Gratitude and Grief

My son turned fifteen today. 

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

*

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

*

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

"They killed all the kids," she cried.

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

*

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

*

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

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

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

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

*

We can build paradises and sanctuaries in hell.

*

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

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

Five Days Later

"We have arrived in hell. You can build paradises and sanctuaries there too." - Rebecca Solnit

On Friday afternoon, I decided that after three straight days of anxiety and grief I needed to get out of my house and breathe and be in the world without having to talk to people. I'd been talking to people nonstop; on the first morning we woke up in hell, I had to go to school and teach, and then I had to drag my chair and my laptop down to the Commons and have conferences with students and their parents for five hours. I hadn't slept more than a couple of hours since Sunday. To say I was exhausted is an understatement, but I knew I wouldn't do anything as sensible as take a nap if I stayed home. I couldn't yet.

So I hopped on the light rail, intending to take myself to lunch, walk around a bit, and head to my favorite bookstore where I'd drink coffee and then a glass of wine, and write. I just wanted to be an anonymous person out in the world for awhile, with the space to eat and read and write without having to manage my emotions or needs for anyone else. I wanted space to breathe.

But when you're in a city and you pay attention, when you're on public transit or sitting in a cafe or coffee shop, you can hear a lot. And all day, I heard snippets. Two men and a woman wearing football jerseys and making crass jokes about Kamala on the light rail. Two women hunched over their salads at lunch, voicing their fears. Two baristas reliving election night, how nerves gave way to dread, and here we fucking are. Again.

I wrote this eight years ago:

It's been one week. One week ago, I spent the entire day in a state of horror, pasting on a smile when I had to interact with kids and their parents, dissolving in tears in the bathroom (where I encountered other teachers doing the same) or in my car. Since then, I've been despondent, and I've been angry, and I've tried to take care of myself and my family and ground myself in the beautiful present. And then I wake up and say, "Nope, I'm still angry." Last night I could not fall asleep, which is becoming my new normal, unless I take Tylenol PM. I swung between fury and terror. I've had horrible dreams about keeping my children safe. And my children will be among the "safe"; they are white, raised by two white, straight, "Christian" parents. (Is it any wonder that I put "Christian" in quotes? I'm really struggling with that one.) No one has threatened to come after them, although I absolutely worry about raising a daughter in a world in which our Commander-in-Chief objectifies women ("Not a 10!") and normalizes tearing them down and assaulting them. Again, this isn't new, and women know this, but when a man can scream about a woman's pussy as she's out for a jog or taking her kids through a drive-thru and happens to have an "I'm With Her" bumper sticker on her car, he's not just being vulgar; he's quoting our elected leader.

What's wild is that all the things that should have been deal-breakers in 2016 seem almost laughably mild now. Eight years after "You can grab them by the pussy," he won the popular vote after threatening vengeance against anyone he considers an enemy, after openly fantasizing about shooting Liz Cheney, after going on and on about Arnold Palmer's penis size, after simulating oral sex onstage, after swaying nonsensically to music instead of speaking for like forty minutes at a rally, after repeating bizarre and grotesque lies about immigrants (lies our future VP admits were lies but like, if you have to lie to get what you want, whatever). Now it's "Your body, my choice." I could go on, but clearly, I don't need to. Because it doesn't matter. There is no bottom.

But. You do not get to vote for him or for his supporters in your local elections (looking at you, Montana, 'cause you broke my heart, even though I saw it coming) and claim your love for individuals this will harm, individuals who will be less safe. Those individuals include my daughter (who I am so, so thankful to raise in Washington) and all of my students. Of course it includes far more, but I am so tired of folks thinking that they can love specific people, congratulate themselves for that, pray for them in church, and then vote for what will harm them.

Please, tell me I'm "too angry."

At the bookstore, I ordered a pumpkin spice cold brew and later a glass of wine from those baristas and I appreciated that they didn't try to make small talk. They didn't say, "How's your day going? Any fun plans for the weekend?" When I bought an Americano on my way to work on Thursday, the barista said, "How's it going today?" Totally chipper, no meaningful tone. And I replied automatically, "Oh, I'm good."

How absurd. The day wasn't "good." I wasn't "good." It's just that automatic, that we're so conditioned to prioritize comfort over truth. It's wild to me that some folks are so comfortable just moving on, posting chatty little updates without ever acknowledging what has happened. Again. And sure, sometimes we need flashes of normalcy and self-care, but as a friend of mine said, it's pretty clear who was never all that stressed out by this. I guess that's the wild part. 

It's wild to me that folks can talk about "respect" and "agreeing to disagree" and say, "Of course, there should be no place for bullying in schools!" And some of them are the same folks who helped elect the biggest bully we've seen in office in our lifetime. And to those who would say we shouldn't have to share who we voted for, that it's a private decision -- sure. And I don't actually care who you voted for or even if you voted, frankly, as long as you didn't vote FOR Trump or FOR people and policies who will elevate the hateful MAGA agenda. I care a great deal about whether or not your beliefs align with what's coming for my own family and my students and anyone who can't just go merrily about their day and not consider the harm to folks who are not white, or straight, or Christian, or men. If you're one of these folks and you're still reading, please consider this: if you can largely go about your day, business as usual, if you can happily carry on in your life without having to think about misogyny and racism and sexism and its direct impact on real people, then this is our mess to clean up. Watching the mental gymnastics some Christian folks are doing to convince themselves otherwise is exhausting.

I've lost some friends in the last few years. Some Facebook friends, some high school friends, and two formerly close friends whose loss I genuinely mourn. I write their names privately, on paper, and I grieve. But when I was tempted to reconnect after three years of silence, I went to their social media profiles and realize that I cannot open the door for those relationships again, because while they "loved" me, that love is hollow. If your vote will harm my child, or my students, that door is closed. I want to know who I need to protect my loved ones from, and this is not hyperbole. Sometimes this realization breaks my heart, but also, I don't have time to sit around in my feelings about that. America is the same country it was last week; we've just shown ourselves so much more clearly. And while my heart might be broken, it's still beating, and so I'm not quite ready to surrender yet.

