The Complicated Love of Home

We visited Suzannah for Fall Family Weekend, and it was wonderful. It's only been a month, but I have missed her so much. I'm still not used to walking past her empty (and strangely tidy) room. I'm not used to not hugging her every day, or before bed. Hugging her again -- she gives great hugs -- was my favorite part of the weekend.

"You're doing great," I whispered as I hugged her good-bye last Sunday. 

"I'm doing okay," she replied.

And I told her that one month into her first year of college, especially considering everything she's fought through to arrive at this place, okay is more than enough. When I think about the last couple of years, those terrible post-Covid years layered with additional trauma -- some of which I recognized and some of which I didn't at the time -- my gratitude for what we have now brings me to my knees. We did the best we could with what we knew at the time, and some of it was good enough and some of it wasn't but it brought us to this moment, where my firstborn baby adult wants to spend time with us, where she checks in every day, where she misses our hugs and can't wait to come home.

I'll take that. Every time.

*

I've written about home a lot, both in this space and in many others. It's a loaded word for me. I was born into senseless privilege, really; my childhood bedroom still exists in pretty much the same state I left it an entire adulthood ago. I have always loved the way my parents' house in Bozeman smells when I walk through the door, even decades after I left. I love everything about it: the sound of the creek through the open window in my old bedroom (where my children now sleep when we visit), the light over the kitchen sink at night, the sound of the water singing through the pipes when the shower starts, the way I still know where to reach for cereal or crackers or peanut butter. The deer that strut across the lawn at twilight. The shadows that spill over the Hyalite foothills.

I didn't interrogate this privilege for a long time. I've always had a home base: somewhere to return to. And I took it entirely for granted.

*

How many homes can a person have?

I have never once regretted moving to Washington. I've lived here for my entire adult life; we've chosen to raise our family here, and I can't imagine choosing to leave. I have the water and the mountains, and a short drive to the plains I still love as well. I have creative autonomy in my professional life that I absolutely do not take for granted these days. And I live in a state where basic human rights still -- mostly, for now -- remain protected. As a woman and as a mother of a fabulously queer kid and as a human being, this matters.

I love my home state and I always will; it's in my blood. But I also understand that I'm an outsider now. I understood that the day someone from my hometown posted a picture of a car with an out-of-state license place just...driving down Main Street. The message was clear: You're not wanted.

It was a running joke when I lived there in the 90s: No Californians! 

The license plate was from a state in the Midwest, though, not California. And I understand that this isn't a joke.

I have an out-of-state license plate and I have since 2001. 

Is this a silly thing to pick on? Maybe. But this person happened to post this picture the same summer Ijeoma Oluo -- a writer I think we should all be reading -- faced an intense wave of racist vitriol (death threats, rape threats, vile names I will not type here) when she dared to make the comment "Will they let my Black ass walk out of here?" after visiting a Cracker Barrel in Montana during a road trip with her children. (I've never eaten at a Cracker Barrel, but I do know they had to pay...a lot, for racially discriminatory practices.)

Which brings me to the conversation I had with a student last week.

*

My juniors were working through one of James Baldwin's essays, and I was walking around the room begging them to please just fall in love with the texture and cadence of his perfectly brilliant sentences. They were doing their best to derail my teaching, as teenagers do. But sometimes the derailing leads to conversations that take us where we need to go anyway.

"Winslow, what's your favorite place in the world to visit?" 

I was tempted to ask this child what in the world that had to do with the work she wasn't doing, but it was Friday, and I like her a lot, and I didn't really feel like working either. 

"Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park," I said. "This has been true for my whole life. If I could only ever go one place again, it would be the shore of that lake. Or swimming in it."

"Where is that exactly?"

"That's in Montana, where I grew up. I love some places in Washington just as much now, so this isn't a fair question, but that's always my first answer."

"I'm not about to set foot in Montana," she said. And she explained in no uncertain terms why.

*

The first time someone I worked with told me about the time they were met with unabashed racism at a restaurant while traveling through my home state, my first response was something along the lines of, "I'm so sorry that happened! That's not Montana!" As a white person in America, I was taught to believe that racism was a reflection of horrible individuals. Horrible individuals are everywhere! An unfortunate reality that doesn't ask anything of us. Because we are not like that.

It's exactly the response I saw from well-meaning Montanans in response to Ijeoma Oluo's experience. How desperately we want to prove we're not like that. 

