(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.
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