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.

 

Enchiladas and Gratitude and the Absurd State of Things

Black bean and sweet potato enchiladas sounded good tonight. 

It's hot, and we don't love using the oven when it's hot, but I was out of other ideas. Black bean and sweet potato enchiladas come together so easily, and while I thought for a moment about making this delicious and giant summer salad that involves noodles and colorful sliced peppers and cabbage and cucumbers and this divine sesame dressing, making that beautiful and cool salad actually takes a lot more work than putting together these enchiladas. Even when I make the enchilada sauce myself. So enchiladas it was, because it was supposed to just be a chill Friday evening in July. I'm a big fan of "whatever we have, man" for dinner. I'm a big fan of boredom. I have actually never in my life been bored, but I believe heartily that kids should learn to cope with it and so we have wonderful "I don't care what you do, let me read" days in my household.

If I look back over everything I've written during the summers, especially since I had kids (so like 18 years), if I read all my journals and all my social media posts, a theme emerges: gratitude for the moment. I don't need -- or want -- more than I have. Slowness, stillness. My backyard patio. The freedom to read, to delight in simple things like swimming lessons (I read many books in the bleachers at my kids' lessons over the years, to the background of shouts and the slap of wet feet on concrete), or music lessons (this summer Isaac is taking lessons in both flute and saxophone, one for wind ensemble and one for jazz, and the smell of the music store takes me back to the summer of 1994 when I was trying out different trumpets before settling on the Bach Stradivarius, the same one my daughter plays now. There is something about the scent of valve oil and cork grease or the distant sound of a horn in a practice room that tugs at a deep nostalgia for me). These moments every summer are grounding, lovely, and necessary.

And I am grateful for exactly what I had today: hours to read in the backyard, my skin glistening with sunscreen because I am trying to prove Matt wrong -- he believes I will always sail into summer with a terrible sunburn because I missed a spot, and so far, this summer, I haven't. Endless glasses of iced green tea from Trader Joe's. A dog who loves to sunbathe on the crispy grass next to me. My quiet neighborhood. The view of Puget Sound, shimmering in the morning sunlight when Isaac and I walk that lazy dog. My daughter, home with us, puffy and sore from the removal of her wisdom teeth two days ago but home. With us. Recovering and resting and returned to us after five weeks in the hospital at the end of her senior year.

I've written a lot about gratitude, really. And I believe in this as a practice. But also, sometimes things are terrible and I think it's okay to just let that be real. 

Sometimes the terrible things are really minor: say, my enchilada sauce forgotten and boiled over on a burner. It spilled across the stovetop and made a huge mess. The spill sizzled and burned, the rag useless, the bottle of olive oil and jars of cumin and chili powder coated and sticky.

Often -- every day, it seems -- the terrible things are major: say, the state of the country? The folks who literally want to erase the existence of human beings? I saw the signs held high by all these smiling white folks at the RNC: MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW. They were probably all in church last week and they'll probably be there again on Sunday. 

I keep thinking of my first (but not my last) student to be deported after Trump took office in 2017. I've written about this kiddo more than once, but possibly not where everyone will see it. And deportations happen under ever president, but there's a monster gunning for the White House (again, WTF) whose followers hold up these signs and smile about it. Women's rights are also on the chopping block; Trump literally strolled out to "It's a Man's World." Obviously, LGBTQ protections are, too. This IS the Republican party now; none of this "I'll vote for the right individual for this particular job after careful consideration." 

Marlon James posted today: If you think Trump was the scariest part of that Convention you weren't paying attention. Make no mistake, this is the youth who will burn crosses, tell date raped undergrads that they asked for it, send women back to the alley with a clothes hanger and erase every single protection gay marriage had brought, and they will outlive you. You might be scared about what's happening to America. But you might be scared at the wrong thing. I once took some relief in the idea that at least Trumpism wouldn't survive Trump. I've never been so wrong in my entire life.

So I was in a funk about all that today, to put it mildly.

I checked all my gratitude boxes: time spent reading in my backyard. My daughter, home with us. My son, walking the dog with me. My husband, dicing the sweet potatoes for me because he likes to help with dinner. The sunlight shimmering over Puget Sound. I will never not be grateful for the moments that make up my life. 

But dammit, don't condescend. Don't give me platitudes. Don't REMIND me of what I already know, which is that I am lucky beyond measure.

I'm grateful, and I'm pissed. I'm grateful, and I'm baffled. I'm grateful, and I'm terrified. We can contain multitudes. My normally neat kitchen is a mess, and so is my heart. I'm seriously, stupidly cranky about the spilled enchilada sauce. I'm furiously heartbroken for the folks who feel rightfully terrified by what lies ahead. I'm grateful for my own senseless, stupid privilege, but I'm in a demographic that has caused a great deal of harm and I have to interrogate that. I'm also the proud mother of a fabulously queer kiddo, and fuck every single person who will vote for a monster who seeks to harm or erase any of us. I am a public school teacher in a state that hasn't yet outlawed my curriculum. I have to interrogate that, too -- how can I use what I love while I can?

It's all a lot for a hot July afternoon when I should just be relaxing with my book, but life intervenes, and the enchilada sauce might boil over and my kids might fight with each other over who gets what end of the couch for their viewing of Deadpool and I recognize that this ordinary fight is everything I actually missed and hoped for again two months ago, precisely because of its ordinariness. I'm so grateful for all of it. I'm so angry and so terrified pretty much all the time. But the world happens to all of us. We can have good days with terrible moments. We can have terrible days without trying too hard to find some superficial good in them. We can contain multitudes.