I responded in more or less the same way the second time a friend told me a similar story. A different town, a different circumstance -- but the same story I didn't really want to hear. I wanted to believe in the friendliness and hospitality of my home state. And I do believe in the friendliness, hospitality, and goodwill of individuals in my home state. But it took me some time (the time I had the privilege of taking) to understand that my response -- I'm sorry you encountered terrible people, but that was a reflection of individuals, not a systemic issue -- is exactly how white supremacy sustains itself, how it grows and flourishes, even in our homes, even in our well-meaning hearts.

I remember the first time a student asked me, "Are there any Black people in Montana?" and it led to a conversation similar to the one I had with my student last week. She understood the call towards home; she felt it too, towards a home she hadn't visited in a long time. But she also wondered, rightly so, how I could love a place that wouldn't welcome her too.

I don't love Montana any less than I did the day I left at eighteen, and the day I left for good when I moved to Washington twenty-three years ago. Sometimes I think that the grand sum of my writing, all of it, has always been a love letter to home, whatever that means. It means it's complicated, like any love. It means I think a great deal about home. How privileged I am to have been raised where I was, to love it freely and to feel welcome while I lived there. How privileged I still am to be able to return when I want, to hope my children understand that while they are Washingtonians through and through, Montana and Minnesota pulse through them as well; their roots are deep in all those places. How privileged I am to claim these roots, and to be able to return.

*

Suzannah was always fairly certain she wanted to attend college in-state, though she considered a few Oregon schools; she was quite firm on this from the beginning. She never wanted to go to a red state, for what (I would hope) are obvious reasons. But also, she doesn't want to be too cold or too hot, so no weeks of subzero or intensely hot weather. 

"The Pacific Northwest it is, then," I said happily. Because what parent wants her kid to go far away? She had plenty of excellent options and I trusted her to choose what was right for her. But when we visited Western the summer before her senior year, I had a feeling.

Mostly, I want her to know our home will always be home, regardless of where she chooses to put down other roots. I hope it always feels like it.

*

My kid voted in her first election last weekend. Her ballot was delivered to our address, and we took it to her for Family Weekend. After we'd had lunch and made our Target run, we hunkered down in a cafe I've grown to love over the past year. Rain streamed down the windows; Mazzy Star played inside while Suzannah and I sipped coffees in a cozy booth. I wrote in my journal and she spent a long time with her ballot. I've drilled into my children to an irritating degree that local elections matter a great deal; if I've done my job, neither of them will ever say, "I'm not political" or "I'm not into politics," which is, of course, a political statement in itself. 

*

I can't see myself living in Montana again; I don't think there's a place for me or my family there anymore. But Montana runs through me, and I still love it fiercely. I love my family there with my whole heart. It's complicated, and it's not. 

I've donated to Jon Tester's senate campaign more than once because I still have this wild hope that that a dirt farmer who works the same farm in north-central Montana near my family's farm in north-central Montana (who still uses the same meat grinder that took three of his fingers in an accident when he was only nine) can hang on to the senate seat he's held for so many years in a deep red state, even though he is a Democrat, which is something of a miracle. I've donated because even though Washington is my home now, my heart still claims Montana too, even if it won't claim me back. Because even though Tester and I part ways on some issues, he represents more wild hope that there might still be space for people like me and my family in the place that raised me, even if it's not actually me and my family. Because he works the same land his grandfather homesteaded, because he was a teacher, because he has a gay son, because if I want to ever believe that there is a place for my family in any capacity then I have to believe that some folks in unlikely places will still fight for basic safety and dignity for everyone. Because his opponent is absolutely repugnant and you don't need the news to tell you that; you can hear it straight from the candidate's own mouth. I've donated because people contain multitudes and even though Tester has never been on the ballot with Trump before, which will do him no favors this time, I have to believe it is possible that safety and dignity and decency and empathy can win, even against the odds.

I'm not sure donating to a senate campaign in a state I don't live and can't vote in counts as local politics, but it feels personal.

*

In the meantime, here we are. We're a mess. But also, even when we're a mess, our daily lives are still so full of beauty and love and I hope to never take a second of that for granted, even as I sit with the understanding that I have, in this beautiful life of mine, taken so much for granted.

