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.