Balancing the scales

I've decided not to do Christmas cards this year. 

I know some folks are doing great ones: whimsical, playful, humorous, or just an attempt to maintain tradition in a year that challenges most of them. I wondered if creating a Christmas card would bring me a sense of healthy normalcy, because I do enjoy making them each year (I'm always in the "find the candids that show us as we are" camp and I think that will always be my style, because to me that's the fun part about making the cards, and it's us), but this year, it feels like a box to check, and this year, it feels especially important to reevaluate the importance of checking boxes when it might be healthier to let go of the expectation.

I've spent a lot of time talking about self-care with my students and trying to practice it myself. I've spent the fall working longer hours than I have since my first year of teaching, with not a lot of return plus the added scorn of what feels like, oh, everyone who isn't a teacher. Everyone has an opinion about teaching in a normal year, but in a pandemic year, it's pretty obvious that the "respect" folks claim to hold for teachers is pretty hollow when they're personally inconvenienced. (I know it seems I'm generalizing here. But also, I'm really not.)

In a normal year, even a hard one, I don't spend this much time feeling so defeated, angry, exhausted, and just...sad.

There are good things. Of course there are. Even in a pandemic, even in this strange context, even though I'm still struggling because what I do can never really translate to a screen, there's still no other job I want. Even now, so much is possible. Especially now, I owe my students the best I have to give. And my students still make it all worth it, so I'm still here.

But I'm tired of checking boxes. I think any teacher could tell you that we're feeling pretty micro-managed in a lot of ways right now (can we be trusted to be professional if we're teaching from home? Some folks seem skeptical about this, and it's not a coincidence that these are the same folks who seem to think that teachers are greedy takers if they dare to expect a professional salary). So I check a lot of boxes these days, boxes of no authentic value, merely to prove that I'm earning my paycheck.

Christmas cards do have authentic value to me, depending on the spirit in which they are given and received, I suppose. But this year, I can't do it. I can't check a box for the illusion of normalcy. I tell everyone I love to let things go and extend grace, and I am choosing to do that for myself as well. This is a thing I am letting go.

I'm sorry, Friends and Family. I do love your Christmas cards and will gratefully receive them if you choose to send them. If Christmas cards are transactional for you, though, and you choose not to send one our way again because this year I can't respond in kind, well, it is what it is. I don't know how to weigh my well-being against someone else's expectations right now.

Sometimes, the scales don't always balance.

*

I spent the first few Thanksgivings after college away from my immediate family. That first year, Matt and I prepared our own Thanksgiving dinner in our little one-bedroom apartment above the roaring traffic of Pacific Highway. I made my mom's scalloped corn, and he cooked a turkey. We had mashed potatoes. He made the pecan pie that he still makes every year. And every year, I would marry him all over again for that pie.

The turkey was a little dry, but the memories of the day are still pretty sweet.

We thought about trying to recreate the coziness of that day, with a little more experience and a bigger kitchen. In the end, though, we opted for ordering our dinner from McMenamins in Tacoma. A big Thanksgiving dinner is only a little bit about the food; it's really about the togetherness and cooperation and warmth. I didn't want to stress about a giant turkey dinner and the kitchen cleanup for the four of us when my daughter is just as happy to eat chicken nuggets and there was no reason to put out a spread of pita crackers and brie or fresh veggies and olives, too. Instead, we ordered food to go. I made my mom's scalloped corn anyway because it's really easy and I love it, and Matt made his pecan pie, because. See above.

It was a good decision. Matt and I took turns heading out for long runs and walks in the cool sunshine. (Matt probably ran twelve miles, but I don't want to know. I dug out my Turkey Trot shirt and ran my own personal 5k, then walked another hour listening to a podcast.) We hung out together. We allowed time for us to enjoy ourselves apart: iPad games, quiet reading. Late in the afternoon, Matt drove down to pick up our dinner and dropped off a couple of slices of pie for my brother and sister-in-law; after all, I think we've enjoyed every Thanksgiving since Isaac was born at their house, just minutes from our own.

In a non-Pandemic year, my high school students make hand turkeys in English class the day before Thanksgiving. Since I couldn't do that with them this year, I brought the tradition home to my own family. I realized, too late, that I'd left the good supplies -- the feathers and googly eyes -- in my classroom. But we had plenty of construction paper and card stock. We had glue. We had markers. We had random bags of dried beans and lentils from the art bin I put together when Isaac was born and I spent nine months on maternity leave with a three-year-old, determined to try "home preschool." 

A crafty Pinterest Mom I am not. But we had fun. Even my husband, who seemed resistant at first, got into the project.

"This is actually really calming," he said, as we cut feather from construction paper. He even held up dinner a bit because he wasn't "satisfied with the plumage." I told him he'd have to finish later.

*

Dinner was off-the-charts delicious. Not as good as our traditional family dinner where multiple households work together, but it was never going to be that. However, it exceeded my expectations for takeout turkey and all the sides, I didn't emotionally invest in the preparation while battling the grief over what was missing, and cleanup was a breeze. We had a Zoom call with my parents afterwards, and while it couldn't compare to our usual post-feast game of Clue, I'm still grateful we could see their faces.

*

As I made the choice not to do cards this year, as I said it out loud to my husband and cried just a little -- a strange but increasingly familiar mix of relief and grief -- I wondered if maybe we should just give ourselves permission to be a little quiet this year. Not to overcompensate with more lights, more spending, more stuff, more attempts to recreate the normalcy we cannot have right now. And maybe we should rethink what we consider normal anyway.

No: I didn't wonder. I wished it.

*

Every December, right around New Year's Eve, I write a huge Year-in-Review entry in my journal (my actual journal, not this public blog; it's really just for me). I've done this since before Suzannah was born, and it's interesting to see my answers to the same questions year after year. It goes without saying that I've been imagining my 2020 Year-in-Review entry for about seven months now.