In the meantime, here I sit, thinking of home. Of the people I love in every home I've ever known. Of all the ways a human heart can break and mend. Of my daughter's hugs and how I miss them, of how lucky I am to know she misses them too. Of the way my son can make me laugh on the darkest days of the year. Of my students and everything they've taught me. Of the friends I've lost and the friends I count as family. Of everything we stand to lose. Of privilege and shortcomings and shortsightedness, of trying to be better, of giving grace, of accountability. Of not knowing where to start, but clumsily trying.

Grief and Hope and Joy

I moved my firstborn into her college dorm this week.

I keep trying to write the sentence that comes after that. I keep trying to choose the sentence that comes after that. The right one. I keep typing and deleting.

There are so many sentences and I haven't found the one that fits, but if I wait to find the one that fits, I won't ever write this.

I keep thinking about taking her to her first day of kindergarten, which I wrote about at length in this space so many years ago. So many years in the blink of an eye. (It's wild, really -- I've been writing here for sixteen years, and I keep thinking I should start a Substack because that's where so many folks I'm reading are writing these days, and this space has been pretty quiet for me in the last couple of years but that's not because I don't have things to say, and it's not because I'm not writing; it's just that writing about parenting older children -- older teens and baby adults -- is very different territory. All that to say, I guess, is that I'm still writing, that I'll always be writing, and right now I guess this is still my little corner of the Internet to share a fraction of that.)

I felt all the feelings when we took our baby to kindergarten, and I wrote about that day like I'd invented parenthood -- forgive me, but it's so easy to put on our MomPants when our babies are small in an age where we share everything with an immediate audience in some way. The solidarity ("Hang in there, Mama!" and all those likes and heart-reacts) can get us through some tough moments, long days of drudgery, crushing self-doubt, and often help us laugh about it later. But as my kids grew older, I found myself drawing different boundaries around what I would share, imagining them reading it later, and I realized the importance of being transparent about my writing with them. It can be more complicated to write my story when it tangles with someone else's, whose stories are not for public consumption.

Lonelier, too. So, so much lonelier.

Kindergarten drop-off was hard -- is hard, I imagine, for so many parents -- because at its core is the realization that our babies will continue to grow up and grow away from us. That feels particularly cruel when our babies are five years old.

I wrote this back in 2011:

She hung up her new pink backpack. She already had a cubby, one she'd chosen the day before when she met her teacher. She gave us each a big hug, and then she walked over to the large rainbow carpet and joined all the other kids. Her cheeks were pink and I could tell she was nervous, but she was holding it together so well...she turned and waved at us, gave a little smile. We waved back, smiled as hard as we could, and left. And we sort of staggered across the playground, holding hands and leaning heavily into each other. I must have looked awfully shaky, because we attracted lots of sympathetic smiles from other parents milling around. I really thought I might throw up. And then, it was so ridiculous, Matt and I kissed each other good-bye and went off to our respective jobs. I was all, what? I have to go to school and teach classes? How?

I would like to tell you that dropping my child off at college was like that. It was, in some ways. But taking a child who hasn't been traumatized to kindergarten is a different kind of hard (for a mama who is equally and also senselessly privileged) than taking a child to college who has experienced trauma her mama couldn't protect her from. The spaces and silences in a journal can speak as loudly as words.

My child has her own story to tell, and it's a powerful one. I have my own story to tell, too, but I'm still trying to figure out where it fits, and how to tell it.

Here's what I can say: I am so proud of her. My heart is constantly seized by terror and love, but mostly love. Grief and hope and joy can coexist in a strange and beautiful space. I am lucky beyond measure. It's unthinkable, when they're five, to imagine them growing up and growing away from us. But it's also the point, isn't it? To raise them to be able to do exactly this: to find their way. 

Here's what I didn't understand about raising teenagers and young adults, when she was five:

That they need us more, not less.

That we have to figure out an entirely different way to parent them.

That when our babies are born we think we understand how much a heart can hold, and we haven't the faintest idea. We learn that quickly, but I'm still amazed and shattered by it as my baby becomes an adult.

That this is what it's for. We don't have babies to have babies forever, or preschoolers, or second graders. I may melt with nostalgia when Facebook and photo memories remind me of the delights, absurdities, and challenges of my children's childhoods, but what's really incredible to me is how these babies of mine have become humans I just really love getting to know. Learning who they actually are in the world, who they are becoming, and continuing to navigate a relationship with them both -- that is the greatest gift of my life.

