2021 in Books

2021 hasn't been much better than 2020, but I read some great books. My beloved college professor and advisor Joan Buckley said, "We read to remind ourselves of our humanity." I think that matters. I'd say now more than ever, but it has always mattered.

This year's list:

Home Fire, by Kamila Shamsie
I read this in 2017 but I reread it this year because I added it to the IB Literature curriculum, paired with Antigone. This one absolutely rewarded rereading.

Jack, by Marilynne Robinson
I read this slowly, appreciating the return to the world of Robinson's Gilead (though this novel is set in St. Louis, not Iowa), this time to tell the story of Reverend Boughton's wayward son and the woman he loves. Like the other novels, this is a story of ideas rather than plot, but no less engaging (to this reader) because of that.

I love Robinson's fiction and her graceful prose, but I wouldn't try to read this without the context with the others. Even though I read Gilead years ago and my memory of specifics is less than perfectly clear, I was glad to have a little context.

How Much of These Hills Is Gold, by C Pam Zhang
I read this in two days. It's so interesting to read the reviews of others who claim they couldn't get into the story, which just goes to show how reading experiences can differ; I was hooked from the first sentence and found it both propulsive and deeply immersive, and Zhang's language is a wonder. It reminds me a bit of Téa Obreht's Inland in that it takes us to the American West -- but not in any way we're used to reading about it. Instead, Zhang elevates the stories of a Chinese immigrant family as they search for home in a land that is hostile to their culture and identity. I hesitate to say more about it, because so much of the magic, for me, happened when the story took a turn I didn't expect. The structure worked brilliantly, the characters were so compelling, and at every turn Zhang added a layer of poignant surprise that, in hindsight, was the heart of the story all along.

Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson

“Choose not to look, however, at your own peril. The owner of an old house knows that whatever you are ignoring will never go away. Whatever is lurking will fester whether you choose to look or not. Ignorance is no protection from the consequences of inaction. Whatever you are wishing away will gnaw at you until you gather the courage to face what you would rather not see.”

When I read The Warmth of Other Suns years ago, I knew it was one I would forever recommend to everyone. This isn't true of all the books I love, or find powerful or moving or beautifully written; reading experiences differ, blah blah whatever. I love a lot of books I wouldn't necessarily insist my mother or boss read immediately.

The same is true of Caste, only more urgently. I want everyone to read this. I love Wilkerson's writing: smooth and engaging without ever assuming her readers already know what she has to say. I read this because I loved her previous book, yes, but I also know I have a lot of anti-racist work to do, and this book made me look at race in this country in a way I honestly never really had: through the framework of a caste system. It knocked me flat, but not in a way that will shut down readers who most need to read this (which is...all of us in the dominant caste). This is essential reading.

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, by Deesha Philyaw
Oh, this is just so good. I have my absolute favorites (as I usually do, in any story collection, and this is what makes the entire book tricky to rate), but they're all good. Read it. Read it.

Concrete Rose, by Angie Thomas
I loved everything about this and I read it in a single day. Thank goodness for Snow Days.

Read this after The Hate U Give, but read it. I love -- LOVE -- authors who show us their characters in a different light, from a different perspective, who take a supporting character from one story and let them take the stage in another. Madeleine L'Engle was a master at this. Tana French did it with the Dublin Murder Squad. And Angie Thomas does this with Garden Heights, the setting of The Hate U Give, seventeen years earlier. She doesn't miss a note.

A Promised Land, by Barack Obama
I read this a bit at a time for a long time, switching between the hardcover and audiobook. I love hearing his voice; I also love his writing voice. This book is dense but reads smoothly, and it's well worth the effort. I'll read the next installment when it comes, but I think it's going to be difficult, knowing where the country went in 2016. The contrast is still unbearable.

Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine
I picked this up at Powell's last year, pre-Pandemic, and I realized that it's part of a trilogy -- that it belongs with Citizen: An American Lyric (which took my breath away five years ago) and Just Us: An American Conversation, which I bought as soon as it was published.

So I read it today. In a single day, almost a single sitting, just like Citizen. Rankine writes in that "unsettled territory" between poetry and prose (I can't remember where I read that, but that's what it is) and she does it brilliantly, weaving in mental health, pharmaceuticals, loneliness, culture, and politics that capture yet also transcend a very particular moment in America. Brilliant.

Who Will Be a Witness? Igniting Activitsm For God's Justice, Love, and Deliverance, by Drew G.I. Hart
Add this to the list of books I want every Christian to read, especially those who seek to move from being an ally to being a co-conspirator. I appreciate the mix of history and theology, as well as the necessary challenge to look at the way the church has often upheld white supremacy and shift to practicing "Jesus-shaped" justice.

A Year of Mr. Lucky, by Meg Weber

"I always feel like too much, except when I'm afraid I'm not enough."

This is a beautifully honest memoir about being human, vulnerable, and strong -- I believe that telling the truth about our own lives is some of the most important work we can do, and Meg Weber does this with fierce courage. (I've been incredibly lucky to write with Meg for the past several years, and she's the real deal.)

Long Bright River, by Liz Moore
This character-based mystery is more about the family dynamic, class, and the struggles of opioid addition than the mystery itself; it reminded me a bit of Tana French.

The Prophets, by Robert Jones, Jr.
I've been thinking about how to write about this devastating, beautiful, brilliant novel and I just don't know what to say that will capture how powerful it is. This novel soars. The characters, even -- especially? -- the secondary characters. The structure, which manages to tell an epic story from multiple perspectives but propel the reader forward. The sentences.

The author makes no secret about drawing inspiration from James Baldwin and Toni Morrison (among many other brilliant folks), and while he doesn't write "like" them, I think his work belongs alongside theirs. Still processing.

Infinite Country, by Patricia Engel
I read this book in a day, and I kept pausing to say to my husband, "This is just so good and so important and I want you to read it right now." Patricia Engel tells an immigration story that is both intimate and epic. The structure and pacing are perfect, the characters fully realized, and on a sentence level, it's just beautifully crafted. I can't believe anyone could tell this much story in under 200 pages. And this story does what the best stories do -- it humanizes what we try to "other" with our labels, political discourse, assumptions, biases, ignorance, and fear. Engel slips us into the perspective of a young couple trying to make their way in the world, their Columbian-born daughter raised in America, their American-born daughter coming of age in Columbia, and the brother between them -- all trying to survive, all trying to find their way back to each other, all grappling what it means to call a place home when your heart is somewhere else.

Milk Blood Heat, by Dantiel W. Moniz
I started reading and couldn't put this down. When I finished one story I immediately wanted more. I love everything about this book -- Moniz writes so beautifully and viscerally about girlhood, the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters and husbands and wives and siblings, and the intimate physicality of lived experience. So, so good.

Verge, by Lidia Yuknavitch
This book feels sort of impossible to rate. I think Lidia Yuknavitch is brilliant, full stop, and one of the bravest writers I've read. If you've read her other works and agree with me, or if you've enjoyed writers like Kelly Link and Carmen Maria Machado, read this one.

Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Fun and deliciously creepy gothic novel. Lots of fog, mysterious and sinister characters, a great big gloomy house, and a spunky protagonist determined not to let any of it scare her before she saves her cousin from some malevolent yet undefined force. This would have been a fantastic Halloween read, but I appreciated this literary escape over Spring Break, too.

The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead
Another reread (this one from 2016), because the district gave me permission to teach it this year. It's brilliant. Colson Whitehead is everything.

What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat, by Aubrey Gordon
I absolutely love Aubrey Gordon, and I think EVERYONE who has either been hurt by or perpetuated toxic diet culture and anti-fat bias, even inadvertently (which would literally be ALL of us), needs to read this. And I'm specifically eyeing...some of you whom I dearly love.

I also highly recommend the podcast "Maintenance Phase," hosted by Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes. I'd listen to them talk about literally anything (Hobbes also hosts the podcast "You're Wrong About," which is also fabulous) but this one focuses on "[debunking] the junk science between health & wellness fads, and decode their cultural meaning."

Read the book, and then check out the podcast.

Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam
Quietly unsettling, beautifully written story about race, class, and the end of the world. I couldn't put it down.

Grounded, by Jon Tester
Jon Tester is a senior United States Senator from Big Sandy, Montana (near my own family's origins) and he still manages his farm full-time. I LIKE HIM SO DAMN MUCH and reading this sort of broke my heart. I wish it made me feel hopeful, because if anyone can communicate with Americans of differing beliefs, it's him. (I fall a little left of him on most things, for the record, but his story and his beliefs resonate hard with me. I wish everyone in my family would read this.) It was also interesting to read this at more or less the same time I read A Promised Land.