One of the questions is Who did you miss?

Everyone. Just everyone.

It's a strange holiday season, for sure. We've spent every single Thanksgiving since our kids were born with my parents, brother, and sister-in-law. Over the years, we've added a few kids to the mix. It's always a cozy, lovely weekend -- one of my favorites. We've never spent Christmas on our own. But I think about the thousands upon thousands of place settings that will sit empty next year, and about the folks who have never been able to take holiday gatherings for granted in the first place. Togetherness looks different this year, but it means we can still hope for next year. And maybe it's not a bad thing, to focus on what matters, let go of what doesn't, and grapple with the sometimes heartbreaking in-between. To let ourselves celebrate and grieve, both, and let it shape us as it may.

"Now is when the real work begins."

When I'm feeling things, my feelings tend to come out of my eyes. It's just how it is. I've been crying a lot since yesterday. My friend Peggy commented last night, "I didn't realize how bereft of optimism I'd become." And that's exactly it, I think. So many of us have been sick at the thought of eight years of this, and now we can actually imagine a more hopeful future.

Watching Kamala Harris and Joe Biden speak -- watching with my husband and children (especially my children) -- was exactly what I hoped for. I cried over what we've been missing, but I also wept because I feel hopeful. 

For three? Four? mornings in a row I rose long before dawn, raised the blinds in the living room, and waited for daylight. Isaac was the first to join me, every day.

"Did Biden win yet?"

And I said, "Not yet, but I really believe he will."

The official call came just before 8:30, just before the hair appointment I made weeks ago -- to go back to blonde. When I made the appointment, I hoped it would be celebratory, rather than an attempt to cope with anger and fear and loss. As it turned out, I got to tell my stylist that Biden won -- she hadn't heard yet. 

"Oh, thank God," she said. "Every night this week I've gone to bed wondering if we'll still have a democracy in the morning."

When Van Jones teared up on CNN, he spoke to so many of us: "It's easier to be a parent this morning. It's easier to be a dad. It's easier to tell your kids that character matters...Telling the truth matters. Being a good person matters." 

Four years ago, I sobbed in Matt's arms: We're raising a daughter. For that matter, we're raising a son.

So this matters. We need better than what we've had from the leader of our country.

*

But I'm still afraid of complacency. Trump didn't create the racists, misogynists, and xenophobes; they've been here all along. He merely gave them a voice, and they're still here, and we all know them. Naive, optimistic little me learned this week that I overestimated the number of conservative friends and family I believed would never vote for Trump, and while I'm heartsick I shouldn't be surprised. I just hoped that some things would be dealbreakers, at least for folks in my life: Unapologetic racism, white supremacy, white nationalism. Misogyny. Mocking the disabled. Anti-semitism. The incessant name-calling. The bullying. The narcissism. But they weren't dealbreakers, and that's a heartbreak for me.

Don't you dare speak about your pro-life motivations if you've never cared about children in cages, forced family separations, children sexually assaulted in custody at the border. Don't tell me that your goal is saving babies if you care more about punishing women than supporting their health. (Don't you dare claim to be "not political.") Abortion rates drop during pro-choice presidencies, but if that were ever the goal, instead of control, this wouldn't be the reason someone is a single-issue voter. Don't ever, ever claim to respect women. I just call bullshit, no matter how much I love you, no matter how much I always hoped you loved me, too.

But do dare to tell me. Truly. Tell me. Look at me, and make me understand: what made you choose a monster because you've convinced yourself it supports some greater good? (What is that greater good? Does it reflect only what you see in the mirror, and shut out anyone who doesn't look like you?)

Or let your silence speak for you. It speaks more loudly than your words.

Yes, yours.

*

So this is what it feels like, in 2020. To have the tentative hope of the next four years. To feel a little broken because four years of Trump held up a mirror to what we should have seen already. But also, to feel hopeful. I'm a teacher who sees the fire in our kids. I'm a mother who strives to raise children with fierce empathy, who understand their privilege and use it to make a better world. I'm a woman with a partner who shares these values. We know we have a lot to learn. We know we have work to do.

I never want to be a closed door

Teaching challenges every assumption I make about teenagers. Every single year.

I still make them. I don't mean to, but I do. These days, with a bit of age and experience, I can usually remind myself to extend grace to these kids, but there are moments. 

I've been reminded so many times this month that this isn't school like normal. I can't expect what I normally expect because I can't support kids like I know how to do. Sometimes kids access my class from their phones in a parking lot. Sometimes they drive to a friend's house in a different town to borrow their laptop so they can log in. Sometimes they're caring for younger siblings or neighbors' kids, and their houses are chaotic and they literally have people climbing on them while they're trying to annotate a passage from a novel (two of my students allowed me to see that this week when they turned on their cameras, bless them). 

But all the same, I'm human, and dammit, I want them to do well. I mean, I also a little bit want them all to fall deeply in love with what I'm teaching because I love it so! much! And I hate not being able to communicate that to a room. Sometimes teaching is performance. It's hard to be my best teacher self when I'm mostly staring at my own face reflected on a screen. I get tired of looking at my own face. I can't blame kids for keeping their cameras off.

Still, I am working hard, and sometimes I let frustration get the better of me. Why hasn't that child even dropped a comment into the chat box? Why haven't they signed up for an incredibly non-threatening five-minute time slot to chat with their friendly and frankly sort of desperate English teacher, just so she can hear their voice? Especially when she begs, insisting again and again it won't be scary?

So it's easy to assume, this close to the end of the quarter, that a student is lazy, or doesn't care, or isn't cut out for my class. Especially if I don't know them. The only face I have is the face on last year's student ID badge, the face that shows up in my online gradebook. If I've done everything I'm supposed to -- I've contacted home, I've e-mailed, I've texted, I've sent private messages in the chat during class -- what else can I reasonably be expected to do?

