Besides, all this absence is actually making the heart grow fonder. I'm especially missing Aaron's parenting skills when it comes to Asher. He's always been a handful of a kid, but trying to work through the first hit of puberty without a dad to look to for guideposts? I'm about to keel over from emotional exhaustion. I'm figuring out that I have never even been in the neighborhood of male adolescence before. I grew up in a family of all girls (my only brother was born when I was 16), and other than giggling about them in the bathroom, my exposure to boys this age is pretty much restricted to TV shows. It turns out that the drama doesn't always disappear after 22 minutes and a handful of commercial interruptions--who knew? Apparently it's not entirely unheard of for boys this age to be angry? To rage, even? To someone like me, these angry outbursts feel like something from another planet, and there are times when I want nothing more than to drop my child off on the side of the road and leave him for a while--oh wait, I've already done that. Twice. By the way, the car is not a great place to be whacking on brothers and sisters, for any interested parties, and yes, I picked him back up eventually. It's sad that our best weekends right now are the ones that Asher spends at a friend's house, but I'm hoping we'll be able to iron things out, if not immediately, as soon as Aaron is around to take the reins on this one.
Meanwhile, I've continued to just try to enjoy these fleeting days that we have in this little paradise that I love so much. I go running every morning around the two ponds near our house, and I just try to inhale all the things I love about this place, to make them a part of the marrow in my bones. I love the reflections of the birds as they land on the water, the rainbow of fall colors every time I go outside the house, the sound of the wind whispering through the willows, and the barbequed dinners we can still manage on the patio on warmer evenings. The days have been cool, but some of the gloriously colored leaves have been sticking it out to the end.
I guess I didn't mention before that in September we managed to make it to the annual Johnny Appleseed festival, where we had a really lovely time. I gave each of the kids some lunch money and let them spend it however they wanted, even though in some cases that meant a lunch of gigantic cookies and caramel popcorn. We ended up not staying all day, and by the end of it, I felt ready to let this tradition go and move on to whatever California has in store--hopefully that's a good sign. Another weekend, we drove up to Shipshewana together and had a lovely afternoon visiting old antique shops where the very kind shop owners told us all about early leatherworkers and metal-smiths. We spent that afternoon browsing markets and sweet-shops, including an old-time candy shop with an adjoining carousel ride, then we finished with a nice evening meal at the Blue Gate restaurant. The kids would have loved it unconditionally if it hadn't been for my shrieks of wonder about the leaves on the drives up and back--I know I might go a bit overboard, but I would hate for them to miss that much beauty!
Since school started, I've been downright diligent about taking each of the kids out for lunch dates every week, and we've discovered some fun little joints, including Moe's Southwest Grill which has pretty good burritos, but excellent chips with an assortment of salsas, not to mention one of those super-cool Coke machines where you can get whatever bizarre flavor combination you can come up with--raspberry peach Fanta is my current favorite. Cookie Fridays are charging forward better than ever as Payton and Gillian, friends from across the pond, often join us and have hosted a few at their house as well. In other interesting little vignettes, Emerson has gone nuts with origami lately, staying up late at night to fold new creations, and while I'm not an ecstatic fan of the elaborate airplanes that zoom through the living room to find their final resting spot, I love his unique way of scratching that creative itch.
The awesome end to our month came only after I spent a fair amount of time convincing Aaron that it was somehow necessary--I made good on my plans with Chelsi to drive out for the Thanksgiving holidays. We ended up working the holiday backwards--we left the Friday before Thanksgiving and the kids took Monday and Tuesday off of school, then we returned on Black Friday rather than staying the second weekend. We even ended up with a surprise when Aaron joined us partway through the trip!
On Friday, we drove first down to Washington DC, an eight-hour drive filled with a lot of movie-watching and only a moderate amount of fighting, where we met up with Chelsi and Sam and their kids at a hotel for some pizza-eating and some grown-up chatting while the kids (at least her kids) conked out. The next morning, we crossed the Potomac into Washington DC. Wow.
True to form, I spent the month leading up to this trip up to my eyeballs in books about US history (okay, maybe that's an exaggeration--I wanted to be up to my eyeballs, but I probably ended up only ankle deep). Still, I was somehow unprepared for the majesty of our capitol city. Though I've seen pictures all my life, I found the trip across the bridge just breathtaking. The beauties of the birthplace of democracy cried out jubilantly from every corner, from Mount Vernon to the US Capitol building. Flashes of flaming scarlet and gleaming gold lingering on autumn treetops set off the alabaster white of the "city set on a hill." I admit it stirred something strange inside me--I can't rule out some future run for office, be forewarned.
