Where I Am

So here I am, on the third Friday evening of the new school year. The kids and I are home from Tae Kwon Do, and that little fact proves, I think, that I'm starting to find my footing a bit. We've been adjusting to our fall schedules, and finding our groove -- Tae Kwon Do for both kids twice a week, plus soccer and Confirmation for Suzannah. It's something every weeknight.

(I need to be clear about something: I say this not to be a martyr, not to brag about how busy I am because everyone is busy, and definitely not to elicit anyone's sympathy. I enjoy this stage of our lives so very much. I love the rhythm of our days, admittedly made easier by the kids' teachers not assigning excessive amounts of homework and the fact that my kids are bookish teacher pleasers who get their stuff done immediately after school. I love watching them do their things and just be so beautifully, unselfconsciously themselves, and I even really love driving here and there, because my kids are still willing to chat with me in the car, spilling the details of their days. I know -- oh, I know -- that this time in our lives is fleeting, that before I know it, they'll be grown and gone and I will crave what these days give me, which is just being as present as I can with my very favorite people. It is the greatest gift of the universe.)

(I'm also intentionally writing this on Friday evening instead of, say, Tuesday morning, when someone is yelling at one parent because she thinks she's late if she's only five minutes early for her zero hour jazz band practice and someone else is crying because he broke his umbrella by using it carelessly in ways for which it was not intended and the other parent did not immediately offer to buy him a new one. There are those moments, too.)

We've been squeezing in the second Tae Kwon Do class on Saturday morning -- when Matt offers to take them -- because for the last two weeks the thought of coming home after school on Friday afternoon and then leaving again, wearing pants, was just too much to ask. But today I managed to squeeze in both a workout and a bubble bath before taking the kids to class, and while they donned sparring gear I even graded some of my sophomores' papers. Tonight, my husband is making dinner and we're settling in for Family Movie Night, and I'm settling into the feeling that this is good. Kids, teaching, life, all of it.

I was ready to go back in August, because I always am, but it's been a strange start for me this year -- I've felt unmoored in ways I don't always. Objectively, everything is...fine? Good? Actually, objectively, things are better than good. This year has had me feeling more grateful than ever to work exactly where I am, with these fierce and wonderful kids, with these fierce and passionate educators, in this community I have loved for years. In some ways, I've never felt more grounded, more committed to doing this work here, in this place, with these people. Sometimes I allow myself to settle into sort of a bubble in which all I see is what's around me, and sometimes that's a comfort and sometimes it distorts my vision when things feel hard, but when I push past that, I realize exactly how very lucky I am to be exactly where I am. (Take that, toxic local Community Watch Page on social media.)

I'm not sure what I'm even really trying to say here. I'm processing some things. I've been struggling a bit this year, I guess, to reconcile what I know and believe with what I feel, which is complicated. Today, though, or maybe throughout this entire week, my feelings match what I know and believe, and that's a gift. It's also probably a normal part of September.

Or it's part of what I claim in this new decade of my life, one which the world tells me I'm supposed to dread and one in which I feel -- who knew? -- really, really good. Let me tell you something: I don't have time for what the world has to say about that.

I was reading through old journal entries today, and I ran across this, written in my twenties: [My grandma] believed that birthdays should be celebrated gladly, always...[it had] nothing to do with presents and everything to do, I think, with her gratitude to this life we're born in. Even if every breath hurts.

I am lucky to move through this world without every breath hurting. On my last birthday, I wrote this:

I don't mourn the passing of my childhood, or my twenties, or my thirties. I've learned a lot -- who I am and what I want. And I woke up on my birthday in the very life I realized I'd always wanted for myself. I have so much more work to do, so much more, and there are still things I want. Deeply. There are things I want that I won't ever have, and that's okay; part of the blessing of living forty years is the realization that we won't ever have everything we want, and that it is possible, still, to be happy. Part of the blessing of living forty years is that the pursuit of individual happiness isn't, perhaps, even the point. I am working towards the things I still want, but I'm not sure that my individual happiness is the point there, either. This is the work of a human life.

And I think about what that means today, what it's meant for the last half-year as I read posts on social media by my friends who either welcome or fear this concept of fully embracing all of the years we are lucky enough to live.