Then this tiny message appeared in the chat, right as class ended: Miss, can I stay after?

I almost missed it. I had to pee. I wanted my five-minute break. Students from my next class had started to pop into the waiting room.

I waited, staring at the name, the same white letters stark against a black square. Would this be like the other times, when this student just didn't log off at the end of class? When, after long, silent minutes I assumed he'd ghosted my class, logged on and left, taken a nap?

"Miss?"

"Hi! Yes! I'm here!" 

I laugh at this a bit, hours later. Of course I was there, trying to calm my face, ecstatic at hearing a tentative voice through that black screen, trying not to scare him away. It reminds me a bit of taming feral kittens on the farm. Sometimes I was successful. Not always.

"Um. I'm sorry I haven't ever talked to you before."

My heart broke in that moment. It just broke. But I kept smiling.

"It's okay! I'm glad you're here. How can I help you?"

"I don't know if this is okay to ask, because one of my teachers told me it's too late to do a bunch of stuff. So I don't know. If it's -- I mean, it's okay, but my situation -- it's been hard, so I haven't been able to -- but some things are better now, so I'm trying to catch up enough to hopefully pass your class?"

"I'm so glad you're here, and it's not too late for anything."

"Can you help me?"

And my heart quietly broke again. 

Please never let me forget how much courage that question takes.

In a non-pandemic year, I'll be honest: sometimes it is too late to reasonably do All The Things, or even Enough Things, at this late hour. But when there is no reasonable way for me to support these kids in my actual presence, where I can carve out a routine and semblance of normalcy for awhile (as much as they fight me there sometimes, too), then I will hold the door open as long as someone wants to walk through it. Or as long as I can see someone hovering nearby even thinking about it.

I sent him a list. Do these three things first. Let me make sure you understand this, and then we can tackle this next chunk.

I waited an hour before I sent him a message, hoping against all hope that he would reply when he has never replied to me before.

Did you get it? Let me know!

Ninety minutes passed, but the reply came.

I got it. Thank you. I'm here.

Because this is too much for a Facebook post

It's Monday evening, and my house is blessedly quiet. Suzannah is hunkered down in her room (because teenager), Isaac is in the family room with the iPad and his giant Lego organization project, and Matt is at Trader Joe's buying everything we might need for the dinners I have not planned yet for this week because that part of my brain stopped working sometime last Friday. I finished up my fourth day of remote professional development, promptly headed outside with Isaac for some biking (him) and jogging (me), came home and soaked in a bubble bath for a bit, and now...here I am. Just breathing. Just being.

To say I'm overwhelmed is just the most hilarious understatement of all time, but I am also grateful. I am also okay right now.

Friday was hard, and I stumbled into the weekend feeling exhausted and disheartened, my brain on a hamster wheel I couldn't quiet. There are so many unknowns. It's hard for me to begin a year feeling so unmoored, so unsure of what I'm doing. Back-to-school planning in August is something that usually fills me with so much joy, because I love this stuff! So much! I'm lucky to have the trust and relative freedom to teach my passion. I'm lucky to have a classroom space that feels like another home, falling-down moldy old building and all. One of the heartbreaking things about this pandemic is wondering if I taught my last class in my room back in March. Our new school is slated to open one year from now, and I'm sure it will be beautiful, but my classroom has held so much of my heart, and so many others' hearts. Hearts have been broken and put back together there and I feel it every time I walk inside. One of my favorite things about August is the quiet afternoons spent planning there, just sitting in that space. I'm still spending some time in that space this month, planning and writing and thinking, but it's different. The quiet isn't as cozy; somehow it's just a little nervous all the time.

I know what I need to teach, and the context doesn't diminish my passion for it. It's the "how" I'm still trying to wrap my brain around. But I keep reminding myself that we're all in this together, that we're all figuring out the how. And I really sat down here to write about that, I guess. I opened up this blog and found a draft of an entry I started a week or two ago, but what I started to write that evening isn't want I want to write tonight.

Tonight I'm not writing to convince my non-teacher friends that I deserve my paycheck. I'm not writing to my friends who think their children will fall behind (behind what, exactly?) in a remote public school setting, or who are frustrated because we can't give them what they think they need, which, I'm sorry to say, isn't possible in a pandemic. Those folks can just stop reading here and have a nice evening.

Tonight I'm writing to and for my colleagues. I'm writing to say: Thank you. Thank you for reminding me why I love where I work, that I'm not in this alone, that we take care of each other. Thank you for reminding me that the what and the why matters more than ever, and we will figure out the how together.

Thank you for reminding me that building authentic connections is not only possible but essential. We can still do that, and I truly believe that we will be creative and intentional in new and amazing ways this year.

 Thank you for your willingness to be vulnerable, for your fierce love of our kids and your fierce support of each other. 

Thank you for reassuring my terrified mama heart. My daughter is starting ninth grade in a new school while her friends head to a different one, and the thought of her trying to make connections with other kids over a computer screen breaks my heart a bit but not completely, because I am trusting her with the best of the best. I truly believe that she'll gain as much--if not more--than she'll lose. Thank you in advance for loving my girl. It has been my prayer, every single September of her school-aged life, that her teachers will love her like I do. Today we all posted little videos to introduce ourselves to our students, and when I mentioned this to my daughter, she was so excited to see her teachers. I watched some of the videos myself, and it reinforced my deeply-held belief that I work with the most phenomenal folks. It is no small thing to trust a school with your children, and when parents get a little crazy at me sometimes it helps to remember that. Thank you to my friends, my colleagues, for making that an easy choice for this mama, and apologies in advance if I ever get a little crazy. I'm lucky you already know me enough, probably, to anticipate that anyway (and please don't hold it against my girl, who is probably far more level-headed than her mother. She's a good girl).

