If I can, I choose sweet

It is late afternoon, late in August. The day is overcast and the air feels cool. I'm listening to the sound of my children destroying their markers by coloring roughly over a long cardboard box that, two days ago, contained all the pieces for the bookshelf that was assembled (by Matt) and filled/organized (by me) on Sunday night. I should probably tell them that their frenetic scribbling will smoosh the tops of those markers right down, dry them out, and otherwise wreck them, but they are having so much fun "decorating" together that I can't find it in me to be too bothered. This is a favorite game of theirs. They will scribble and scribble and scribble until the box is completely colored in, and then it will become a fort of some sort, and I will tolerate it until I can't anymore. I might be able to let this one go until the weekend; Saturday mornings are good for building structures out of cardboard, our dining room chairs, couch cushions, and some blankets. But this box is too long for me to allow it to take up half of my living room for more than a few days.

My children are talking to each other and mostly cooperating, but my house seems quiet all the same. It's the gray of the afternoon, the quiet that seems to fall over my neighborhood on such days. It's a cozy little prelude to fall.

There comes a moment late in August when I feel a palpable shift from something like Sunday afternoon anxiety to something else -- a combination of optimism and excitement and anticipation of September, the beginning of fall, my favorite season. Maybe it's just that I love the turning of the seasons, and that's why at some point I stop mourning the end of summer and look forward to what comes next. It's a peaceful sort of resignation, I guess. We had a perfect summer, really, full of outdoor play and sunshine-filled weekends and a fabulous family vacation. I read a lot of books and ran a lot of miles. My children are lean and tan. So it's not at all that I wouldn't want to prolong that; the end of summer is always a little bittersweet. It's just -- you know, nothing gold can stay and all that, and I feel like choosing to be all grumpy about the end of summer is only going to make these last days more bitter than sweet. If I can, I choose sweet.

I wrote this last year:

September is nothing like Monday. September is golden, optimistic, hopeful. September is warmth and crunchy fall leaves and the transition from shorts to sweatshirts. September is a huge box of markers my students haven't yet ruined, it's new shoes, it's stacks of crisp white paper. September is kids who haven't grown too comfortable or too complacent yet. September is settling into a rhythm that hasn't yet become routine, hasn't yet become drudgery. September is falling in love with my life all over again, the way I do every autumn even when I am stressed and overwhelmed and seriously doubting my own competency.

Yesterday, I opened a card from my mother and read this: I'm thinking of you as you get back into the routine & anticipate the start of school, the delight at a fresh start & fresh materials to work with -- blank pages, sharp pencils and crayons, new pens -- enjoy it all!

I'm grateful to have people in my life (my mother, my children, the teacher friends who return to this job again and again with energy and hope instead of grumbling) who know how to tap into this simple joy and encourage me to do the same. It carries me through the first weeks of the school year. And it is sweet.

Home again, home again...

On Sunday night -- well, really, Monday morning, well after midnight -- I signed online, unable to settle into sleep. It's like that, at the end of a road trip. We'd tried to make the last day of our vacation an easy one, going as far as Spokane on Saturday night. Before we had children, we never would have considered splitting the drive from Bozeman to Seattle into two days, nor would we consider such a thing at the beginning of the trip, all anticipation and eagerness to put in as many miles as possible. But after nearly two weeks of travel, from Washington to Montana to Canada back to Montana, after a couple of colds, after a trip through Glacier National Park and a day in Yellowstone, we thought a nice hotel room halfway on the last day, in a city we enjoy, would be a nice way to stave off post-vacation blues and prevent total meltdown from one or more members of the family.

And it was great, really, a total luxury to sleep in on Saturday morning and then go for a four-mile run with a view of the mountains and then pack and then enjoy a nice lunch with my parents and then hit the road only to stop in time for dinner and a semi-reasonable bedtime. Suzannah snuggled into her bed in the hotel and fell asleep on her own. Isaac willingly went to bed in his pack-n-play (which is a Big Deal; he started the first few nights in bed with me, and my sweet son does love to snuggle but sleeps like a pinball, so if I was hoping for a cozy little temporary return to co-sleeping -- which I was -- I was in for a rude little surprise, plus some happily kicking feet right in the kidneys). Matt brought me a drink from the hotel bar, and we stretched out and read our books in the peace and quiet.

I'll just gloss over the part about how when we arrived at our hotel, after trying unsuccessfully to use our room key like a thousand times and then having it reprogrammed twice (or whatever they do with those dumb little cards) and then having some maintenance guy up to the room, we learned that the main reason none of us could get inside was that it was actually occupied already. We learned this because when the maintenance guy finally got into the room, a pissy voice called out, "Someone's in here, dude." So he called down to the front desk, and they insisted that the room was still assigned to us.