The Push, by Ashley Audrain
This reminded me a lot of We Need To Talk About Kevin, with a more nuanced and true portrayal of the darkness of new motherhood.

Detroit Fairy Tales, by Elisa Sinnett
Elisa Sinnett has written a love letter to a place without romanticizing it. She honors her roots without minimizing trauma. She writes about what drives human behavior -- class, family, sex, race -- without losing sight of the ways in which we are all messily human. I loved every single sentence of this book.

The Office of Historical Corrections, by Danielle Evans
This collection of short stories and a novella is brilliant. It's about, oh, everything. And it's just about perfect on the sentence level. Pretty much everything I want in a work of literature, and also, I couldn't put it down. Sometimes I like short story collections because I feel like I can read them while I read other things. Read a story here, with my morning coffee; read another one before bed, maybe while I'm also reading a novel. But this collection was so immersive; I read it straight through.

I know I haven't said anything specific about the stories themselves, but if you care about imaginative storylines, compelling characters, and beautifully crafted sentences, read this.

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive, by Jane Allison
Well, this book definitely reinforced my stance that I never want to live in a house that is too much for me to take care of on my own as long as I am able-bodied, and I continue to be unimpressed by the classic capitalist idea that we're supposed to want to upgrade and upgrade and accumulate more stuff and take up as much space as possible in the world and then someday downsize again, or whatever.

This is an engaging, well-written memoir, and I appreciate Land's voice in a larger conversation about poverty. I really appreciate the way she dismantles so much of the "bootstrap" narrative so many of us were raised with. I think it's important to remember, though, that this is one woman's story, not a work of research, and I think that basic fact gets lost in a lot of discussions of this book. This is not to diminish Land's experiences at all, but it's hard to read this without thinking of how her (real) poverty is temporary, and how her whiteness affords her privileges that are not accessible to many folks in similar situations. I wish she would have hit on that a little harder, but again, this is a memoir. I also think she leaves out some important pieces of her story (there are so many things I have questions about, things she skims over but clearly impact this story in profound ways) but I also know she doesn't owe me that, and the omissions may very well be intentional. I still recommend this one. (I read this before I watched the Netflix series. Which is also good...but it's incomplete.)

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, by Dawnie Walton
This novel deserves every single accolade. It sings, it soars, it provokes. The oral history form works beautifully, and Dawnie Walton writes voice unlike anyone I've read. I think the audiobook would be fantastic, but as someone who also loves beautifully written literature on a sentence level, I cherish the hardcover. (Buy a hardcover so you can hug it.) I absolutely loved it.

How the Word Is Passed, by Clint Smith

“I think that history is the story of the past, using all the available facts, and that nostalgia is a fantasy about the past using no facts, and somewhere in between is memory, which is kind of this blend of history and a little bit of emotion…I mean, history is kind of about what you need to know…but nostalgia is what you want to hear.”

I make no secret of my love for Clint Smith, and this book is one I want literally everyone to read. I learned that he originally conceived of this project as a book of poetry, one in which each poem would address a different Confederate monument he visited. For the record, I think that would have been a brilliant collection. But this book soars as both an important and immersive history book and a stunning work of literature on the sentence level; Smith writes with a poet's ear to language. I read this one straight through, marking every chapter, unable to put it down.

My "blue-ribbon" high school education (and all the years before and many since) had some gaps, to put it mildly. We need this book.

Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
I absolutely love this book.

It wasn't written for me or my understanding (and likely that will apply to you, too).

Read a little about the book, maybe.

Let the poetry break you a bit. Laugh out loud sometimes (because it's also funny sometimes). Let it break your heart, too, make you think, make you wonder. Be willing to do a little work to understand, or try. Be open.

Long Way Down, by Jason Reynolds
I don't love all YA novels-in-verse but this one leveled me with the power of its language -- the economy of it, the power, the care given to rhythm and sound.

I finished it and immediately handed it to my teenaged daughter. I want more copies in my classroom. The story itself is powerful, but the writing sends it soaring.

We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom, by Bettina L. Love
I want every teacher teacher to read this.

I had the phenomenal privilege of hearing Dr. Love speak this year, and in my journal I wrote, "I want every teacher to hear her. Actually, every human." That's exactly how I feel about her book.

The Chosen and the Beautiful, by Nghi Vo
Retellings of well-known stories don't always work for me, but I couldn't pass up the story of The Great Gatsby told from Jordan's perspective. Jordan as queer, adopted, and Asian -- I'm here for it. Right before I picked this up, I had a conversation with a friend about the value of "American Literature" courses in high school, and I said that the only way I would ever want to teach a class with that title again is by focusing on whose stories weren't told in those red hardcover anthologies so many of us marched through. But that's a larger conversation.

Anyway, maybe the premise is ridiculous -- there is also magic, demon's blood (demoniac) added to many, many cocktails, and cut paper figures that come eerily to life -- but Vo's telling of this story is transformative and it works beautifully. I suppose it could stand on its own, but I think I appreciated it so much more more because I've read Fitzgerald's novel many times (and I can't deny that I love it, mostly for the cadence of his sentences). Vo perfectly captures the essence of Fitzgerald's story and the way he can draw a reader so fully into a moment, but her command of language is also very much her own, and I was completely enthralled from start to finish. I knew what was coming, but I couldn't put it down, and with Jordan at the center the story soars in a dark and dreamy new way.

The Shadow King, by Maaza Mengiste
This book is stunning, and it's also the best war novel I've ever read, telling the story of Italy's second invasion of Ethiopia. Most war novels relegate women to the margins, if they are present at all; they are flimsy plot devices, or sexual objects, or props. This novel centers them; women have always been there.

The characters are all multifaceted, complicated, and human. The writing is gorgeous at the sentence level and brilliant in the bigger picture -- structure, plot, theme. I couldn't put it down, but I also wanted to read it slowly. It's a nearly perfect novel.

Things We Lost to the Water, by Eric Nguyen
This is a story of Huong, a refugee from Vietnam, who arrives in New Orleans with her two very young sons in 1979, and the novel follows their lives through the next few decades, ending with Hurricane Katrina. I wanted to love it -- the motif of water is (clearly) an important thread, and the novel grapples with the themes of memory, loss, belonging, and how we find and define home (one of my favorite literary themes). But I wanted more from each of the characters' stories -- so much potential for development. Still, this is one I'll keep in my classroom and happily share.

Great Circle, by Maggie Shipstead
I loved this book more than I can put into words. Finely honed at the sentence level, perfectly paced and plotted, and characters I can't stop thinking about. It spoke to my soul in ways I can't articulate yet. Definitely one of my favorites this year.

Local Woman Missing, by Mary Kubica
I know I listen to too much true crime, but this irritated me so much. At the end I both wanted to laugh and throw the book at the wall. The multiple perspectives also didn't work for me because the voices all read exactly the same to me -- I'd have lost track of who was talking (the little brother of the missing girl, one of the missing women, the woman next door, etc.) if each section wasn't clearly labeled with a name and "NOW" or "ELEVEN YEARS AGO." On the positive side, it was a FAST read (started it at dinner, finished it after breakfast the next morning, did NOT stay up all night breathlessly turning pages) and I did finish it, because in spite of myself, I wanted to know what happened.

Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy, by Gholdy Mohammaed
Another absolutely essential book for educators.

The 57 Bus, by Dashka Slater
I'm excited to add this to my sophomore curriculum.

This is the summary from goodreads.com:

One teenager in a skirt.
One teenager with a lighter.
One moment that changes both of their lives forever.

If it weren't for the 57 bus, Sasha and Richard never would have met. Both were high school students from Oakland, California, one of the most diverse cities in the country, but they inhabited different worlds. Sasha, a white teen, lived in the middle-class foothills and attended a small private school. Richard, a black teen, lived in the crime-plagued flatlands and attended a large public one. Each day, their paths overlapped for a mere eight minutes. But one afternoon on the bus ride home from school, a single reckless act left Sasha severely burned, and Richard charged with two hate crimes and facing life imprisonment. The case garnered international attention, thrusting both teenagers into the spotlight.

This is a story that fosters empathy and understanding, elevates marginalized voices we need to hear, and, yes, reminds us of our own humanity. I hope.

