Home Leave Proper

Rebecca here: This entry is being written from the southwest corner of Virginia, in a log cabin up in the Appalachian mountains. My brother-in-law Jonathan has African jazz playing on a portable speaker while he and my nephew Fletcher are playing whiffle ball in the yard. Everyone else is napping and resting after a very satisfying 6-mile hike around a mountain lake earlier today. This week is likely to be the apex of home leave vacation during our time in the USA this year.

But let me take a few steps back… Jonathan had to leave early from their stay with us in Maryland at the end of June, but his wife Emma and son Fletcher were able to stay for the first few days of July. Over those days, we enjoyed some very competitive games of croquet in the front yard of our Bay House. We also took the boys on a short hike to the Turkey Point Light House, part of Elk Neck State Park. We could almost see Charter Hall from there…but it was a hot day and the boys weren’t thrilled with a forced hike on a hot day. The other highlight activity was a visit to the National Aquarium. They had just reopened with very strict policies to reduce risk of COVID, including strict mask-wearing, one-way traffic flow, and 25% capacity. We have loved to go to the Aquarium in the past, thanks to my mom’s membership, and this time was even better because it was truly not crowded. We had a spectacular view of the octopus who must have gotten used to being alone and unobserved and was startled out in plain sight. Even the dolphins seemed pretty happy to come out into the main pool and greet a handful of visitors.  In the evenings we played a few good board games and watched silly slapstick films—all the things to celebrate the end of school and the beginning of summer, except that we really wished we had a pool to go to.

Emma and Fletcher departed for their 12-hour drive back to Nashville on Friday. That evening, we were able to finally arrange to see good friends from our Baltimore church. They have two boys who really love the outdoors, exploring, and finding creatures. David was just over the moon to finally have an agemate to explore with, and the two of them took off for a long beach walk while we adults caught up, the younger son tried fishing nearby, and their baby crawled around exploring the lawn. It was great to spend time with Ashley and Bill, and hear their views on politics, parenting in a pandemic, and the goings-on at church. Then there was swimming in the Bay (never mind the muck!), running through the sprinkler and even a little canoe paddle. The boys were industrious about lighting a bonfire after dinner and had a great time roasting marshmallows and making s’mores as masses of fireflies hovered in the trees.

That was the start of a very social weekend, all done with strict social distancing. On Saturday midday, my parents came out to join us for the July 4^th holiday, joined by their close friends, the Ballards. Louise brought out a perfect picnic lunch and we stayed cool in the shade by the water for a while, before starting up a new round of croquet. My dad continued to beat all challengers! It was delightful to visit with these old friends as well. My parents stayed on for the evening and several of us went out for an evening canoe paddle. As the sun set, we were able to see fireworks lighting up the distant horizon in multiple directions across the water. We spotted at least 10 bald eagles, both mature and immature, soaring and screaming along the shoreline. We returned home for sparklers and a dessert of delicious mixed fresh berries.

Our final visitors that weekend were Chris Ballard (son of my parents’ friends, and my one good friend from high school) with his daughter. Again, David was delighted to have a good friend his age to enjoy the afternoon with. This time, we had to dodge inside to avoid a major thunderstorm, but it quickly passed, and then we went out again for more canoeing – this time through the marsh. I loved hearing the kids talk about gliding over the shallow water and peering down into the aquatic underwater vegetation: “It’s like looking down into a forest of Christmas trees!” David gleefully announced every time he spotted a tiny fish. I was thrilled to see a Northern Oriole at the end of the marsh, and for Ella, every Great blue heron was a new marvel (for us, they were just the next-door neighbors, so it was good to remember the wonder of the Bay through her eyes). Ella and David swam in the Bay afterwards for a really long time, and I was so thankful that he finally had healthy social time with another kid. This pandemic has been especially hard on him, emotionally.

We had agreed with our landlord to use the Bay house through the July 4 weekend, but leave July 7. On Monday, we needed to pack up the house and do our best to fit as much stuff into my mom’s car as possible when she came to pick up the boys mid-afternoon. Even after they left, Paul and I found a remarkable amount of work to do to empty the house completely of our stuff and prepare it for a thorough cleaning. We finally decided to quit work and enjoy our quiet evening around 8 pm, watching more thunderstorms roll dramatically up the Bay.