"Well, that's interesting," the maintenance guy said. "I wonder who's in there, then. Either they made a mistake, or someone scooted in there after housekeeping finished up and locked it. They do that sometimes. We've had guys try to make off with a coupla TV's." We were led to a new (unoccupied!) room and given vouchers for free breakfasts in the restaurant for our trouble.

We had all these ambitious ideas about heading out early the next day, but we lingered over our awesome free breakfast -- Matt really rocked the huckleberry pancakes -- and took the kids swimming in the pool so Suzannah could get just a little more mileage out of her new Spiderman kickboard. (She has come a long way in her swimming this summer, and this mama is proud. And Isaac just loves the water, loves to be tossed, loves to jump into it without bothering to look and see if we're actually ready to catch him. Little Dude will be in real swimming lessons next summer, for sure.) After we checked out of our hotel, we stopped for a quick visit to Riverfront Park because we cannot pass up the carousel. And as it turns out, we cannot pass up the Riverfront Rotary Fountain either, especially when it is at least two hundred degrees at noon.

We didn't leave Spokane until three o'clock in the afternoon. The kids, post-splashing and post-lunch (where there may or may not have been some overtired whining and one almost-tantrum) were passed out in the back before we'd finished filling the car with gas. Matt turned to me and said, "I'm just gonna drive until I need gas again, is that cool?"

Crazy weekend traffic just west of Ellensburg added probably an hour to our drive time, but Matt didn't stop until we were nearly home, and then only because we needed a few grocery essentials so we could at least get through breakfast the next morning. I didn't stretch my legs until I climbed out of the car in my own driveway.

I can't describe how much I love the smell of my house after we've been gone awhile. Every time we return from someplace -- not an afternoon away, but a real trip -- the smell of our house reminds me that coming home is awfully sweet.

That feeling lasts for about five minutes. Then the study fills up with luggage and the previously clear kitchen counter fills up with everything that was in the cooler and our snack bags, and I begin to despair about the state of the back seat of the car and its handfuls of crumbs. I am too tired to unpack, but no way can I leave the suitcases until morning, so somehow, in between getting the kids in the pajamas and putting together a late-night supper, I put all their clothes away and stash their suitcases. I unload the duffle bag with Isaac's blankies and Twilight Turtle and Suzannah's Twilight Ladybug and all the sunscreen and beach towels and extra diapers and Suzannah's kickboard. Somehow, I kept putting things away but the house still seemed to be strewn with stuff. So much stuff. (I have never, ever been able to go to sleep after a trip until I've unpacked at least most of everything and put it away.)

And then the blues set in. I wasn't quite ready to let go of this vacation -- I hadn't really felt quite ready to drive out of Montana the day before. I had a really gross sinus infection for a good part of this trip, but in almost every other important way it was a really healthy time for me. I stayed off Facebook entirely (good grief, I seriously need to do that more often) and only logged in to my e-mail three times in twelve days, because the thought of tons and tons of messages just piling up in my inbox made me a little nuts. I connected with people I love a lot, people I don't see often. I filled my lungs with the best air in the world, I dipped my toes in my favorite mountain lake, I went for solitary runs along quiet highways, I watched my children experience Old Faithful for the first time, I saw once again how loved and lucky we are, I had a long-overdue date night with my husband, I read good books. My cup was filled.

It's always a little strange, trying to settle back into normal. Especially late at night, with remnants of our trip sort of scattered all over the house, when I'm still feeling a slightly sticky layer of sunscreen on my skin, applied in a different city. When I've slept awkwardly against a car window and gotten a little carsick trying to read as we wound around over the pass.

So I was just sort of puttering around, unable to settle down and relax. I signed online, frittered around there for awhile. Glanced at the news. Learned that conditions were perfect for viewing a meteor shower after midnight.

I grabbed Matt's hand and said, "You have to come outside with me." And that's how we found ourselves lying on our backs on our rotting old (soon to be replaced) deck in the middle of the night, gazing up at the stars. Our neighborhood is quiet, but I could hear soft laughter from a few streets away; I wondered if people were out there with the same idea.

I tried not to think about spiders in my hair as my eyes adjusted to the night, and then I wondered why I don't spend more time lying on my back on my rotting old deck gazing up at the stars. It wasn't quite the same as appreciating the stars under a wide-open sky in the mountains of Montana, of course, but it was its own wonderful thing, framed by the outlines of the huge trees at the edges of our yard. And after a moment, I saw the first meteor, streaking across the inky sky.

We didn't stay outside long. We watched a handful of those meteors, those sudden little blazes of light, there and then gone. And then I sat up, rubbing my bare arms, kissed my husband, and went inside. Sometimes all it takes to beat the post-vacation blues is to notice something wonderful quite literally in my own backyard.