Vol. 24, No. 9

We don’t get out that much. We’re not agoraphobic; it’s just that when we contemplate going to things, the thought of having to get there, find parking, and deal with all the vagaries and uncertainties of downtown just seems exhausting. Consequently, we often succumb to inertia and are content staying home and watching TV. We had this tendency pre-covid, too, but the pandemic seems to have baked it in.

(My use of plural pronouns in the preceding paragraph is not entirely appropriate, but projecting my personal neuroses onto Crystal makes me feel better about them.)

For reasons I do not entirely understand, my outlook changes somewhat when people offer us free tickets to things. The thought of actually getting there still gives me gas, but something about the kindness of the gesture and a relatively low-risk proposition of doing something fun reminds me (however briefly) that I actually tend to enjoy going out once we’ve managed to find a parking spot that’s, you know, less than a mile from the venue.

These offers do not come our way all the time, but we somehow managed to have two of them in the past month.

The first was four weeks ago when a friend from church called to tell me he had tickets the following night he couldn’t use to a show called The Good Liar. I initially wasn’t sure I wanted to go (see opening paragraph) and actually explained these misgivings to my friend. (Ever one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I think I actually told him it sounded “exhausting.”) But he convinced me to take the tickets and I’m glad he did. I wound up having a really fun time with Crystal and maybe three dozen other people in a smallish conference room in the Capital Hilton¹ at what amounted to a cool little interactive magic show. The performance was a hidden gem that I never would have even known about and never would have thought I’d enjoy even if I had known about it. But because someone offered us free tickets…

The second one was this past Friday when an old friend from church (who probably hasn’t lived here in over a decade) messaged us that her sister-in-law had tickets she couldn’t use to Nate Bargatze at DAR Constitution Hall that night and asked if we’d like them.

I Googled “Nate Bargatze” so I could pretend to have heard of him, verified Crystal’s availability, and replied that of course we’d love to go. My expressed interest in going was 100% genuine despite the fact that there is precisely nothing I like about Constitution Hall (apart from how it looks — it looks nice). It doesn’t help that the previous half-dozen events I’d attended there were all graduation ceremonies, which are pure torture no matter their location (so I can’t really blame Constitution Hall for that). The theater has good sight lines but the seats are uncomfortable and, worst of all, it holds 3,700 people and has no parking whatsoever.

We eventually found an open garage a little north of Pennsylvania Avenue and hoofed it all the way down 18th Street alongside a mass of humanity the likes of which I had not been a part of since covid. (Turns out this Nate Bargatze guy is quite popular.) Masks were required inside (indoor masking is required virtually everywhere around here) but the place was so packed by the time Nate came out, I can’t imagine they actually did much good. (Maryland, D.C., and Virginia all have pretty good vaccination rates, which hopefully helped.)

It was the first stand-up comedy act I’d attended in I can’t remember how long and my first ever in such a big room. He’s really funny — though I can’t say he’s any funnier in person than on Netflix, where you can actually see his face. But I’m glad we had the chance to go and happy to report that I am gradually rediscovering some of the pleasures of going out just for the sake of going out.

So anyway, if you have any tickets you’re looking to offload, don’t go through the hassle of selling them on SeatGeek. Just give them to us. We’ll happily fill your seats for you.

Crystal’s first month of working by day and going to school by night went pretty well. A new school year means she has a whole new crop of amusing tales about her sweet little autistic middle schoolers with which to regale us. As for her coursework at Hopkins, most of her Saturdays are now largely devoted to studying alone. Jen invited Crystal to join her study group, and so she also spends a couple of evenings each week on Zoom with them. She attends class in person every Tuesday night, which she has actually described as “fun.” Everything seems to be working okay for now.

Crystal also continues to serve as our stake’s communication director. She enjoys that work, too, even though she struggles to find the time to do all the things she thinks she should be doing. Her responsibilities include being the point person for all our interfaith involvement. Consequently, she had the privilege of being one of our church’s delegates to some big multi-denominational service in Prince George’s County earlier this month at which all in attendance were invited to unite their hearts and voices in fervent prayer to bring an end to the “Five Evils” plaguing our world.

