By Sally Torbey
E-mail Sally Torbey
About this blog: About this blog: I have enjoyed parenting five children in Palo Alto for the past two decades and have opinions about everything to do with parenting kids (and dogs). The goal of my blog is to share the good times and discuss the ...
(More)About this blog: About this blog: I have enjoyed parenting five children in Palo Alto for the past two decades and have opinions about everything to do with parenting kids (and dogs). The goal of my blog is to share the good times and discuss the challenges of having a satisfying family life in a community where parents set a high bar for themselves, their children, and the schools and organizations that educate and socialize them. I grew up in the Midwest, attended a small liberal arts college on the East Coast and graduated from medical school in Chicago. I left a pediatric residency to care for our then infant son and spent the next dozen years contentedly gestating and lactating while having four more children. My husband grew up in the Middle East, came to the US for graduate school and works in high tech. Our eldest son graduated from a UC, and after working in the Middle East for a few years, now attends law school in NYC. Our eldest daughter graduated from a Midwestern Big Ten University and is a journalist in Texas. Our middle child studies engineering at a UC. The youngest two girls are in middle and high school in PAUSD. We are celebrating 20 years as PAUSD parents! I volunteer in the public schools, our church, and scouting.
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My birthday last week was extraordinarily long and extra special as well. We traveled back from our week-long trip to Lebanon on my birthday, so with the 10 hour time change, we had a few extra hours to celebrate!
We spent the day touring the mountains above Beirut, and enjoying an amazing lunch in a seafood restaurant in a snowy village. An alpine village seems an unusual locale for seafood, but in Lebanon, the Mediterranean Sea is never more than a few hours away. It is a short drive down the mountain for the chef to purchase the daily fresh catch. From the village, we had a magnificent view of the coast and the sparkling sea to the west, and the white mountain peaks to the east. I was surprised with a cake and candles, which we somehow managed to consume even after a multi-course lunch!
Second only to eating and socializing, our favorite activity in Lebanon is hiking. Our friends guided us on a hike down a valley to see ruins of a picturesque centuries-old bridge and mill along a rushing river, complete with a shepherd and his small son calling and herding their grazing sheep.
We also visited a site high on a mountain peak with a 360-degree view of mountains, valleys and the sea. A refurbished home perches there, atop many layers of civilization in unexcavated ruins. Our friends, the architects who restored the house, pointed out to us how the rocky outcroppings around the property had been “worked” and carved, evidence that we were likely walking on the remains of an ancient millennia-old pagan temple. Later, the temple stones were repurposed as a church. In a cave dug into the rock, we saw brightly colored 6th century frescoes of biblical images. The property also had a tilled olive grove with fragments of painted pottery. All of this attesting to the thousands of years the land has been occupied. One feels a connection to the countless generations of people who have sought out the spiritual experience of the site’s awe-inspiring view.
It was a birthday I will long remember!