But it's also just so hard. I'm still so scared. The last few years are still so raw, and there is no clear road map for navigating our way forward. I'm beyond grateful for the connections I have with friends who have traveled this road already, for the connections I've made in writing groups where we can share from our most vulnerable places, and for the privilege of access to support and resources.

Weeping as your baby goes to kindergarten is a thing. And for most of us, it's okay to share that as publicly as we want. And make no mistake: I believe in honoring and remembering those moments.

Weeping as you walk across a college campus, away from your baby, walking toward your car as she walks towards the dining hall -- it hits differently, and for me, at this moment, harder.

I know I'm not really alone, that I am experiencing a privileged grief shared by many, many other parents -- to be able to send my girl to a school that suits her, where, God willing, she will thrive. She will find her people and continue to discover and become the fabulous human she is. But I also have to grapple with this: I can't really protect her anymore, not like I used to. I can always provide a soft place to land, I can spread my whole soul out on the ground, but this really is her path.

Thirteen years ago, as my baby started kindergarten, I wrote this: All I really need is for her to be okay, and I'm okay.

There are layers in that sentence now. My okayness should never be her burden to carry, and she is not responsible for it, ever. I read those lines and thought, yes! That, exactly! But as I think about it, my okayness isn't the point. So I revert to the prayer I've prayed every first day of school for her whole life: Lord, let them love her like I do.

Just let her know she is loved beyond measure.

 

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.

To Imagine the Future: A New Morning

My baby girl, my firstborn, my smart and impatient and funny and compassionate and silly and sweet daughter, turns fourteen years old tomorrow morning. Today, right on schedule, I find myself just staring at her, remembering the day before her birth. Have I told this story here before? Probably yes, probably a hundred times, probably everyone is tired of it; my daughter rolls her eyes because I tell her some version of it every year. I intend to do this for as long as I can speak.

Suzannah was born on the Sunday morning of Memorial Weekend, four weeks before her late June due date. I remained staunchly in denial that I was in labor, although in hindsight (and after birthing another baby since then), I now understand I'd been in labor for quite some time. I taught my classes on that Friday before Memorial weekend, sitting awkwardly on top of a student desk because I couldn't fit anywhere else, because it hurt to stand and it hurt to sink into the chair behind my desk. So I perched on top of one of those desks and coached my students through the opening act of Othello. I wasn't sure I would make it all the way until the end of the school year, but I was determined to get through the damn play before I gave birth, and I figured that if I needed a sub, they could show the movie.

One of my sophomore boys called over his shoulder on his way out of my classroom, "Bet your water breaks this weekend."

"Shut up," I said to his retreating back.

That afternoon I loaded my pug into the car and drove her to the vet. She'd been digging at her ears again and I was absolutely sure she had an ear infection. I wanted to sob at the thought of getting in the car, of having to bend over and lift all of her fifteen pounds onto the exam table. She did have an ear infection, and twenty-four hours later I would be very sorry I hadn't just left her there for the weekend. But Matt brought home pizza for dinner that night, and we settled in to watch a movie, and I actually slept pretty well -- better than I had in recent weeks.

This is an excerpt from my journal entry on Saturday afternoon, less than twenty-four hours before she was born:

Today we're shopping for last-minute things we need. We are packing the hospital bag (which I meant to do over a week ago -- though we did get the carseat installed). And then we're going on a double-date at a pub, where the boys will drink pretentious microbrews and Ky and I will drink root beer.

In between shopping and dinner, I need two things. One: Bubble Tea. Two: To lie down on the couch for awhile.

I don't remember the bubble tea. I do remember walking very, very slowly around Target and pretending to look at things on the bottom shelf because it felt sort of good to squat.

Please just imagine the sight of a very pregnant woman squatting and breathing in the middle of Target and be appropriately horrified. My mother certainly was when I recounted our shopping trip later.

Kyanne and I didn't get our double-date with our husbands. I called her and asked if we could maybe go somewhere closer to my house, because the thought of sitting in the car any longer made me want to die.

"Or we could just...not go," Kyanne said.

I spent the afternoon and evening trying to doze on the couch. I demanded McDonald's chicken nuggets for dinner, which Matt bought and which I promptly threw up. By midnight, I couldn't walk to the bathroom without dropping to my knees and howling, at which point I agreed that maybe I was in labor. I called Kyanne to come and pick up our pug, and twenty minutes later she was standing above me in the hallway with her arms crossed.