What are the Five Evils? Well, I’m glad you asked. According to something called the “Poor People’s Campaign,” the Five Evils are: 1) Systemic racism, 2) Poverty, 3) Militarism and the war economy, 4) Ecological devastation, and 5) The distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism. It’s quite an ambitious list, and these people clearly have greater confidence in the efficacy of prayer than I. But if you happened to notice any of those things getting better during the past few weeks, now you know why.

Grace is gradually getting the hang of driving. She got her learner’s permit back in January, but it’s only in the past month or so that she and I have spent any significant time practicing. I thought things were going reasonably well until last week when she texted me this:

It’s pretty spot on. I don’t think I actually yell all that much, but Grace can usually discern the urgency in my voice when I point out as calmly as I can that she’s about to take out a mailbox or sideswipe a line of parked cars. It’s that urgency (sometimes followed by “okay now stop…….I said Stop!…….STOP!!!”) that usually triggers the crying. But she doesn’t cry every time she drives with me — just most times.

I think Grace is happy to be back in school. She claims early-morning seminary is her favorite part of the day, which makes me happy, and has probably attended more football games this month than any of her older siblings have in their lives.

Sadly, in all those games I don’t think Grace has seen her beloved Northwood Gladiators score a single point. She considered it a moral victory when they “only” lost 30-0 to Blair (the arch-rival school where Hannah went, literally a mile away on the same street) because two weeks earlier they had lost 60-0 to Blake (where most of Grace’s local cousins go). In between those two nail-biters, Northwood managed to get on the scoreboard against Wheaton, losing 54-6, but that was an away game and Grace did not go.

Last week, Grace went to homecoming with three friends. After watching the football team lose a squeaker to Kennedy, 36-0 (“It’s always something to zero,” one of Grace’s friends explained to me) they attended the dance on Saturday, which, owing to the pandemic, was held outside from 4 to 8 p.m. in a corner of the school parking lot.

I golfed with some work colleagues on Saturday afternoon at Whiskey Creek (great course with breathtaking views — five stars — highly recommend). While unwinding on the clubhouse terrace after our round, a group of formally attired high school students pulled up to pose for photos behind the 18th green. Presumably they were on their way to homecoming somewhere and had stopped at the course to take advantage of the splendid natural backdrop.

I only mention this because it reminded me that I also had a child attending homecoming that evening and that we had taken a grand total of zero pictures. Fortunately, Grace took about a million selfies. Here are a few:

Grace is also neck-deep in rehearsals for the fall musical. Remind me to write more about that next month.

Sophie learned yesterday that she will be departing for Ukraine on October 7th. I have no further details but we are excited for her.

She seems to have enjoyed most things about her first month of missionary-ing in and around Pullman, Washington. She is assigned to a YSA ward that meets 15 minutes away in Moscow, Idaho, which sounds like a place where she would be able to practice her Russian, but alas… . Being able to see and speak with her every week makes it a lot easier to be a parent than it was when Hannah was a missionary. It also affords a somewhat more granular and unvarnished view of how things are really going. This does not always come across in letters, which sometimes get sanitized when written for broad distribution. Having her three hours behind us makes finding time for the weekly calls really easy. I suspect it will become more complicated when she is eight hours ahead of us.

Notwithstanding what I wrote in the previous paragraph, Sophie’s weekly letters are a delight and remain the best way of keeping tabs on what she is up to. If you are not on the distribution and would like to be, send us your email address. If you’d like to communicate with her directly, you can at sophia.willis@missionary.org

Lucy and I are the only people at home a lot of the time these days. Lucy returned to Montgomery College (virtually) this month to take a writing class, which they enjoy, and pre-calculus, which they do not. Lucy remains interested in pursuing a career working with animals, and their goals now include a bachelor’s degree in zoology. In what I suppose could amount to a zoology internship, Lucy continues to hold down a job hosting and seating people who come to eat various dead creatures at the Aspen Hill Outback Steakhouse.

