Weather

Today's weather mirrored my general state of mind: Cloudy and still, followed by a burst of hard rain, followed by hours of sunshine, followed by a strong and chilly breeze. All is calm now.

I can feel everything in an unstructured Saturday. We don't have many unstructured days. And while I'm grateful for them, the way I'm grateful for summer, they also tend to make me anxious. Left without a plan, a structure, my mind begins to churn. It's funny. Teachers will tell you they can't really relax until July, but July is the month in which I make myself most anxious. Each summer I find myself obsessing about something different. Like Mt. Rainier erupting, or "The Really Big One" -- Kathryn Schulz won the Pulitzer for the piece that had me pricing survival kits all summer, worried that we wouldn't have stockpiled adequate rations by the time the inevitable earthquake hit.

So maybe it's not a bad thing that my summer is going to be a busy one. We'll have our usual week in Montana, and it's our summer to fly to Minnesota. I also have a trip for school, and for the first time I'm accompanying Matt on a work trip, purely for pleasure! And I'm taking a class, one that starts before the end of the school year and ends in early September. And I'm planning a class, one I haven't taught in years, and one I'm changing considerably from the last time I taught it.

None of these are bad things. It is, after all, the life I want. This work is work I am privileged to choose. These travels to spend time with family are trips we are privileged to take. It's just that the part of summer that I most love, especially as a mother of young children, is going to be necessarily condensed. It means I will be pretty protective of the days I have at home. I want things to be slow; I want to stay grounded. Moments I cherish will mean everything: those afternoons in the backyard, while the sun slides across the patio and I move my lawn chair, following the shade. The sparkle of the sprinkler: diamonds against a bright blue sky, the sound of my children's laughter. (And, if I'm honest, the sound of their squabbling.) The echo of voices in the muggy air of the swim center, the sharp scent of chlorine and the slap slap of flip-flops on the concrete floor. Mornings at the playground, the kids kicking the soccer ball while I jog the track.

I'm excited for the things that shake us out of our routine (although our Montana trips are becoming a tradition: time spent in Bozeman, finding new coffee shops since the coffee shops of my youth have closed or changed, date nights at fun restaurants, hiking, grilling in my parents' backyard, driving to Glacier and swimming in Lake McDonald and hiking some more and camping and breathing the sweetest air of my childhood). I'm looking forward to every single scheduled thing, even though travel makes me anxious. Because so does stillness. My mind will hop on any available hamster wheel.

The hamster wheel, this weekend, is going a little nuts. Like the clouds and the rain and the sun and the wind.

But I do love weather. I love the clouds and the rain and the sun and the wind.

And so here we are, in May. I'm so ready for summer, even though I'm also so anxious. Sometimes I feel everything, everything, all at once, and it's too much, and I lose perspective. But sometimes I also remember to breathe. Tonight the winds have calmed and I am breathing.

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. It's going to be a nice day, because I married a man who gave me beautiful children and who gives me everything I ever want out of this day: a short nap after church, a trip to Elliott Bay Books (plus a little quiet reading and writing time in the cafe), and a cozy dinner somewhere, usually Veggie Grill. Basically like my birthday. Plus, he offered to vacuum the house. Truly, those things--a nap, books, dinner, a vacuumed house--are worth more than anything a jeweler could ever sell me, and they make me infinitely happier.

Anyway, I love Mother's Day, because I love my children and my family and I feel just deeply grateful for this life. I'm grateful for the children who made me a mother, for the mother who raised me (even if sometimes I wonder if I didn't turn out quite the way she hoped), for the mother who raised my husband and who loves me too, for the fact that my children have grandmothers who love them deeply, for the husband who loves and supports and partners me in parenting our littles, for the friends who lift me up when life is hard--it's all connected! But I also wouldn't mind if Mother's Day ceased to be A Thing, because I think Mother's Day might be the most painful day some folks might experience in a year, for lots of reasons. The hurt runs deep. Becoming a mother has taught me that much as well. There are places in our hearts -- as mothers, as children, as mothers who are missing their children and children who are missing their mothers and as humans who feel absences in myriad ways -- that will always hurt a little more on this day.

Nothing is ever simple. A day of sunshine might still hold a chill, a storm, a quiet. And we all might remember different hours in the same day.