"I am definitely never having kids," she said.

"It's not that bad," I panted. "Go look at the baby's room! We just finished it last weekend!" (Note: the joke was on us, since Zannah slept in our room for over a year. But I also have no regrets about that.)

“You’re crazy,” she muttered, as Matt helped me into the car.

“I can’t sit in front,” I said. “I have to stretch out.”

We sped south on I-5, the freeway nearly empty at two o’clock in the morning. I howled and panted in the backseat, refusing to put on my seatbelt.

The light inside the emergency room seemed too bright. I was being asked to do impossible things. To write my name. To wait. To sit.

This wasn’t supposed to be happening yet -- not for a month. But eight hours after we arrived at the emergency room and two-and-a-half after I started to push, our daughter was delivered to my chest. She was four weeks early, but healthy and pink.

“I know you,” I said. We laughed and cried. Our little family of three.

Someone brought in a tray of food: grilled cheese and a small bunch of purple grapes. The sandwich was lukewarm and too soft, but in that moment it was the finest grilled cheese I’d ever tasted. My swaddled baby was nestled into my arms while a nurse wheeled us to our new room on the fourteenth floor.

As soon as I could stand, I hobbled to the small oval-shaped window. The sky was heavy, overcast for late May. I gazed down at the city streets of Tacoma, under the gray sky: a new morning.

***

If birthing my daughter taught me anything, it's that sometimes we need to roll with things we didn't plan for. That's difficult for those of us who like to plan. Perhaps ironically, my daughter is one of those people; on the first weekend after schools closed, she wrote out a very detailed daily schedule. On the first day of "Spring Break" (in quotes for perhaps obvious reasons), when we learned that schools would be closed for the rest of the year, she balled it up and threw it in the trash and we both cried. But during the first week of official remote learning, she was back at it, and she brandished her new daily schedule at breakfast. And every single day she shows up to her class meetings, completes every activity her teachers post, practices her trumpet, and makes sure she spends time outside if it isn't raining.

The end of her eighth grade year wasn't supposed to look like this. She was supposed to have more concerts. She rehearsed with musicians from all over the district for the all-city Honor Band only two days before schools closed. She was supposed to go to Silverwood with the band. She was supposed to be able to celebrate the end of middle school before transitioning to a new high school. The fact that she'll be attending a different high school than her friends adds a layer of sadness we couldn't have anticipated a few months ago, when she thought she would still be able to say good-bye. And while I know how her new school welcomes freshmen, and I know the opportunities that await her (because I happen to teach there), I don't know what that will look like in September. She's lost the end of eighth grade, and the beginning of her high school career will look far different than either of us imagined. My heart hurts for her. But I also trust that neither one of us can grasp the bigger picture yet, not while we're stuck in the small one. What graces, what gifts will come from this? How will we remember these days? How will she tell her own story ten years from now?

Both of us mourn what we've lost. She misses her friends. I miss my students, my seniors. But I wonder if what we're mourning will translate into something worth celebrating. In our weekly Zooms, my students talk about taking care of each other and holding themselves accountable. They appreciate the chance to sleep and understand the importance of sticking to a schedule. We've talked about strategies for managing stress and anxiety and staying organized when there's no teacher there to yell at you. These are lessons it may serve them well to learn as they gain their independence in a world that changed, fast. They're sad, but resilient. And they can articulate this.

I've been trying to be positive about this while also holding space for whatever feelings Suzannah has. She is, after all, my daughter, so there are frequently some big feelings in this house. But while my heart hurts for my girl, while I hate that all of her grandparents and her aunt and uncle and cousin can't join us for grilling and ice cream cake tomorrow, while I hate that her birthday trip to Great Wolf Lodge has been canceled, I'm also taking my cues right from her. She has decided that tomorrow she should have the day "off" from school, considering she hasn't missed a beat, and I agree. We picked out an ice cream cake together, and the kids and I will frost brownies sent by her grandmother. Matt and I came up with a gift to surprise her that, hopefully, will lessen the sting of not sharing her day with more people -- at least not in person. We'll eat outside in the sunshine. I ordered special Quarantine Birthday decorations, which Zannah seems to enjoy. We'll appreciate the technology that allows us to see her grandparents until we can hug them in person. She's pretty good at enjoying the moment she's living in, and I think (I hope, I pray) she understands how much she is loved. The daughter of my heart.