September marked the glorious return (after getting canceled in 2020 for some reason) of the Civil War Century, an annual 103-mile bike ride through the Blue Ridge Mountains and battlefields of Maryland and Pennsylvania. The ride is becoming something of a tradition for Grant, Andrew, and me (I don’t see myself ever doing it without my brothers) and we took it on again this year even though none of us is exactly at peak cycling fitness right now. We got through the 7,200 feet of climbing but some of the hills that I barely noticed in 2018 and 2019 (when I was fitter) had me gearing w-a-y down this year. One of the ride’s signature climbs — an ascent of South Mountain, where the gradient over last two miles averages 7% and reaches the mid-teens in places — took me two and a half minutes longer this year than in 2019. I was pedaling as hard as I could just to avoid losing sight of Andrew. I succeeded in that but thought it would never end.

South Mountain was the site of a pivotal 1862 Union victory — a few days before the Battle of Antietam (at mile 36 of the 103-mile ride) and about a year before the Battle of Gettysburg (mile 82). I would not have made a good soldier (I complain too much) and so getting over South Mountain (and over Catoctin Mountain some 50 miles earlier) is probably as close as I’ll ever feel to winning a battle.

As evidence of this, I give you what shall henceforth be known as the Battle of Redneck Hill (or, if that offends you, the Battle of Dog Hill):

The steepest hill on the entire ride comes about 18 miles in. It’s only about a quarter-mile long and Strava puts the average gradient at 11% but I think that’s wrong — it’s worse than that. It’s one of those hills where near-maximum effort is required simply to maintain enough forward momentum to keep the bike from tipping over — the kind of road where you sometimes see cyclists zigzagging to take out some of the steepness.

The universe clearly thought the hill was not taxing me sufficiently because about two-thirds of the way up I started to hear angry shouting from a nearby house. I could not immediately understand what the shouting was about, but it quickly became clear that it was being directed at two large, scary-looking dogs that I could now see running across the yard and alongside the road. I began feeling some anxiety as the dogs entered the roadway and my anxiety turned to terror and panic as both dogs darted directly at me and began jumping on my legs, which were busy trying to pedal up this impossibly steep hill.

I reacted to this — in my typical, measured way — by swearing loudly and repeatedly, which for some reason did not help. Since that was really the only arrow in my quiver, and since the pitch of the road had me maxing out at a little over 4 miles per hour, there was no escaping the situation and I had little choice but to unclip, dismount, and try using my bike to fend off the dogs the way a lion tamer uses a chair. (If only I had a whip…)

The dogs continued jumping at me until a lady in a bathrobe emerged from one of the houses and joined in the chorus of yokels yelling at them to come home. Hers seemed to be the voice they ultimately responded to and I managed to escape injury. The road was too steep at that point for me to get started again, and so I had to walk my bike up the last bit of the hill. Few things are more humiliating than to be seen by other cyclists walking your bike up a hill. Part of me would rather have crashed. I made sure to announce to everyone passing me that I was only walking “because those damn dogs back there knocked me off my bike!” (which wasn’t exactly true, but I didn’t have time to tell the whole story).

Andrew tells this story better than I do, mostly because he’s better at mimicking the Appalachian accents of the people involved. The only things missing from this otherwise perfect Jeff Foxworthy stereotype would be for the dogs’ owners to be named Cletus and Darlene, someone firing a shotgun in the air, and a giant “Trump 2024” flag in the front yard.

I very much cherish biking with my brothers. It’s something I’m truly grateful to be able to do.

I hope you are finding time to do things that make you similarly happy!

Love, Tim

1. The Capital Hilton is the one that’s a couple blocks from the White House, not to be confused with the Washington Hilton (near Dupont Circle) where Reagan was shot.