Gratitude and Grief

My son turned fifteen today. 

I've told his birth story so many times, even in this space. Today in the car, driving home from bowling, I reminded the kids that fifteen years ago I spent the day cuddling Isaac on the couch in our family room. I was blessed with an intense but mercifully quick and uncomplicated labor, and two hours after he was born we bundled him into his carseat and drove home from the birth center. The winter morning was frosty and still dark, but I felt nothing but buoyant joy.

I was also starving, so Matt bought me a breakfast burrito in the McDonald's drive-thru on the way home. Orange juice too, I think. Like the grilled cheese I devoured immediately after Suzannah's birth, it was the best thing I'd ever tasted.

We arrived home just after Suzannah's auntie Morgan had fed her waffles for breakfast. We'd planned to introduce her to her new brother but take her to daycare for a few hours to let us settle in and keep a normal routine for her for a little longer. She only had two more weeks of daycare before she'd be home full-time with me until the following September. But as luck would have it, Matt wound up taking her to the pediatrician around lunchtime; she'd spiked a fever and had a runny nose and cough. Today we laughed about Matt announcing to our pediatrician that oh, by the way, we'd also had a baby that morning.

I asked Matt to bring home a quarter pounder for lunch, so back to McDonald's he went. This might not be such a grand memory, except that it makes all of us laugh.

I was a more seasoned mama the second time around, and I had my own bed, my own couch. Isaac had no trouble nursing from birth, and my memories of that day are cozy despite the sleep deprivation. My doula called later that afternoon to gently encourage me to nap, but I couldn't take my eyes off my son. I didn't sleep until that night, with my baby nestled next to me in bed. It was a perfect day.

*

This morning Isaac and I walked the dog together in light drizzle, and then we all went to lunch at the Spar before heading to Tower Lanes. We didn't check the schedule ahead of time, so when we learned that bowling wouldn't open until 2:30 due to a tournament, we booked a reservation at a much smaller bowling alley in a neighborhood we love. The kids played in the arcade for awhile first, gleefully redeemed their tickets for handfuls of trash, and then we headed to our next destination. All four Winslows were on our game. I mean, by our third, we were on fire. Each one of us bowled strikes and spares like nobody's business. Listen, I broke 100. That doesn't happen a lot.

After bowling, we stopped for coffee -- well, a cortado for me and an espresso for Matt, and baked goods for the kids. Without any prompting, they both shared theirs with each other and then offered us bites as well. Back home, Matt diced an onion for me -- he likes to help with dinner prep -- and Isaac asked if I wanted to play Blokus, the game we played nearly every morning back in 2020 when schools shut down and which he almost always refuses to play with me now because apparently I "overdid it." (Please.)

Isaac takes after me in that he is a total homebody; he'd almost always rather stay home than go out. It made sense, then, that he requested a night in for his birthday rather than a favorite restaurant meal, even though Saturday night is our usual family dinner night out. He wanted tater tot casserole and homemade cake, and this little thing is so endearing to me. So Matt baked the cake and made the ganache frosting, and I made the tater tot casserole. (Not Tim Walz's recipe, though; I made that on election night and I can never eat it again. It was delicious in the moment, though very heavy -- he uses bratwursts instead of ground beef -- and when I understood how the night was going to go it was all I could do not to throw up. All night long, I regretted the Election Casserole. For Isaac, I chose a simpler version -- ground beef and green beans, plus the cheesy goodness of freshly shredded cheddar topped with tater tots. We served it with a green salad.) He opened his gifts after dinner but before cake, and he was sweetly appreciative of everything, as he always is.

*

Here is a thing that is always part of Isaac's birth story: His name means "He laughs." I couldn't have known then how much my second-born child would make me laugh every single day of his life, no matter how dark the day.

*

Here is a thing that is impossible to untangle from my son's birthday: on the day he turned three, my lunch break was interrupted by the sound of a colleague's screams.

"They killed all the kids," she cried.

On the day my son turned three, twenty first graders were slaughtered in their classroom in a public elementary school in the United States of America. On the day I was excited to celebrate my son, I swallowed back my terror and tears for my last class of the day, and as soon as the bell rang I rushed to pick up my own first grader from her classroom in a public elementary school in the United States of America.

I have written about this and written about this and written about this and it feels like screaming in a locked, empty room. Parkland: 17 dead in 2018.  Uvalde: 19 children killed in 2022. And all the others, too many for me to remember by name on demand, even though I've tried to write about them, tried to donate money every time another one happens. This is shameful, that there are too many to recall, to name. The fact that my country excels in mass shootings is a shame that should be named.

The year my son turned three, the year twenty children were slaughtered in their school, President Obama wept and Republicans openly mocked his tears. This year my son turns fifteen, and we have elected people into the highest offices who shrug their shoulders and say that school shootings are merely a "fact of life."

I think of those twenty children from Sandy Hook every year on this day. I think about how they should be home from their first quarter of college right now, or working at their first post high-school jobs. They should be hauling home laundry bags, sleeping in, catching up with high school friends.

Their parents should be able to hug them hard after missing them for months.

The blood of these babies coated the floor and it continues to coat our hands.

*

It's hard to have hope in this country, in a country that reelected an unapologetic racist, a misogynist, a rapist, a monster. In a country where folks think they deserve absolution if they didn't vote for him but voted for those in their cities and states who will uphold his monstrous agenda. We are a spectacle and a shame. But as Rebecca Solnit often reminds us, hope is not the same thing as optimism. Hope requires work, not complacency. Hope means we acknowledge that things are very, very bad and they will get worse. But Solnit also reminds us that we can build paradises and sanctuaries in hell. For that is where we are.

*

I write all of this from a place of relative safety and extreme privilege. I know this. And I write from a place of hope, because my children deserve this. My daughter deserves our protection and my son deserves our accountability. My son has been granted every privilege, and I know that raising him to understand this requires work beyond raising him to be "good." Because "good" white straight Christian men have caused immeasurable harm when they haven't been taught to interrogate that privilege. Even the progressive ones, even the kind ones. And we've devoted too much energy to their hurt feelings at the expense of people's lives.

*

I am aware, every day, of the darkness. But do not underestimate my capacity to embrace joy.

It has been a dark, hard year. Personally, professionally, locally, globally.

I am aware, every day, of my privilege. This year has knocked my sideways in ways experienced by lots of folks with fewer supports and resources. What I know I need to do is channel that privilege into action, with the energy I am privileged to have because I've had supports and resources. It's the most important work we can do, and I'm still learning it. I believe this is our collective responsibility. To interrogate this privilege and act on it. And to listen. To listen.

My children's birthdays make me contemplative, I guess. The personal becomes political. 

*

We can build paradises and sanctuaries in hell.

*

I wrote this five years ago: Every year, and especially every December, the darkest month of the year, I look at my son, at both of my children, and remember the light.

So this is my prayer, every December: Let me never take such ordinary gifts for granted. Let me find a way to use my gratitude, and my grief. Let me not drop anchor at despair.

I do know what it means to be grateful

Well, it's been a minute.

I realized just now that I've only written two entries here in 2022, and only a handful since this time a year ago. I've never abandoned this space for so long. Although that's not accurate, either; sometimes we all just need to go quiet for awhile. It's easy for me to post a little brain-dump, a snapshot, a moment when it's social media, but frankly, I've had no idea how to approach this little corner of the internet -- how to write about the last year for an audience. I've wanted to, because I believe in telling the truth about our own lives and I think we should all embrace that particular act of bravery in whatever fumbling, messy ways we can, but I also know that all the stories weighing on my heart are not necessarily all mine to share, either.

Motherhood is wild. When my babies were delivered to my chest I couldn't imagine a love more all-consuming than what I felt for them in that new, raw moment. I had no idea that raising young adolescents and teenagers would break and expand my heart beyond anything I could have envisioned when I could still meet all their needs with a hug, with a snack, with a distraction or a bath or a bandaid. Even when I was delirious with exhaustion, even when I stood bleary-eyed in a shower at two o'clock in the morning rinsing off a child's vomit, even when I cried into my hands with frustration after a battle with a stubborn toddler at the end of a hard day and felt I was failing at the thing I thought should just always come naturally, there was always a solution: bedtime rituals, or an extra nap, or antibiotics for an ear infection, or whatever. Something. There was always a baby book nearby. If your child does this, try that.