***

Even as I miss our daily routines, I appreciate the routines I'm privileged (and I do understand it is a privilege) to create now: Waking early to walk through my neighborhood, watching the spring unfold and flower. Sipping coffee slowly. Playing Uno with my children, which started when Isaac and I were the only ones awake at dawn, but sometimes in the afternoons (because he never tires of it) Suzannah asks to join, even if it's not written into her schedule. Walking to the school playground, where I walk or jog and Isaac rides his bike. Letting Suzannah stay up a little late and then sleep a little late. Frequently I am ready for bed before she is, because I still like to rise long before everyone else in my house, and when I go to bed she slips in beside me for awhile to snuggle. Still, at fourteen! I loved snuggling my babies, so very much, but there is something profoundly special about my teenager nestling against me while we giggle and talk and sigh. May I never take this for granted. These are moments I will cherish and probably definitely miss when we resume whatever "normal" life will look like again and our rhythms change again. My deep hope is that we are creating connections now that will carry us through whatever comes next.

Motherhood is like this. Nothing could have prepared me for the enormity of the life change when my daughter was born and delivered straight to my arms. I could only imagine, and my imagination wasn't big enough. I think about that now. How can I expand my imagination to hold all that awaits?

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?

Fragments

Sometimes I want things to be easy. Sometimes, when things feel hard, I fantasize about moving somewhere and raising my children in a safe little bubble and teaching in a safe little school where my biggest problem is all the white moms who are irritated because their honor students have a few B's or their sons aren't getting enough playing time on the field and the school district would never be in the news unless it was to report on the Homecoming game; perhaps the biggest controversy would be some conservative parent protesting a novel or a cheating scandal or something. But the thing is that I don't want that. I don't want those people to be the people who influence my children, the people they learn from, the people who shape their worldview. And frankly, I know that so much of what I value about where I am now would not be possible if I retreated to that mythical bubble.

But right now I am indulging in a fantasy, because things have just not been easy this year. Well, some things. I need to remember that, on top of everything that makes me feel so unmoored right now, I also have the deep privilege to teach three of the best classes I have experienced. Teaching them is exciting. It's everything I love about teaching. That is something, and it is a lot.

*

Sometimes, the parts that are hard become the parts that I live for. The parts that make me stay, in the end. And when that's not enough, I have the best people in my corner, in the trenches with me. The best of the best. And these people are the people I want in my children's lives.

*

October makes the unbearable bearable. When I can manage it, I squeeze in a quick run before I pick up the kids in the afternoon. I run through piles of damp, fallen leaves and breathe in the faint scent of woodsmoke. Some of these fall afternoons have been beautifully sunny and warm. The other day I jogged through a light rain that soothed the edges of my fraying nerves. The sky begins to darken earlier, and I am ready to settle in at home afterwards, settle my kids at the table with their snacks and their books and their math while I slip into the bathtub with a book of my own.

*

Twice a week we go to soccer practice. Suzannah runs to the field, ponytail swinging, shouting greetings to her friends. Isaac runs off with the other little brothers. Sometimes one of the soccer dads brings a football and tosses it around with the boys; sometimes they stomp through puddles and run off to collect sticks and branches and enter a world of wild boyhood just beyond my grasp. They play at the edges of the trees, stomp through piles of leaves, disappear for a few anxious moments, and reappear with whoops and hollers. I sit at the edge of the field, my eyes glancing between them: my girl on the field, my son just beyond it. I love them so much I can hardly breathe. Observing them like this, when they are wholly, unselfconsciously themselves, so present in their bodies, is one of the great gifts of motherhood. These babies, my babies, these wonderful humans. What will they become?

