Just to be present

A few weeks ago I was incredibly privileged to attend the IB of the Americas Conference in Toronto. On one hand, it was a trip to Toronto, a city I've never seen, and that was fabulous, but also, there is just something purely magical about meeting people from all over North and South America, people who teach in so many different contexts but with whom I share so much common ground. I attended one of the best workshops of my professional life. I attended energizing and inspiring breakout sessions. Every evening I found my brain churning, and at one point I flopped down on a poolside lounge chair next to my boss and found myself talking a million miles a minute, feeling totally overwhelmed but also very determined and excited. I took many, many pages of notes. I made lists. I couldn't shut up.

I also spent a day walking around with my DP (Diploma Programme) Coordinator, visiting independent bookstores and feeling the pulse of the city around us. I carved out time for myself each day, which I didn't do last year and which I realized is important for this introvert's sanity. In the late afternoon, after the workshops and breakout sessions and before dinner, I hunkered down in the corner of the hotel bar (and once I claimed one of those poolside lounge chairs for two hours alone) and sipped pinot gris and wrote and wrote, just processing. I read a novel. I went swimming a couple of times. Twice I rose at dawn and jogged a couple of sweaty miles in the damp morning air, just to move, to clear my head before a long day. These little acts of self-care soothed the edges of my typical travel anxiety and possibly made me a more pleasant travel companion. ("You've actually done really well this time!" my principal said on the final flight home.)

My mom flew out to stay with the kids while I was away, which also helped a great deal with my travel anxiety; I didn't worry about them at all. She sent pictures of them shooting off rockets with their uncle and baking cookies at our place. Later, Matt sent me a text explaining just how many cookies we actually had: "Your mom doesn't play." (When I arrived at home, my mom said, "And don't try to give any away to Aaron and Morgan. I left cookies with them, too.")

Before I left for Toronto we'd been having a fairly cool summer. Comfortable, mostly, but not quite hot enough to enjoy the hours in the backyard or at the spray park that I so crave. Since I've been back, though, we've had stretches of hot, sunny afternoons that call us outside to slather ourselves in sunscreen and play in the sprinkler. This week, it's been too hot to walk to the park, even; well, possibly the kids would have been fine, but I usually jog a few miles around the little track while they ride their bikes or play on the merry-go-round or "big toy" on the playground and that appeals to me in no way right now. We've been spending our mornings in swimming lessons, our afternoons in the backyard. Once we drove to Seattle with Morgan and her sister to go to the Elliott Bay Book Company. Once we had lunch with Kyanne in Tacoma. Today we took our friend and pastoral intern to lunch before meeting another old friend at the spray park. Two nights ago we picked up dinner and headed to a local park that features live music every week; we met one of Suzannah's new friends from swimming lessons and played with our kids on the playground and I fell in love with my community again. The park was full, and parking was scarce. Kids were everywhere. But everyone was relaxed and friendly, and my kids played with kids they didn't know, and I chatted with mothers and fathers I didn't know, and I thought about all of our different contexts and how we still managed to share this moment with our kids on the merry-go-round and how that matters to me, a lot. There are a lot of reasons I choose to stay exactly where I am when I'm reading editorials in the local paper about how our city is "going downhill" because it doesn't look like the city people remember from a few decades ago, and the people on this playground don't look anything like the people writing those editorials, but I didn't live here a few decades ago and I do live here now, and this is my home and my community. And I unapologetically love it.

So here we are, at the end of July, and it feels so different than last summer. Last summer was by no means terrible, but I went from a deep sadness (losing my beloved pug, worrying about losing one of my best friends when he moved to a different job) to bouncing from Montana to home to Chicago to home to Minnesota to home and right back into planning professional development. By August tenth I was back at school every day, without having had the stretches of summer to just...be present in my life. This summer, I've had more time at home, which is what I need and crave. A year later, the friendship I worried would change has deepened in a way that means everything to me. I have time to process what I've learned before I step on another airplane. I can let it be okay to spend afternoons in the backyard, watching my children aim the sprinkler at the swings or the slide and create their own version of a waterpark at four o'clock in the afternoon while I pour a glass of iced green tea and read on the patio.