On Tuesday, our last day, I woke up early as usual, but did something I’d never done before, taking a cup of coffee out to the beach to watch the sunrise, enjoy the fresh morning and birdsong, five eagles across the cove, two turtles on log, a heron perched on a snag, with all the assembled calls of our familiar, if unseen, avian neighbors: a bittersweet moment to savor this unique period of pause by the water for our family. Then I took one last walk up the farm lane, something I’ve been doing every morning since we arrived. I’ve watched every shrub and tree all spring and have learned which blossoms are roses and which are blackberries. I know the territories of the mockingbird, cardinals and chipping sparrows, respectively. I have rested in this peninsula and gotten to know it intimately. I’ve raised up so many dear friends in prayer every morning as I walked that gravel road. It was terribly difficult to think about leaving, and I’m afraid I took my time saying goodbye to each step of it that morning.

Our sister-in-law Emma gave us a tremendous gift for hosting them: she hired a cleaning service to come and thoroughly go through the house before we left. So, between 9 and noon that day, Paul and I were sort of pinned down to the house to supervise the cleaning, and yet we didn’t really have to do anything in particular. It was an incredibly restful time. I picked a quart of new, fresh wineberries and had a chance to sit and journal and give thanks for this time. And then Paul and I celebrated with one last canoe trip, finally making it up the Principio River together for the first time all year. As we were nearing the mouth of the river (almost 40 minutes of paddling), we marveled at the fact that we weren’t hearing any complaining! No bickering! No moaning of “I’m tired, I’m hungry, I’m bored!” We realized that we have not ever done that trip alone, without kids, in the quiet of two adults who are fully capable of paddling the whole way without complaint. No offense to the kids, but it was truly one of the best dates! We went far up the river on the high tide and enjoyed the exploration together. And then we left the canoe back at Charter Hall before finally driving off to my parents’ house.

For the rest of the week, we had a bunch of administrative things to catch up on, including some medical appointments and things to prepare for Paul getting a new work permit for Ethiopia. We were a bit neglectful of the kids some days but had a couple of nice late afternoon outings. One day, all of us drove down to the nearby Gunpowder River. We have gotten to know a wonderful swimming hole there, which was a relief on a hot day. It’s deep enough to actually dive underwater with goggles and see the trout, or swim crawl against the current, running to stand still. On the next day, we took the kids out for a great hike at Cromwell Valley Park, one of my favorite spots from our Baltimore life. I was astonished by how sweet-spirited the kids were about hiking that afternoon. Oren insisted on taking the long version of the hike with me, leaving David and Paul and to take the short-cut and wander along the stream. He really likes walking and talking and I’m so glad to do that with him when we can.

On Saturday, I went out alone to visit a friend from our old nieghborhood. We had kids in the same elementary school class and developed a tradition of walking together every week, which we repeated that morning and then sat in her beautiful garden for a  long talk. She is a remarkable woman who is making the best of a lot of adversity, raising her older child, a young adult with autism. She’s truly a soul-mate, and we always have so many stimulating conversations together, and tease each other about using long vocabulary words. As I left her house, I spotted my brother out in his yard and had to stop by and say hi. I really miss those times of living on the same street with him and having spontaneous get-togethers. (We all returned on Sunday afternoon to try and play a little football and frisbee with Paul and Gabriel in a rainstorm).  I was grateful to my husband for letting me go off by myself for the first time in maybe three months!

In the evening we had a very special dinner to celebrate the 64^th wedding anniversary of Paul’s parents (ours was the next day). Bunny and Henry came in the late afternoon to visit and reminisce. Then we set up some outdoor tables next to the new pollinating garden, the one we helped my parents to establish this spring. The variety of blooms are now exquisite there, and the air was lovely and cool in the evening. The Mosley’s contributed some really good steaks, and I made a fresh blueberry strawberry pie for dessert. The kids flew kites for a while when the wind picked up. It was great to celebrate in a special way.

On Sunday, we spent a fair bit of time packing for the trip that brought us to the Appalachians. In fact, last year, we had planned for a big Mosley family reunion in Chattanooga this week. However, the pandemic necessitated canceling that plan – too many families gathered at once, in a place with too many big attractions and high rates of COVID. We were still planning to drive down and see Jonathan’s family again at their home in Nashville, but the COVID rates there were climbing and making us nervous. In addition, Jonathan realized that he had been spending 24 hours a day in his home for the past 3 months and getting out of town would be a welcome relief. So, he hatched a plan to find a cabin in a remote location, halfway between Baltimore and Nashville. And here we are!