We spent the day getting to as many places as seemed reasonable (okay fine, I kept trying to drag people to even more places long after they were clearly exhausted and beyond bored), managing to tour the Capitol Building, the Library of Congress, and at least one building of the Smithsonian. I could have stayed for a week or more, but I'm glad that at least we got to see all the inner-workings of the Capitol Building first-hand. We learned about the early meetings of Congress and the Senate, and how they differ from the meetings today, saw sculpture portraits from every state in the union (including, the kids were startled to see, Brigham Young from Utah), saw some of the famous early art of the United States, including the baptism of Pocahontas (who we've been told is an ancestor of ours), and the assumption of George Washington on the ceiling of the capitol rotunda. We saw the early housing of the Supreme Court, a place for which I have a special reverence, and walked the same halls that Senate and Congress members walk every day.
Afterward, while Chelsi snuck away to feed her baby and Sam and the other kids went for some food, I forced my kids to soldier onward through the Library of Congress, which has arguably some of the most beautiful architecture in Washington DC. Although there wasn't much to look at in the way of books and artifacts except behind closed doors, we did have a chance to see an original Gutenberg bible, and compare it to its immediate predecessor, an biblical manuscript illuminated on vellum. Though the kids acted like they would die if they had to listen to me any more, I gave a full-fledged lecture on how amazing it is that the words of the bible were preserved and transcribed over centuries, and what it must have meant to have a printing press that made its text available for only the equivalent of a few hundred dollars. We also got to see Thomas Jefferson's original library, which was just stunning in the context of the time period in which he lived. Having recently read extensively about Jefferson's relationship with John Adams, I particularly enjoyed imagining the two sparring over details of the philosophies which eventually shaped our nation. One of the things I've become increasingly aware of through my reading, is just how messy democracy really can be--really is, in truth. As much as our national mythology idealizes the Founding Fathers, when looked at through the lens of the time period and circumstances in which they lived, they really couldn't look into the future to see how it would all work out. They were naïve in many ways, and they made misstep after misstep in hindsight. What really stands out to me though, is that they were not just thinkers, they were doers. I spent a lot of time pondering the differences between the American and the French revolutions, with their very different results. The few things that made all the difference, in my mind, were that the Americans had somebody with a great sense of selflessness to navigate the country from the presidency in the early years, that compromise was valued over "rightness" even when some of the compromises were morally malignant, and that a spirit of community prevailed throughout. I really respect that the Founding Fathers, while not always "right," always went back to the table and kept hammering away until they had something they could work with. There is a valuable lesson in the ethic they had.
As it started to get dark, we got back into the van and drove north to Philadelphia, listening to the only American History book on CD that I'd been able to dig out of library before we left--it was an account of a yellow fever plague that swept through Philadelphia in 1793, and while it didn't necessarily have much about nation-building, it gave a bit of insight into what daily life might have been like for the people who lived in Philadelphia around the time of the revolution. Along the way we got an awesome call from Aaron. After listening to me beg and chide him for over a month, at the last minute he decided to use some of his air miles and come out to join us on Monday!
We arrived at Chelsi's darling little house late that night, and I just about died over how cute and perfect her little house is!
Inside it was all wood floors and there was a little wood-burning stove, and she has it decorated so cute, you can just imagine hopping back a century or two. We found everyone a place to sleep, and crashed for the night.