Next week, my kids will attend VBS and I will divide that morning time between writing and meeting with colleagues; there is so much work to be done before school starts. And it's good work. It will be all the better because I've had the time to slow down and breathe in the smell of water and grass and sunshine in my backyard on these July afternoons. The week after that, we will load up our CR-V and head to Bozeman for a few days before driving to Glacier National Park. I tell people that if I could only visit one place again in my entire life, it would be Glacier. We'll pitch a tent and curl around each other under the night sky, breathing the sweetest pine-scented air in the world. We'll hike to the Hidden Lake Overlook and swim in Lake McDonald and eat huckleberry ice cream. Even me, probably, even though ice cream upsets my stomach because I can't do dairy anymore. We'll buy T-shirts at the Cedar Tree and grill hot dogs and make S'mores at our campsite. This is becoming our family tradition now, and every year, despite the fact that I am sleeping on the ground and the four of us are sharing a pretty close space, my heart and my head feel at home and at rest. The nights spent in our tent underneath the Montana sky are peaceful in a way that no other experience can replicate; I am present in the drumming of rain (I'd say we've been rained on overnight at least fifty percent of the nights we've slept in that tent over the past few summers) and in the hush of the breeze through the skinny evergreens and the way the dusk settles over the lake.

This is what I want from summer: to be present in this moment without dreading the next.

Outrage exploding on my Facebook after Dallas.

It's not that I don't think there should be outrage, but where was the outrage after Minnesota? Small bursts here and there, but nothing compared to this.

Why did it take Dallas to inspire the public outrage?

This morning Marlon James said, "I know I have more mainstream followers than most, so listen to me: Whoever shot those Dallas policemen, doesn't believe in Black Lives Matter either. They have no belief in peaceful protest for constructive change. Diamond Reynolds was very clear: She wants accountability, changes in recruitment, counseling for unhinged cops, and reform, not some jackass' idea of revenge. We need Cops too."

He also said: "White Americans. Fucking do something."

We need to do better. We white Americans like to do precisely nothing UNTIL it is "our own" being gunned down (and often, not even then). Black folks can't wait that long.

Intentionally slowing down

And just like that, it's July. Summer really is still just beginning, so I am trying not to do the thing I do in July: feel anxious about its inevitable end. I am trying to slow down. Breathe. Relax.

Last year, summer felt a bit too full, too fast. It was full of so much goodness that I don't want this to seem like a complaint: we had family trips to Montana and Minnesota, and I went to Chicago for a truly exciting conference. But these things came so fast, so close together. By the time I was home from Minnesota it was time for me to start prepping for the next school year already and my new responsibilities that came along with it, and I was back at school every day for three weeks before school began. What I missed was the slowness I deeply appreciate and even crave, as a mom and as a teacher. Days of lying around with a book while the kids run through the sprinkler, afternoons of wandering up the street to the park any old time without planning it first. It's not that these days didn't happen at all last summer, but I actually had to plan them. This summer, I'm looking forward to a family road trip and to another truly exciting conference, but I'm hoping for a slower pace.