I can tell you this: on my last birthday, I made a few small changes, and those small changes have meant everything. I hadn't realized how much until this month -- this unsettling and unmooring month. I'm taking care of myself in a way I couldn't have in my twenties. I'm enjoying myself in a way I didn't know how to when I was younger. I don't come to work tired every day. I'm sleeping soundly and well -- far, far better than I did when I was younger. I have the energy to keep up with my kids and take care of myself. I couldn't run a mile to save my life twenty years ago, but I can jog (slowly but steadily) several of them now. I eat nutritious food that makes my body feel really good, and I take pleasure in its preparation, both because I love to eat it and because I love to feed my family. I have no interest in eating a meal which requires me to peel back a plastic cover (aside from my fondness for a few appetizers from Trader Joe's, because I do love those vegetable spring rolls when I'm cooking Thai peanut noodles or stir fry, and I love the samosas or vegetable "bird's nests" if I'm cooking something with chickpeas and curry). I have no desire to reject the foods I love because they're "naughty." I'm learning to tune into what I actually need -- exercise, whole foods, fresh air and movement, things that taste delicious, alone time to recharge -- and separate that from what has been careless habit in the past. I'm slipping into jeans I kept in the back of my closet and didn't wear for a long time because they felt too tight. I'm reading more books instead of scrolling through my phone. I'm trying very intentionally not to scroll through my phone, period. I'd fallen into a terrible habit of starting my day by picking up my phone and reading the news and social media and I don't do that anymore. You know what helps? Having your young son say, "Why do you always read your phone in the morning? That's too much." He's right. I'm in the process of Marie Kondo-ing my social media (see above comment about toxic Community Watch Pages...it also applies to toxic people). I've missed a lot, probably, but a lot of that is noise.

It's a hard balance to strike. I care, deeply, about a lot of things. I don't want to close myself off from the world. I do, however, need to shake off the noise, the excess, the obligations. When I turned forty I decided I wouldn't stay in a room I didn't want to be in, and I meant that both literally and figuratively. It's something I'm still practicing, but it's also maybe one of the best things I've ever done for myself.

Unmoored or not, that's not a bad place to be at the end of September.

What I want is what I've got, exactly where it is

This morning, on our last morning before the school year begins in earnest, I poured myself a cup of coffee and curled up on the couch with a book. I have to snatch these quiet moments when I can, because Winslows don't really sleep in. But Suzannah is also a teenager now, and this summer she has been "sleeping in" for the first time in her entire life -- which means she emerges from her bedroom, rumply and sleepy-eyed, sometime between 7:30 and 8:00 in the morning. (Once or twice she even slept in just past 8:00, at which point I wondered if I should check to make sure she was still breathing.)

She curled up on the recliner across from me, not quite awake. I didn't say anything right away, hesitant to disturb the quiet balance -- or, more accurately, hesitant to attract the attention of the youngest Winslow, who was already breakfasted and wide awake and ready to troll someone. But I watched her. She didn't even really seem aware of me right away. She arched her back and stretched her arms way over her head, exactly the way she did when she was an infant. Arching her back, sticking out her little bum in her tiny pink sleeper, stretching her arms out wide, pursing her sleepy lips.

I watched my daughter stretch and fold her long limbs back in. She turned toward me.

"Hi," she said.

I can't even put into words how I fall in love with my children all over again in these moments. Again and again.

I wanted to tell her how I was feeling, somehow. How in that moment of just watching her stretch I really saw her, the way she has always been exactly herself. I wanted to tell her about the way I used to open the door to her room after her nap, when she was old enough to pull herself up in her crib. The way she would already be standing up, beaming.

Instead I just held out my arms, and she crossed the living and crawled up on the couch with me, folding herself to fit so I could rest my chin on top of her head, and I breathed in her sleepy scent, warm skin and shampoo from last night's shower.

She has always been exactly herself. I have always been this lucky.

*

The quiet doesn't last, of course. Soon my son was bounding into the living room, shouting his good morning, shrieking his silliness, irritating his sister. And I thought, too, of the way he used to thump his fat little legs with joy when he was a baby, when I was changing him, or even just playing with him on the floor. He'd thump his legs and let out these ear-piercing shrieks, his eyes wide and shining, his grin open-mouthed with delight. As soon as he found his voice he used it to scream, and the message was clear: Hey, world! Here I am! I'm a baby! It's awesome to be a baby! He has always seemed so happy to just be. Every single day with him is a gift, a reminder not to take myself too seriously.