The next day, I took the kids to see the ward where Aaron and I lived ten years ago while he was in the choral conducting masters' program at Temple University. When we first started attending, church was held in a few rooms of an office building--the "Smylie Times" building. During our stay, they began construction on a large and beautiful new building on Red Lion Road, which is where I took the kids on Sunday. I was amazed at how many people were still there! While we were there, it often felt like most of our friends were other students, and many of them, like us, moved away afterward. But some of our very good friends, the Ackermans, who had a daughter, Grace, who was Asher's age, and another, Lily, who was Addy's age, were there, and in fact the week of our visit was Brother Ackerman's first Sunday as bishop of the ward. It was so great to see them, and how their lovely daughters had grown, as well as their other two children, several years younger than our younger two. We also got to see Asher's first nursery leader, some of the parents of the youth who I had served with when I worked in the young women's program, the L'heureux family, who had lived further away but had children close to ours and participated in the family home evening group we had, as well as Ashley and Nolan Mauer, who went on an on about how the organ had never sounded as good as when Aaron played it. Strangely, though, it was the spirit of the meetings themselves that most brought back memories of our time in Philadelphia. The area we lived in was not particularly well-to-do, although there were some areas with more established families. For the most part, we lived in an area rich in diversity, selflessness, and people working hard to improve circumstances for themselves and their children. I feel like our church has so much to offer for people in those circumstances, and I could feel more strongly than in the more affluent areas where we've been blessed to live since, how powerful a tool for change the gospel can be in the lives of those who seek it. The sacrament meeting, though there were many children there, was very reverent. The stories shared by those speaking were incredibly moving, recognizing the hand of God in the smallest details of their lives. Such interesting points came out in Sunday school and Relief Society--people really pondering the meaning of gospel principles, comparing them to other sources of knowledge in their lives--there was a sense of sincerity and interest there that one doesn't often find in congregations made up primarily of people who have grown up with those principles from birth. The kids seemed to enjoy attending their classes as well, with Asher and Addy meeting up with faces from their very early childhoods. It was such an enjoyable morning that I hated to leave. On the way back, we drove past our old apartment, above the Wetzel and Son Funeral Home on Rising Sun Ave., as well as the little Tookany Creek Park where I used to walk with Asher, the Krispy Kreme doughnut store where we used to stop for free doughnuts (now a Dunkin' Donuts, the shame!), and several other old hangouts.
That evening, we spent time letting the cousins get to know each other a little better around the house, and sitting and talking together. It's fun and crazy to see my little sister doing much the same thing I was not many years ago, as mother to four children five and under--they were crazy times! I loved getting to snuggle up her little James, who is just the sweetest baby--when I could wrestle him away from Addy for a few minutes. We made a plan for the week and started figuring out Thanksgiving dinner.
The next day, while LucyMae was at school and Chels was busy with her regular life, we moseyed on down to the Franklin Institute, which I had never visited during our time in Philadelphia. We got in free with our Science Central membership, and it was fantastic! In addition to the usual awesome science center fare, we got to see a heart dissected and attend a fantastic planetarium show. Of course, somewhere along the way, Sera managed to lose her coat, so we spent the last hour of our visit trying to locate it before we saw somebody who was there with a school group wandering around with it and looking for its owner. Thank goodness! It would have been a cold remainder of the trip without it. When we finally left, we had acquired a lovely parking ticket, lest we get too nostalgic for Philadelphia apparently.
We headed to the airport to pick up Aaron, and what a reunion it was! The kids were thrilled, thrilled to see their dad, and I was too! The rest of the trip was a blur of fun and excitement for everyone. Having Aaron there to parent Asher was a huge break for me all by itself, and he really started behaving better almost immediately (not before getting in trouble several times though). We went with Chelsi's family for cheesesteaks for dinner, and were once again reminded of Philadelphia's unique hospitality when our server walked away in the middle of our order. Though delicious, we were also reminded that cheesesteaks should really not be eaten more than once every few years--they're heavy!
On Tuesday we knocked out a visit to Independence Hall, where we got to see both the room in which the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed and where congress met for the first several years of American history, as well as the room where the original Supreme Court sat before the seat of the government moved to Washington DC. We were able to tour the original statehouse, where George Washington lived and carried on affairs of state. It was quite remarkable to consider that what has grown into such a great nation came from quite humble beginnings.
After seeing a handful of other sites in the city, we went back to Bluebell (my sister's town) and she very kindly let us leave our kids with her for the night so that Aaron and I could sneak away for a few hours alone together (a few hours which would have been enhanced if I had known that Aaron would make it out for the holiday in the first place and had managed to pack a little more lingerie and a little less flannel, let me say). Aaron got us a lovely room at a nearby hotel and we spent a relaxing evening spending time alone together and hitting the pool (even though I somehow turned up with only half my swimsuit--don't worry! I found a substitute!). Among other things, we had a chance to talk face to face about some of the upcoming changes we're facing. Although we tossed around the idea of me staying in Indiana for the remainder of the year (a possibility that has some significant advantages as well as drawbacks), we decided that our most important priority should probably be getting our family back together again sooner than later. We managed to agree to rent initially, though finding a place may be a significant roadblock. Aaron has already looked at several, and rents are high, besides which, choosing a neighborhood in such a large city is no mean feat. After seriously considering the Poway area, near where Aaron grew up, we are leaning toward the Carlsbad area, north of San Diego, not far from the coast, where we nearly bought a house. We talked out some details and wrote up a list of the characteristics we hope to find in a rental. Now, hopefully we'll be able to find it! We also tentatively scheduled ourselves for a move over the Christmas holidays, which as insane as that seems to me, may be the only realistic possibility given Aaron's schedule.