It has been very good to spend time with them here. We’ve been developing new versions of cornhole competitions. There are lots of trails on the hillsides for wandering around. Cows graze on the steep pastures around us. The silence in the mornings is stunning. The darkness of the night sky and the brilliance of the stars here is dazzling. It’s great to be here and to spend time with these family members who also feel like friends.

Post Script: Paul and Jonathan took an afternoon during the vacation to visit brother Mark in North Carolina. Here is a photo of them together for the afternoon. 

Bonus photos: 

#100 End of School and a Birthday

So in an inauspicious place at an inauspicious time, I arrive at entry #100. After 3 years since beginning this blog, we now have 100 entries, and the timing is fitting as we have just this month officially moved into a new role in our assignments in Tanzania, moving from more technical 'service worker' positions to Country Representatives. I say inauspicious because of the fact that we have not been in Tanzania since our departure at the end of March is disheartening. But we do have our flights booked to return on August 10th on Qatar Airways (barring any further disruption to air travel).  

Oddly, we actually just started our official 3 weeks of home leave on Monday. I say odd because we have been in the US for 3 months already, and yet none of this has resembled a vacation despite the rustic water-side setting. 

But the past week has finally felt like a change. The biggest driver of change has been the end of school and the grueling parental task of coercing the children into their google classroom assignment pages to complete their day's work. I will say it started our fairly well for Oren and he was motivated to keep up for the first 6 weeks or so, but the last 4 weeks we could hardly get him to go through his task list in each class to see what needed to be done. The fact that we were 7 hours behind meant that the kids missed most of their live sessions and I think it just felt less and less like real school. 

David never even pretended to be motivated by online lessons and rued every moment on the computer doing assignments. Most of the time one or the other parent (usually Rebecca) had to sit beside him to be sure he completed his work. The deepest of ironies was the award ceremony on the last day when David was given the 'online learning award' for term 3. (Rebecca claimed that prize for herself.) Oren also was able to eke out all As and Bs on his report card, and I suspect that averages went down for most everyone in term 3 and a generous curve was applied.

With the end of school, this past Friday felt like a huge burden off our shoulders, and that coupled with improvement in the COVID-19 curve in Maryland gave us the confidence to expand our horizons a bit. We have a number of friends that have wanted to come by and pay us a visit and we finally said yes in the past 10 days. 

The first to come by was Jennifer P. She was one of our service workes when we were MCC Reps in Rwanda/Burundi. Our team was very close-knit and many of us have remained fast friends over the years. Jennifer now works in Kinshasa with Mercy Corps, but like us, she was evacuated during the COVID-19 crises. She has been based in DC, but drove out to our Bay house (just 1.5 hours up highway 95) to visit us. Jennifer is one of the most vivacious people you will ever meet and it was really fun to catch up with her and hear all the news and gossip of old friends. She did stay a night with us, we talked, walked on the beach, canoed, and she taught us a new game of cards called Kobo that we all enjoyed playing together. 

Another DC resident that dropped by was Margaret, a friend of Rebecca's from her choir at William and Mary, who was also a bridesmaid in our wedding. She, her husband, and kids have been friends over the years and have joined us at Charter Hall in the past. On this occasion, Margaret came alone for an afternoon and we had a nice time catching up with her.

We also celebrated Father's Day with a visit from the grandparents on both sides and enjoyed a meal together.  Rebecca's mom brought a feast of ribs, crabcakes, and chicken parmesan from a local crab house. We had a great time together watching the sunset. Right at the end, the wind picked up suddenly and David ran in the garage and got a kite we had somehow ended up with. It was a picturesque ending to our time together. As a father, I got some nice gifts from my family including another 1000 piece puzzle (we have done about 10 since our arrival). We completed it in about 3 days. We also gave Rebecca's dad a birdbath which we brought out to their house for their new garden. 

Oren and David have enjoyed visits to Rebecca's parents' house (Papa Dave and Grandma Jean) where they get to earn money for chores including lawn mowing and berry picking. David is particularly enamored of picking berries and making jam! (All of us profit from these endeavors.)

The big surprise this month, however, was the visit from my brother Jonathan's family. We had planned, much earlier in the year to have a Mosley family vacation in July in Chatanooga Tennessee with my parents and two brothers' families. When COVID-19 was in full outbreak we realized that this would need to be canceled as travel for a number of us who are high-risk, particularly my parents, would be impossible at this time. 