Sometimes I'm nostalgic for those days, but I wouldn't return to them, either.

These days are hard in ways my new-mama self couldn't have prepared for, but also, the joy and moments of deep contentment and gratitude are everything I always hoped for. These people in my house? They're good people. They're my favorite people in the universe.

*

Teaching is wild, too. I only wrote a few entries here last year, and they are almost too painful for me to read.

One of my rituals at the beginning of a school year is to browse through old journals, to revisit and remember my first day of school as a first-year teacher, as a third-year teacher, as a fifth-year teacher excited to have a baby, as a ninth-year teacher pregnant with her second and a tenth-year teacher nervous about the changes in her school. I love the entries I wrote in the years when I took on the role of MYP coordinator, when Kailey and I sneakily painted my classroom in August, when I visited my classroom on a hot day in late July just to poke my head in, just to visit the space, just to remember that this, too, is home. 

I filled an entire paper journal last year, and the entire journal is too painful for me to read. I've tucked it away for a time when I'm a little less tender. I wrote here a handful of times, and it's hard to read that, too.

*

Some folks stop writing because they think they need to catch up after a long silence. I don't believe that at all. I believe in beginning again, from wherever you are.

So here's where I am: it is a Sunday evening in late September. The days are still so warm, and we haven't had any rain, but the nights are blessedly cool, and the mornings are crisp. The shadows spill across our backyard a little earlier. I'm so ready for the rain to return.

Suzannah is at Open Gym because she is already thinking ahead to basketball season, even though it seems the soccer season just started -- yesterday we all attended her Saturday game and took the dog and cheered for the girls on the dry field in the warn September sunshine. A couple of her teammates from her years of rec soccer play with her now, and a couple of them play on teams for other high schools. Those little girls are so grown now. And even when those girls find themselves playing against each other now, my heart just swells for all that they are becoming. As for mine? She's balancing a heavy academic load with sports and clubs and marching band and I wring my hands and worry a bit but mostly I'm just so thankful for where we are in this moment, which is so much better than where we were in so many moments last year.

Isaac is building something with his enormous Lego set, completely content and absorbed, and my heart swells to watch him, too -- still my little guy, still so unselfconsciously himself at home, willing to lose himself in creative projects. In a few minutes he'll scamper off to his room to play Roblox on his computer, and in an hour or so, I might coax him out to help me make corn bread for tonight's chili dinner. He is still so sweet, and he is absolutely the funniest person I know, full stop. He chose early-morning jazz band over cross country this year, and since he is still doing Tae Kwon Do, I think this is enough for a twelve-year-old. But I admit it: I'm a little sad, too, because one of the things that brought this mama so much joy last fall was watching my boy run, to see him quietly pleased when his teammates high-fived him. But it doesn't mean he can't ever do it again, and I don't want him to lose the joy in anything he happens to be good at just because his mama is the one who wants it more.

Maybe next year.

*

Last night I spoke to one of my very best friends on the phone when he texted and asked if I could talk, and our conversation wrapped itself around my heart and reminded me to nurture what really matters. Another story that isn't mine to share, but the gratitude for the people I love? I can share that. I've spent this entire weekend just thinking about how lucky I am to have landed exactly where I am, all those years ago. How could I have predicted all that followed? The folks who raised and mentored me in this work. The folks doing the work with me now. The babies I've been blessed to raise myself. My friends and colleagues who have taught and continue to teach my daughter. The community in which I live and work. 

I don't know what it means to return to normal, but maybe we have something to learn from that.

I do know what it means to love what I do. I do know what it means to love the folks who are figuring this out with me. I do know what it means to love where I live. I do know what it means to be grateful.

It's late September, and tomorrow I will show up for my fourth week in a new year. I haven't found my groove yet, but I'm grateful all the same.

Float On (or, the strange juxtaposition of grief, gratitude, and joy)

I sit on the couch in the early morning dark, Christmas tree lights twinkling in the living room. A neighbor wearing a reflective vest walks his dog up the street. The quiet lasts just long enough for me to read for five minutes, and then I hear my son’s bedroom door open. He pads into the living room, wrapped in his fleece Batman blanket. When he sees that I’m up, he takes a flying leap and lands on the cushion next to me.

“Morning, Baby,” I say.

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Reading the news. Looking at the neighbors’ Christmas lights.” Across the street, our neighbors, who are always up early, have turned on their Christmas tree lights as well. 

"Less than twenty-four hours until I’m eleven!” he whispers.

“How are you so old?” I ask him. I lean over to wrap him in a hug; he is tall and bony, but his cheek is still so soft when I kiss it. He wriggles out of my grasp and shoves his bare toes in my face.

“Smell,” he says, wiggling them.

“Ew. Get away,” I say, and he hops off the couch, cackling, then heads to the kitchen to toast himself a bagel.

His sister emerges a few minutes later, ear phones in, cords trailing to the phone tucked in the pocket of her robe.

“Morning,” I call to her. She pours herself a bowl of cereal and settles in at the dining room table across from her brother and eats, looking at her screen. I walk by her on my way to the shower and touch her shoulder. She takes out an earbud. 

“Sorry, what? I’m listening to a podcast.”

“Well, untangle yourself for two seconds,” I say, but I smile and kiss the top of her head.

*

Eight years ago, my son’s birthday fell on a Friday. He was three. I’d planned to pick up his sister from school, gather him from daycare, and drive north to meet my husband in West Seattle after work. We’d enjoy a cozy family dinner at our favorite family-friendly pub, and the next evening we were going to take the kids to Chuck E. Cheese and Build-a-Bear. But at lunchtime, a coworker started screaming from the copy room.

“He killed them! He killed all the kids!”

An entire first-grade class, murdered.

I couldn’t reach my own first-grader fast enough, all the way across town. The horror on the other side of the country gripped my throat until I saw my daughter safely at the door of her own classroom, standing in her purple coat next to her teacher. None of the parents lingered on the playground with their children that day.

I drove north on I-5 that evening, Sarah McLachlan’s mournful Wintersong in the CD player, my children buckled snugly into the backseat. And I wept.

*

One year ago, I wrote: My son will never again have a birthday where I do not remember this horror. My children's lives are forever linked with one of the darkest days, the day I realized that if our country could fail to respond to the slaughter of children then what hope is there? I still don't know if what I have can be called hope, because I'm mighty full of anger and, too often, despair. What I have is a crazy, incomprehensible mix of gratitude and grief.

Tomorrow morning, just after five o'clock, my boy will turn eleven, which is five more years than the children at Sandy Hook Elementary would ever see. 

My daughter started high school this year. I think of the twenty children who will never play the trumpet or clarinet on a school cafeteria stage, never get their first periods, will never get their braces off—they never had the chance to lose their baby teeth. They will never take algebra and cry over it. They will never get a driver’s license, or back into the mailbox with their parents' car.

Their mothers will never have the inexpressible, tender joy of having bony adolescent feet waved in their faces, those lanky limbs sticking out of fleece pajamas. They will never knock on their teenager’s bedroom door and say, “Come out of your cave. It’s lunchtime.” They will never open the door to an overpowering wave of too much Bath and Body Works Winter Candy Apple lotion, or the fug of unwashed socks when the room’s occupant has failed to empty his laundry basket into the washing machine. They will never threaten to remove those bedroom doors when their teenagers slam them.

*

Every year, I feel it: the gratitude and the grief. But more than that, I feel the crazy joy that my son has brought to our lives every single day of his existence. 

I write some version of his birth story every year, and often in this space. Tonight, near the end of 2020, which is universally acknowledged as a dumpster fire of a year, I think about joy. I think about how eleven years ago, Matt drove me to the birth center on Lake Tapps in the middle of the night while I howled through contractions and sang along with Modest Mouse at the top of my lungs, one of the songs he included on the mix CD he made for the moment. No soothing Enya for the hard work of birthing a baby, but something to keep me moving:

Alright don't worry even if things end up a bit too heavy
We'll all float on alright
Already we'll all float on

And less than four hours later, he was born into Matt's hands and delivered to my chest while I laughed. I laughed. And every day since then, every single day -- even on the darkest ones -- my son has made me laugh. 

(Mustache Day at school.)