While Friday found me disheartened, anxious, and exhausted, Monday afternoon left me literally weeping with gratitude, right there on the Zoom screen. I don't think that's ever happened at PD, but there you go, and I wasn't alone. I'm still so overwhelmed, and it's easy to start to panic if I look beyond the exact moment I'm in. To feel like I'm floundering after so many years of trusting that this is what I was born to do is a scary place to sit, but somewhere in all of this there are life rafts that not only pull me to safety but offer me a blanket, a glass of wine, a shared knowing glance, some real belly laughs, and the belief that even in this strange context, I am deeply privileged to be exactly where I am.

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?

The end of a school year during a pandemic (one teacher's thoughts)

I tried to write about school last week, and I could not do it.

Do not -- do not -- ask me what I think will happen in September, because I am not capable of having that conversation. That's the conversation that makes me want to crawl under the covers and cry, and the collective tears cried by teachers in the last two months could fill all of the swimming pools in the country. Here's what we know: that it won't be anything resembling "normal." That's as far as I can go with that conversation. I do not want to talk about that right now.

Right now, I'm trying to breathe and figure out how in the hell I'm going to say good-bye to my seniors over Zoom. I don't know how to do that.

And this is perhaps something that needs to wait a few weeks, at least until I've tried to process the end of this school year, but I'm thinking about how to teach what I need to teach in a context I've never experienced. I don't know how it's possible. What I'm doing now? It isn't teaching. This. Isn't. Teaching. What I'm doing now will not work in September. I realized early on that I had to throw my planned content right out the window, along with the notion that kids would have either the motivation or the support to keep up with assignments that resembled anything I would give in a classroom; the important thing is keeping them connected through this trauma, because that is exactly what this is. It is the thing that matters. Connection, authentic connection, is the heart and soul of what I do. I don't know how to do that with kids online, especially kids I haven't locked eyes with in a classroom, in a shared physical space. (I have at least learned this about myself: I have zero interest in distance learning as a possible career path ever.) We've seen a lot about jobs that we now know can be done from home, and I am here to tell you that teaching is not one of them.

At least it's not something I can do from home, not forever, and while some kids probably do thrive in an independent setting, I don't believe that this is best for most of them. (This is maybe where I pause to jot down notes for future blog entries.) And I don't feel like I'm doing anything particularly well, even as I understand that most of us feel that way. And most of the time, I can extend that small grace to myself, perfectionist that I am. But then some days, I spend too much time on social media, which evokes all kinds of complicated emotions. I work with so many amazing people, and sometimes I have no idea how in the world I can keep up with them, even as I understand -- I do understand -- that it's not about that.

***

The Hysteria of the Week, of course, is what schools will look like in September.

If you're not a teacher, I respectfully request that you stop speculating and panicking, and please don't use the widely-circulating "CDC guidelines" as fuel, which is an inaccurate portrayal without proper context of actual guidelines you can access on the CDC website. Be critical readers before you start announcing on Facebook that if this is how it's going to be, you're going to homeschool your kids! Or hire your own teachers!

(My friend/work wife and I have a thing for Venn diagrams. I wonder about the overlap between folks who claim they'll homeschool and folks who refuse to wear masks in public because they think they're oppressed by the government. I'm just guessing Shonda would say, "Doesn't that just look like a circle?")

(I was also honestly surprised to see so many "I'll just hire my own teachers" comments. What do those people think teachers are worth? And what do they think teachers do? I am genuinely curious.)

If you're panicking about what schools could like like and you're making assumptions (look, I'm absolutely guilty of this in all sorts of contexts! Sometimes we need to step back and breathe and listen!) and you're tossing out comments like, "That sounds like a concentration camp," please know that is not okay, ever. Why, WHY are so many folks doing this? Why? Am I just noticing it more because I'm a teacher and these are the sorts of things that make it onto my radar? Please take two seconds and consider your language. It is unacceptable to compare this situation and measures to keep people safe to the Holocaust, to slavery, to horrific tools of slaughter and oppression. Again, I suspect that these are the same folks who broadcast their refusal to wear masks, and it's unlikely that those folks are reading anything I write here because I hope (I fervently hope) that our circles don't overlap. But it's also my hope that any friends who are reading this who have friends who are posting these comments will have that conversation. We need to do better, together.

***

If you're not a teacher, please know this: We're working really, really hard. I say this not to prove that we still deserve our paychecks (because I trust that intelligent folks who take two seconds to consider what it has meant to completely, completely rethink and redesign everything that we do to serve the kids we teach in a completely new context will understand this, and probably the other kind of person isn't reading this blog). We want to get back into the classroom as much as anyone, and we also want to keep everyone safe: our kids and every adult who works with them. We are not willing to offer up our kids or the folks who teach them as public health experiments.

***

A week ago, I couldn't think about this and I couldn't write about this. I tried, and I just kept crying and raging and deleting. Tonight, I'm grieving the end of the school year and all the things we're missing with our kids. I'm anxious and worried about what school might look like as my own daughter's eighth grade year ends without the closure and celebration we'd hoped for, and as she begins high school in a new school without her friends, much less any sense of what school will actually look like for her. For any of us.

But I'm also heartened sometimes. My own students have given me thoughtful feedback about what what works and what they need. They have shown great resilience and kindness. They've grappled with what it means to balance our needs with the needs of our community. They've made me so proud, and they're exactly the reason I'm doing my damndest to weather the now and trust that I'll eventually be lucky enough to share physical space with them again, when we can look into each other's eyes when we talk about what matters. When that doesn't have to happen through a screen.

They're imagining a more hopeful future, and, as always, adults could stand to follow their lead. Tomorrow is promised to none of us, and I am frequently anxious about what the future holds. But the world happens to all of us, and the only way to move through it is to remember we're doing it together. Our hearts might be broken, but our resolve isn't.

This broken and beautiful world

“Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Suddenly, they become the bleached bones of a story.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

I posted this quote on a discussion board for my seniors during our first official week of remote learning. They'd read most of Roy's novel before the school closure, and suddenly her words took on new meaning. So we started there. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted.

