37 is pretty great so far

I think it was last night, driving home from pizza -- or maybe the night before, driving home from our bookstore excursion, followed by dinner at Veggie Grill -- when my son dropped his shoes to the floor of the car, peeled off his socks, and stretched his bare toes towards us.

"Ugh, I actually smell feet," Matt said.

Without missing a beat, Isaac hollered gleefully, "Smell them! Smell them as much as you can. Put your nose right on them."

This afternoon, Matt headed into the mountains for a little cross-country skiing. The kids and I went to lunch at Marlene's, a Natural Foods market and deli we love. Because it is Suzannah's 9 and 3/4 birthday (Harry Potter fans will appreciate that) and also because why not, we shared a little special dessert. Downstairs, I picked up a few last-minute ingredients for dinner: a few avocados and some enchilada sauce. Isaac carefully lifted the jars into the basket for me, and Suzannah made dramatic gagging noises.

"Can we please work on your rudeness, Child?" I said. "Have you ever even tasted green enchilada sauce?"

"Yeah, Zannah," Isaac chimed in. "You won't know if you like something until you try it."

"Isaac, don't be the mom," his big sister replied.

"He's right, though," I said.

"Yeah, but you always tell me not to be the mom."

She is also right.

Tonight, Matt told me that Isaac quoted me at breakfast, too. He'd picked up donuts for the kids, a rare Sunday treat (oh, so much sugar today) and there might have been a bit too much examination of who had more donut, or frosting, or whatever, and Isaac said something about how we don't measure our lives in fairness or bites of food or something. I didn't hear it. But I'm always telling the kids that the only reason they should be checking out what someone else has is to make sure they have enough, not to whine about what they think they should have.

(I guess what I'm saying is that I'm grateful for all of these little moments and I want to remember them. And I have enough.)

My birthday was on Friday, and following the little tradition I've established for myself for the past two years (since my children outgrew the toddler stage of catching every single winter bug and passing it through our family, which means I'm not using up all of my wellness leave at work), I took the day off. I've called in exactly once this year, and that was to stay home with a sick kiddo, so I felt no guilt about this. I had a perfect day. Truly. It went like this: I slept in until 7:00, drank my coffee, opened cards from my family, dropped off the kids at school, and then went for a four-mile run in the sunshine. February is almost always full of beautiful days here; we forget this in November when it's rainy and blustery, but February means the first breath of spring, the first cherry blossoms, the first revving lawn mowers. I walked up my street in the morning quiet and thought about how much I love our little house in this neighborhood, the one we stumbled into back in 2003. The air smelled like heaven and the birds were singing. I have several different routes mapped out, depending on how far or how long I want to run; I can squeeze in a quick 30 minutes before I pick up the kids sometimes, or I can do two longer loops that never take me far from my house but that will make me run a total of 3.6 miles, or I can go on a longer four-mile loop...I had all the time in the world on Friday, and the morning was crisp and bright. I jogged the four miles, breathing the scent of fresh mud and blossoms and leaves. I felt both in the world and in my head: traffic pulsed around me when I turned onto busier streets, but mostly I was just moving to the music Matt downloaded to my phone, and feeling really, really good.

After I showered I met Kyanne at one of my favorite coffee shops. She didn't quite make it to work either, since we'd both attended "Short Takes: The World of Emily Dickinson" at ACT Theater on Thursday night (so fun!), and it was clearly unreasonable to expect us to go to work the next day (because we went out for dessert afterwards and we are not twenty-one anymore). And then we ate lunch at the Rosewood Cafe, and they had my very favorite salmon chowder that makes me just so deeply happy to be alive in the world, and also I had a glass of wine, of course, because normally my weekday lunches have to happen in fifteen minutes if I also want time to pee before my last class of the day.

After lunch I walked around for a long time by myself, just meandering through the streets of Tacoma, noticing the cherry blossoms falling over the sidewalks (my very favorite sign of spring), gazing at Puget Sound, and feeling so lucky that these things are part of my beautiful, everyday life if I simply pause to see them. By mid-afternoon the clouds had settled in over the sound, and the air was so still. I walked, just to breathe the air, just to look at the water, just to move by myself in the world for awhile and think, until I had to drive back home to pick up the kids. By then, the first fat splatters of rain hit my windshield. By the time the kids and I left for Seattle to meet Matt at the Elliott Bay Book Company, we were caught in a full downpour. The drive took an hour, far longer than usual, but my son fell asleep almost immediately and slept the entire way. Suzannah stared pensively out the window, and I listened to music.

Matt was waiting when I pulled into the parking lot across the street from the bookstore, paying for my parking before I could unload the kids. He read with them in the children's section while I browsed and made my little stack, and he added chocolate when I carried my books to the register. We ate a cozy dinner at Veggie Grill, by no means a fancy restaurant but one of my favorites anyway.