Tomorrow morning, I'll wake up before he does, and I'll curl up on the living room couch in the glow of our Christmas lights. I'll remember the frosty darkness before the dawn of his birth. I'll fiercely miss sharing this season in person with his grandparents and auntie and uncle and cousin and feel grateful that we can gather over Zoom later in the evening to celebrate anyway. And I will give thanks for this sweet, ordinary life in an anything but ordinary year, because one of the unexpected blessings of 2020 -- while I'd never have wished it this way -- is this time with my family, and there's more than a little sweetness in that.

These Ordinary Gifts

Ten years ago tonight, Matt and I curled around our newborn son in the middle of our own bed. I traced my fingers over his pink warm skin. Kept kissing him, breathing in his newborn scent. He smelled like heaven. To take him home from my midwife's house only a few hours after his birth, to spend our first day together in the comfortable quiet of our own home, was a great gift.

Every year I tell my children their birth stories -- whatever version, whatever piece seems appropriate for them at the time. Isaac's story always includes this beginning: You were born in the dark of a frosty December morning. Sometimes I tell him that I sang in the car all the way to the birth center at two o'clock in the morning because it helped with the contractions. I don't tell him that I dilated from four centimeters to pushing him out in thirty minutes while I soaked in my midwife's huge tub, how I howled him right out of my body in two pushes, believing I would break in half. Last year I told him I made his dad drive through McDonald's for a breakfast burrito on the way home.

This morning I called him over to the couch to look a photograph, one of the first my doula took of us together after he was safely earthside, just moments after his birth. His skin is so pink. His little feet are pressed against me, his head cradled in my hands, his arms flung out wide, unaccustomed to the sudden space around him. I kept touching my nose to his. A moment of falling in love.

Isaac glanced at the picture and shrieked, "Ew! Yucky!" And then he bounced away to the breakfast table, where he inhaled miniature pancakes from Trader Joe's and irritated his sister until she screamed, "Isaac! Go away!" But she also gave him a birthday hug, without any prompting from me.

I walked up behind him at the table and wrapped my arms around him, pressed my cheek against his. It's still so soft. For a moment, he let me.

"Happy Birthday, Buddy," I said. And because he is still little enough to be sweet to his mama, he hugged me back, kissed me on the cheek. His lips were sticky, and his breath smelled like pancakes and oatmeal and the last piece of a Top Pot donut his dad brought home yesterday. And I still think it's heaven.

*

The kids had their Tae Kwon Do belt test this morning: two-and-a-half hours of hard work. Two years ago I didn't know I wanted to be a Tae Kwon Do mom, just like I didn't know I wanted to be a soccer mom, and as it turns out, both of these things bring me immeasurable joy. (Really, I didn't have kids to sit at home while they watch TV.) Anyway, it seems to me that there are worse ways to spend a few hours on one's birthday than testing for junior black belt.

Sometimes, during ordinary Tae Kwon Do class, I drop them off and run errands. Or I stay, but sometimes I watch and sometimes I read, or I grade papers. Testing is different. I can't take my eyes off of them. It just all comes together, all their hard work, and I see the very best of them: their concentration, their drive, all the results of practicing and, this month, as many extra classes as we could cram in to make up for classes they missed when Suzannah twisted her ankle or I was away for training and we couldn't juggle everything.

This is a thing they decided they wanted to try, two years ago, and once they started I have never once doubted they would become black belts. It's not that, though -- while I'm proud of them, what I love is just being present for these moments of watching them do their thing. They are so present in their bodies, so fully immersed in what they're doing. Sometimes they'll glance over and make eye contact, and I'll smile, and I'll see them try not to smile back because they are trying to focus, but mostly, they're just wholly and unselfconsciously themselves. They are not thinking about themselves, they are being themselves, and when I am allowed into these moments as a witness, I am utterly overcome with love for these two people who completely remade my heart when they entered the world.

*

My son is ten. An entire decade of my life filled with this crazy joy. Today, when I look at him, all of it, all of it, washes over me. The wrapping paper strewn on the floor next to the Christmas tree. The way he scooped up his baby cousin this evening to carry him away from the hot oven before dinner and made him giggle instead of cry. The way he runs away from me when I drop him off at school early for Safety Patrol, not even glancing back as he races to join his friends and don his orange vest (but he will still give my hand three quick squeezes before he leaps out of the back seat). The way his hair sticks up in the mornings when he shuffles out of his bedroom before dawn, and if he's not quite awake, the way he'll let me hug him just a beat longer than usual before he pours himself a bowl of cereal. The way he pours himself a giant bowl of cereal as soon as he gets home from school because suddenly he is always, always hungry. The way he decides to put himself to bed just past eight o'clock every night and screams dramatically, "Tucketh me ins!" And superimposed over all of the moments in our life now are all of the moments we have ever shared. The way he wraps his arms around at least one but probably more like four stuffed animals every night. The way his wispy hair fell over his forehead before his first haircut. The way his round tummy bulged over his FuzziBunz diapers, the way he used to wrap his arms around my neck and let me rock him in the dark before bed. The way he used to let out these piercing screams as an infant, not because he was unhappy or uncomfortable but because he was letting us know that hey! He was there! He was a baby and it was awesome to be a baby! The way he was so brave the night we drove to Mary Bridge Children's Hospital when his doctor told us he had gone into kidney failure, the way I sat in a wheelchair with my four-year-old son in my lap as a nurse wheeled us to his kidney ultrasound at three-thirty in the morning, just so he could sit in my lap instead of sitting alone, the way he grabbed both of my arms and wrapped them around his body. The way he still remembers playing Zombie Cats during that hospital stay even if he doesn't remember bursting into tears at the sight of yet another plate of plain noodles and grapes because his diet was so restricted. The way he used to play at the splash park when we first discovered it, how instead of running through the water he would trot doggedly around the perimeter, again and again, lap after lap, his swim diaper drooping and his little sandals slapping the wet concrete. The first day I took him to kindergarten camp but knew he would be just fine because he would have Suzannah's beloved kindergarten teacher. His little red-and-white striped polo shirt. The way his belly used to round over his swim trunks. The way he stretched as he grew one summer; suddenly, he had no chub to hold up those shorts and he was always showing just a hint of butt crack instead. His first class at The Little Gym. The way he played in the wet sand at Ocean Shores and screamed at the sight of a huge dead crap, leaping to safety in his daddy's arms. The way he threw up four times on a flight to Omaha but wept when we wouldn't get him a cheeseburger as soon as we stepped off the plane. The way he used to hurl himself on the floor in a tearful toddler rage. The way he used to hurl himself cheerfully into the dog bed, whether she was in it or not. The way he used to bring me his nursing pillow, the way he'd say "Boppy!" with a big smile, and I would pull him up on my lap to nurse. The way his nursing manners deteriorated as a toddler, the way he'd poke his fingers into my nose or stick his toes in my face, so when he was finally ready to be done I was too, but also, the way I look at my children now and thank God I never rushed to push my babies out of my bed or away from my breast. The way he used to crawl like a jolly little komodo dragon, barrel chested and bent on destruction, flinging books off the bottom shelf or upending the dog's water dish or tossing his toy cars in the toilet. The way he still brings me his fleece Batman blanket on Sunday afternoons when I lie down on the couch for a nap, the way he tucks it around me and gives me a kiss.

*

Sometimes the moments wash over me, all at once. I watch my son kihap as he breaks a board with his heel. He bows as Master hands him the halves, and he runs across the mat, bows again, hands me his broken boards. My eyes fill with tears, not so much because I am overcome with the sight of my son breaking boards again (which is one of my favorite parts of testing) but because today, in this moment, this lanky, sweaty boy is also my pink warm newborn, my big-bellied toddler, my sweet kindergartner. He is my son sleeping in the backseat, building Lego creations in the family room, curled up in the recliner with a book, zooming around the driveway on his scooter.

Let me never take such ordinary gifts for granted.

*

Seven years ago, the day my son turned three, twenty first-graders were murdered in their classroom. My daughter was a first-grader then. My son will never again have a birthday where I do not remember this horror. My children's lives are forever linked with one of the darkest days, the day I realized that if our country could fail to respond to the slaughter of children then what hope is there? I still don't know if what I have can be called hope, because I'm mighty full of anger and, too often, despair. What I have is a crazy, incomprehensible mix of gratitude and grief. I think of twenty children who should be eighth graders now, who should be planning their high school schedules. Instead, they never even lost their baby teeth, never learned how to play the trumpet or the clarinet, never looked into the audience at a middle school band concert to see their parents filming their beautiful squawking debut, never got their first periods, never got braces. It seems spectacularly unfair that some of us get to raise our children through these ordinary moments and some of us don't. I struggle with this often, but especially on this day.

