Work for new to me opera company and many wonderful new to me colleagues. Good things: My parents arrived to help with the kids while I worked. So grateful for them. Hard things: Working from home with a toddler (I was over a year late to this game… big hugs and high fives and all my respect to people who did it since March 2020)

June: Start in person rehearsals. How I’ve missed chorus rehearsals. Camping with the kids and my parents. Good things: joined a pool. First date night with the Husband since can’t remember when. First stop on Maryland’s Ice Cream Trail. Beautiful things: being witness to the joy and love and tears as singers and musicians make music together onstage for the first time in too too long. Hard things: commuting on the beltway after 2pm. Awkward thing: accidentally setting off the fire alarm at work by knocking over a rack of music stands.

July: Second show of my contract and reuniting with a very dear friend in the director’s chair. We’d worked together as baby ASM and baby AD and it’s almost surreal that we’re all grown up. Visit with a good friend from college. Good things: The kids got bunk beds! So many people on my local listserv offered up bed rails when I posted about needing one for the baby. Getting to swim laps in the pool during adult swim. Ted Lasso. Marina InterLibrary Loan system. Summer Olympics. Hard things: Tech. Being a landlord. My parents leaving; I’m always sad to see them go. Mosquitoes. Delta variant and never ending risk-assessment.

August: Took the kids camping by myself for three nights. Did some old fashioned back to school shopping and bought clothes for the kids (which… they have already outgrown!). The four year old went back to daycare/pre-school after 17 months away. “The kids are wild,” he says. Trip to Dutch Wonderland and Longwood Gardens – stayed in a hotel! First Day of School for the nine year old. Good things: Re-watching Pride and Prejudice – the ten hour Jennifer Ehle/ Colin Firth version. My mask making group at church getting an award of recognition from the Hospital. Free toddler play time at the local rec center. Hard Things: Nine year old’s basketball camp moving indoors because of torrential rain, and then being cancelled. Setting up tent by myself in the rain. Trying to get back into the school routine.

September: The Husband had knee surgery. Four year old sick, but thankfully not COVID. I decided to take up running. Good things: outdoor music concerts at the Golf Course on Friday nights. Apple picking. NSO in the neighborhood string quartet concert followed by the movie Soul. Nine year old’s bus stop moving to walking distance from home. Got new glasses! Hard things: Not planning well enough to complete the Maryland Ice Cream Tour. (definitely a third world problem). Fighting house clutter in an unending battle. Texas abortion laws

October: Quit Facebook, after realizing it was a toxic infinity scroll for me. Made a Millenium Falcon out of cardboard for the 4 year old and won Hallowe’en. Good Things: Malaria vaccine approved by WHO. Hammocks in the park. Hard Things: questioning whether I’ve overscheduled the kids’ weekends. Patience while parenting.

November: Longwood Gardens in the Fall. COVID vaccine for the nine year old. Tackled some big house organization projects. Good things: a visit from dear friends. Rented a concertina to try to learn how to play. Hot Pot playdate in friend’s backyard. Lots of great hikes with the baby. Hard Things: Hmmm… nothing specific, just the daily grind. My Thanksgiving apple pie had a soggy bottom… need to figure that out.

December: Gig running super titles, first time back working at and indoor venue. The baby has COVID. Again. Seems an ironic bookend to the year. Hard things: booster shot wiped me out for a little over 24 hours. Hard things: Typical holiday overwhelm. Omnicron.

Well our second year of COVID living and the end seems very much like March 2020, but I think I feel less unsure and more accepting of what risks I’m willing to take. There is work coming up in February, which is exciting and daunting, but I’m looking forward to it. Here’s hoping 2022 is exciting and boring in all the right ways!