The day before I left for my trip that took me to Austin and Seattle, MJ’s aunt Sherry died. It was unexpected, and in addition to the shock and grief, left us all in a troubled state about what to do logistically. Should I cancel my trip? Should we all drop everything and immediately fly to Virginia? Should just MJ go? Due to various unanswered questions about her wishes and estate, we decided to stick to my travel plans and play it by ear. I let my boss know that my plans may change, and went off on my trips.
I only had the pleasure of meeting Sherry once or twice and the boys never have, but a loss like this has ripple effects, and there was a heaviness to my journey. I felt bad that I couldn’t be physically present as MJ worked with her friends and their family to make arrangements.
Based on a variety of factors, her funeral ended up being after my trip and we decided that only MJ would go. He flew out on Thursday, just hours before I returned, so I didn’t get to see him, and we had a babysitter drop by in the early evening to fill in until my return. He came home Sunday night with stories about his aunt as he visited her home, the town she loved so much, and a bookshop she used to run. May her memory be a blessing.
Aunt Sher (right) at our wedding in 2013 and her mother, Ruth
With MJ away, I had the boys on my own for the weekend. On Saturday we took BART out to Dublin to visit a new playground that they absolutely loved, even if they didn’t love the half mile walk from BART to get there. Sunday was extremely warm, so we went on a water quest! The water hoses we had were cracked and basically unusable, so the boys and I went to our local hardware store in order to replace two of them, plus one of the stands they were on. When we got home we set them up and hooked up a new rainbow water toy in the yard and the boys had tons of fun running through it and turning it into a car wash for their Cozy Coupe.
In some ways it was a lot of fun to have the boys to myself, but it was also pretty tiring and I was eager to have MJ back. Plus, on Monday we had a Seder to prepare for!
Thankfully, MJ took off from work on Monday so he could recover from the trip and head up to San Francisco to pick up our Passover meal. When I was done with work at 4PM I got to work setting everything up. The boys are still quite picky about food, but Adam loves matzoh so it’s a fun time of year for him. The Seder was incredibly chaotic and I timed the food wrong again, but I think that’s part of the charm of family holiday dinners.
This year we also were able to hide the Afikoman and let the kids find it, which became a bit of a prolonged activity as the kids wanted to hide all kinds of things throughout the 8 days of Passover, hah!
I also succeeded at making matzoh brei, and the boys actually ate it, which was a nice surprise. Adam took to calling it “hot matzoh” and that’s probably the name in our house now.
The week of Passover also happened to be when some colleagues were in town, and we took the opportunity to go out for a group activity. Since our team is geographically distributed, it’s a rare occurrence for so many of us to be in one place, and there was one colleague in the group that I hadn’t met at all before! We met at a Bocce place in Livermore, and had a lovely lunch (even if my options were limited, Passover!) and then all attempted to figure out how to play Bocce, which was a lot of fun.
The end of April also meant MJ and I had our 11th wedding anniversary. Given everything that had been going on in the previous weeks (see above), we almost missed it, and had no opportunity to plan anything on the day itself. Instead, we booked at Thursday evening reservation just around the block at Tancho, featuring a Chef’s Counter Omakase experience. It was spectacular, and surprising for our little town! And while it was an expensive meal, they weren’t overly pretentious and the experience was a beautiful way to celebrate our anniversary.
Plus, by doing some thing early and local, it got us home in time to help their babysitter put the kids to bed. This was particularly important because we had just recently started our second attempt to put the boys in the same room. Honestly the change in room situation almost made us skip observing our anniversary at all, but we didn’t want to keep delaying taking time as a couple. It’s so important for us to stay connected, especially during the difficult and busy times.