The next day, after reuniting with everyone, we started Thanksgiving preparations. Thanksgiving is seriously so much better when there is someone to share the cooking with! When Chelsi and I had most things underway (which is not to say that Aaron and Sam didn't pitch in--they did! And so did the older kids), we broke away to brave the falling sleet so we could see Valley Forge. We got there just before dark, and though the grounds were open, the small museum was already closed. Aaron and the kids were nice enough to let me force them out of the van a handful of times to take pictures between reading to them from a George Washington biography about how hopeless the American Revolution must have looked in the winter of 1777 and 1778. I think it was a good time for all of us to take stock of how really not-hard our lives and decisions are by comparison. I especially appreciated the chance to consider how much good came of the decision made to stand strong, to weather it out, and to come through the other end, both in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, and in the generations succeeding it. Maybe, after all, some good will come of our decision to leave a place of comfort and peace, to try something newer and harder.
Thanksgiving was all kinds of wonderful. We managed to have the requisite extended-family spat (over what time to hold dinner), but otherwise, I can't imagine a more lovely way to spend a holiday of gratitude than with the Evans family. The food was all outstanding, and the only sad part was that there just isn't enough room in the human stomach to fully appreciate it all. Afterward, we made all the kids get up and perform for each other, from little Benjamin on his cardboard cut-out violin, to Samantha and LucyMae on their little real violins, to all our kids at the piano. It was funny to see which kids got nervous performing for each other, which ones couldn't care less, even if they missed notes and rhythms, and which were clearly born for the stage--I love that we have a family that can undertake a half-hour of entertainment at a moment's notice!
When we were fully worn out and ready for some serious digestion-via-sleeping, we rolled off to bed to catch a few winks before I had to wake up at the crack of dawn to take Aaron to the airport. When I got back, we said our goodbyes and packed the kids back into the car. Surprising nobody who really knows me, I couldn't actually hit the road without just a couple more teeny-tiny stops. We ended up spending a couple of hours at the Philadelphia Art Museum that I love and adore, and even though I had to spend about 15 minutes of each hour stopping the kids and reminding them that a) they seriously can't touch stuff and b) they seriously can't make noise I mean really how old are we now, and c) telling them crap about art is practically the most fulfilling thing I do as a parent so for goodness sake look up and pretend like you care about what I'm saying, I think it went pretty well. We spent quite a while in the Impressionist wing (though it may or may not have ended in a blitz of giggling at a painting populated exclusively with small nude children), spent considerably less time in the Asian and Classical/Romantic wings, and managed to get through the Art of Warfare wing in less time that I expected--apparently at least some of my many lectures about how killing and war are bad sunk in at some point, and they were all (even the boys) more concerned about what in the world someone small enough to fit in the child-sized armor was doing going into battle on a horse than they were fascinated. Since there are abysmally few of them, I'm going to pocket that as another parenting win. We nearly as much time outside the museum as inside, looking at the city from those glorious steps, and taking pictures of everybody as Rocky. I can never quite get over the beauty of the architecture of that place--truly one of the great monuments in America.
Even though the trip to the museum took quite a lot longer than I intended, I packed us back into the car and started driving. I had planned on sidetracking to visit both Hershey and Gettysburg, but as it ended up, Hershey was so much more fun and delicious than another historical site that we spent too long in the one and ended up at the gates too late to get into the other. However, after entirely too many lectures about American history, you better believe that the kids were thrilled with the Hershey factory. We stood in line and enjoyed the journey through the life of a chocolate kiss before hitting the Hershey store and getting a treat or two for the road. Given our late start and all the stops along the way, we only made it to Ohio before it got too late, so we stayed the night in Lima and finished the journey on Saturday.
All in all, November was packed with adventure, and I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out. For whatever reason, filling our lives with great adventures is one of my most important goals, and I really enjoyed the chance we had to have this one. Now as we head into December, the clock is ticking on all the things that need to happen if we want to be together in the new year. But at least we have the joy of family and good experiences to propel us through them.