Behind Closed Doors, by B.A. Paris
So this isn't great literature, but I couldn't put it down and the ending was pretty great. It's exactly what I needed to read over Labor Day weekend after the most chaotic return to school I've ever experienced (fully in-person after 18 months AND in a brand-new building). Glad it was a library book because it was no Tana French, but no regrets.

Somebody's Daughter, by Ashley C. Ford
Ashley C. Ford is a beautiful writer, and this memoir is one I'll recommend (and add to my classroom shelves).

It's a different story than the one I thought I was going to read -- maybe that's a marketing issue, but there were so many places where she brushed over stories I wanted so much more of, especially in her adulthood. But they're hers to tell as she wishes, and this is still a complex, nuanced, important read.

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, by Richard Flanagan
This strange, dreamy, devastating, beautiful book cut straight to my core.

I love this quote from Damien Cave's review in The New York Times: "If there is hope in 'The Living Sea of Waking Dreams' — and in interviews, Flanagan has said there is — it may be found in that simple admonition. Look extinction in the face and find meaning in what we have left. Human failure cannot be solved when we’re scrolling, lost in our dreams, or when the air is tobacco brown. What we see, stream and share will never matter as much as the lives and landscapes we can observe, contemplate and touch."

The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris
I picked this up because it was getting a lot of literary buzz and it was categorized (by some) as a "thriller," which is what I'm often in the mood for in the fall. But this book defies easy categorization. It's not really a thriller -- at least not the fun, read-in-one-sitting kind of books I indulge in over the weekend when I'm stressed -- but it also doesn't read (to me) like a "dark comedy" or one reminiscent of The Devil Wears Prada, which is how it's marketed. It's much deeper than that, and the writing is so much more than I usually expect from my fun mystery reads. Maybe that's actually why this isn't the book for some folks. I suppose it's a slow burn in terms of "thrillers" (although the writing and characterization had me hooked from page one, and I didn't want to put it down), but I trusted this writer from the beginning, and when I understood where she was taking her readers I wanted to go back and reread parts just to appreciate how skillfully she steered the story. I suspect I'll be thinking about this one for awhile.

A Slow Fire Burning, by Paula Hawkins
Fun in the way Paula Hawkins's books are. A good way to spend a vacation day. Probably it's predictable, but I never try too hard to solve the mystery when I'm only spending one or two cozy, chilly afternoons with a book. (I think I like Ruth Ware better, but both writers are ones whose books I happily check out of the library when they're available.)

Filthy Animals, by Brandon Taylor
I think Brandon Taylor is a brilliant writer and I loved his novel Real Life last year. These stories are also well crafted and beautifully written, but they didn't hold me like his longer fiction. I enjoyed the book every time I picked it up to read a story, but I never felt compelled to go back to it, and in the end I read the last three together so I could add it to my 2021 list -- I'd almost forgotten I was reading it at all. I wonder if I would have been more drawn to it if it had been a collection of distinct stories or a novel-in-stories featuring Lionel, Charlie, and Sophie instead of a mix of stories featuring those characters and a few that seemed entirely disconnected.

Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead
Five stars because Colson Whitehead is a genius. I would probably not have been drawn to a novel described "a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s" -- sounds fun, but my reading list is long -- except that Colson Whitehead wrote it. I know I need to go back and read his earlier work, because the versatility of his writing is astonishing. The characterization in this story is phenomenal, as well as the brilliant evocation of a particular time and place. And it turned out to be exactly the book I needed to read to take me out of my own particular time and place, at the moment.

Crossroads, by Jonathan Franzen
Listen, I know we're supposed to hate Jonathan Franzen, and despite the fact that The Corrections is a book that lingers with me sixteen years after I read it, I was ready to be done with him myself after reading Purity (which wasn't an awful book, but I thought, you know, I don't need to be loyal to this writer). But when I read the synopsis of Crossroads, and when I picked it up in a bookstore and skimmed the first few paragraphs, I bought it. And when I sat down to read in earnest, it grabbed me exactly like The Corrections did, and I really, really loved it for all the reasons I loved The Corrections and there you go.

Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons For Our Own, by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
I'm including this in my 2021 list because I'm closer to the end than the beginning. I came to James Baldwin rather late in my life and I'm still discovering him -- but teaching his essays to my juniors requires that I think beyond what personally resonates for me, too, and this book sets his work in the context of our own. I have so much more of Baldwin to read (and more is definitely on my list for 2022), and I'm glad to have this book alongside me as I do.

The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles
I'm also including this on my 2021 list even though I haven't quite finished, although I still might by tomorrow night. I couldn't wait to get my hands on this one after absolutely loving A Gentleman in Moscow, which remains one of the most immersive, satisfying reads of my life. This one, I am happy to report, lives up to my expectations. Absolutely wonderful characters, beautifully crafted sentences, and a story I just want to curl up with forever. It's been perfect for our snow days this week.

Note: I don't usually include audiobooks, because they're not my favorite. It's not that I don't consider them "real" reading (I do!) but they don't work for me in the same way; I can't fully appreciate the language and craft of stories I really love when I can't see the sentences. But that's not to say that I don't enjoy audiobooks in my own particular context: extended time on the road, and occasionally, on my daily walks (though I prefer podcasts for those).

Here are my top audiobooks for 2021:

American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century, by Maureen Callahan
My favorite true crime podcast let me to want to learn more about Israel Keyes. Why didn't we ever hear about Israel Keyes? He's terrifying. He also probably killed someone wherever you live, by the way. And he spent plenty of time in Washington state (as do most serial killers, it seems), so I continued to be amazed that I haven't either been murdered or tripped over a human femur on one of my walks.

Anxious People, by Fredrick Backman
I LOVED THIS BOOK SO MUCH. As in, I might actually buy it just to have a hard copy to hug. I listened to the last 90 minutes on a 6-mile walk, tears streaming down my face the entire time. I recommend this book to literally everyone.

An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones
I think I'd have appreciated this a great deal if I'd read the physical book, but it worked well as an audiobook too. I loved the characters' voices, the structure, and their story. It was heartbreaking and tender even at its most painful moments.

Beartown, by Fredrick Backman
I'm currently listening to this one after a couple of short(ish) road trips over winter break; I have a bit left. It's powerful and intense, and the storytelling is what I've come to appreciate form Backman. I pretty much recommend his books to anyone, audiobooks or otherwise.

As always, I've already started a list for 2022, and I'm looking forward to the Most Anticipated Books of 2022 from Lithub and The Millions in the coming days. If you've made your way through my list, I assume you're reading your way through your own. And I believe reading matters, so: love and solidarity, Friends.

Friday nights are different this year

Three years ago, on a weekend when I desperately needed the comfort of nostalgia, I ordered The Baby-Sitters Club Retro Set -- the first six books of my beloved childhood series, the one I gave away decades ago when I thought I had well outgrown them. The books arrived in a pale blue tin case, with the original covers. I appreciated the satisfying heft of it. And then I tucked it away.

*

Last weekend, I wanted to curl up with Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead's new book. I've been looking forward to this since the Millions Most Anticipated list came out. I think Colson Whitehead is one of our most brilliant, most versatile writers. But while The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys are phenomenal and important works of literature, I am absolutely here for a novel described as "a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s." That's what I want right now. Sign me up.

*

Friday afternoons have always been sacred. I leave school full of energy, full of love for my job and my students, full of optimism, full of absolute certainty that my job is the best there is. Friday afternoons are when I feel the freedom of the weekend stretching before me, so I do not feel conflicted in any way about indulging in a few hours of reading after changing immediately into sweatpants. Sometimes I go for a walk or a jog first and soak in a bubble bath. Sometimes I skip it. But there is always a book and comfy clothes, followed by a cozy dinner and Family Movie Night. 

In the early days of our marriage, before we had kids and when Matt was still working in West Seattle or Kirkland, I liked to go to a local coffee shop on Friday nights in the fall and read on a cushioned corner chair as the afternoon turned to dusk. I read Fingersmith by Sarah Waters on a dark October afternoon, sipping a huckleberry mocha. I thought of that moment yesterday as I drove home through the rain; it's one of my coziest reading memories. The coffee shop is closed, now. And anyway, driving to it requires commitment I can't muster at the moment.

Last weekend I tried to read Harlem Shuffle, but my brain couldn't process it. I couldn't process Colson Whitehead's perfect sentences, couldn't process the story I'd wanted for weeks - one as far removed from my own life as I could get.