*

So here we are, the first weekend in September. School starts tomorrow. My daughter will be in eighth grade, her last year in middle school, a fact I cannot process without my chest seizing a bit for all the uncertainty and fear. Is this what it always feels like? I couldn't sleep the night before she started sixth grade; I crept out to the couch at two o'clock in the morning to read a book, trying to distract myself from the fears I was trying desperately not to project onto my daughter. I spent the entire summer before she started kindergarten in a state of anxiety and nausea. Last week I stopped by the school to drop off a check for Isaac's school supplies -- his school takes care of all of them for a small fee -- and I ran into the kids' kindergarten teacher, who remains one of my favorite humans on the planet. We hugged each other and caught up on summer, and when I told her my girl came back from camp taller than me and did she remember that first day of kindergarten, she said, "Oh, yes. I remember." (Bless all the kindergarten teachers, for caring for our babies and for handling their anxious, wrecked parents with patience and grace. If every child could experience the love and warmth and competence of my kids' kindergarten teacher, we'd solve a lot of the world's problems.)

She was fine. I think she'll be fine in high school, too. But I know that this will be my struggle this year -- knowing that in only a few months, it's something I'll have to think about. This was the comfort of seventh grade, knowing she would be okay at her school and knowing we still had a nice buffer before high school.

I was significantly more relaxed when I left my son on the first day of kindergarten, because I knew, loved, and trusted his kindergarten teacher. This week I will leave him with the teacher who also taught his sister for two years, and I couldn't be happier about that. But there are little reminders that he is growing so fast -- like the fact that he signed up for morning patrol last spring, and Friday afternoon was his "training." He'll help with the drop-off car line in the morning, and after he turns ten in December he can be a crossing guard. I keep thinking of the way he used to grab one of the bright orange flags out of the can taped to the pole at the intersection across from the Elliott Bay Brewery, the way he would clutch it in his chubby fist and wave it as we crossed California Avenue on our way to dinner. On Saturday, we drove to Madison Beach in Seattle to swim in Lake Washington one final time this summer, and as we always do, we stopped at Pagliacci Pizza before heading home. We parked across the street and walked to the crosswalk, and Isaac, always the ham, snatched one of the little orange flags tied to a stick and waved it dramatically, bouncing across the intersection while his sister rolled her eyes. Both of them perfectly and always themselves.

*

So here's where I am this weekend: still feeling unmoored the night before school starts, feeling anxious and unsettled in a way I always have. But I will not wake up tomorrow morning sick to my stomach with nerves, and that's not nothing. More importantly, I've spent the last couple of days soaking up the last days of summer with my family and feeling just leveled with gratitude that this is my life, that the people I spend my days with are the people I want to spend my days with.

My kids might really need to go back to school, yes, and they're driving me a little crazy (and they're driving each other straight to insanity, to the point where I'm sort of worried Isaac will revert to biting and Suzannah will punch him in the nose), but to everyone who rolls their eyes at me and says, "Ah, you have a teenager, lucky you," while looking sort of sorry for me? Don't. I loved having my babies when they were babies, but it's these humans I live with now who remind me exactly what matters, and who are the source of my deepest joy. I would never wish us backwards. I love the now, and I've learned to trust that I will loves what comes. Maybe I've learned to choose to love it.

*

Matt took the kids hiking yesterday so I could get some work done. We have been married nearly seventeen years, together for nearly twenty, and he understands the need for quiet and space the weekend before school starts. He packed lunches and sunscreen and took the kids to Denny Creek while I spread my notebooks and binders and laptop all over the dining room table and worked on my unit plans and curriculum maps. I also took a little time to read through journals from my first years of teaching, which has become another back-to-school ritual. It helps when I'm feeling anxious and overwhelmed, because it will never be harder than my first year of teaching, ever. But I don't only read about my first year; I read through the entries of my first few years. I started to feel like I knew what I was doing after that first year, but I was also always anxious. The year I was privileged to teach my first IB classes I spent my last week of summer with a severe case of Imposter Syndrome. (It is interesting to note that I felt the same way many years later, when I was given my first class of regular freshmen. I've taught "regular" sophomores of all stripes more years than not, but freshmen? They require skills.)

I wrote this, a week before my college graduation, when I was feeling more terrified than excited: Probably when I'm forty I will look wistfully back at this wonderful, exciting time in my 22-year-old life and wish I could be here again. I guess it's all about perspective.

Oh, Sweetheart. I would never, ever wish myself back to my twenties. God. I had so many opinions without the life experience to temper them. And other people's opinions mattered too much. I said yes when I should have said no. I stayed in rooms I didn't want to be in, literally and figuratively, and I don't do that anymore. I was not objectively unhappy, but I am so much happier in my own skin now. Hang in there, Kiddo. It gets so much better.