Dear Family,
I ran across the Susquehanna River twice this month, something I’ll never be able to do without thinking of Dad.
Like probably untold millions of other Mid-Atlantic denizens, I have crossed the Susquehanna River countless times — usually in a car on I-95, but also dozens of times on trains, a handful of others on buses, and even once as the patient in an ambulance. The opportunity to traverse it on foot, however, presents itself to me on precisely one day each year (more on that later).
But whenever I do it, whatever the mode of transportation, I think of Dad.1
I think of him because I grew up in South Jersey while my Henrichsen grandparents (and other family) mostly lived in Montgomery County, Maryland. We frequently drove between the two places and generally considered the bridge over the Susquehanna to be the midpoint of the two-and-a-half-hour journey. (I still can’t believe the drive was actually that short. It felt like an eternity when I was a kid.)2
And every time we crossed the Susquehanna, Dad would announce a) that we were halfway there, and b) that this was the river in which Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery baptized each other.
He probably didn’t actually say it every time. Maybe he didn’t even say it most of the time. But he did it enough times that in my childhood/adolescent memory, it’s as though he said it every time. I still remember looking out the car window, up and down the banks of the river, wondering if I could see the place where it happened.
(It was only much later — as an adult — that I would learn that we were nowhere near where it happened. I-95 crosses the Susquehanna in Maryland not more than a mile or two from from where the river empties into the Chesapeake. The baptism and surrounding events in 1829 with Joseph and Oliver (and John the Baptist) happened more than 200 miles upriver — way up in northern Pennsylvania. I’ve never actually been there. It’s not close to us. It’s not close to anything. I’m told it’s very nice.)
Still, every time we cross the Susquehanna now, I make a point of mentioning to whoever has the misfortune of being in the car with me that we are crossing the river in which Joseph Smith was baptized. I just can’t help myself — I have to say it. I had numerous occasions to do it when our temple was closed for renovation and we were regularly shuttling youth up to the Philadelphia Temple. Every time we crossed the river, I carried on my father’s tradition by dutifully making the announcement. I can still hear Crystal rolling her eyes at me and the kids couldn’t care less, either. For some reason, no one ever seems to find it as fascinating as I do.
So imagine my excitement when I found out about the Susquehanna River Half Marathon! I learned about it through my involvement with Athletes Serving Athletes. So not only would I get to run across the river (twice!), but I’d get to do it pushing someone in a wheelchair, which is one of my very favoritest things to do! I would also have a captive audience of fellow ASA “wingmen” alongside me. The river is a solid mile wide where we cross it, which would give me ample time to explain to anyone within earshot why this particular body of water is so significant.
I was assigned to team Caimile (the girl in the jogger, below) with fellow wingmen Emma and Jenny. The way it works is we rotate taking one-mile shifts. I pushed the jogger for the first mile while Emma and Jenny ran alongside. Then Emma pushed the second mile while Jenny and I ran alongside. Then Jenny pushed the third mile, while Emma and I ran alongside. Then it rotated back to me to push for miles 4, 7, 10, and 13. Sometimes we mix things up, but you get the idea. The picture below is of us approaching the finish. As is custom, we all cross the finish line together with at least one hand on what by that point in any race has become the jogger’s disgustingly sweaty handlebar.
I love Caimile’s smile in the photo above, the but I love love her smile in this one of the volunteer putting the medal around her neck:
The race started and finished in historic Havre de Grace, Maryland (incorporated in 1785) — a charming little town situated alongside the Susquehanna as it empties into the Chesapeake.
Fun fact: Havre de Grace, Maryland, was named after a charming little historic city in Normandy, situated alongside the Seine as it empties into the English Channel. That city (founded in 1517) lost the “de Grâce” part of its name during the French Revolution (i.e., after the founding of Havre de Grace, Maryland) and is now known simply as Le Havre.
Why does any of that matter? It doesn’t, really, but it gives me an excuse to tell you that in addition to having visited Havre de Grace, I have also been to Le Havre!
I didn’t get a chance to talk about the religious significance of the Susquehanna River during the race. I just couldn’t figure out how to work it in organically, and we had plenty of other things to talk about. So I feel like I probably let Dad down a little, but I imagine he’ll forgive me.
…and just because I have them, here’s a picture of my team (team Dave — love Dave!) in last year’s race on the actual bridge crossing the Susquehanna.
…and here’s me with a different team three weeks ago pushing Caimile again, this time in the Charles Street 12 Miler — a race that goes past the original Washington Monument — which, as everyone knows, is in Baltimore.
This is my third year doing this — I’ve probably done a couple dozen of these by now — and I know I’ve said it before. But this is basically the funnest thing I do.