We were not sure what to do but had considered driving out to Nashville where Jonathan lives (with his wife Emma and cousin Fletcher). This would have been a smaller gathering than we planned though. Last week Jonathan had a brainstorm of coming up for a week right at the end of school. We agreed to host them and they drove out in one shot from Nashville to our house on the Bay. They arrived after midnight, but without incident. 

Having a cousin in the house significantly changed the dynamic for our kids who I think had almost forgotten what it was like to have real-life friends. With the end of school responsibilities, we, the parents, have also felt far less stressed and more inclined to relax and have fun. 

The fact that Jonathan's family came here meant that my parents were able to see them as well, even though they did maintain social distancing and came and sat around outdoors with us. Our family has taken the moderate risk of sharing the space here recognizing that all of us have been very diligent about wearing masks and not going out to any large gatherings of people, restaurants, etc. It is interesting to talk to them about the culture of mask-wearing in different contexts. In Maryland, it is required everywhere when one goes out and not a point of contention. In Tennessee, distinguished as one of the most mask non-compliant states in the country after Texas and Arizona, wearing a mask is, sadly, a political statement. 

Jonathan is a health professional so being diligent for him and his family is essential but does not find much community support for masks when he is needing to leave home.

We had a great time together and the festivities really began on the weekend after their arrival. My parents and Jonathan's family had a huge picnic on the lawn by the Bay in the back of our house. They also returned on Saturday for an early Birthday Party for Oren who is now 15. (He has been enjoying getting to try to drive on the dirt road that leads to our house.) The Birthday festivities continued on Sunday with Paul and Gwendolyn Sack and cousins Miriam and Gabriel coming over. We were able to go back over to Charter Hall and use the kayaks and canoes as well as swim in the pool and bay. 

On Monday we had Oren's official Birthday and Jonathan's family, and both sets of grandparents came out to celebrate. One of the highlights was a game of croquet with a really nice set of official size croquet mallets, wickets and balls. We set up the field under a large shady tree. Papa Dave (Rebeca's Dad) is quite a croquet shark and slaughtered us all with great ease. (He finished about 6 wickets ahead of second place.)  We had a birthday cake (this was a Coldstone Creamery ice cream cake) after having a traditional cake the day before. I think we had enough American cake for all we missed in Tanzania in the past year.

I had to take Jonathan to the airport Monday evening as he had a clinic and needed to return for Tuesday. Emma and Fletcher will stay through Friday.

So that it is the end of the school year and the beginning of summer vacation. It has been a long strange trip thus far, and I am not sure what we will do with so many changed plans in the weeks ahead.

Here are some bonus photos from the past 2 weeks.

New Jobs

Paul engaged in Home makeover

We have been gradually transitioning into the role MCC Representatives for Tanzania since we signed the offer last October. But on Friday, we officially moved from the back seat to the driver’s seat. Today, we felt the full force of Rep email descending on us. We are grateful that we are near the end of emergency online education because we will need to be giving a lot more time to our roles as Directors of MCC’s programming in Tanzania.

Meanwhile, there are other side jobs to tend to as well.

Haircuts in the garage 

Like most people in lockdown, our hair has been getting a little unkempt. Last weekend, our set of hair clippers finally arrived, and I found myself trimming my mom’s hair, and then David’s. I need to figure out who I am brave enough to ask to trim my hair…

We have had a larger side task to tend to after work and on the weekends in the past month. We found an arrangement to stay rent-free in a lovely, vacant vacation home on the Bay, in exchange for painting. It has turned out to be an interesting and substantial job. Fortunately, we have a coach / site manager with all the equipment we need. Last weekend, Don dropped off a power washer, which enabled Paul to blast the old paint and stain off of the lower sides of the house, as well as the moss and weeds off of the patio and the concrete walkway down to the beach. 

Powerwashing 

On Wednesday, he brought a truck with a lift. By Thursday night, Paul had blasted clean the high front wall of the house.  By Friday night he’d stained the entire high section, and on Saturday, he and I worked as a team to stain the rest of the place. David even pitched in to paint a low section of boards where the stain just dripped into the bushes and didn’t do any harm. We made it festive by blasting the upbeat tunes from “The Greatest Showman,” a current favorite with our boys. It was great to finish this part of the home improvement contract before our Rep role really got going. Now we just have a couple of doors to paint, and some mulching to do.