I could do this every year, just to be reminded that simple things make me so happy.

I've said to Matt a few times over the years that when I get to age _____ he should really throw me a party, that we should invite a bunch of people and make it a thing. But I think I'm done pretending I want that, because here's the truth: I am really bad at parties. I don't want them for myself. When I attend other people's parties I usually have a good time once I get there, because I make sure I know someone there and am therefore safe, but I have to really talk myself into going and will do almost anything to get out of them. I fully admit that I want to be included, but I'm just not good at them. I suspect I wouldn't be any good at my own party, either. I've basically designed my own introvert's birthday dream, and maybe I should just go with that. For an entire day I felt so deeply content I couldn't imagine wanting anything other than exactly what I have.

The serenity didn't last, of course, because then other things happened this weekend: I read the news, I read an upsetting Facebook post, Donald Trump still exists in the real world and not just in my nightmares, Isaac was horrifically grumpy last night, I overreacted to something at dinner, I didn't get the vacuuming done. As a result, I found myself in a cloudier headspace this morning, and I wrote an entire blog entry in my head about all of that. But I'm saving that for later and posting this instead, because as the day winds down, somehow, miraculously, even though it is Sunday night and I am often given to the Sunday Blues, my little family brings me back to where I should be: in this cozy house in our little corner of the world, where we smell trees and water, where I know these streets. Where I will tuck my children into bed soon, and one will protest that I'm kissing her too much and one will say something like, "I love you, Mommy, and I am going to eat off your head." Where I will brew a cup of tea and read more of Anna Karenina and engage in a little good-natured trash talk with the other adult in this house about who will finish their big fat Russian novel first. (Shari and Tolstoy are definitely winning against Matt and Dostoyevsky, if anyone cares to keep track.) Where I am content to be exactly where I am.

It has been...a day.

Something I'm trying for 2016: For one week out of every month, I'm not reading Facebook at all. Taking a break from the noise is, I've come to realize, pretty essential for my mental health. I miss things, of course. I miss big announcements. I miss birthdays. I miss delightful little snapshots of people's lives, which is the sort of thing I enjoy posting myself. But I also get to pass on SHARE IF YOU AGREE and people making Big Fat Points. I get to pass on getting sucked into the comments of just about any article. I get to pass on scrolling mindlessly through my screen, the Facebook screen that never ends, only to say, "I've just spent forty minutes of my life reading what?" I get to pass on the things people will say when they can hide behind a computer screen. I don't miss that.

Tonight is the beginning of my seven days, because I've had it.

I actually had kind of a great day today; I'm not sure I can articulate this in a way that makes real sense, but I was stressed yet thriving within that. I felt engaged in the work I was doing, because it felt meaningful. I coordinated meetings and rounded up students and reached out to some really fabulous professional contacts and they responded to me, which made me literally squeal with delight in the middle of the computer lab where I was tapping away at an e-mail while simultaneously chatting with two seniors girls about books during Advisory because I am that much of a nerd. I taught some classes and really enjoyed them. (Sometimes I really do just consciously decide to enjoy my classes, to play, to have fun, especially if the previous class was frustrating or annoying. Because I know I set the tone of my class, most of the time; it's not unlike setting the tone for my own home. Sometimes I can't hide my frustration. Sometimes Mama gets mad. But sometimes I have to remind myself that it's Friday for teenagers, too, and if I can laugh with them everyone is going to have a better day.) And then things happened. Life happened. The world intruded on my little bubble, I guess.

What upsets me tonight is the way the media tells tiny pieces of a story, and people fill in the blanks on their own, informed by their own fears and biases. People forget their own humanity and look for someone to blame when they're hurting or afraid. (Take your pick: Obama? Those gun control freaks? Liberals? School districts? Parents?) I sat at my computer this afternoon and thought that by this evening I'll be reading comments about public school, about "those" kids, about "That's why I_________," about bad parents, about "kids these days," about why didn't the school ___________ and why didn't the district _____________ and I will feel the need to defend my choice not only to serve THOSE kids in THAT school but to send my own children to public school in this very district, with teachers like me who believe passionately in what we do, in where we choose to do it, and who ALSO FIND THIS REALLY FUCKING HARD SOMETIMES.

