Veeka graduates from high school; a major milestone for her
Veeka at a baccalaureate-style gathering at her high school just before graduation
Me (with injured foot), Veeka, Sean and Sarah Salai. Veeka later caught the bouquet.
With Veeka graduating this month from high school – followed a few days later by her first flight in 6 ½ years – June has been a banner month for us.
I wasn’t sure how the 90-minute flight to San Francisco, which we took to attend the wedding of Sean Salai - one of my friends from my Washington Times days - would go. It’d been years since Veeka had climbed aboard a plane and she’d taken up a whole host of anxiety-filled behaviors since then. I won’t go into certain traumatic incidents in public places but let’s just say I had reason to fear. But, thanks modern medicine, she did great, and that despite utter chaos at the Alaska Airlines luggage check-in counter where there were lines of people stranded because of two broken luggage belts. We were about to miss a flight, so we grabbed our suitcases and sent them through the TSA line, then raced down the departure hall to where folks were about to board.
Once in San Francisco, we stayed in the Richmond district which is in the western part of town between the Presidio and Golden Gate Park. It was a part of the city I didn’t know but I got to like it, as there was no crime or homeless folks that we could see, and the area was mainly residential. Our first day, we walked around the Presidio, enjoying the new Tunnel Tops Park and taking advantage of a shuttle bus that got us about. Our second day, we were entering Golden Gate Park when I stumbled on one of the sidewalks, my ankle twisted, and I fell onto the grass. Thinking I’d simply sprained my ankle, I got up and continued on, but the pain was surprisingly sharp and eventually we had to beg a local resident to drive us back to our lodging. The wedding was the following day – by then I’d rented a Lime scooter to get around – and the city’s notorious fog had started to lift, so we were less cold than we’d been since our plane landed. The ceremony was a lengthy Latin Nuptial Mass - can’t say I’ve ever attended one before - and although I could follow much of the beginning, I got lost at the Sanctus. I definitely couldn’t dance at the wedding, sadly, but Veeka caught the bride’s white rose bouquet, which was a lovely touch. And we met a guardian angel there named Annemarie. She drove us around the city that night and the following day – as the pain was getting worse - so we more sights in her car. One was Rosie the Riveter National Park across the bay, which was beyond fascinating as I’d known nothing about how the Bay Area shipyards had contributed to massively to the US war effort during World War II.
After we returned to Seattle, I learned that I’d broken a fifth metatarsal in my right foot which, roughly translated, means no hiking, biking, swimming or much of anything for many weeks. Many of my summer plans are shot, as I am on crutches and wearing a large boot.
Veeka in her halter-top prom dress
All this happened well after Veeka’s graduation and senior prom. For the latter, she wore a lavender halter-top dress we got at a seconds shop in Burien. She took a girlfriend named Abby, who attended a private Christian school that had no senior prom. I drove them both there and observed how odd proms are these days. Kids more often go in large groups; the girls gowned in expensive formals. There were some couples and some guys, but few people seemed to actually be dancing. Most were looking at their iPhones. The event was at the Museum of Pop Culture or MoPoP as we call it in Seattle.
That was on June 1, the same day her theater class put on a play that Veeka had a few lines in. This was with a group called the Theater of Possibility, a program that helps special-needs kids do drama. V had been working with this group since March, and trying to memorize lines for several weeks. It was the first play she had tried in nine years. Lauren, the coach, was great to work with and my daughter really enjoyed her Saturdays there.
Veeka (foreground) and Abby (standing) open gifts at the graduation tea at our church
On June 15, our church had a graduation tea for Veeka and Abby (the same friend who went to the prom) that was truly nice with flowers and gifts and speeches by myself and Abby’s mom that some members of our family were able to attend as well as women from the church. I didn’t have the means or room to throw a graduation party for Veeka, so I was grateful for this gathering.