I picked up the Baby-Sitters Club instead.

*

Fridays are different this year. I leave school feeling defeated and exhausted in a way that is deeply unmooring for me. I'm not used to this. I'm not used to this sadness, this anger, this diminished energy. The pervasiveness of it all. The aloneness of it all.

I wrote a lot about remote teaching last year; it was the strangest word I'd ever done. There were glimmers of pure magic from my students that somehow, somehow, reminded me that all was not lost. But it was so much work with so little of the joy.

There is undoubtedly more joy this year; I end every single day with it, truly. My seniors have no idea what a gift it is for me to be in person with them. And I tell them that often, but I don't tell them that they are the reason -- sometimes it feels like the only reason -- that I keep breathing in and out. I don't tell them that, because it's an unfair burden to place upon a kid. They have enough burdens of their own, and I truly believe that they should not feel like they need to be a teacher's source of emotional support. When we develop these relationships with kids, it can be easy to forget that, but I also believe it's critically important. I'll cry on my last day with my seniors, but they also need to trust that I won't fall apart every time we talk about something difficult. (I teach literature. We talk about "difficult" a lot. And they need to feel safe doing that.)

But where, then, does that support come from? Because I have never in my career felt so low, or so utterly isolated. 

It's been a long time since I could tick off literally all the boxes on the "High-Functioning Depression" test. Years. And for a long time, I've felt pretty good about my ability to manage it. But now the coping skills I've developed after years of learning how (with a lot of help) are fracturing, and it is all I can do to hold it together at school, where there is absolutely no place for me to feel anything. No place, no time, no room. No space for me, really. It just is not there. So I swallow it back. And who the hell cares, anyway? Everyone has their trauma right now. We're all traumatized by teaching, and some of us have other things going on, but there is nowhere I feel like I can go with that, so here I am, typing alone at my table while my children sleep, or sneaking back into my office space when everyone has gone home and I'm waiting to collect a child from an after-school function, or driving in my car after I drop off another child at school, or having a panic attack in my bathroom at home because that feels like the only space for me right now.

I don't need advice. I know. I just need a space. A place. So I guess I'm taking it here. As for the rest? Well, life goes on. It always does.

I don't say that flippantly. Please believe that.

*

I read all six BSC books last weekend, straight through.

As much as I wanted to be Claudia, I'm more of a combination of Mallory and Dawn, I think. Always writing in a journal, a little klutzy -- I have tripped over my own Danskos and torn my jeans at school too many times to count -- and prone to moping under a tree. But also organized, mostly vegetarian. Too sensitive and easily annoyed. Practical. Fearful. But mostly perfectly okay being herself.

Reading those books felt like wrapping myself in a weighted blanket. That kind of comfort -- I needed that. I finished the first one and started the second (Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls). I thought I should stop then, ration the books a bit, but I couldn't make myself care about anything more than submerging myself in The Truth About Stacey and Mary Anne Saves the Day.

What does it mean to be a teacher, a mother of a teenager, a mother of a sixth-grader, muddling through school after a year-and-a-half of remote learning? How can these books speak to me where I am right now? Why do I want nothing else than to pull a blanket over my head and retreat into this world of novels written when I was in fourth, fifth, sixth grade?

But it's what I needed. I read the first, the second, the third. I read all six, all in a row.

If I were in a different state of mind, I would write entire essays about reading the BSC books again in 2021. As it stands, I'm grateful to tuck them back into their tin and maybe browse the internet for copies of the Super Specials.

Life goes on, as it does.

But tonight, I'm carving out this little space that's mine, where for a minute it matters, where I can try to catch my breath after losing it in so many secret spaces.

I picked up Harlem Shuffle again last night and read for awhile. I'm ready to keep going this time, I think. At least there's that.

October, finally

Two weeks ago I sat at my dining room table, writing to the sound of rain. This is the sound I wait for, every September. The rain was fleeting, but it soothed the edges of my frazzled nerves.

I went for a run after school today. I'm oddly energetic on Friday afternoons, especially on Fridays when I end with a class that never fails to fill my cup. I was in a strange headspace; this week has been particularly hard. But I left school feeling good and wanting to move in the cool sunshine.

It cools off at night now; we still sleep with a fan, but I don't kick away the covers. One night this week I was cold enough to wear socks to bed -- what a lovely feeling. Sunny days aren't oppressive, the way they feel in late August, with our matted lawn, crisp and colorless. The leaves have begun to turn, and they are beautiful. I love the bursts of color on sunny Saturdays in October; this year, I know they'll make me miss our weekend soccer games. 

I missed them last year, too, but I missed a lot of things last year. 

*

These days, our morning routines go like this: Suzannah and I are up early, before the boys. She starts the coffee maker, which Matt has set up the night before, and she drinks one cup with her breakfast. Milk, two teaspoons of sugar. I'm never hungry at that hour, and I don't like to drink coffee quickly, so I simply shower and dress, and the two of us are out the door before dawn. I drive through my favorite espresso stand before we get to school; I discovered them twenty years ago, when I used my lunch break to rush back to my apartment and take my new pug puppy out to potty on the scrap of lawn next to the stairs. In those days, I ordered a black and white mocha and drank it on my way back to school. Now, I stick to Americanos, sometimes black, sometimes with a splash of cream.

On the days when I take Suzannah to school, we park in the teacher lot and walk in together. She gives me a quick hug and heads off towards the Commons area or to hang out with her friends in a patient colleague's classroom, and I walk up the stairs to my new office, where I have extra morning planning time. I've been on a part-time contract since she was born, so I'm not required to be here at this hour -- but Matt and I decided to choice Suzannah into my school, so we share the responsibility of transportation. The extra time feels lovely right now. I'm a morning person by nature, and those extra hours in a quiet space mean it's easier for me to leave my laptop at my docking station at the end of the day. Last year, I never really succeeded at establishing a boundary between work and home, because I taught my classes through that screen at the center of my house.

On the days when I take Isaac to school -- the privilege of a position that is still technically part-time -- we can all sleep just a little longer, or at least we're not as rushed. Matt doesn't need to make himself presentable before he rolls out of bed to drive her to school, and he doesn't need to worry about snagging a spot in the teacher lot -- my school is still under construction, and parking is at a premium. When I go in later, I park behind the football field, nowhere near the entrance that is closest to my classroom. Or any entrance, really. I walk along the track, then up a long paved path to the back entrance next to the health clinic, and then I cross the Commons area and make my way to the stairs that lead to the second floor, where I share an IB office and a classroom.

But it's okay. A year ago, we didn't go anywhere. We drank our coffee and ate our breakfast and logged onto our computers in different rooms of our house. As much as I loved wearing my favorite gray sweats underneath whatever reasonably professional look I managed to put together on top, those gray sweats weren't worth it. As much as I loved having some really sweet time with my family, knowing that it was an unexpected gift -- after all, my kids are not at ages when I would expect to see so much of them, and I really loved it -- it wasn't the natural order of things, and I know how much they need to be with their peers (and please, no one needs to lecture any teachers about this). But I won't write about that here tonight. I tried to write about it a year ago, when I was still trying to justify my paycheck to friends and family who didn't seem to think I deserved it.

I haven't found my sweet spot yet, not at all. I counted it as a victory that I found my teacher mailbox in the main office all by myself for the first time last Friday, without Kailey holding my hand (though she did cheer me on, and I choose to believe it was not entirely mocking). I can make copies now. But I haven't found my groove, that place where I'm actually ready to greet students at my door because everything they need is printed and ready to pick up (and they know the routines to do that) or displayed on a screen (which is now a fancy new Smart Board). Kids haven't had to ask permission to pee in a very long time, so I haven't been consistent with hall passes. We have a system now, but everything, all of these really basic things, are an evolving process. I have to remind kids all day long to wear their masks correctly, which is the only issue I haven't encountered before, and it's the one I care about most right now. Usually, all it takes is eye contact and tapping my own. But it's unmooring, to say the least. All of it. Learning to be human together again. To read each other's signals. To constantly evaluate risk, and maintain that essential connection at the same time. It all matters so much.

This is what it means to be back in a classroom full-time. It's too crowded, of course. I'm no stranger to over-crowded classrooms; my first of teaching, I had 42 students in my first period class. But during a pandemic, when we have to provide seating charts for contact tracing, full classrooms bring a different level of anxiety. The first time I stood in front of a full class, I found it difficult to breathe, and it wasn't because of my mask.