Harpers Ferry & Annoying People at the Kennedy Center
Speaking of charming, historic towns, Crystal, Ari, and I kicked off September with a quick Labor Day morning hop over to Harpers Ferry. We were joined there by Grant, Jen, and Jake (who I’m pretty sure had grown another inch in the three weeks since I’d seen him last and has to be at least 6-foot-7).
Visiting Harpers Ferry was once a Labor Day tradition for us. We used to meet what seemed like half the ward out there every year. The tradition died when certain families who were integral to it (Jenkins, Warner, other amazing military families who have come and gone over the nearly three decades we’ve been here — sometimes my memory conflates them) moved away. But now that the Jenkinses are back in town, we might have to start it up again.
(Harpers Ferry was also the setting for one of Luke’s and Sophie’s first dates together, so it has family historical significance.)
A week or so later we had the pleasure of experiencing part of the National Symphony Orchestra’s pops season when Ira, one of my running buddies who also happens to play in the orchestra, gave me tickets to a concert celebrating the legacy of John Williams and Steven Spielberg.
(I still count Ira among my running friends even though we almost never run together anymore. We used to run together all the time, but then, a year or two ago, he went and put in the work to get a lot faster, while I, well, didn’t. But we still occasionally bump into one another at the track and elsewhere, and he still hooks me up with orchestra tickets on the regular, so the relationship’s working out pretty well for me. I’m not sure what’s in it for Ira, but he’s a really swell guy!)
The concert was magnificent. We had a great time even though the clientele who turns out for a concert of music from Jaws, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Lincoln, E.T. and a half-dozen other movies differs somewhat from the clientele that shows up for Mozart and Mendelssohn.
The main observable difference between these two clienteles is that the people who turn out for Mozart and Mendelssohn are far less likely to pull out their phone in the middle of the performance and start video recording it.
If I thought about it for a minute, I could probably come up with a short list of human behaviors that I find more annoying than lighting up your phone and holding it up between me and a performance that I’m trying to watch. But I can’t immediately summon one. I have no idea what these morons are planning to do with the footage. I guess it’s understandable and excusable at a school performance with your kid in it. (It’s still annoying, but okay, fine, whatever, I get it.) But it’s absolutely unacceptable at a professional performance, and these people should have their devices confiscated and cast into the Potomac.
Fun concert, though!
Tales from Middle School
Crystal is now a month into the new school year, which means dinner conversations have gotten fun again! (If you’re new, Crystal teaches English, social skills and other things to middle school students with “high-functioning autism.” I think that’s what it’s called now — I can never remember how her students are officially classified. In another era, Crystal was called the “Asperger’s teacher,” but we don’t use that term anymore because the important people who name things prefer to retire terms once everybody has learned what they mean and replace them with new terms so that common folk (like me) are always one step behind.)
Whatever label one affixes to these children, they sound almost universally smart, sweet, innocent, and at least a little odd — the type of kids who would ordinarily get eaten alive in the cruel social grinder that is middle school. It’s nice they have this program to shield them from some of that.
This month I learned about a seventh grader who was late to Crystal’s English class because he’d gotten in trouble for throwing sand in another student’s eye during P.E. He meant no harm in this. In his matter-of-fact telling, he was just trying to help his team win whatever game they were playing and surmised that throwing sand in an opponent’s eye was a prudent strategy to that end. Upon learning that this “strategy” was not considered to be socially appropriate, he felt awful and immediately set about trying to find the boy so he could apologize. But he didn’t know the boy’s name and couldn’t find him, which only compounded his remorse and frustration. I gather that part of Crystal’s job is intervening before these little death spirals get out of control … so she can then teach them about dependent vs. independent clauses, subordinating conjunctions and relative pronouns.
And then there’s the student who barks (like a dog) at everyone they meet.
We never run out of things to talk about. Whenever the topics dry up, I just have to ask, “So what happened at school today?” and we’re set for almost any length car ride.
Happy fall!
Love,
Tim
Managing Editor of The Famlet Monthly
- If you’re not a close relative, I should probably clarify here that, however this might read, my 83-year-old father is still with us.
- It may have actually been more like 3 hours, and sometimes longer. The universal 55-MPH speed limits of much of my childhood, combined with the fact that I remember when they finally finished the I-95 Fort McHenry Tunnel through Baltimore (before that, everyone had to either take the I-895 crap-a-hoola Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, which it seems was always backed up, or the I-695 Key Bridge, which has been famously sitting at the bottom of the Patapsco River since early last year) meant that the drive from Philly to D.C. not only felt longer when I was a kid, it actually was longer.