The last two days have delivered exactly this, but I've had to retrain myself to appreciate it instead of feel anxious. Sometimes I feel I need to account for my days in the form of lists, little things I can check off and say, "This is done." Two days ago I found my anxiety mounting throughout the afternoon. The morning was full of documentable activities; Suzannah and I got pedicures (Isaac played quietly on his Leapster and waited for us, but we made sure we had the first spots of the day), we took Isaac to get a haircut, we met Auntie Morgan for lunch, and I cleaned the bathrooms and vacuumed the house. But then the day slid into languidness, in that way of summer afternoons. I turned the kids loose in the backyard with the hose. I wandered around restlessly before pouring myself a glass of iced tea and reading some more of my book: A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James. (If anyone is interested, I think that might be the most brilliant work of literature I will read this year. No exaggeration.) The next day, we walked to the park in the morning and a different park in the afternoon. We ate lunch together. The kids were whiny and bored but I think dealing with boredom is an important part of childhood and sure enough, they bothered each other for awhile but also played basketball in the front yard, blew bubbles in the backyard, and dug out some watercolor paints. Eventually one of them punched the other "as part of a game" and I banished them to separate parts of the house. Suzannah became so absorbed in her book during her exile that she declined to come out, and Isaac busied himself with toys he'd forgotten he even had. I read more of my book. Today we met Kyanne for a leisurely lunch in Tacoma, plus coffee, plus a bit of wandering around, but back at home I lounged in the backyard with another glass of iced tea and another book and the kids played and I thought, this is exactly what I want out of summer. The sun on my shoulders, a glass of iced tea on my patio, a book in my hand. The kids playing, fighting, running through the sprinkler, biking up the street. This. What a privilege it really is, to lie in my backyard in this neighborhood, to see nothing but trees and hear nothing but birds and the occasional lawnmower at four o'clock in the afternoon.

It's not that I don't have to-do lists; I'm still me, after all. But they don't have to be daily to-do lists. Not yet. Not on the first of July. And the first two weeks of summer have been full enough: we packed our entire house into our living and dining rooms, had all our carpet replaced, and are still in the process of putting our house back together. Matt's parents have been visiting. They took the kids to the ocean with them for a few nights; Matt and I joined them for a day at the beach but rented a hotel room with an ocean view and a loft with a jacuzzi instead of camping. (That was pretty spectacular.) Our kitchen faucet started leaking. We replaced it. Our backyard faucet started leaking, which meant that we had to call the contractor who did our kitchen and patio and over the past few days we've had guys in our backyard cutting into the side of our house early in the morning. Our new kitchen faucet has a different problem, so we probably have to return it and replace it again. And I understand that any problem that can be solved with a quick evening trip to Home Depot is not, in fact, a real problem at all; all the same, sometimes my highly anxious self creates problems where there aren't any to be found.

All that to say: this afternoon, as I settled myself into my backyard chair with my book and my glass of iced tea, as I wondered whether or not I was making the most of my summer, as I fretted about house repairs and swimming lessons and travel details, I thought to myself: don't ruin this moment, this sunny and slow afternoon. Just be in it. And I realized in that moment that the last couple of days, the ones that have had me so worried that I wasn't doing enough to enjoy my summer, have been exactly the kind of days I have waited for, wanted, craved.

I also uninstalled Facebook on my phone. I thought I'd leave it off while I was at the ocean; then I decided I'd leave it off for a week. Now I'm determined to leave it off at least through the fourth of July. Longer? I don't know. I've read a bit when I'm on my computer (which isn't happening much since I got rid of my huge, old, increasingly flimsy corner desk when we got new carpet; this weekend I'm going to get something simpler, sturdier, and smaller) but I think my anxiety decreased significantly when I gave myself permission to just take a damn break. Two things: I do not want to be the person scrolling mindlessly through Facebook every time I have a quiet moment, because I think we could all benefit from being present in the real world even in those moments in which things are boring or awkward, because remember what it feels like to just be a person in the world? To just be? And second of all, and this is honestly an entry I am not ready to write, or maybe I'm just sick of trying to write it again and again and again: I cannot read any more shit from people whose first response to yet another mass shooting is "Stay away from my gun rights!" I am so, so, so done with this even as I understand we are absolutely nowhere near done and we are also apparently nowhere near even trying to do the tiniest damn thing about it. This will keep happening. And when people are gunned down in their safe places, in schools and churches and clubs and movie theaters, the fact that we respond with "Not MY guns" and "It's not a GUN problem!" before we say anything else? That makes me literally, physically ill. We are ill. And I cannot. I cannot read that shit on Facebook right now. (How many times have I written a slightly different version of this very same thing?) It's not just that; I think a break from social media is just a very healthy thing every now and then, which is why I've tried to take a week off each month of 2016 so far. I have been only marginally successful, but something about my need to recenter myself, to breathe deeply, has made it easier for me to do this summer. And that's where I'm at right now.