Speaking of which: teaching through a mask isn't my favorite, but it's infinitely better than teaching through a screen. I'm watching schools in other parts of the country -- and, this week, a private school in my own state -- close because Covid is tearing through their classrooms, and my anxiety rises. My anxiety rises, and so does my anger. My whole body thrums with it. I am so grateful to live in a state with a mask mandate, because it is the best chance we have of keeping kids in school without putting them at even more risk. I'm furious at folks who think that doing this tiny thing is giving into "fear." I'm furious at folks who think that protecting vulnerable members of our community is an imposition on their personal freedom, that we should expect them to "stay home if they're scared." As if we should render them invisible. As if we haven't already. 

Right now, I just want my son vaccinated. Sometimes I think it will be a miracle if he can avoid quarantine until then. I found myself murmuring in the car two weeks ago, Please let him just get to run in his first cross-country meet. And please just let him not get sick. Sure, he'd probably be fine, right? But look, this mama has already experienced what it's like to have a healthy child suddenly hospitalized at Mary Bridge Children's, with a pediatric nephrology team taking care of him. 

Is that what it means to "live in fear"? 

We were lucky. We were so lucky. And on a normal weekday, we waited for hours in the ER for a bed. I would be so terrified to need any sort of hospital care now, when we can't assume a bed will be available at all. Washington is taking on transfers from Idaho. My home state is rationing medical care. My best friend who works for a clinic in Minnesota reports that they're struggling to find open beds for non-COVID patients.

Most healthy children don't suddenly go into kidney failure, but some of them do. Don't come at me with your statistics, especially if you're too precious to wear a mask for twenty minutes inside a grocery store. I think a measure of our humanity might just be our willingness to wear that stupid mask to protect someone else's child. That's the only sort of world I want to live in. So I'm pretty depressed these days.

*

Anyway, my son managed to escape quarantine before his first cross-country meet last week. And my greatest fear was not, honestly, that he would get sick -- because he is incredibly conscientious about wearing a mask and because we are lucky enough to live in a district that requires them. I just know that he needs these experiences, these connections, and I want him to have them.

He ran hard, with absolute determination, and he took third overall and first for his school. Yesterday he shaved something like forty-five seconds off his time; he threw himself against the fence, panting and red-faced but clearly pleased after he crossed the finish line. He did not get any of this from me. I require a tremendous amount of validation from for huffing around my neighborhood for awhile. I was highly allergic to P.E. and running the mile until P.E. classes were no longer required. Listen, I was the kid vomiting at the side of the track because I really wanted that stupid A on my report card. (I'm told P.E. doesn't work like that anymore and I am so glad.) 

Cross-country is a perfect pandemic sport, and perfect for my high-energy son who is very active but has zero interest in "organized" sports. I watched him run, and then I watched him bounce up and down and cheer for every single teammate until they crossed the finish line. This is what it means to be part of a community. Toxic individualism tells us that our "personal freedom" is what we should fight for, instead of the greater whole. But we are part of something bigger than ourselves.

*

I've tried to write here so many times in the last two weeks, since the afternoon when I sat at my table, listening to the rain. I don't know how to tell all the stories that matter right now.

I want us to be better

Seven years ago, my four-year-old son went into sudden kidney failure. And by sudden, I mean sudden, following what seemed like a typical end-of-summer cold. Matt took Isaac to the doctor while I prepared to start another school year. His doctor thought it could be a virus, but he took one look at our son and ordered a urine catch and blood work. When the tests came back a few hours later, the doctor called and said the safest place for our son to be was the hospital. Immediately. So we found ourselves tossing toothbrushes, pajamas, and Isaac's stuffed beagle into a backpack and the soup that hadn't finished cooking into the sink. My brother and sister-in-law came over to stay with Suzannah and we drove to Mary Bridge Children's Hospital, where I spent the first few days of the new school year.

Instead of meeting my students, I met with a pediatric nephrologist. I held my sobbing son through an EKG, many blood draws, an IV, a failed attempt to get him to drink a huge cup of sludgy medicine to lower his potassium levels, and albuterol treatments. 

We spent that first night in the Emergency Room, waiting for a kidney ultrasound. Isaac fell asleep on the padded exam table behind a privacy curtain and we wrapped him in Matt's sweatshirt to keep him warm. I watched the clock discard the minutes, my eyes burning. By the time a bed was ready, it was five o'clock in the morning, and I was covered in my son's dried tears and the remnants of the medicine he had thrown up all over me. We tucked him in with his stuffed beagle, and Matt and I curled into each other on a small pull-out couch where we dozed for an hour or two.

It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, but all things considered, we were so lucky. We took him home a few days later, and several months after that, all his tests came back clear. 

Last week, I took him in for his well-child visit and middle school immunizations (the ones that are required for school, a mandate which people do not seem to be protesting, interestingly enough). I am grateful for every single one of those vaccines, and I am grateful for my son's health. He is a boisterous, active, healthy, hilarious, absolutely wonderful kid and I am grateful for him always, but particularly every September now, when I remember the moments in the hospital when Matt and I were brought face-to-face with everything we stood to lose. 

And the thing is that I never believed we would lose him, because such a loss is unsurvivable. Right? 

But here's the other memory that stays with me: the children we met that week on our floor who would not be sent home with their families after a few randomly frightening days. 

I still almost can't breathe typing this. 

I remember, for instance, sitting in one of the game rooms with my son and a child in a purple bathrobe, completely bald, smaller than my son, dragging an IV pole over to a table with coloring books and games. I still think about that child all the time. Where are they now? Are they okay? Are they also getting ready to go back to school? Fourth grade, maybe? Fifth? Sixth, like my son?

When I think about hospitals filling up with COVID patients these days, I think of that child. 

When folks who showed nothing but love and support for my son seven years ago post on social media now that we need to open up, get back to normal, and live -- I think of that child. I think of that child and I think of my son when those folks post, "If you're scared, you should stay home!" I am honestly too afraid to ask these people if they believe that our "right" to not feel uncomfortable in a mask is more important than a vulnerable child's right to an education. Or to a place in our society. Just stay home. Don't inconvenience us with your "underlying condition." Don't ask us to value your life as a necessary part of our community. Don't ask us to care about a person we don't know.

You cared about my son then. What if things had turned out differently? Would you say the same things?

We're starting another school year, together again. We need it so much, and I will do anything to return safely in person. I will wear the mask, even though I don't love teaching through a mask. Teaching through a mask beats teaching through a screen, and all of that beats spreading a virus to folks who cannot be vaccinated yet. To vulnerable folks. We are going to have to take some risks, yes. But we also have the tools to protect each other, and some of us just don't want to use them.

I think of my son and all the what-ifs. I think of that child in the purple bathrobe. I think of the parents holding their children in a hospital room, or waiting for one.

Today I looked at the pictures of my son in the emergency room, small and swollen and wrapped up in my husband's gray sweatshirt, and I cried and cried. I looked at the picture of my son curled up with his stuffed beagle in his hospital bed. I thought about how lucky we are, and how it could have been otherwise. I thought about the folks who love him, and about all the folks who don't know him, and about all the other children currently tucked into hospital beds, or waiting for them. I thought about how in a week ago in Dallas County, Texas, Judge Clay Jenkins said, "If your child's in a car wreck, if your child has a congenital heart defect...and needs an ICU bed, or more likely if they have Covid and need an ICU bed, we don't have one. Your child will wait for another child to die."

Don't fucking talk to me about percentages, because those are children. You are talking about someone's child. 

I thought about how terrifying it was to rush my son to the hospital seven years ago. I cannot fathom how terrifying it would be now.

Percentages don't mean a lot when you're a terrified mother holding your baby in a hospital. 

I think of the parents of that child with the purple bathrobe.

I'm so thankful -- so far beyond thankful -- that my state now requires vaccines for school staff and masks for everyone, regardless of vaccination status. Anything less is failing our kids. Period. But I see protests even in my city, because some people believe that individual comfort matters more than someone's life. And I see what's happening in other parts of the country. This is why my anger is spreading like a can of spilled red paint. This is why I cannot fully embrace the back-to-school joy I've missed so desperately. 

My son still sleeps with that stuffed beagle. I think mothers understand this: sometimes I tiptoe into his room after he's asleep, even now, even as I'm preparing to send him to middle school. I still need to see the steady rise and fall of his chest, to ground myself in the gift of his presence, to offer a desperate prayer of thanks that we still get to have him, and beg the universe to show mercy to our babies when the adults around them turn away. 