Little events: Trips to the grocery store.

Ordinary things: A walk through a neighborhood. A package of toilet paper.

Smashed and reconstituted: Prom. Graduation. English class on a Monday.

The bleached bones of a story. Our stories. All of them. These small bones, and the way we pay attention to them now.

***

Almost exactly ten years ago, we were in Montana for my grandmother's eightieth birthday. Isaac was just four months old, and I was still on maternity leave. April was strange that year, too. I remember: snow on the mountain passes and staying the night in Helena when the roads became too treacherous. Eating at a diner, too late, but cozy anyway. A vanilla latte before we hit the road. I read Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played With Fire when I wasn't driving. We drove into Gildford after lunch in a brisk wind in time to celebrate with my grandmother at the little general store: someone had baked her an Elvis cake. My daughter, only three at the time, remembers the blue frosting. We stayed overnight at the hotel in Havre I still I love, even though the tiny pool is cloudy with too much chlorine.

Even with an infant and a not-quite-four-year-old, I remember sleeping so peacefully.

I remember my aunt Liana taking family pictures; we were all so rarely together. I remember one day in Bozeman, and a quick visit with Julia, my oldest childhood friend, when we stopped in Great Falls on our way down to my parents' house. We had a date night for the first time since Isaac was born.

I miss my family.

I miss my grandmother.

I miss crisp hotel sheets and lattes on the road, the highway through the mountains and across the prairie. (I miss road trips.)

I miss date nights. Restaurants. I miss the wood booths at the Elliott Bay Brewery. I miss the Seattle skyline when we drive over the West Seattle bridge at sunset. (Now that the bridge is closed for safety, I will miss it for a long time.)

I miss hugging the people I love. (I love the people I live with and I am grateful for their hugs every day. But I love a lot of people.)

I miss my old friend Julia.

I miss the landscapes of my childhood.

I miss writing alone in coffee shops, and drinking wine in cafes.

I miss hugging my toddler nephew, I miss my parents, I miss my friends.

It is not lost on me how lucky I am to live in a life that brings me joy exactly where I am, even now. But sometimes the missing is a deep ache, all the same.

***

How quickly we adapt and change.

On a Monday morning in early March, I pulled up to the espresso stand I drove through every day on my way to school. (Drove. Past tense, for now.) My favorite barista had seen me in line and made my drink already, so she handed my Americano through the window without my asking.

“Isn’t everything so crazy?” she said. Her words sent me spinning back to the first month of my teaching career, when I’d driven through on my lunch break. September eleventh. I’d ordered a mocha that day, my standard back then. She’d said the same words.

That day, though, she said, “I guess I don’t understand all the hysteria. Why can’t we just live normally and be smart about it and let it pass?”

The previous Friday, one of my coworkers asked about social distancing at our upcoming student-led conferences, an event that brought hundreds of parents and family members pouring through our cafeteria and commons area, where we had tables set up in close proximity. Our principal replied, “It’s way too late to reschedule or change the format. Families already have the schedule and the expectation. We’ll proceed as normal, but we can talk about your questions and concerns at next week’s staff meeting.”

But on Monday morning, we received an e-mail: the district had decided to hold conferences remotely instead. Students would sign up for a time slot with their advisory teacher, and we would make phone calls. We were still expected to hold the same hours, our principal said, to accommodate our families. The building would be open, and we could call from our classrooms. We would discuss the details further at the staff meeting on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, instead of discussing the logistics of remote conferences, we watched Governor Inslee declare that schools would be closed for six weeks, effective no later than Tuesday, March 17. We limped along until Friday afternoon, when we were all hustled out of the building. I walked to the parking lot in a daze, watching thin flakes of snow drift from the gray skies.

***

“Staff, you have five minutes remaining. Five minutes remaining before you need to exit the building.”

The office manager’s voice echoed over the intercom. I stood behind my desk, my arms around my desktop monitor. I set it down and yanked the cords for my docking station out of the outlet. Sweat trickled down my back. I wondered how I would carry this out to my car with the three overflowing bags at my feet. Could I sprint to the parking lot with the books, the binder filled with senior IB material, the chocolate and snacks I’d stashed in the back of my file cabinet (I didn’t want them to go stale or attract ants) and make it back for the monitor, all in five minutes? Could I just cram the docking station into one of the bags?

I could not.

“Three minutes. Staff in the building, you have three minutes remaining. Please gather the last of your things and exit your classrooms.”

“Fuck it,” I muttered. “I don’t really need another screen.” My laptop would have to do.

I slipped my mask back onto my face and took one last, long look around my room. It looked like the end of summer, only cleaner. The student desks had all been scrubbed and stacked in the back of the room. My desk was completely clean. I thought the carpets had been shampooed, and the harsh scent of disinfectant lingered in the air. Everything was wrong. When my room looked like this, it was time to set it up, arrange the desks, touch up the paint on the walls. Now I didn’t know when I’d be back.

“Bye, D-7,” I whispered. I grabbed my bags before my tears could dampen my mask, and I flipped off the lights.

“I’m out. I’m done,” I called to my assistant principal who sat with her laptop in the breezeway between buildings, noting our times in and out. We’d been given twenty-four hours to sign up for a time slot and twenty minutes to gather what we needed. It wasn’t enough.

My coworker (or, more accurately, my work wife) and I stood in the parking lot, separated by two spaces. We hadn’t seen each other in exactly one month.

“Coffee?” I asked. She nodded. We drove up the street to that drive-thru espresso stand I’ve loved for my entire adult life, ever since I discovered their black-and-white mochas the weekend before my first day of teaching. She parked in the back of the strip mall parking lot, skipping the coffee. I pulled through the stand and ordered an iced chai latte. I didn’t know the afternoon barista. She was nice, though. She took my card and wiped it with Clorox before handing it back to me.