Seven years ago I had a three-year-old and I had a six-year-old. Seven years later I am lucky enough to have them both, still. To celebrate their ordinary moments and extraordinary lives. They grow so quickly. It's bittersweet. Achingly so. And mostly sweet. Because they grow, and they will not let me drop anchor at despair.

Every year, and especially every December, the darkest month of the year, I look at my son, at both of my children, and remember the light.

So this is my prayer, every December: Let me never take such ordinary gifts for granted. Let me find a way to use my gratitude, and my grief. Let me not drop anchor at despair.

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

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

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

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

"Hi," she said.

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

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

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

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

*

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

*

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

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

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

*

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

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

*

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

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

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

One year later

Yesterday afternoon, the kids and I drove to the Elliott Bay Book Company. I had two specific books in mind to buy, one of which I've been waiting on for months, and one of which I've been pondering for a long time. I had a mission. And I like to support independent bookstores.

Matt had planned to meet us there after work, but we drove up a bit early. The kids busied themselves in the children's section, where they can read for a good long time, and I browsed a bit before settling into a corner of the cafe to write for a few minutes. In fifteen minutes I'd poured out three pages' worth of ink.

I feel so much these days. So much love. So much anger. Hope. Fear.

But really still a lot of anger. I look at the predatory white supremacist rapist monster sitting in the oval office and I think about people who will vote for him again in a few years and I think about how I do not want any of those people anywhere near my life or my family or my students or my stories. What a mirror we held up to ourselves almost exactly one year ago, and what an ugly reflection. We have to do better. We have so much work to do.

Since the last time I posted here, just a month ago, twenty-six more people were murdered in church. Shot. Slaughtered. Just another day in this great country of ours. It's still not the right time to talk about guns though, right?

I'm so tired of writing the same fucking thing here. I'm not saying anything new. I'm so sick of it, so disheartened.

Since the last time I posted, someone I once respected used the term "witch hunt" to refer to women coming forward with stories of sexual assault, sexual harassment, or predatory behavior by men. Anyone holding that opinion, by the way, is cordially invited to show themselves out. I can't stop you from reading my blog, I know that, but please go away anyhow. Unfollow. Unfriend. You don't want to read anything I have to say.

I have stories, too, but I also don't owe them to anyone. Though I did spend an evening mentally writing a post about the time a man greeted me at a party by giving me hug and promptly sliding his arm down my back to firmly grab my ass and squeeze it. We were friendly, but we were by no means close friends. I'd laughed at his jokes before this moment. I'd hugged him before. I wasn't wearing a short skirt. I'm pretty sure I wasn't wearing a particularly tight sweater. Should it matter? What I was wearing? Should it matter that I'd hugged him before, in similar social settings? What should I have done differently? Why does it fall on me to ask these questions? Why did he think my ass was his for the grabbing, especially when we were only casually acquainted? Would he offer the same kind of bullshit non-apology we keep seeing from all these famous men? This was such a small moment for me, really. I'm not scarred for life, I could have chosen a much bigger moment to write about, etc. Right? Or at least I've been conditioned to think that way. But I can't shake the feeling that it also captures so perfectly the entitlement of men. For what it's worth, I never saw this man again, but I did look him up on Facebook, and the sight of his face and his smug smile makes me angry even now, years later.

I think it's so interesting that Franklin Graham is so obsessed with sexual purity and sexual morality, and really bizarrely fixated on homosexuality -- like that's THE SIN in America, and not, say, institutional racism or the dehumanization and marginalization of our most vulnerable citizens -- but if he's called out, say, Roy Moore, or, you know, our Commander-in-Chief, I've missed it. Probably I should stop reading anything with Franklin Graham's name attached to it. He's the one who said last year's dumpster fire of an election demonstrated "God showing up at at the polls." I've said many times that I am probably a terrible Christian but I am an earnest one; if I believed that the likes of either Franklin Graham or our president represented the love of Christ I can promise you I wouldn't even try to set foot in any church, ever. As it stands, I believe God loves them just as much as anyone else and, to paraphrase Anne Lamott, has the tools to help them clean up their messes. But my heart really struggles with that. Because I still think they're flaming dumpster fires, as far as human beings go.

I know. I'm far from Christlike myself.

Anyway.

I am married to a man I love and we are raising a boy, and we absolutely must raise a different sort of man than this America expects him to be. This doesn't happen by trusting that because we vote the right way, or because we love him enough, or because we go to church, or because he is a "good kid" raised with quality role models in his life he will somehow transcend the toxic masculinity embedded in the very fabric of our country.

I don't want anyone near my life who isn't willing to wrestle with that statement.

I'm terrified because I do not know how to do this work well enough, and I don't have the answers, but dammit, this shit needs to change.

Complacency terrifies me. It also makes me angry. I'm really angry these days.

***

So that's where my head is at.

I know I started this blog as a place to post cute stories about my toddler, to open up another little corner of the internet as a space to write.

I'm sorry if this is too political or too angry.

***

Or no I'm not. I'm not sorry about that.

***

But I also need to point out that my head is also here:

My children. My students. My life. The heartbeat, the everyday pulse underneath the greater heartbreak. I'm still a soccer mom, mourning the approaching end of the season. I love every single game, even in the rain, and last weekend, even in the snow. I especially love the night games under the lights. Tonight the referee was this fabulous grizzled old grandpa whose gravelly voice sounded like it was filtered through decades of cigarette smoke. He barked encouragement at both teams throughout the game: "Well done, yellow! Nice pass, blue!" And he turned to all the parents on the sidelines and said, "Girls this age, you don't get 'em under the lights like this very often. There's just nothing better!" One of the dads from the opposing team turned to me and said, "Have you guys ever had this ref before? He's a riot. Makes the games fun. We really enjoy him." And while we both shouted encouragement to our daughters, the night felt so friendly. Tonight my daughter's team took a loss on the field but my girl also scored a beautiful goal, and I was so proud of her, and when she climbed into the car the first words out of her mouth were, "I really love my team!"

My son takes Tae Kwon Do classes now, and watching him focus and breathe and kick and move and work so hard, so in the moment and so unselfconsciously himself, just makes me so proud. He bursts through his classroom door at the end of the day and tears across the playground, stopping just short of hugging me the way he used to in kindergarten. As we walk away, I hear kids call, "Bye, Isaac!" and one of his little buddies always chases after him shouting, "Hug attack!" and they run, backpacks thwacking against their little butts, shrieking with laughter.

My school district held conferences this past week, and that means what it has meant for several years now: my kids have to spend a lot of hours at school with me, but there's a part of me that loves how comfortable they are with that. I wind up absolutely physically and emotionally spent after meeting with my own students and their parents, but the truth is that these long days are also deeply important in terms of building relationships with these kids and their families. And now, as a mother of children in school, I appreciate them on a deeper level as well. It matters: to connect with the humans who teach my children. To look them in the eye and say thank you. To ask questions. To see them exchange handshakes and fist bumps and hugs with my kids. To see that my children are known and loved and seen.

Both of my kids are learning important lessons they cannot learn from me. That's a thing that seems to threaten some parents, but it just makes me so grateful for my village. It's the thing that makes me hopeful, I suppose, despite everything.

Sometimes I feel so hopeless, but I am also so deeply privileged to live a life that give me so many opportunities to hope anyway. And love always.

Spectacular beauty, spectacular joy

The other day I was clearing the table for dinner, moving the odds and ends that accumulate throughout the afternoon: a chunky eraser, a pencil, a slinky, a small tub of Play-Doh, and my son's weekly reading log. I paused over that, just letting my eyes linger on his careful, blocky sentences. He enjoys reading well enough, but he sighs over writing about it. Still, he is ever the teacher's son. He sharpens his pencil over the kitchen trash can, and now, a few weeks into the school year, he settles in to read and write immediately after we get home in the afternoons so the rest of the day is his. He turns to the sandbox while the afternoons are still dry and warm, to the backyard, or to his toys. Daily he spreads his toys across the floor, building his own creations: towers, robots. And I stand at the kitchen table, gazing at his writing: the shape of his letters. The heavy black oval of a period at the end of a sentence. He kneels on the chair while his writes, his feet crossed underneath his bum. He's already shed his grungy little socks; they are balled up on the floor in the family room.