I want the world to be better. I want us to be better.

I know how to breathe in the water

When your child challenges you to a water balloon fight on a hot afternoon in late July, I believe in saying yes. Always. Even if you're not wearing a swimsuit. Maybe especially if you're not wearing a swimsuit, because there is something about getting soaked in shorts and a tank top that feels whimsical and freeing. Although I do have to say that fifteen years into motherhood, I still frequently put on a swimsuit for an afternoon of Serious Water Play in the backyard, because that signals commitment, and I am a mother who pities the parents who do not find joy in this, at any age.

I've written about this before, but my perfect summer happens in my backyard.

We didn't make it to Bozeman last summer, or almost anywhere else. Our story isn't unique. We're in a Pandemic (yes, still). Matt changed jobs. The IB Global Conference was cancelled. By this time last year, we had just learned that we would begin the school year remotely, which was both a relief and a source of anxiety and dread. Last year at this time, we were about to leave for a quick trip to Glacier National Park, where we met my parents, my brother and his family, and Matt's parents. It was the only time all summer that felt something like normal, the only time all summer where I could just breathe. And I did, mostly by swimming in Lake McDonald. Put me in the water, and I am home. 

I know how to breathe in the water.

*

We did make it to Bozeman this summer, and I was so grateful. I missed the smell of my parents' house. It's a smell they probably don't notice, but to me, it smells exactly like home the moment I walk in the door, the smell I've known for most of my life. I love it so much, in exactly the way I love the smell of my own house after we've been away for a week; it's a very specific smell I never notice any other time except after days away. 

(How many homes is a person allowed to have? I have asked myself this question for years. My best high school teacher told me one night before I left for college that I would put down deep roots wherever I went. And it's true, I think. I can still smell, in my memory, the apartment I shared with Carmen in Moorhead, Minnesota. Or the smell of the heavy, late summer air there. Home is the way the air smells.)

We also spent a few nights in Glacier. We didn't camp this time, like we have since my son was in diapers. I've missed it, those nights spent breathing the sweet pine-scented air under the stars, settled into the quiet of a tent, with everything that matters held in that space. COVID changed things, yes. But pandemics do eventually end, and at some point in the last few years I have learned how to set boundaries for myself and for my family. We'll share communal spaces again, but until then, we'll gratefully accept my mother's gift of a cabin and days at the lake. Paddle boards, kayaks, the sun setting over the water. The cool water of Lake McDonald against my body, which I prefer over any kayak or paddle board. It's a strange thing: to so fully enjoy the water, to acknowledge that this lake is warm enough to swim in all afternoon, which it shouldn't be. Growing up, it wasn't. We are incinerating the planet, and this is obvious in a heartbreaking way when I visit this place where the glaciers are shrinking into snow fields.

Pam Houston writes in Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country: 

For now, I want to sit vigil with the earth...I want to write unironic odes to her beauty, which is still potent, if not completely intact. The language of the wilderness is the most beautiful language we have and it is our job to sing it until and even after it is gone no matter how much it hurts. If we don't, we are left with only a hollow chuckle, and our big brains who made this mess, our big brains that stopped believing a long time ago in beauty, in everything, in anything.

Montana is burning. It's too hot, too early. Again. I returned to my home state hoping to breathe the sweetest air in the world, but smoke filled my lungs instead. Weeks later, friends there post pictures of a red sun in a yellow sky.

Montana might never truly welcome me home; I'm an Outsider now. And yet. And yet. My soul still knows how to breathe in the water there, and the Montana prairie is not so different from the ocean tides. I'll always love it.

*

I moved to the Pacific Northwest twenty years ago. I've lived here longer than I've lived anywhere else: my entire adult life. I was born in a prairie town, grown and nourished near the mountains, returned to the Midwestern plains, and given my wings to wind up exactly where I am now. All of it, all of it, courses through my blood. My heart beats to the rhythm of the ocean tides and prairie winds. I cherish my trips home. But home is also here now: in the Pacific Northwest, in the mountains, at the coast, and quite literally in my backyard.

*

Matt and I were extraordinarily lucky to stumble into our little house, in this neighborhood, just six weeks after we were married. Before we had kids, I spent August afternoons reading in the shade of our enormous tree, or reading in the sunshine on our deck (I won't tell you which books led to my most painful sunburns, but I remember them clearly). After Suzannah was born, I spent countless afternoons in the backyard with her, taking pictures while she splashed in the little plastic wading pool we bought at Target or Toys R Us. I remember sitting on the edge of the deck trying to read while she ran through the sprinkler. One of the books I was supposed to teach for IB Literature still bears her scribbles; she grabbed my blue ballpoint pen after she tired of the water, and I didn't really care for the book anyway -- it was a complete chore to read (and I no longer teach it). Temperatures hit 100 the summer I was pregnant with Isaac, and I sat in that plastic wading pool while Zannah poured water over my belly. The next summer, Isaac kicked his fat legs on a blanket on the grass. And after that...well, the yard was his, too. The sprinkler, the lawn, the deck. The concrete patio that replaced the old, rotting deck. The swing set and sandbox, built by my husband and father-in-law before my son's first birthday.

I'm supposed to want more. More square footage? More house, less yard? Newer? Bigger? I wasn't thinking about "forever" when we bought our house, only about how we loved it then. All these years later, I still do, and even more in Quarantine, when my daily walks introduced me to so many neighbors I'd never known and showcased spectacular views of Puget Sound, only a few streets away. I've learned that what I need is not the same thing as what we're conditioned to want.

*

I love our summer travels. I do. Our trips have mostly always been to Montana and Minnesota, because our families are there, and I have no regrets about that (Montana and Minnesota are wonderful places to be, in any season). I've had some wonderful trips around the country for the IB Global Conference each summer, and once Matt and I went to Vegas on his company's dime (I'll go anywhere and enjoy it when I don't have to pay for it, but I'd be okay not going back). I have a list of places I want to go and things I want to see and experience in the next few years. But I've also learned that the summers I love best are the summers that give me the most time at home here in the Pacific Northwest. We keep discovering places that fill and feed my soul near my home here. At the coast, in the mountains, on the trails to the Sound near my own house.

(I almost wrote, "in my home state." Is this my home state now? I think of the privilege inherent in claiming a state this way in the first place. In having a childhood bedroom that still exists somewhere else. Surely, claiming a home shouldn't be limited to those of us who still have a bed in a place we lived in decades ago.)

*

I spent some time this weekend reading through old journals, which is a thing I tend to do in late summer, before I dig into preparing for the next school year. The year after I moved here, after I chose this place to begin my adulthood, my "real life," I wrote about returning to a place of wet and green Januaries after Christmas in Montana, about how I felt like I was going home. And yet, for years after I left Montana, I still wrote about weeping as I drove east or west out of Bozeman -- to Moorhead, Minnesota or to Washington. Bozeman is a hard place to leave. But those tears meant that a heart can expand to hold these other places, too, and to call them home.

*

I've lived here, in this state, in this little house, longer than I've lived anywhere else. 

My dream house is this one, I think. Maybe a few streets closer to the water, so I could drink my coffee with a view of Puget Sound instead of having to walk to that view in the mornings (all summer) or the afternoons (when I'm teaching). What I have is close enough. My perfect summer day happens right here, when I pour myself a glass of iced green tea ("Enjoy your alien pee," my son says) and read in the backyard until it's time to cook dinner, which we also frequently eat in the backyard. My perfect summer day happens when my children fill water balloons with our backyard hose and throw them at each other, and at me. My perfect summer day happens when all we need is a backyard hose, a sprinkler, a grill, a fire pit. A comfortable lounge chair, or one of the Adirondack chairs I bought in May, along with a side table -- perfect for that glass of tea, a can of lemon-flavored La Croix, or a Pinot Grigio in the late afternoon.

I'll never say no to the water. 

*

School starts again a month from now. I'll be teaching full classes in person again for the first time in a year-and-a-half. My daughter will be a sophomore. My son will be a middle-schooler, which is harder for me to process, since the last time he attended in-person school he was only in the fourth grade. But the world happens to all of us. We'll figure it out.

In the meantime, we'll run through the sprinkler, we'll have water balloon fights, we'll spend afternoons at the beaches in the state parks near our home (two of them are ten minutes from our house, in two different directions, with sandy beaches and swimming and trails), and we'll make one last drive to a National Park and a beautiful lake in the mountains near the sea. This is what feeds my soul.

