Today felt like a gift. As a teacher myself I know how powerful and intense student/teacher relationships can be, and I also understand that despite their intensity, many of them -- most of them, really -- fade over time. People remember many of their teachers fondly (I hope) but they don’t necessarily stay connected. But I’m thirty-five years old, and still. Still! One of the people I always want to see when I go home is one of the best high school teachers I ever had (I spoke about her in the interview, thirteen years ago, that landed me the teaching job I still have today), and so we remain connected, years later. I love Becky, and I love her daughters, who I babysat for a couple of summers after I graduated. They were younger than my own children are now when I spent my days with them. They were candelighters at my wedding. And now they’re adults, twenty and twenty-three years old. I had coffee with their mother last week in Bozeman, as I always try to do when I’m there, and she mentioned that she and the girls were heading to Seattle for a few days this week.
And that is how I wound up spending the day with them today. We met at the Woodland Park Zoo, and I brought Matt and the kids, and it was just delightful beyond words. I couldn’t believe how much they remember about the time we spent together -- they were so young! -- but I love that they do, because they were such a defining part of my summer days for awhile. I took them everywhere with me. I remember giving them piggy-back rides around downtown Bozeman, driving them in the backseat of my new car, taking them to ice cream, to the park, to the pool. When Matt and I took our children swimming at Bogart Park in Bozeman less than two weeks ago, I told him about taking these girls there, too. They really felt like family more than babysitting charges; I brought them out to my parents’ house all the time, and when we took my grandmother out for lunch on our way to Bozeman on our recent trip she asked about them because she remembers them, too.
“You trusted me so much,” I said to Becky today. “I just kind of took them everywhere I went.”
She shrugged. “I knew you,” she said.
Today I watched these two young women interact with each other in this beautifully sisterly way, still so different from each other, still so completely fabulous. I watched them play with my own children, which burst my heart in the very best way. And I thought about how strange time is, how these two little girls have become adults while I still feel so much like my eighteen-year-old self sometimes, how they have their own lives now, and how utterly lucky I am to be able to share this day with them. I think about how much their mother has meant to me for over half my life now. I think about the moment today at lunch when my two little children were both tugging on their arms, and I don’t even know what to call that, really. I could only smile and say, This is so great.
I didn’t forget about writing down three positive things each day for seven days; in fact, I scrawled them in a notebook on our trip, but I decided not to work to hard to post while we were on vacation. The internet break felt really, really healthy and necessary. But! I’m back now, so here are twelve good things.
Huckleberry riesling and huckleberry ice cream. Swimming in Lake McDonald, the way the cold water closed over my head when I finally worked up the nerve to plunge in, the view of the mountains when I resurfaced. Field roast and baked beans cooked over the fire. Falling asleep in our tent, curled around our children. Walking to Apgar Village in the cool dawn because Matt needed breakfast supplies, buying a hot chocolate, and returning to our campsite for pancakes and French press coffee. Driving across northern Montana, taking the wheel on the Chester road -- maybe one of my favorite quiet stretches of highway -- while my family dozed. The sunsets east of Shelby and just south of Great Falls. The first shower after camping. Showing my children the house I lived in when I was their age, driving them past my elementary school, my middle school. MacKenzie River Pizza (twice) and Leaf & Bean coffee (a bunch of times). Pickle Barrel sandwiches and huckleberry soda in the park. Swimming at Bogart in the afternoon heat and in the rain. Hiking to Emerald Lake and Heather Lake and Grotto Falls. Losing my sunglasses, and finding them again next to a rock where I’d stopped to rest and adjust my boots. Running along the highway with a view of the Bridger mountains. My dad’s famous popcorn in his ancient popcorn popper. Date night at Over the Tapas: poached pear salad, goat cheese croquettes, grilled asparagus, and vegetable Wellingtons (which I told Matt were the best thing I’d ever tasted). The trout aquarium at the St. Regis travel center. Homemade huckleberry scones. A cute neighborhood pub in Coeur d’Alene. Watching my son break into a grin on the carousel at Riverfront Park in Spokane, especially after he thought it would be too scary. The way our house smells when we return to it after a vacation -- like home.
Is that more than twelve? I stopped counting. They are all small, simple things, but they are the things I remember most. The small things make me appreciate the big things: my family and this time we had together.
At our campsite at Glacier, Suzannah turned to me and said, “Four things made this a perfect day. First, we got to ride the shuttle to Logan Pass. Then, we had ice cream, and then we played in the lake, and then we had s’mores. When you get four things like that it’s a great day.” Later, as we enjoyed our dinner, she said, “Ahh. Milk and a fire. Perfect.” Indeed, this is how my children bless me every day. They remind me to be present, right here, in the simple joys of our lives. Perfection is found in these small moments: in ice cream, in jumping into a lake, in a chocolatey mouthful of dessert roasted over a fire.
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