I think about the way I'll slip this reading log into his school box later, the special case I keep for his papers. I'm unsentimental about so many material things. I feel no nostalgia for old Happy Meal toys, for slick paperback picture books collected from so many book orders, for spit-up stained onesies. I have no desire to fill up the corners of my closets with things I'll never look at or use, just to take up space, just to have them. I save stories. But I also do save some things. Not everything. Not every piece of paper my children scribble on. Not every math worksheet. But they each have a box or two, one that does fit unobtrusively into a closet, filled with exactly these treasures: these carefully printed sentences, with their mix of capital and lower-case letters. The heavily scribbled dots above the i's, at the end of the sentences. The sheer beauty of the work, the earnest care. Someday I imagine myself as a mother of two grown children: sliding one of these papers out of the box, and letting myself return to this moment. These golden September afternoons. The whining, the sighing, the resigned sharpening of the pencil, the triumph of completion. The shhhh of the sliding door as it opens for my son's escape to the backyard. The crumpled little socks. The blocky dinosaur eraser, blackened with pencil lead around the edges. All of it.

*

Last night we attended our daughter's Open House. It was a week of Open Houses; three of us are in three different schools. High school, middle school, elementary school. This requires a certain amount of juggling, adjusting to our new normal, but the Winslow girls are efficient, and our mornings have taken on a different sort of smoothness. I wake up earlier without snoozing my alarm, even when I crave more sleep, simply because right now I need the space to be a little quiet with my coffee in the midst of all the movement: Suzannah hurrying her dad to the car, Matt adjusting to leaving the house earlier so he can drop her off on the way to the bus stop. I take Isaac to school a little later, and there's something painfully sweet about this too: this school is his now. I reach into the backseat and squeeze his hand before he jumps out of the car, running towards the open doors, his backpack bouncing over his little butt, his jeans barely staying above the waistband of his superhero underpants. He barely looks back. And we're okay. This is my seventh year dropping off a child at these doors, and I trust the adults on the other side to love him well for a few hours. His cheerful running and his careless goodbye tell me that I'm right.

The night before my little girl started middle school, I didn't sleep. At all. I went to bed early and tossed and turned. Matt came to bed, and I tried to relax into the normalcy of hearing him breathe next to me, but I stared at the ceiling, stared at the wall, tried very deliberately not to stare at the clock, and then gave up. I grabbed a book and retreated to the couch so my restlessness wouldn't bother Matt, and I read for I don't know how long. I dozed a bit before sunrise and rose feeling wrecked and queasy. Let her be okay. I prayed this with every breath. Let them be kind.

My own first day of school was a blur, not unlike my first day of school after I dropped my girl off at kindergarten. But she greeted me with an easy smile that afternoon, her face flushed in the heat.

"Great!" she said, when I asked, So how was your first day of middle school? I slept much better that night.

She comes home smiling every day. She loves her teachers. She and her friends chatter their way home. She and her gym locker partners couldn't figure out how to work their combination lock, so their exasperated PE teacher told them to watch a YouTube video for homework; the next day, my daughter was an expert who announced that she "saved the day." In the meantime, she reported, the eighth graders who helped her were "super nice" about it, and I sent up another prayer of thanks.

The sight of my daughter walking across the playground to meet her brother at his classroom door, swinging her trumpet case, fills my heart to bursting. So did the sight of her at Open House last night. After hot dogs and chips in the cafeteria, we followed her through her schedule.

"This way, I know a shortcut," she called over her shoulder as we hurried to keep up with her. Band to math. Math to science. Science to P.E. She glanced back, just briefly, her ponytail swinging. I wanted to talk to all of her teachers, wanted more than the few minutes we were allotted. I wanted to tell them my daughter loves them, loves learning, and feels safe and happy there, and that is everything to me. That's all I want. I need those teachers to know how much that matters. Having a child in school has shaped everything I am as a teacher of other people's children.

*

It's soccer season again, and I've fallen back in love with it all. Practice falls in the hour before dinner. Last month I jogged around the track while the girls practiced on the field, and my son ran off with the other younger brothers to brandish sticks and fling pine cones at each other. Lately, though, I settle into my camp chair under the trees at the edge of the field, and I try to read, my eyes bouncing between the girls on the field and my son playing nearby in the dirt.

The sun is lower in the sky each day. The afternoons have been mostly warm, sunny, and dry. The sun hits the leaves above me, and the late afternoon is framed in golden light. And every day, exactly fifteen minutes before the end of practice, a large flock of Canada Geese assemble in the middle of the field encircled by the dusty track, just beyond the soccer players. They waddle into position and wait until each goose is present and accounted for. At first I don't notice, but then suddenly there are these fat, feathered bodies, shifting and shuffling.

And then, each day, at exactly the same time, they take to the air. They lift off the field in a grand fluttering of wings, and they fly over my head, honking low and loud. I lift my eyes and watch their bellies sail over the tips of the trees, watch them fall into their perfect V.

It is spectacularly beautiful.

*

Last year, I was so ready to be done with September: I was too busy, and too sick. I coughed and sniffled my way through the month, trying to juggle too many meetings -- if I look in my planner from last year, one week shows seven meetings in five days, which is just stupid for a part-time employee. I was still on church council. I was unmoored and stressed and exhausted.

This year is different. September has seemed long this year, too, but at the same time, it's been awfully sweet. I'm still breathing. My girl comes home smiling. My son bursts through his classroom door with a grin at the end of the day. My students are wonderful and ridiculous and I love them. The dynamics in my department feel so healthy right now, and even when I'm stressed, I know I'm in good company with a good team, and I am grateful. I love the work. I love the people. That's a lot.

I was more than ready to be back at school by the middle of August this year; I was just done with this summer, which had become stressful in its constant demands, pulling me away from home when I really just wanted to be still and present and rooted. It's a privileged problem to have, and I don't regret the travel, not exactly, it's just that I really wanted to let more of the days be slow. The days are anything but slow now, but they are ours, they are here. We are learning how to settle into our groove, and I'm so deeply happy in all of it. My classroom space. My cozy little house. Our routines: these mornings in which I make time to curl up in the living room with my coffee. These afternoons, in which I wrap my arms around my sweaty, smiling children. Soccer practice, the geese, the setting sun. Everything is settling into place, into a rhythm, and it's the rhythm of our lives, every fall. Today I'm a little wistful about September's end, but on Sunday, the first day of October, as the temperature drops just a bit, I plan to pick up pho on the way home from church and curl up on the couch with a quilt in the afternoon. I'll drift to sleep in the living room as the shadows lengthen across our driveway, and later I'll sit at the dining room table and grade commentaries.

The big picture is often unbearable and I don't know how to move through the world these days. Doesn't mean I'll stop trying. Doesn't mean I'll stop speaking. But when I stop and breathe inside the right now of my life, how can I feel anything but gratitude?

Family Weekend

So it is May, again. May is full of so much, so many feelings. Beginnings and endings. Anniversaries. Rememberings. May is the month in which I fell in love with my husband sixteen years ago. May is the month in which he slipped a ring on my finger. May is the month in which I became someone's mother.

May is a tough month in which to teach, but I have decided to teach with abandon, like a crazy person. Forget the symbolism of the yellow car in The Great Gatsby; find me spectacular sentences instead. My sophomores are not complaining. One of them tiptoed to my desk last week and said, "Ms. Winslow, I actually really like this book." Oh, child. If only you knew how far those whispered words carry my soul.

I am tired, bone-tired, as all teachers are. But at the same time, there is a sweetness to this time of year that I deeply love. It's the anticipation of summer before the feeling of summer going too fast, of fading, flowing between my fingers in the sunshine. Everything is before us, the whole wide expanse of languid shimmering afternoons. What I want this summer is not to be able to say we did this and this and this, although there are things I am looking forward to: a trip home, and a trip to Toronto for the IB of Americas conference. Some of my colleagues are planning exciting trips, and I wonder if someday, I will also want to plan exciting trips during my summer breaks. Right now, summer vacations spent visiting our families are enough, more than enough. And right now, what I deeply love about summer is its slowness. Swimming lessons. Spending the afternoons in the backyard, watching my children run through the sprinkler while I sip iced tea and read. The splash park -- are my children outgrowing it? I hope not, because I love the smell of the water, the sound of their shrieks carrying across the playground. My children are both still young enough to play, just play, and I recognize that this is an incredibly sweet time in our lives.