*

I tell everyone I never wanted to be a soccer mom and I mean it. I never did. Matt and I are great lovers of outdoor activities: hiking, swimming, running. We are not great lovers of sports, although I have been known to enjoy a good college basketball game. But somehow, the two of us produced a child who loves sports (she understands football more than I do, no question), and when she said she really wanted to play soccer with a real team, what could I do but sign her up? And as it turns out, I love it. I really do. I've spent every Tuesday and Thursday since mid-August at the soccer field, sitting in a camp chair and reading or chatting with the other parents. I've spent every Saturday for nearly three months watching her play fiercely in games, and there is no reading then: I'm in it, all the way. I'm balling my hands into nervous fists, I'm cheering, I'm leaning forward and holding my breath. I have intense respect for her coach, who is a legitimately awesome coach but who is also gracious and positive. I love the girls on the team and it has been amazing to watch them grow together. I love the other parents, how they learn the names of all the players. Two months in and we cheer together. We shout encouragement to each girl, by name, and when one goalie throws herself into the mud to stop a ball or one girl finesses the ball away from the other team and passes smoothly and another shoots it triumphantly into the net, we know which parent to turn to: "Your girl is doing great."

The girls didn't play their best game today; they had a make-up game last night (from the game they lost due to the epic storm that didn't quite happen two weekends ago), a mere eighteen hours before their regular game today, and we could all tell they were tired and foggy. But still, the mood was upbeat. One of the dads said, "It's more like they're out there going for a nice little jog together and they've forgotten about the ball," he said. He started jogging in place next to me. "Y'all want to to out later after the game? What are you doing this afternoon?" And we all laughed. We didn't love losing the game, but I did love that when the girls walked off the field together, red-faced, hair sticking to their cheeks, they called cheerful good-byes to each other: "See you tomorrow!" Because we play in a state cup qualifier tomorrow. It's exactly the sort of weekend I assumed I would dread, but somehow, I don't. When I learned the season lasted until December, I thought that seemed like an awfully long time; now, as I can stare down the month of November, I'm already feeling a little sad about the season's end. I really, truly love this. What an unexpected joy.

*

After today's game we headed to Seattle. Matt took the kids to EMP and dropped me off at one of my favorite coffee shops to work on an online workshop I'm doing this month. I really wanted to just sip coffee and read (I'm loving Work Like Any Other by Virginia Reeves), but I hunkered down and worked for two hours and wound up feeling so glad I didn't put this off for late Sunday afternoon, which would have made me edgy and stressed because I still don't really know what I'm going to do with my freshmen on Monday and I need to spend part of tomorrow figuring that out. When they came back to pick me up the kids were happy and spent and full of stories: Suzannah ran into one of her classmates and they played together, and Isaac told me what he loved best about the Sound Room. We drove to West Seattle for dinner. Matt and the kids walked to Easy Street Records while I wandered over to Elliott Bay Brewing to put in our name. I crossed the street behind two men in jeans and boots and leather jackets with chains, and suddenly they clasped hands and giggled and crashed their hips together, totally smitten. They walked more and more slowly as they looked at each other, and I couldn't help smiling. One of them leaned in to kiss the other, and then he glanced back at me.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" he said.

"We're totally hogging the sidewalk," the other said.

"No, it's okay," I said. And then I blurted, "You're...really cute."

They looked at each other and beamed and laughed.

"I had to bring my Jersey boy to Seattle," one said. "It's his first time."

"Don't listen to him. I just met him five minutes ago. But I think he might be my next husband."

We all laughed and said goodnight as I went inside the pub. I scrawled our name on the wait list and headed for the bathroom. I passed a table with two parents and a golden-haired baby, who looked up at me and grinned and waved, her chubby hand opening and closing. Coming out of the bathroom, I met a mother leading a toddler by the hand. That kiddo looked up at me and said, "Hiiii!" And in the space of five minutes, I just felt that in spite of everything, the universe can show us these beautiful moments of grace, these fleeting random encounters: people in love, babies, toddlers, husbands who lead children into a restaurant and slide into a booth with their wives. The warmth of it all.

Dear World: This is my girl

It's late, and I just tucked my exhausted children into bed, but I wanted to document this moment, however inadequate my late-night musings may be.

We celebrated my girl's tenth birthday today. Ten! She is ten! How is it possible? How has a decade, which seems like such a weighty, significant length of time, actually passed since her birth on that gray Sunday morning? Then again: she is so deeply anchored in this world, and in our hearts, that trying to remember our lives before her seems like a strange trick of memory.

Dear World: I want you to know some things about my girl. I want you to know how much I love this child. I want the world to love her like I do. Loving someone as much as I love my babies just makes me feel kind of desperate and crazy most of the time. Sometimes I feel like the best I can do is hope and pray that this crazy love will make up for all the ways in which I cannot possibly live up to the task of raising them well enough.