“Stay safe,” she said.

I parked two spots away from my friend in the nearly-empty lot. She rolled down her window.

“I have camp chairs in the back,” I said. “No one’s touched them in a month. Want one?”

She hesitated. “Okay,” she said.

I hauled it out of the car, slid it from its canvas cover, and set it up next to her car. When I’d retreated to my own space, she opened her door. We slid on sunglasses in the afternoon sunshine.

“Do you think we’ll even be back in September?” she asked.

“I cannot think that way right now,” I said. “I cannot.” My heart began to thump with anxiety and my stomach churned. I sipped my chai and remembered my friend Jessica's words from a few weeks ago: When Sean was dying of brain cancer, we had to find a way to live in ever increasingly horrible new normals. We learned to keep going by living in the present and finding good moments. This means trying not to think about what your day would have been like in the circumstances of a few months ago or what your day might be like a few months from now. It means trying to find good moments in today.

I try to remember this every day -- not as a trite admonition about positive thinking, but as the only way I can live, to breathe in and out and try to put forth some good in this world anyway. If I start worrying about a situation I can't control three, four, or five months from now, I am no good for anyone.

We chatted for awhile. When we stood to head back home, she gave the chair a shove so we didn’t have to get any closer than eight feet apart. All the same, it mattered -- that brief human contact, face-to-face.

***

I think about the things that bring me joy, like my early-morning walks. I've watched the spring unfold and bloom in a way I never have. Every day, I walk through the streets of my neighborhood and beyond, exploring new routes, new views of Puget Sound. How have I lived here for so long without realizing what shimmering expanse of water can be seen from a street so near my own? I've met other folks on a similar schedule: the older gentleman who walks with a cane at the same time every day. Last week he raised his hand in greeting and said, "Hello, Dear," and it filled my heart. Hello, Dear. When would I have the chance to encounter him in another, ordinary life? Or there's the jogger who sprints up the hills I walk every day, and sometimes we cross paths in the middle--maintaining a respectful distance on the other side of the street. A month ago we nodded greetings; now he shouts a cheerful "Hey!"

My son and I play games in the middle of the day, after he finishes his math and reading. I unearthed a board game all about U.S. geography; I have no idea where we got it, or when, and Isaac showed zero interest in it, proclaiming that it was "so boring." But! I bribed him one afternoon, because obviously I parent (and teach) through bribery and emotional manipulation, and now he begs to play every single day. I guess it isn't so boring after all.

The kids and I get outside every day. Unless it's pouring, this is non-negotiable for me. My son hops on his bike and I walk and we head to the school, where he zooms around the playground and I walk or jog on the track. Fresh air and sweat. Every single day.

My children are experts at trolling each other, but we have settled into a rhythm now, and there is something sweet about looking up from my laptop and watching my daughter at hers while she works on her math or typing. I watch my son curled up on the recliner in the living room, reading. They are old enough to read what their teachers send and "do school" without too much guidance from me; I think I merely set the tone for our classroom. It's possibly the sweetest time to be quarantined with children. They're old enough to manage themselves (and ask their teachers questions, instead of me) and young enough to follow my basic expectations of routine. We work in the morning and head outside in the afternoon, at at lunchtime we watch the Cincinnati Zoo "Home Safari" which features a different animal each day. Fiona the hippo is still my favorite. And I know I'm going to remember these moments sweetly someday.

I have learned a very certain thing about myself: I am not meant to be an online teacher. I need to be in the room with my kids. But I can't be in the room with my kids now, and I am grateful for the technology that allows me the next best thing, which is to see their faces in a Zoom classroom meeting. Truly, it is one of the highlights of my week. I miss them so much.

This isn't forever, and I know this. But I can't think about teaching this way long-term. Not now. It's already hard enough to know that the last glimpse of my senior class will be when we line the streets for them as they pick up their caps and gowns for a graduation that won't happen -- at least not as we envision it. I will be there in whatever capacity I can. On the street, with a sign, anything I can do. But it isn't the same.

I suppose the fact that this hurts so much shows how deeply privileged I am. To love someone so much, to miss my work so much. Please never believe this fact is lost on me. It isn't.

***

Things fill me with anxiety and rage, too.

Armed (and white) protestors screaming at our healthcare workers are not "very good people." Friends of friends in my homestate who tell the whole internet that no one will force them to wear a mask or get a vaccine because they're not sheeple, thank you very much are also revolting (and to be fair, I probably have friends who say the same thing, but apparently they're doing a good job of filtering me out of those particular posts). So are the conspiracy theorists and the "Do Your Own Research" people who think watching a YouTube video or reading an article in a publication that requires you to pay for your submission counts as research. The flippancy -- if I'm not sick, why shouldn't I do whatever I want? If you're immunocompromised, you stay home! I think about the relative who e-mailed me over a decade ago with concerns about Obama's death panels. He'd euthanize all our grandmothers as soon as they turned seventy. That aged well, didn't it? I have no idea what that person thinks these days, because after I told them I didn't think I was their target audience, I never received another e-mail.

It's too easy for me to spiral into anger, rage, and anxiety, so I'm trying to put down my phone during the day, read balanced sources I trust, and avoid scrolling through social media. It really does help.

I actually think it's important to stay angry. And awake. But I can't drop anchor at anger.

So instead I'm trying to focus on gratitude, and, yes, joy. It doesn't negate the anger or the anxiety, but it means I can slow down and take notice of the world I want to preserve. The friendships that last through physical distancing and the hope that I can hug my people again. The kindness of neighbors and the kindness of strangers. The way the spring comes again, every year, whether we notice it or not, and the unexpected privilege of witnessing it each day. And maybe I can send a little of the fierce hope and love I have into this broken, beautiful world, and maybe it will land on the people I love and miss every single day. I don't know how else to live.