Next Saturday, my daughter turns ten. Ten years ago, I waddled uncomfortably through the month of May, believing I would still be pregnant into the month of June. What a surprise my girl is. How she continues to surprise us.

We spent the weekend at Great Wolf Lodge as an early birthday celebration, instead of having a birthday party this year. We've never been there, and I didn't know what to expect. On the one hand: our family loves the water. On the other hand: I am deeply introverted, and that's a lot of chaos. In the end, we had a fantastic time, and it gave me the opportunity to watch my children just be exactly who they are. One child is fearless in the water, loves throwing himself under the waves in the wave pool to be tossed around like a little stone, and is a naturally stronger swimmer than his sibling. But he doesn't like rides. Not at the water park, not at the fair, not anywhere. My firstborn never liked to put her face in the water as a little one, and still resisted real swimming until we put her in private lessons with someone who worked with her and said, "You will swim across this pool." But she loves the thrill of the drop on the scariest waterslide. She'll go down facing backwards. She is not afraid of heights. Standing in line for the Howling Tornado, high up on the steps above the water park, she gripped my hand--not because she was scared, but because I was.

"Just look at me, Mom. Look at me. Then you won't be thinking about how high up you are, okay? It's going to be okay."

I have a memory of my parents taking us to an indoor water park when I was about the age my kids are now. There was a wave pool, and a waterslide. I don't remember how big it was, but I remember going down a waterslide again and again by myself for maybe the first time. I remember how I loved the feeling of being tossed around in the water. Decades later, the memory of just having so much fun remains. I hope that's what my children remember from this weekend: how much fun they had, how they loved wearing their little souvenir wolf ears when they weren't in the pool, how excited they were for bunk beds and their own little space in their "wolf den." How they went screaming joyfully down the slides, how they threw themselves ecstatically into the waves, emerging from the water with peals of laughter.

Isaac says he wants to do this for his birthday. Since our kids are born in opposite seasons, this might not be a bad idea; twice a year, six months a part? Maybe. Maybe this will become our family tradition for a year or two: stopping at the Spar in Olympia to eat both on the way down and on the way back (we love it and rarely go, since we're not often in Olympia). Glancing at our kids in the rear-view mirror, smiling at their jumpy anticipation on the way to Grand Mound and their sleeping faces on the way back home. It's a beautiful snapshot, in any season.

Kids, Mother's Day Edition, (mostly) unedited

Months ago there was this thing going around social media, just questions mothers would ask their kids. And then they'd post the answers. I wrote them all out in my journal. When we were in Leavenworth at the end of January, the kids and I found ourselves in a coffee shop while Matt went skiing, and I took that opportunity to get their answers. I never posted them anywhere, but in honor of Mother's Day, I'll share them here.

1. What is something I always say to you?
Suzannah: "Stop."
Isaac: "Who is my love?"

2. What makes you happy?
Suzannah: Watching Harry Potter.
Isaac: Sledding!
(My note: We were in Leavenworth at the time. There was lots of sledding.)

3. What makes you sad?
Suzannah: Not playing XBox.
Isaac: When Zannah hits me.
(Suzannah: "AHEM. It's not always on purpose.")
(Me: "Not playing XBox? You've played XBox, like, twice. I forgot Daddy even had one.")

4. How do I make you laugh?
Suzannah: By telling Dad to pick up his socks.
Isaac: Tickling and zerberting me!

5. What was I like as a child?
Suzannah: Like me.
Isaac: Funny!

6. How old am I?
Suzannah: 36 and something?
Isaac: Seventy-eight?

7. How tall am I?
Suzannah: Five feet and something?
Isaac: Sixteen inches.

8. What is my favorite thing to do?
Suzannah: Be with me and Isaac.
Isaac: Reading.

9. What do I do when you're not around?
Suzannah: Write.
Isaac: Go wander around places.

10. What am I really good at?
Suzannah: Writing and reading.
Isaac: Swimming.

11. What is something I'm not good at?
Suzannah: Being messy like Daddy.
Isaac: Driving a car.
(Me: "What? I AM GOOD AT DRIVING A CAR.")

12. What do I do for a job?
Suzannah: Teach writing.
Isaac: Selling houses? Teach?

13. What is my favorite food?
Suzannah: Pho.
Isaac: Stuff that doesn't have sugar.

14. What do you enjoy doing with me?
Suzannah: Playing Uno.
Isaac: Going to Freighthouse Square.

15. What is something I do that upsets you?
Suzannah: Take away XBox.
(Me: "Are you kidding me? You've played it like twice, because Daddy dug it out one day.")
Isaac: Zerberting my tummy.

For the record

For the record, if your post on Facebook begins with something along the lines of:

I believe in respecting everyone, but...
I'm not racist, but...
I don't believe in discrimination, but...
I don't hate anyone, but...

...and you think that little clarification makes it okay for you go on to write something ignorant or racist or hateful (even though you "don't hate" anyone), then I promise I am not following your Facebook any longer. Even if I love you. Because this week there have been too many times when I've said, out loud at my computer screen, "For f*ck's sake, no one is taking anything away from you."

It is probably time for a Facebook break? Except that I fully admit that I want to tell everyone that my son lost his first tooth today, or share the hilarious thing he he said at school. When his class asked the teacher how old she was, she said, "Well, I'm not as old as dirt yet." (One of the other kindergarten teachers frequently jokes about being "as old as dirt.") My son replied, "Well, my grandpa is older than that and he's not even dead yet."

Bless. This is why I love Facebook. But.

For the record: if you are my friend and you ask, earnestly, if I plan to keep my children in our current school or district, or what our plans are (we are looking at middle schools already!), I will happily have that conversation with you! I will tell you yes, absolutely. I believe we are all trying to do what's best for our children, and I believe in keeping my children in our neighborhood public schools. Because the public school teachers who teach my children are the most dedicated, compassionate, loving, creative people I could hope for. They work magic and they know exactly how to keep doing that no matter who is at the top. (I would also like to chime in here that I have been teaching for fifteen years, and if I teach differently now than I did ten years ago it is because I am better, and it is because I have learned from my ever-changing students how to meet them where they are. It is not because suddenly there is a new [insert principal/superintendent/politician/school board person] somewhere above me. I don't want to minimize the challenges that potentially creates for me, or for any other teacher, and some other day maybe I will write about that, but I'll be damned if that dictates a student's experience in my classroom, which is a beautiful and sacred and magical place.) I will tell you that I have faith in the men and women who help teach and shape my children into hungrily curious students. I will tell you that I absolutely believe they will gain more than they will lose by sharing their classroom with kids who are not exactly like them. I will tell you that I give not the remotest of shits about the standardized test scores of the school, especially when I see the magic that happens in those classrooms, especially when my children are eager to return to school on Monday morning.

However, if you are the mother of one of my children's school friends and you post a bunch of anti-testing stuff on Facebook (and I don't disagree with you, by the way) but also express real consternation about the school's "grade" based on those very tests, and you're not sure you want to keep your child in public school, and you are "all for diversity" but you feel the schools are "going downhill," then I will probably not be terribly interested in future play dates. I will go ahead and admit right now that when you mentioned the superior district you moved here from, I looked it up. It looks pretty good, as far as those test scores go -- from the tests that inspire you to fill your Facebook with anti-testing rants, right? It is also 92% white, with about 10% free and reduced lunch. But I will put my children's teachers up against those teachers any day. What are we measuring, exactly? Passion? Dedication? Competence? Resilience? Love?

Any. Day.

If you said all these things out loud to me during the play date, I regret that I didn't have a better response; I was a little blind-sided. You clearly assumed I would agree with you, and I wish I would have said more. I wish I would have told you that I think every family needs to decide what's best for their situation, of course, but I am not remotely worried about those "other" kids "bringing down" my own. I admit that I need to learn how to have this conversation graciously but firmly.

Full disclosure: I am having kind of a difficult day.

I have three classes that are so fabulous I can't even believe I get paid to teach them but I also have a class that made me curl up in the fetal position on our bed when I came home this afternoon. Matt, who was working from home today because our car needed an oil change and a new set of tires, came in and suggested that I go for a run or go to Starbucks. I stared sadly at the wall.

I don't really want to write about what caused me to stare sadly at the wall because I am also in no damn mood for anyone to disparage these kids.