But even if I don't want to drive those ten minutes on a hot afternoon in late July or August, I can bask in summer days exactly where I am. I've never needed more than our back yard, a slip 'n slide or sprinkler, a camp chair under a towering tree that shades our home. I've added better chairs, I suppose. We have that fire pit. A patio umbrella. A grill, for when we don't want to heat the kitchen. But the magic that happens here is simple: an arc of water from a garden hose, catching the sunlight like diamonds. A book. A glass of iced tea. Dinner on the patio, maybe. The cool night descending over the water, the breeze that pairs with our bedroom fan to ruffle our bedroom curtains.

And always, the water. In whatever form my children want. Because isn't this it? The moments we miss later?

(Maybe it's the Pisces in me, but I'll take the water in any moment, on any day. I want the hose, the sprinkler, the slip 'n slide, the spray park, the pool as much as my children do.)

So I say yes to the water balloon fights, the water gun fights. I suggest the spray park, or the beach when my son whines that he's bored. I don't care what we do there, whether we splash in the water or dig in the sand or buy hot dogs or hike the trails near the water. I love it all. It's a life I couldn't know I was choosing all those years ago. It's a life I wouldn't trade.

The Natural Order Of Things

School officially ended a week ago, but it still feels impossible to relax. For one thing, I still have to unpack in my new classroom after bidding farewell to the room I called home for so many years. For another thing, temperatures in the Pacific Northwest are predicted to top 100 -- up to 112 in my area, according to one forecast -- for three days. Every time I look at the weather reports, anxiety and dread sit heavily on my chest. For all the "it's just weather" climate change deniers, do you realize that not once in my lifetime has the temperature hit 100 degrees in June here? And I can count on one hand how many times we've hit 100 ever. I've lived here for my entire adult life, and when I moved here twenty years ago, "fire season" wasn't a thing. I didn't assume we'd start the school year choked with smoke. But by the time I was old enough to be a soccer mom, I knew that yellow, smoky skies meant canceled practices, closed windows, and hot, stuffy homes for weeks at the end of every summer. Last fall, one of my closest friends had to evacuate her home; she began the school year living in a hotel room as wildfires raged, blown in from eastern Washington.

This is not the natural order of things.

But then, some things are: like my daughter coming out as Queer.

I should mention here that I have her permission to share this; she's comfortable with herself, which is what I've always hoped. She should be. She is completely fantastic exactly as she is. She has always been so very much herself, and she has always been so loved. And even that moment was the most beautiful manifestation of her unique and beautiful self, and remembering it will always, always make me smile. I wish it could be that way for everyone, and until I take my last breathe, I hope, I'll find ways to work towards that. The world needs to be better. We need to be better for each other.

*

When I can't relax, like during the first week after school is out (every year), it helps to focus on the sweet early-summer moments, to notice them, to write them down. Time seems to slow just a bit that way. This week the kids and I went to the beach on a sunny morning, we ate lunch outside at the Des Moines Dog House, we bought everyone new shoes, we ate frozen yogurt, we spent a lot of time in the backyard (well, Isaac and I did, and he even dug out our slip 'n slide and spent many happy hours throwing his skinny body through the water on that surprisingly durable strip of plastic), I took Suzannah shopping, and she got her hair cut.

Oh, her hair. It's so fabulous.

She has had long, golden waves for her entire life. She had almost no hair until she was two, and then it came in fast, curling in fine blonde waves. I couldn't bring myself to cut it until she was four years old, when it reached her butt and it was a pain to shampoo and comb. I still have a lock from that first trim, tucked away. But she's really never cared about her hair. She's never wanted me to do anything with it; she only consented to ponytails for Tae Kwon Do and soccer. She has definitely never been excited about a haircut; the closest she came to excited over her hair was when she had the ends dyed blue last August.

So when she told me that she thought she wanted to cut it short -- "like, short" -- I thought, okay, yes. This is you.

So many folks have asked me how I feel about her cutting her long hair, and I completely understand that. But this is what I wrote yesterday: I loved Suzannah's hair, but SHE didn't, and she never let me play with it anyway and certainly didn't care herself. I figured a long time ago that the most important thing to me is for my kids to feel comfortable in their own hair, body, skin, and soul -- far more than fulfilling some vision of those things I have.

I took "before" pictures, because that's what a mother does. But I resisted the urge to peek during the actual cut, because I wanted the big reveal. I listened to my daughter chatting happily with her stylist, I listened to all the advice about how to play with it, how to comb it, how much product to use. I tried to read my book, but I couldn't concentrate. I just kept beaming. My kid. And when she walked over to me with her new hair, my heart just burst. It was so perfect. She was so happy. She was so her.

I've written so much about what it means to call a place home, and why I've chosen this particular place for mine. I could have landed anywhere after college. At a job fair in Minneapolis shortly before graduation, I interviewed with districts in Alaska, Colorado and Minnesota. Alaska offered me a job on the spot, but I knew it wasn't right. Colorado seemed promising. But there was a tug to the Pacific Northwest, and I followed that like a fishhook was caught in my heart. I've never once been sorry. I knew I wanted the mountains and the water, both. I was raised as a daughter of the prairie who felt the pull of ocean tides. But I couldn't know then, as a young adult leaving college behind, how lucky I would be to stumble into the community I found here. My students. My colleagues. My friends. Our neighbors. Our incredible affirming church. They've all challenged me to be better than I was before I met them, and I owe them all an impossible debt. They're also the folks who truly see and support my kids, which is this mother's most fervent prayer.

Please understand this: a mother notices. I know who is important in my kid's life, and I pay very close attention to how they respond, or don't. I see the folks who see my children, who love and celebrate them. Those folks are our community. To the rest? Your words or your silence, whatever it is, you can come through me first. I have a lot of love behind me to block it.

Love, Just Love

"Love is the story and the prayer that matters the most." -- Brian Doyle

***

There is no way to write about the end of a Pandemic Year right now, not tonight, not at the end of the first week of June with ten days left to go, not with a classroom to finish packing for a move into a new building, not with final essays to grade, not with this much love and grief and hope to sit with for awhile. Not with this much exhaustion.

But I wanted to write something, because my heart is so full.

For the first time in what feels like a very long time, we could host a gathering in our home for fully-vaccinated family to celebrate my firstborn's fifteenth birthday. Matt and I could hug our parents again. Our kids could hug their grandparents.

I visited one of my very favorite people inside her home and could hug her again. I had no idea that when I hired a doula for Isaac's birth that her assistant would become one of the most important friendships of my life, and eleven years later, I'm leveled with gratitude for this relationship. 

I get to hang out with one of my best friends again. I might turn her into a hugger yet.

Pandemic Teaching in all forms is absurd, but my students continue to remind me why I'm still in, and it's absolutely worth it. Hybrid teaching is terrible in every way except that I get to see some kids, and I get to talk to my favorite co-workers in the morning before class, in person, and I have missed them. So. Much.

We went to church in person for the first time since March of 2020, and I was not prepared to feel everything I felt today.

Matt and I have the most incredible kids. I don't know how to make this sound like not-bragging, but I'm not trying to do that. I'm not here to brag about their accomplishments (of which I am proud in a proper motherly way); I'm more interested in their humanity. My son is hands down the funniest person I know. He brings me so much crazy joy every single day. And my daughter is so, so much braver than I ever was at her age. Hell, she's braver at fifteen than I am now. Both of them are smart, kind, curious, compassionate people and that's really what I care about.

And wow, I've thought so many times in recent weeks that I really mess up a lot, as a Mom. I'm not as patient as I want to be. I react in ways I'm not always proud of. I have big feelings and I yell too much. But there are some things that Matt and I have always wanted to get right, and lately I've been thinking we might have. I've never been afraid of anything our kids might have to tell us; I've only ever been determined that they should never be afraid of how we would respond. I've only ever wanted them to know that we affirm and celebrate and love them unconditionally.

My children's happiness and well-being is my first priority -- as it should be for any parent -- and these days, I'm so thankful for my community, my church, my colleagues, and my friends, for seeing my kids, seeing them and affirming them and celebrating them too. It takes a village. It does. I've written many times that I'm so thankful for mine, and never believe I take it for granted, because I know how it could have been otherwise.

I wouldn't change a single thing about my kids. They have always been exactly themselves, fearfully and wonderfully made.

Happy Pride. Happy June. 