In the midst of these various kinds of labors, our nation is facing yet another crisis. Is this a moment of opportunity? On May 31, when we last wrote, we could hardly imagine that any other crisis could surpass the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying economic disaster in our country. But then the system of racial injustice in America killed George Floyd. People have had enough. And now we are in the midst of urgent labor, as a nation, some of us trying to deliver justice. Or will it be a miscarriage, once again? It truly feels different this time, and if there is anything we can do to push our country towards change, we need to do it. The trouble is, we are staying out in the boonies, and we also are wary of being exposed to the virus in crowds, since we are essentially “quaranteaming” with our older parents. 

Demonstrating on Rt 40, Cecil County

We decided to join with a movement for systemic change, the Poor People’s Campaign, to remembering Floyd’s killing. We stood on the sidewalk near our local Food Lion grocery store and demonstrated for a couple of hours, and then knelt to observe 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence. This county is very Republican. Mostly pickup trucks drove past, and so we only got a handful of supportive honks every few minutes. But that’s OK – it’s important that we all realize racial justice is a moral issue, and people in every corner of the country are calling for it. About 20% of the drivers we saw were African-American, and we hope they know we saw them. David came with us for that first round. Oren was very apprehensive about the potential for some kind of violent confrontation with a right-wing person who might be offended by our expression of our constitutional rights. But we had no conversations or confrontations. We just smiled and waved and were present in the community.

I was also struck by how easy it was for us to put our signs into our car and return to anonymity once more. In our church service the day before, one young man of color reminded us, with deep emotion, that racial injustice for him is not an issue, it is his reality. What will it take for all of us, especially Christians of European background, to make this struggle for justice our daily reality, not just a cause or an issue to take up when we have the luxury of a little spare time?

We continue to enjoy visits with each set of grandparents every few days. Paul's parents really are grateful to leave their closed retirement community to go for a drive into the country. We are able to sit in the yard, in the fresh air and share lots of stories, as well as debate what on earth needs to happen to fix our country. 

 In the beginning of June, David and I went to enjoy a special overnight with my parents. We picked up fresh strawberries along the way and I felt inspired to bake a fresh strawberry pie. 

Family strawberry picking

In the morning, my mom took David and me for a visit to Ladew Topiary Gardens, right there in their neighborhood in Harford County. It was the very first day they welcomed members by reservation, and we were so glad to revisit those gorgeous flower gardens while the peonies and iris were still blooming. 

David especially enjoyed finding all stages of tadpoles in the little ponds and fountains, giving us older people the chance to sniff the roses.

Both David and Oren have had special overnights with my parents, which always involve productive yard work (and pay!). Oren has mowed their grass at least 6 times by now. David accomplishes all kinds of odd jobs, including leaf blowing, seed planting and cutting the suckers off of the bottoms of their fruit trees.

David wielding the leaf blower

My parents have been stuck at home for the entire lockdown, so we invited them to come out to stay one night with us on the Bay. We forbade any computer work! My Dad started reading a memoir about the Bay, and my mom and I took a canoe trip with David up the Principio river. The river is always lovely and refreshing. But overall, the trip was a little longer and harder than we planned. David needed to take a turn at paddling – steering the canoe. And as we returned, in higher wind and waves, he got very tired, but somehow I was able to urge him to keep going, since we really did not have a choice about switching positions to relieve him of his duties. It was a good lesson in endurance for him.

David with bags #13 and #14

David has also been going through a great unit in environmental education in science class. This has coincided with a sudden interest in picking up trash off of the shore around where we are staying. This particular shore had gotten very junky after the two big storms in April, which washed every possible kind of trash up from the south and deposited it directly into the marsh next door. We are able to gather and separate what we find (shoes, styrofoam, and endless plastic bottles) into trash and recycling. 

Gramma Jean and Oren

Oren has also enjoyed more personal time with his grandparents and is finally at the stage where adult conversation can be actually engaging for him. He has had several sleepovers and has watched the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy with my parents. We are glad for the ways that he is able to appreciate this time to be with them. 

We have another two weeks of school to get through, and we will need to focus well on getting our real new job off to a good start. And who knows what else might happen. This is a time which will call for a lot of endurance. But we are also surrounded by many small wonders, and many good fruits of our little labors.

Bonus Photos:

David and Koi at Ladew Gardens

Tiny turtle we found in a swimming pool

Enjoying my dad's hot tub

David catching a catfish

Staining the house

Horse country in Harford County