Isn't that funny? I mean it is, kind of. I love them fiercely. They literally keep me awake at night. Tonight I pulled two of them aside to check in, after giving myself five minutes to breathe deeply because they were pissing me off. They are sad, depressed, lonely kids. They are smart kids. They are good kids and I love them a lot and I can't help them. And part of me is angry at them today because LIFE IS NOT GOING TO GET ANY EASIER, so please try to accept the help I am offering and get your SHIT TOGETHER. And while I am thinking all that I know it's not that simple or easy. But I still don't know how to help them. One of wrote me a note last week thanking me for my patience, and I'm like, what does that even mean? I don't. know. how. to. help. But some part of me also understands that we don't always get to know what the results of any of this are. We don't get to know if or how we help. We just show up.

It's not really enough, but it's what I have, it's what I can do. I can't promise I do it gracefully all the time. I'm angry, but I'm earnest. And here we are, in this fraught moment.

But all moments are not so fraught:

I'll be up in the morning, packing sack lunches for my boy and me; I'm taking a day off to chaperone a field trip with the kindergarteners (and hopefully avoid carpooling with Playdate Mom). My son lost his first tooth tonight. There is plenty of joy to rest in, right here. And tonight I need both: the joy, and the rest.

Still, I believe in the hope

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.” ― Anne Lamott

I've been thinking about this all week: about hope, and about darkness, and about the strange juxtaposition of the two that I cling to every Advent. I would say particularly this year, but the truth is that every December is dark, and this is something I wrestle with each year. I'm not sure that's much of a comfort, though.

Still, I believe in the hope, in the dawn, in the light, despite everything. It is literally the only way I can live.

Six years ago today, my three-and-a-half year old daughter was supposed to appear in her very first Christmas program. As luck would have it, she spent the entire weekend miserable with a fever, cough, and runny nose, so we hunkered down in our pajamas instead of watching our baby girl in church. Reading over my journal (one written in a fog of late pregnancy, but one I am still so glad I have) I remember that in the midst of our excitement and anticipation for our new little one, I also felt quiet and a little lonely. I had already stopped teaching for the year, finding it impossible to put on my socks by myself, much less manage classes full of teenagers. I didn't see anyone during the day, which is perhaps one reason I loved my visits to my midwife so much--just to connect with another human for awhile, to feel her loving hands on me, to listen to her soothing, authoritative voice.

I spent those last days mostly on the couch, trying to read, trying to write. "Mostly," I wrote, "I'm just waiting."

My son was born on a dark and cold December morning six years ago tomorrow. My water broke shortly after I went to bed on Sunday night. I sang my way to the birth center at two o'clock in the morning, sitting on a folded towel. I alternated between "Float On" by Modest Mouse and "Revelation Song" by Phillips, Craig, & Dean. Both seemed appropriate.

I've told his birth story before, even here. I never grow tired of remembering it, but tonight, on the eve of his sixth birthday, the part I want to remember the most is the rush of pure joy as he was born into his father's hands, and the way I laughed when he was delivered to my chest.

(Is it strange that I can't type that without crying?)

In Hebrew the name Isaac means He laughs. Laughter. On that dark December morning when ice coated the driveway of my midwife's house at the edge of Lake Tapps, my son was born into our family and I laughed. I laughed and I fell in love and that joy carried us home a few hours later, followed us into our own cozy little house where we introduced our baby to his big sister, who was eating waffles with her auntie.

Tomorrow morning, that boy turns six years old, and he is still our light, our joy, our laughter. Even though his birthday falls during the darkest part of the year and I will never be able to completely untangle it from the dark events that surround it, maybe that is the point. Sometimes despair just envelops me these days. I wonder if I'll ever again celebrate his birthday without feeling helpless rage over the Sandy Hook massacre, for instance, which happened the day he turned three. Tomorrow he will be the same age as those children who were executed in their classroom, and I struggle mightily with the fact that my children live in a world where this is a real fear of mine. I have a plenty of irrational fears and I will own those, but this one has struck close to home and I know it will continue to strike. I struggle mightily with raising children to be compassionate allies when it would be so easy to raise them to be a part of the status quo that will continue to serve them at the cost of our humanity. I struggle with feeling completely and utterly inadequate for the job. But my struggles are nothing compared to the struggles of those who have lost their children, their safety, their homes, their dignity, their faith. And the fact that this life is a struggle doesn't give me permission to check out or to build a wall around what I have and hold dear; it calls me to show up and roll up my sleeves and work and, yes, wait, which has never been a particular strength of mine. I'm still figuring out what, exactly, that means.

Today, on his last day of being five years old, my joyful son took on his first speaking role in a Christmas program and he was objectively, totally fabulous--both of my children were--and my heart burst in all the predictable ways. Sometimes I think the entire point of me writing anything ever is just to try to keep and hold these beautiful moments for myself because they pass, and they fade. So quickly. But I also think that maybe this is my own small way of lighting the darkness. To remind myself that darkness will fall, again and again, and sometimes I will just have to sit down in it, but I cannot and will not stay there.

Math Bonanza 2015

Allow me to indulge for a moment in a moment of Mama pride: my daughter won 7th in district at the fourth grade level at tonight's Math Bonanza, and top 4th grader at her school. Until that moment when I heard her name I really wasn't thinking about how well she would do or whether she would even place; really, I've just been so tickled about her enthusiasm in going at all. She just likes doing math. And she had such a great time last year. She didn't place, but she felt good about trying her best on some really tough math, got to eat a bunch of pizza, and cheered hard for her classmates. So when she had the opportunity to go back this year, she waved the paper in my face and said, "We're doing this again, right?" It really wasn't even a question.

And it was a terrific night. I fully admit that at 2:10 this afternoon, knowing I still had a meeting of my writing club between school and collecting my children and then we would have just enough time to stop by the house for a quick bathroom break before rushing over to the elementary school that hosts this contest, I really wished I could just come home and put on pajamas at four o'clock and read. But. Isaac gathered his bag of entertainment (over four hours of hanging out in a hot cafeteria is a long time for a five-year-old, and it was a struggle last year) and I washed my face and brushed my teeth, and we headed back out into the afternoon. The sun was beginning to slip behind the trees as we parked, and the air was bitingly cold. The kids slipped their hands into mine, and I relished the moment for exactly that: this sweet little sliver of time when they are little enough to unselfconsciously hold onto me, but big enough to let go and run over to the registration line to greet a friend (Suzannah) or sit alone at a table in a crowded room and color and be just fine (Isaac) while I go buy concessions and chat with my friend and colleague who runs this event.

This year was also lovely because I shamelessly exploited my "VIP" status. I have exactly nothing to do with the execution of this night, but I am lucky enough to call the teacher who runs it my friend and colleague, and the tests are scored by a group of volunteer students from my high school, most of whom I know, many of them whom I've taught over the past couple of years. So when I learned that they'd be arriving for orientation at 4:45 but didn't actually have orientation until 5:15 (high school students need decoy times, just like my husband), I thought I'd go say hi. And then I thought, what if I hang out in the library with my restless son instead of lined up along the wall of the cafeteria? We can spread out on an actual table, and and it's so much cooler. As I walked to the scoring room, an official-looking person asked if I needed any help (which was obvious code for, "Excuse me, but who are you? The sign says no parents or coaches allowed") and I said, "Oh, those are my students in there, and I'm with Mr._________." (Matt was all, "Well, that was shameless.") It was a good move. Isaac had tons of things packed that he could have played with, but he settled into coloring a mandala with gel pens. He is my little artist; he can concentrate for a spectacularly long time on drawing or coloring. (One of the seniors walked by and said, "Man, he's good. I can't color like that and I'm eighteen.") He took breaks to eat popcorn and pizza, but other than that, he was totally absorbed. I tried to read a bit -- math contests are not exactly the most thrilling spectator sports, so I didn't feel badly about not staying in the cafeteria -- but I felt too distracted. I kept watching my students, marveling at the way they were both goofy with each other and serious about their task. I kept watching my son, bent over his paper, absorbed in his coloring. I thought about my daughter, bent over her paper in the cafeteria, her cheeks flushed from the warmth of the room. And I just felt so deeply in love with all of it.