So much can change in an hour

Sometimes it's hard to know how to dress for a walk at this time of year. Late April in the Pacific Northwest is often gorgeous, with bright blue skies and soft breezes, but it's been a cold and dry spring; sometimes sunny days hide a biting wind. Last week I thought the afternoon was warm enough for a thin, long-sleeved shirt and I shivered through the first two miles. A few days later I wore a t-shirt and a hoodie and wound up with sweat trickling down my back before tying the hoodie around my waist and arriving back home with a sunburn.

This morning, I taught through a drizzle that turned to rain. My classroom door was propped open, because it always is; the district has provided air purifiers to classrooms, but my broken window is still broken and my unventilated building is still full of mold. I'd likely have left my door open, COVID or no COVID, because I like fresh air and I love the smell of spring. 

(I've missed the sound of a steady spring rain outside my classroom door, singing across the tops of the covered walkways. I won't miss the broken concrete sidewalks when we move into our new building in the fall, but I will miss the sound of rain.)

The rain tapered off throughout the morning. When Suzannah I arrived at home before lunch it had stopped completely, and by the time I'd signed out of afternoon office hours the sun was peeking through the clouds. My son went outside to blow bubbles; Suzannah bounced a basketball in the driveway. I shut down my laptop, put it away, changed my clothes and pulled my hair into a ponytail, and headed outside to walk the streets of my neighborhood like I've done almost every single day since March of 2020.

And I was cold at first. Five minutes into my walk I have the choice to walk down the hill to the edge of the water or up the hill for more panoramic views that take me through the streets overlooking Puget Sound. Both are lovely, but I chose to walk uphill, away from the wind, and soon I found myself sweating as the clouds dissipated. The water was a brilliant blue, and everything was blooming. I wished I'd brought sunglasses.

I turned on to a shaded side street, and this time I relished the cool breeze.

So much can change in an hour. In a month. In a year.

*

This is what our mornings look like now: 

I wake up early, like I always do, but instead of reading on the couch in the pre-dawn light before my family rises, I shower and dress right away. I put on jeans instead of lounge pants underneath my shirt. I do not drink coffee at the dining room table while I prep for the day; I don't drink coffee at all, actually, unless I pull through my favorite coffee stand on the way home before lunch. Which I do. Partly because I love coffee, even if I have to wait until after ten o'clock in the morning to drink it, and partly because I miss the familiarity of that routine. This week I pulled up to the window and the barista cried, "You're back!" And she still knows my order, even after all this time.

My daughter is also an early riser, so there are no morning battles. She gets herself up, dressed, and fed, and the two of us are ready to leave the house an hour before she can check in for her daily health attestation. This is the life of a teacher's kid. We drive to school together and she hangs out in my classroom with me until it's time for her to check in, pick up her laptop for the day, and head to class.

I didn't expect that we'd be back in the building this year, because COVID continues to spread, school districts continue to be less than transparent about reporting, and we continue to learn. But here we are. We have two classes on campus in the morning, followed by an hour break for lunch and travel time, and two classes in the afternoon. On Thursdays and Fridays, we switch. Each class meets on campus twice a week, for those students who have chosen the hybrid model. Teachers manage both at the same time. Or we try. Two weeks in, and I'm still spinning. How can I make everyone feel included? How can I teach in-person from behind a desk, six feet away? How can I teach sitting down, through a screen? How can I do both, at once, and let them all know they matter? I have never been a teacher who sits while she teaches. Teaching energizes me; it calls me outside of myself. Forcing that energy through a screen, or through a mask from a distance, feels impossible.

But it also brings me life, even now. Because the alternative is -- what? Not teaching?

*

We made it three whole days into Hybrid before we had to quarantine a few classes due to a positive COVID case on campus. And I know perfectly well how many "friends" on social media think that quarantining, at this point, is an overreaction, and masks are merely "virtue signaling." I wonder how many of those folks have sat with a student (even virtually) who lost a grandparent -- or a parent -- to COVID. (For the record, I can't think of anyone even semi-close to me who has died from the flu, and certainly not multiple people. Just saying. For those of you who keep saying it's no worse, no different than the flu.) I wonder how many of those folks have lost a friend, or worried about a child. I wonder how many of those folks actually care about anyone other than themselves and their -- rights? Is that really the word we're using? Is this toxic individualism, or is it ignorance? Does it matter?

My son is still fully remote and will be through the end of the year. He isn't "muzzled" (and if you've used that word to describe children wearing masks, you're an asshole). He's thriving with his absolutely wonderful teacher and his classmates, and he -- as an eleven-year-old -- understands that sometimes we make sacrifices to keep other people safe. I wish more adults did.

My son also went into sudden and total kidney failure when he was little and we spent some time at Mary Bridge Children's Hospital. He has a clean bill of health now, but since we're seeing a lot of "oh, well, they had an underlying condition" comments regarding kids and COVID, you'd best believe I am not fucking around with that. You'd also best believe that if you're one of the folks who says, "If you're scared, YOU stay home!" then I think you're the very worst of humanity. (If we're friends on social media, I literally have no idea why. I keep saying this, and folks keep not believing me.)

As a teacher called back to the classroom -- a place I belong -- I understand exactly why our kids need to be back in school. I do not understand folks who are outraged about sending their kids to school in masks. Look, none of us love them (though they are nice when it's freezing outside, or when one has a zit on one's chin), but decent human beings understand that being uncomfortable sometimes is the very smallest price to pay for someone's life, or even for someone's well-being. Unless you're an asshole.

*

Years of journals reveal that I always think that May is the worst month to be a teacher. This is from 2017:

There is something about this time of year that I love, even when it's hard, even when I say (and mean) that May is the worst month to be a teacher, so far from the romance of September. Everyone is so done. But also, the promise of summer, of long, languid afternoons spent sprawled on the patio with a book and a glass of iced tea while the kids run through the sprinkler -- it's still just around the corner, far enough away that I'm not yet afraid of it slipping through my fingers. The anticipation is delicious, and it's just close enough.

Even in a Pandemic Year. There is something about this time of year that is awfully sweet, despite everything. And in this Pandemic Year, something about being back on campus after a full year away is more than that. Maybe it's everything. And for six weeks, I can do anything. 

And it is not lost on me that I am lucky to teach exactly where I am. That I am lucky enough to raise my kids in this community.

*

Teaching, right now, feels a bit like going on long walks in late spring, in a strange year. I never really know what to wear. I'm freezing, and then I'm dripping sweat down my back. I pass a lot of friendly neighbors, folks I feel I've gotten to know over the past year. I know who walks their dog early in the morning, who jogs, who takes ambling afternoon walks, who mows their lawn on Wednesdays instead of Saturdays. And then there's the glaring man in the house that, until a few weeks after the storming of the Capitol, displayed a huge "NO MORE BULLSHIT, TRUMP 2020" flag that covered half his siding. In February, he replaced the flag with what looks like a tiny Trump bumper sticker in his window, but he still stands in his yard, smoking a cigar and glaring.

A year ago, I couldn't have imagined this. A year ago, I couldn't process the possibility that we wouldn't be back in school September. I couldn't imagine my fourth grade son not setting foot inside a classroom before middle school; I mourned my little girl's lost freshman year. 

I roll with it, as well as I can. If the last year has taught me anything, it is that the world happens to all of us, and all things considered, we are senselessly privileged. I can't control the anti-mask assholes; I can't control much of anything, really. But I can try my damndest to advocate for and protect my family. I can try my damndest to serve my students, knowing full well that I can't give them enough of what they need.

I have no idea how to effectively use multiple screens, cameras, or any other tricks to engage both in-person and remote learners at the same time and make them realize that they are a class and a community, together. I can only hope that the energy I try to project shows them that they matter. 

We have six weeks left. In a Pandemic Year, that's enough for teachers to admit that they're exhausted and done, and the same is true for our kids. But the pandemic isn't their fault, either, and they still deserve our best.

And to be clear: that doesn't mean our best teaching, because that isn't possible in this context. But maybe we can give something else. Maybe we can extend grace to our kids, and to each other. Maybe we can hang on to the reasons we're here to begin with. Maybe we can take what we've learned from this year and make ourselves better. I need to believe that all is not lost.

*

I walked and walked after school today, trying to clear my head through sunshine and clouds, spatters of rain and fresh breezes. I was chilled, and then I was too hot. I waved at friendly faces and ignored the one who wasn't. 

The air smelled like heaven.