The burden is light

I'm in a funk right now. It's a strange thing to feel, to write, when the sky is so brilliantly blue and I've just returned from an afternoon at the splash park, but there it is.

I've been waiting for this week all month, this beautiful week of sunshine and pure Pacific Northwest summer (not to be confused with summer in Las Vegas or Orlando), this week in which we have absolutely nothing scheduled. No lessons. No trips. Just the day, stretching before us.

In four weeks I've taken three trips: one with my entire family, one with my husband, and one alone (well, with colleagues, but without anyone in my family), for work. I'm grateful for each of them. Our trip to Montana was everything I love about Montana and my family; my trip to Vegas pushed me way out of my comfort zone (literally and figuratively; it was a horrible 112 degrees while we were there but also I drove a race car!) while keeping me quite comfortable in a fancy hotel room and eating fancy dinners I didn't have to pay for; and Orlando, while hot and muggy and...flat, was the site for the IB Global Conference this year, and attending it is always a great privilege. I learn a lot and return home inspired and energized.

It's strange to think that I'll be back at work soon, but summer has, already, been so full.

Which is why I've been looking forward rather desperately to this week. As I've written before, really my favorite part of summer isn't the trips we may or may not take (although I need those trips home to Montana), it's the afternoons spent in my backyard with a book and a glass of iced green tea while my children run through the sprinkler. I landed in Seattle shortly before eight o'clock on Sunday night, at the end of a day in which I attended a breakout sessions and a closing general session, spent four hours in the Orlando airport, and read a book on a five-and-a-half hour flight. My body thought it was eleven o'clock, and it wanted to be fed some dinner. Matt picked up pho on the way home, the only thing that sounded good. And because I knew I wouldn't be able to crash immediately into bed--I never can, at the end of a trip, no matter how late I get home--he settled into the couch with me to watch the latest episode of Twin Peaks: The Return. I won't tell you want time I finally crawled into bed, but it was ridiculous, and my daughter scolded me the next morning. But I could sleep. It was the best sleep I've had in days. And on Monday, I vowed to go no farther than our own backyard.

The kids were already dressed in their pajamas when Matt pulled up to the curb outside baggage claim. They've had such a wonderful time with both of their grandmas; Matt's mom flew out to stay with them when we were in Vegas, and my mom took over when I headed to Orlando so that Matt could go to work. They're thoroughly spoiled, and Matt and I are thoroughly lucky to have had such willing and loving help. The kids were so sweetly happy to see me, and full of stories: they've lost teeth this week, baked cookies, finished their swimming lessons, gone on hikes, seen movies. Matt made sure to mention that he'd gotten them bathed and cleaned the kitchen before they picked me up, but when I leaned in to hug them, to bury myself deep in their summery tanned skin, I could still smell the sunscreen.

I can't breathe deeply enough when I hug my children in summer. There is nothing I love more than this: their warm necks and the scent of sunscreen, sunshine, water. Pool water, river water, lake water. The faint sheen of sweat and hard play. My babies. How I love them.

I rubbed sunscreen into my son's lean, warm little back yesterday afternoon, just before I settled back with my book. He's so tall and lean. Pictures from just a few summers ago remind me of the way his chubby toddler belly used to poke above his swim trunks; now they slide down his hips and reveal the cutest hint of butt crack. We are forever telling him to pull up his shorts. He is all movement when he is awake, bouncing and wiggling, but he sleeps so hard. He always has.

My daughter can wear my flip-flops in the backyard, and they're a little long but they basically fit. She moves differently now, carries her body in a new way. She's a preteen for sure. Some moments take my breath away: the way she walks, the way she settles herself into the swing before kicking off the ground and touching her toes to the tree branch she couldn't reach a summer or two ago, the way she crosses her leg and tucks her big toe behind her calf as she reads or eats her lunch on the patio. She is lovely in these moments. The in-between is difficult and awkward and I remember it well, but still, I hope some part of her understands how lovely she is. This juxtaposition unsettles me sometimes, but it also swells my heart: she is so grown, but then she's also a little girl. Since she was born I've always said I would never wish her backwards, that while I want to stop time I also understand that bearing witness to her growth, this beautiful unfurling into the person she is, is the greatest joy of my life.

I snapped at her recently. We were both exhausted, and she said something careless, and I responded without the patience or grace I pray for as a parent. Her eyes welled up and her mouth pursed in the way it does before she cries. I deflated inside.

"Zannah, I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't need to talk to you like that." She rushed right into my arms, weeping, her own grace extended to me in that moment. She allowed me to hug her instead of stomping angrily away. She tucked her head underneath my chin and I held her, so aware that soon she will have to fold herself to fit that embrace.

It has been a gift, for the past two days, to just hang out with these kids. I write this to remember this moment in time, these days in which my kids bicker and squabble and poke all the time and also cannot bear to be separated. These days in which my daughter will still come to me instead of pushing me away when we butt heads: the energy of mothers and daughters. (May I someday find the words to tell my own mother how much I love and need her still, even when we butt heads.) These days in which my son allows me to crawl under the covers with him at bedtime and noisily smooches my cheeks. These years are so short.

Today has been strange. Our beloved babysitter spent the morning with the kids while I did some work (because teachers do work in the summer, even in July, because so much has to happen before the beginning of the school year) and went for a run. I slept well last night, because I am still just so grateful for my own bed, and so in love with this week in which I can rise slowly and drink coffee before I get dressed. I cleaned up and made lunch for the kids, which they ate in the backyard because in the summer we eat nearly all of our meals on the patio. We ran a few errands. We changed into swimsuits and headed for the splash park, because the sky was wide and blue and the temperature was perfect: warm enough to love the water, not so hot as to be unbearable.

And yet, I've been in a funk today, because sometimes the world is too much. That's all I can say right here now.

We went to the splash park and my children ran off while I sat with our towels and read my latest copy of The Sun, the magazine I will subscribe to as long as I am alive or as long as it lasts. It was the 500th issue, with a special section called "One Nation, Indivisible," and it broke my heart, right there in the splash park. It really did, it broke something in me, in the necessary ways we all should be broken sometimes. (If you're reading this and can get to a decent bookstore, go pick up this issue. Or better yet, subscribe.)

So I read The Sun and I felt everything, everything. How it is possible and arguably essential to love my country without being blindly proud of it, which, at the moment, feels both impossible and dangerous. I thought about how our country is in the hands of a terrible, ugly, power-hungry bully of a leader who will never be anything but that, but the rest of us need to just hold up a mirror and take a hard, honest look and try to be better versions of ourselves. I thought about how we all have so much work to do.

And then I looked up and saw my son leaping through the spray of water in front of me, saw the arc of diamonds against a blue sky. I saw my daughter spinning with a group of kids on the merry-go-round. I watched them both join the line to play on the zip-line.

And I started to cry, just enough to have to lift my glasses off of my face and wipe my eyes. But there it was. There were tears. Hidden behind dark glasses, in the middle of a splash park--it's a safe enough place to have a moment like that, and easy enough to hide.

And I can't even tell you why. There is no why sometimes. It's just everything, and the time to notice and feel it. This world, and the weight of it. And the light.