Graduation itself was June 17 at T-Mobile Park downtown. What made the day really crazy is that I was hosting two Mongolian friends over the weekend, one of them being Yanjmaa Jutmaan, of whom I’d written my 2021 book Finding Joy: A Mongolian Woman’s Journey to Christ. It was translated into Mongolian this year! Veeka wasn’t graduating until 8 pm, so we all spent the day running around Seattle showing them the Space Needle and other touristy sights on what was unfortunately a rainy, dreary day. Veeka had a team of behavioral therapists with her for the evening and one of them accompanied her down to the stadium field where she walked across the stage to receive her diploma. They had practiced with her quite a bit for the event, as late nights and large crowds aren’t great settings for my daughter. Veeka did great, and she was so thrilled to be there, dressed in her purple mortarboard and gown and gold stole. One of the vice principals kindly took some photos of her from the stage and sent them to us. That helped mitigate my disappointment over the school leaving Veeka’s name off the graduation program, the only student, out of 400+ kids, to be omitted. I am in an ongoing argument with the school district about this, as they’ve said it was a mistake by the counseling office. So how did the name of only one special-needs kid just happen to get left off? No one will say. They reprinted two copies with her name inserted (which we got at the end of June) but they’ve refused (as of this writing on June 29) to email other seniors informing them of the error. I’ve told them that since the omission was public, they could at least publicly apologize. Nope.
I realize it’s been nearly a year since I last blogged. Back then, I’d just been laid off from Newsweek. Since then, my whole team has also lost their jobs. I dabbled in freelancing for The Free Press by writing this piece about the new craze in stargazing and this piece about the restored football coach in Bremerton. I did a bunch more pieces for the Seattle Times travel section including this guide on places to visit in the Columbia River Gorge and this piece on the Hells Canyon Scenic Byway, a 213-mile route around the Wallowa mountains in northeastern Oregon. Veeka and I spent a week wandering about the area, which I last visited in the early 1980s. Wallowa Lake is still lovely and crystal-clear; the mountains are Swiss-like; Hells Canyon is still a mile deep and this time we had a boat ride on the Snake River itself, which was fabulous. The jet boat tour company, Hells Canyon Adventures, was wonderful; they told us that it takes 2-3 years to train their pilots on how to ride the rapids. It was more than 100ºF out the day we were there, so we jumped in the river at every opportunity. And I got to try a bunch of nice hotels along the route.
Veeka and Yanjmaa
The latter, unfortunately, has become a bit of a sore point, as all of those hotels were paid for by the Oregon tourism folks, as there’s no way I could afford them out of my own pocket. Each year, I do a round-up of eight select lodges from around the Pacific Northwest for the Seattle Times. My latest, which came out last month, is here. However, the Times has told me they don’t want any more comped hotels in my reviews. I’ve told them I can’t do these annual round-ups of lovely lodges, most of which are $300/night and up, out of my own pocket, especially when travel writers are paid comparatively little to do these articles. I can’t say the matter is resolved at this point; when Veeka and I travel, we tend to stay as cheap as possible. Like in San Francisco, we stayed at a $50/night former convent next to the wedding venue. Veeka and I did stay in a lovely lodge over spring break (more on that in another post) but because it was comped, I can’t write it up for the Times. And placing articles with other outlets is becoming tougher each year; I’ve sent out a ton of pitches lately, and with only a few exceptions, it’s been radio silence from editors. I don’t know if the problem is A1 or the surplus of unemployed journalists or what. One editor - who I turned down - had paid me $400 for an article of a certain length seven years ago; when we talked recently, she wanted the same kind of piece but for $300. I pointed out to her that inflation has driven prices up and I wanted more money, not less. Take it or leave it, she said.
I would have blogged more last year but my mother unexpectedly had heart failure just before Labor Day weekend, so my brothers and I had to move her to assisted living pronto. This was fortunately within the same retirement complex where she lives but it meant emptying a 1,500-square-foot apartment full of things, some of which hadn’t been touched in 60 years. It lay mostly up to me to decide to fate of entire bedrooms, closets, piles of linens, towels, a whole kitchen, my dad’s business office, my parents’ books, the contents of the porch and storage closets – it was a three-month marathon with a Dec. 1 deadline. That last month, I did little else. None of the family wanted certain large items like the dining room table, so I had to find a reputable group that knew refugees who needed such things. One of my neighbors got his Mormon church friends to help me move a bunch of items to a storage bin I now have to rent. My now 96-year-old mom is doing fine, but now I know why all my friends take many months, if not years to go through their parents’ estates.
The whole family got together around her birthday last month to have a picnic for her, as she’s now 96. We are so glad she’s still with us.