My daughter loves to laugh. She is also obnoxiously funny in that fourth grade way that irritates me now but that I will absolutely miss one day. (Things that are "funny" in our house include terrible puns, terrible knock-knock jokes, and anything including bodily functions. Oh, you thought that was limited to boys? It doesn't help that she has a little brother whose favorite word lately is "booger," but I am here to tell you it's not limited to boys.)

She is friendly. Nothing delights her more than seeing someone she knows. If she recognizes someone from school at the grocery store she insists on running over to say hello. Sometimes on our way home she'll cry, "Mom, I see my friend!" and it will be literally some kid her in class she saw not ten minutes earlier, but she is still so happy to call a cheerful good-bye after that person.

She is kind. One of the best compliments I received was from a staff member at her school who watched her standing up to an older kid who was picking on a younger kid.

She is incredibly stoic at the dentist. I don't know why I find this relevant; maybe as her mama I'm just so proud every time they say, "She's seriously one of our best patients." They probably say that to everyone who doesn't cry, I don't know, but last year Suzannah had to have a filling and it wasn't fun, and the dentist said that while she held it together really well in the chair I might just be prepared for her to be a little shaken or emotional afterwards. And I was like, hey, I majored in being shaken and emotional! I've got this. But Zannah walked to the car, spit casually onto the asphalt before climbing in, and asked if she could really have ice cream for dinner and also could we please hurry home so she could do her homework.

At the same time, she is sensitive to people's feelings. She is sensitive to perceived injustice. She in sensitive to what she perceives as imperfections: she will lose her mind if she thinks she will be late for school, or if she forgets a math assignment in her desk, both of which have happened exactly once this year. The tardiness was out of her control (ahem, Matt) but the math assignment was a simple mistake. Both, I thought, provided opportunities to learn how to deal with life and the pressure to be perfect, and I resisted the powerful urge to try to fix it for her. It was hard on both of us. But it's not the last hard moment we will have: I know this, too.

She loves school, loves learning. She reads greedily. She thinks math is fun and she's proud of being good at it. She tells us that her class is full of weirdos, and she says it proudly. She's not "cool" and she she seems to be unabashedly okay with this, and this is something about her that I love so much; I will do anything to protect that in her. She doesn't engage in drama at school; if it exists, she doesn't appear to notice. Her best friends are the boys in our neighborhood, but lately her "best friend" is a girl at school who she has been "hanging out with a lot lately, like the last two weeks!" (She's actually a lovely girl who's been in her class for years, but lately they've bonded over, I don't even know, math and Harry Potter.) She deeply loves everyone who has ever been her teacher. I can't blame her. I love everyone who has ever been her teacher.

She is bookish and bossy, which she maybe gets from her parents (although I am admittedly the bossier person in our marriage, though Matt is probably equally as opinionated). She also loves sports, and I have no earthly idea where she gets that. Matt and I love to be active, and Matt is all about tossing a frisbee or playing tennis or engaging the kids in hard outdoor play, but neither one of us give the remotest of shits about, say, football, and our child can watch an entire game and be actively engaged the entire time and I have a pretty good feeling she understands it far better than we do. She plays soccer every day at recess and can't wait to tell me about the day's game when I pick her up at the end of the day.

She wants to play the drums. Gulp.

She loves people. If you become one of "her" people, know that it matters. Know that when you see her, and smile, and give her a high five or a hug, it matters. If you know her name, it matters.

So today this girl of mine turned ten.

We celebrated with a trip on the light rail, first to Trophy Cupcakes and then to her very first Mariners game, and she got to spend most of the day with not only her parents and brother but her beloved Uncle Aaron and Aunt Morgan and Grandpa Chuck and Grandma Diane. She seemed to love every moment. Full disclosure: we left the game a little early, as it was a night game and we wanted to avoid the crush of people leaving the stadium. She was disappointed at first, but Isaac was totally done by the time we made it to the light rail; he fell asleep on the way to the transit center. Both kids zonked out as soon as we buckled them into the car and snored the entire way home, and both kids changed robotically into pajamas and collapsed in bed within minutes of pulling into our driveway.

"Was it a good day?" I asked my daughter, curling around her in her bed after I tucked her in.

"Uh huh," she said. She pulled her blanked over her head, like she always does. Then she smiled.

"You can give me some extra kisses, if you like," she said.

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.

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.