Seeing my kids -- as in, the teenagers I love so much -- spend their Friday night scoring math tests at an elementary school was just about as heart-bursting as watching my own daughter lock into fierce and lovely concentration. Two of these kids in particular made me so crazy as sophomores. I mean this seriously -- not crazy in the fun way, but crazy in the way I feel when teaching actually hurts. I worried about one of them, and I didn't feel like I could help him enough. The other one spent at least a good semester just pissing me off. And now when I see them I feel nothing but pure affection. I feel sure that they will, ultimately, be okay. I laugh with them so easily. I still lecture them, because I still feel they need it and because I think they actually respect me, but mostly I'm just happy when they stop by my room to say hi. I'm going to miss them next year, and if they don't let me know how they're doing, I'm going to think about them, and wonder, and hope.

Sometimes when I tell friends that I'm going to literacy night or math night or science night or family night at the kids' school, I get that sympathetic eye roll. Because we're all tired, and we've taught all day, and the thought of eating terrible pizza in an elementary school cafeteria at five o'clock is not incredibly exciting. It'd be nice to come home and heat up some leftovers instead. Or it'd be nice to toss the kids in the bath and chop vegetables at the kitchen counter while listening to NPR, or really any scenario would be lovely as long as it involves changing into sweats before five o'clock. But they don't need to pity me, even on days when I pity myself, for heaven's sake. Motherhood is often lonely, and some days I am so very aware of the fact that I can't go to happy hour when I really, really want to. But also, this time is golden. It's golden. My children are so happy to be exactly who they are right now, and they seem to just really like school, and they are young enough to really want Matt and me to do these things with them: to show up at their events, and chat with their teachers, and beam. And there is almost nothing as magical as seeing your kid see you beaming at them from their spot in the front of the crowd.

Last year, the week before the contest, she teared up at home when she couldn't make sense of some of the practice problems. (The math skills aren't inherited, but the perfectionism might be.) We talked through that. I told her it's okay that it's hard, that she can do hard things, and that there will be things she doesn't know. Always. This year, she says things like, "I like math best when it's a little bit hard. It's better than when it's too easy." And that grit, right there, that's what makes my heart burst. That's what I hope I can help to teach her (I certainly can't do that on my own), so much more than the actual math.

Matt managed to get home from work in time to make it to the awards part of the night. We crammed into the hot cafeteria and waited, and I fully expected to smile while my girl clapped for her friends. But when I heard her name announced I turned to my husband and saw, I suspect, a mirror of my own face: bursting with happiness and this sweet, shared moment of parental pride. That's our kid up there. Look at her. Just look at her.

Full of wonder, full of grace

I’m recovering from a cold. It hit with a vengeance on Isaac’s first morning of kindergarten; I woke up with that tell-tale sore throat that often promises a sinus infection, and thought: Of course. Here we go. I spent the next week diligently doing my sinus washes, drinking water fizzing with Alka Seltzer Cold, and carrying on basically as usual, except for last Friday when I had to squeak pitifully at a class of exuberant sophomores, “Guys? This is all I’ve got. Help me out.” They furiously shushed each other, and at the end of the period, one girl volunteered to be my voice when I wanted to remind everyone about something for the next class. They are lovely people. Anyway, I’ve gone through a lot of Kleenex, and I’ve drunk too much Nyquil, which gives me strange dreams. But I’m well on my way back to healthy, and life still seems awfully sweet.

(Sidenote: I resisted Alka Seltzer Cold for years out of sheer stubbornness. My band director in college was a fanatic about it. If I sneezed during a private trumpet lesson he literally pulled it out of his desk drawer and insisted I drink it on the spot. And then I married Matt, who did the exact same thing. I’m telling you, these people are insufferable and irritating and I want to mix their stupid Alka Seltzer with whiskey and drink it at them but at this point I also might have to admit that it at least doesn’t do any harm.)

So anyway, now I’ve got two school-aged children. I don’t have the words to adequately capture the sweetness and wonder of our lives, but I’m going to try, because I need something to come back and read when I text Matt and inform him that I’ve locked the children in the backyard and will be shoving their dinners through the window. They are all up in each other’s business all the time and yet they cannot bear to be in different rooms, and they whine and tattle and aggravate and provoke and the other day I might have said something like, “Thanks a lot. I’m SICK and you’re making my morning even HARDER and you don’t even CARE.” And then I was like, shut up, Shari, are you seriously trying to guilt trip your children at eight o’clock in the morning?

But also, truly: it is all wonderful. Full of wonder.

On Isaac’s first day of kindergarten, Matt and I walked him to his line at morning assembly. We were allowed to accompany him to class and take a lot of pictures, and then we were gently shooed out the door. Since Isaac had been to kindergarten camp and knew his teacher, he didn’t seem terribly nervous, so I figured Matt and I wouldn’t feel quite so shattered (in the best of ways, really) when we left him there. Still, we did sort of stagger across the parking lot leaning against each other.

For the first week, I walked him into the gym for morning assembly. I walked him over to his line, right next to the fourth and fifth grade classes that are the “big buddies” to the littles. Every day he hugged me and waved cheerfully as I walked away. This week, I dropped him off with his sister out front. How ridiculous is this? I pull up in front of the school and my babies hop out of the car by themselves and walk into the school by themselves and maybe, if I’m lucky, they remember to turn around and wave at me. My little girl, who all of a sudden stands as tall as my shoulder. And my little boy, who suddenly does look so little, so adorably little in his crisp polo shirt and new jeans and giant backpack. I know that he can confidently get milk at lunchtime. I know that he has friends he plays with at recess. His teacher tells me that he’s such a good model, such a “great little guy.” He is a great little guy. Every afternoon I meet him at his classroom door and he is beaming. That is all I need, really and truly. My children, beaming every afternoon. Everything is okay in my world, even when it’s not, when my children are just happy to be.

Suzannah still loves school. My daughter enjoys homework. She wakes up before everyone else in this house just to have quiet reading time in the morning -- well, to be honest, I’m not even convinced that this child has truly slept since she was a fetus, so maybe she stays up all night reading, but what I am telling you is that I tiptoe past her room in the early dawn hours and she is almost always cross-legged on her bed with a book. This afternoon she said to me, “I really love math! It’s not my favorite when it’s too easy, but when it’s a little bit hard, I love that.” Right now she’s working on a writing “assignment,” but it’s turned into a story that fills pages of her composition book. She wakes early enough that she finishes her daily reading log long before we have to leave for school. I write this all down to remember, to fully appreciate the fact that right now my daughter loves learning with her whole being and it’s not a battle I fight with her. I’m so grateful for her very presence in my life. For her awakeness, for her wonder-filled and curious self.

This afternoon we had Isaac’s five-year well-child check-up. We’re a little late, but it actually worked out nicely this way as it’s almost exactly a year since his hospital stay. We’ll have another check-up with the pediatric kidney specialist later this fall, but today our pediatrician checked him over and pronounced him “perfect.” Isaac’s blood pressure was excellent (it was terrifyingly high a year ago when his kidneys decided to stop working properly), and he’s growing terrifically fast. I have a doctor-crush on our pediatrician, sort of like I have a teacher-crush on his kindergarten teacher. Both of these people have been so important in my children’s lives and been so loving and patient both with them and with me. Suzannah more or less ran Isaac’s appointment today; when the doctor walked in she took over. She answered all of his questions about Isaac (what time he goes to bed, what he eats, what he’s learning in school) and then showed him her latest short story. I tried to shush her a bit, but the pediatrician laughed and said, “No, I love this, this is great.” And my heart grew three sizes. For all of it.

And I’m doing well, too. It’s September, which is always golden and lovely, all full of highlighters with sharp tips and new Pilot pens with green ink, all full of students’ earnest writing and notebooks with unbattered corners. My sophomores are the most wonderful, ridiculous people. My juniors will challenge me this year, but I am choosing to think of this as an opportunity. A girl who rolled her eyes at me on the first day laughs easily now, and she doesn’t seem to hate my class. A boy who hated my class in every way possible last year chose to stick it out in my IB literature class, even after his football coach called him and asked, “Are you sure?” Miracles happen. The system might be broken, because systems always are, but luckily I don’t have time to think about systems when I am working with real kids and when I am working alongside real teachers, who are as tired and exhilarated as I am. Right now I am just so deeply thankful that I work in a place I love, with people I love. Morning comes fast, and too soon sometimes, but right now I take my children to school where they thrive and I drive to my own school and feel deeply happy to be there. It matters. It’s enough.