I'm just tired. I'm so tired. What's sad is that I can already anticipate the exact tone-deaf comments I'll read or hear, and I'm irritated and even angry in advance. I'm investing emotional energy in something that hasn't happened yet--because it has happened, again and again, and I'm sorry, I know this makes me sound like a martyr, and sometimes I'm too sensitive, but dammit. Dammit. I'm tired of it. So this is the night I start my monthly week-long Facebook hiatus, and I pray that my real-life friends who aren't teachers can trust me when I say there are layers to this, and they're all heartbreaking. That railing against the schools, or against parents, is toxic and unhelpful. I don't know what helps. Maybe nothing. Maybe hope. Maybe prayer. For now, I'll try those. For now, I'll hunker down on this Friday night with my children in their jammies, and I will believe that we have more to gain than we have to lose by doing exactly what we're doing: choosing to stay. Choosing to be challenged. Choosing to do the work we're called to do, where we're at.

Shifting towards spring

Somehow, Matt and I managed to produce a child who not only enjoys football but who can sit and watch a game without us, stay interested, and understand what's going on. Were it not for Suzannah, I might have forgotten about the Super Bowl. I've written a couple of blog entries about football but that's because I like the Seahawks, and yes, I suppose I am one of those fans, the not-real ones, because I mostly just don't give the remotest of craps about football but I do love our Seahawks--mostly for reasons that don't even have a lot to do with football, although watching some of them do these amazing things on the field is kind of a beautiful thing. (I learned some stuff--really all I think I strictly need to know about football--from Friday Night Lights.) Anyway, the Seahawks aren't in the Super Bowl this year, so when Suzannah asked me if we were doing some sort of Super Bowl party and received a blank stare in return, her disappointment drove us to the grocery store to procure root beer and Cheetos, which, to my daughter, is apparently a special treat.

So I'm writing this at my dining room table while my children watch football. They've been totally absorbed in the game all by themselves for over an hour and a half now. I don't understand this at all; even when the Seahawks did make it to the Super Bowl, I spent the game cheering when the other people's screams led me to understand I should also be screaming, but mostly I lingered by the snack table and wondered if I could manage to read a few pages of my book if I did it subtly in the corner.

Matt is off running in Dash Point State Park. It is a beautiful, sunny day which is turning into a lovely early evening, with soft light falling across the backyard. Our lawn, after eight weeks of lying fairly dormant, seems to be struggling to grow again, and I know that soon Saturday morning will mean that Matt fires up the mower while I take the kids to gymnastics. I am a girl who loves the winter, who craves the dark and stillness of October, November, December. It might even by my favorite time of year. But what I think I really love is the turning of the seasons. Spring comes early in the Pacific Northwest. Never was I more aware of this than the year my son was born; he arrived during the darkest part of the year, but I spent nearly every day during January and February walking to the park with my children, watching Suzannah play with my new son strapped to my chest. The outside world began to wake up, and I could breathe. Had I spent the first months of my son's life hunkered down in a dark house with two children, I'm certain my post-partum anxiety would have been much, much worse.

February in Washington means the first cherry blossoms, the first outdoor runs in which I wear a short-sleeved t-shirt. In February of 2008 I wrote: The air is sweet with the first breath of spring. I never feel the need to crawl up, crawl out from winter's quiet depths until I smell it, that singing fresh scent under the mud, under the earth and the grass. It's almost painful, that first gasp of sharp sweet air, like a birth, like a death. Every year it's an ache in a way I can't explain. I feel the same thing as spring inches towards summer, as August gives way to September, as the late autumn sun turns into the foggy, still mornings of October. I love the season of Advent. But every year, despite the fact that I was raised to observe the feast of Epiphany which means the Christmas tree stays up into January, I find myself wanting to pack up and put away and move swiftly into the new year. To clean up, to declutter, to breathe. To let the light in.

We spent last weekend in Leavenworth, which is becoming one of our favorite winter traditions. Driving through the snowy mountains to arrive at this delightful village, still dazzled by Christmas lights in the town center, is nothing short of magic. My children love sledding down the hill in the middle of town. I love wandering through the shops, even though there is never anything I care about buying. I love smelling the pastries and the German sausages, I love drinking hot chocolate or hot buttered rum. I love our post-sledding pizza and our children's red cheeks and I love, more than just about anything in the entire world, hunkering down in our modest little hotel room with popcorn and a movie, snuggling with my kiddos in beds I do not have to make. It's a simple vacation, really. We stay in a little hotel, not one of the fancy ones right there in the center of town but a decent one with a little swimming pool and a continental breakfast my kids love (Froot Loops and mini muffins and juice and all the things they don't get at our house!), a five-minute walk from the village. We buy only food and hot drinks. Matt goes skiing or snow-shoeing while the kids and I wander and play. Matt takes the kids sledding yet again while I wander alone and wind up at a coffee shop. We give ourselves breathing space and we come back together. It is incredibly cozy and incredibly restorative, and I have begun to think of this trip as our own way to enjoy winter, real winter with mountains and snow, before we come home and breathe deeply the scent of fresh earth and new grass. I'm ready. For the breath, the shift, the ache as we push up through the darkness. Bring the light.