On streak maintenance, mouth breathing, Greece, and counting the days until summer (vol. xxx, no. 3)

Dear Family,

Today is the 31st. I’m tired and we’re out of the country. But my streak of writing something to you each month now spans multiple decades, and while I acknowledge that, like all things, this will have to end at some point, it would seem a shame to break it because of something as trivial as jet lag.

Consequently, this is likely to be a shorter and more perfunctory letter than usual.

Which is probably a good thing.

It almost embarrasses me to admit that a significant highlight of the month was learning that Crystal, in fact, will not have to teach school until June 26th as was previously reported. Maryland law requires 180 school days and 1,080 school hours (1,170 hours for high schools, but Crystal teaches middle school). Missing something like two weeks of school this year due to weather originally made it appear that the county would have to significantly extend the school year into the summer. Fortunately, some combination of Maryland’s legislature and board of education issued a waiver for the days requirement because the county had satisfied the hours requirement. (The initial request for this waiver was denied, but I guess some combination of an influential teachers’ union, angry parents, and common sense ultimately carried the day.) Whatever the reason, the last day of school is now June 18, which still seems late to me, but at least it’s better than the 26th.

So Crystal is sleeping better at night because of that. But also because of her new CPAP machine, which she picked up this month. She now goes to bed each night looking like Hannibal Lecter and sounding like Darth Vader. But that’s okay, and I think she would tell you it is helping. Naturally, my main concern centered around how all this would impact my sleep. But it really makes barely any noise at all. What little noise it makes is actually rather soothing — like a white noise machine, but quieter. It’s certainly an improvement over snoring. I’m probably sleeping better, myself.

Grace turned 21 this month. Our youngest child is now old enough to drink and wise enough not to. I marked the occasion by speaking with her on the phone for nearly ten whole minutes — before she ran out to have dinner with her new(ish) boyfriend, Matt. Grace and Matt have been friends pretty much since Grace started at SVU. The boyfriend thing is new, but it’s okay. I like Matt — he comes across as a genuine and stand-up guy.

I got to see Grace (and Matt) on March 15th when the SVU Chamber Singers accompanied the university’s outgoing president, Bonnie Cordon, to the Washington D.C. Temple Visitor Center where she spoke (and they sang) at its monthly “Why I Believe” devotional. The Visitors’ Center has hosted these monthly Sunday-night devotionals for at least as long as we’ve lived here (30 years) and I have gone to maybe five of them. (And it’s possible that number is wildly inflated — it takes quite a bit of persuasion to get me out of the house on a Sunday evening.) But I was excited to hear Grace and the Chamber Singers. (President Cordon was good, too, but I would not have gone if not for the choir.)

Grace was also home for a few days for spring break. I’m looking forward to summer when I’ll (hopefully) get to see her more.

Crystal and I returned to the Visitors’ Center the weekend following Grace’s performance to perform an Easter concert with the Washington D.C. Temple Choir. I was the organist for the three pieces that required an organ. We performed at the Visitors’ Center (good organ, crummy acoustics) on Saturday evening and at the Centreville Virginia Stake Center (lousy organ, good acoustics) on Sunday.

The choir performed generally better on Sunday than it did on Saturday, and my organ playing was somewhat less bad on Sunday as well. If you didn’t hear me playing, you can tell how well I’m doing (or not) by the pictures that were taken.

My friend Mary Jean Sokolowsky took this picture of me playing at the visitors’ center on Saturday (and shared it with me along with a suggestion that I include it in the Famlet):

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And then my friend Colby Jenkins took this picture the next night in Centreville:

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I have recently discovered that if you ever want to know how well I’m doing at the organ (and you can’t tell by listening) all you have to do is look at my mouth. If my mouth is closed, it generally means I’m in control and more or less at peace with how things are going. When my mouth is open, it means that something is probably amiss — I definitely do not feel in control and am probably screwing up. I’m not sure which direction the causation runs (if it exists at all) in this correlation. And I’ve only noticed it while playing the organ. But when things feel like they’re going off the rails up there, closing my mouth seems to help (sometimes … maybe. Or maybe not). Things go off the rails fairly often when I’m at the console, so I’ve had a lot of practice experimenting.

This month also marked (my youngest brother) Peter’s 43rd birthday. We celebrated with Cafe Rio catering and Costco birthday cake at Grandma’s (and Grandpa’s) house, and everybody was happy.

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I am writing this entire letter from the sofa in an Airbnb apartment in Athens, where Crystal, Ari, and I are spending spring break.

Our flight left at 5:40 p.m. on Sunday. Our one-hour Palm Sunday service ended at noon. Having heard the nightmare stories of 6- and 7-hour TSA wait times around the country, we didn’t waste any time getting to the airport. We rushed home from church, changed, and were picked up by our good friend Richard Krikava at around 1:00. He got us to Dulles at a little past 1:30. We desperately hoped that 4 hours would be enough time to get through security.

It would seem that everyone on our flight had the same idea. We arrived at the airport to find a long snaking line just to get to the KLM/AirFrance check-in counter (we were on KLM, connecting through Amsterdam — I’m told you can get a direct flight from D.C. to Athens in the summer, but apparently not this time of year). The ticket counter didn’t open until three and half hours before the flight and so we all stood in line for an hour just to check our bags.

We finally made our way to TSA at 2:30 or so, where we found no line to speak of. We were through in like 7 minutes.

And so we ended up waiting for like 3 hours at the gate for our flight, which like every other 5:40 p.m. flight in the history of aviation, departed late. (But not that late.)

We didn’t care. Waiting 3 hours at the gate beats the pants off of waiting 3 hours in a security line.

After changing planes early Monday morning in Amsterdam, we made it to Athens a little after noon yesterday.

The apartment’s great — right in the middle of downtown, walking distance from all the tourist traps (which is what we’re here for), 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, a pool table, and a nice view of the Acropolis. The owners left it stocked for us with an assortment of pastries, juices, and two bottles of Greek wine. (Is Greek wine good? We are unlikely to make use of it.) Every stick of furniture looks to be from IKEA (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and the elevator is the most European thing ever (basically a glorified dumbwaiter, but that just makes it more charming).

So we’ve been in Greece for almost a day and a half, which we’ve spent wandering around Athens. It’s been a fun adventure so far. It’s possible that somewhere in this city there are two consecutive steps that are precisely the same height. We haven’t found that yet, but it could still happen.

Here are some pictures from the Acropolis. According to the internet, the earth is home to 8.3 billion people. That seems a little low to me because I’m pretty sure there were at least 12 billion people at the Acropolis earlier today. I can only imagine how bad it must be in the summer.

We also went to the National Garden, the Ancient Agora, and some other places I’ve already forgotten. Before collecting 20 euros per head at the Agora, they warned us that they would be closing in 45 minutes. Crystal’s misgivings notwithstanding, I assured the ticket people that that would be plenty of time.

I was right.

Anyway, we plan to venture beyond Athens. But that won’t happen until April, so you’ll have to wait until then for those details.

Well, it’s 11 p.m. in Athens. Just 4 p.m. in Maryland, but I should probably get to bed.

Hope you’re well!

Love,
Tim et al