Home is what the air smells like

There are times on the road where I don't want to talk, don't want to listen to the radio or an audiobook, don't need anything but the way the highway hums under the tires and the prairie touches the mountains, the way the mountains touch the sky. Kalispell to St. Regis, driving along the Clark Fork River. Bozeman to the Lewis and Clark Caverns, the drive where, in summer, Montana shows us her best self. Great Falls to Chester, where the road dips under the dome of sky and pheasants scatter across the highway. Havre to East Glacier, where the plains reach to the Rockies.

These are the landscapes of my heart.

I drove some of these roads this week while my family napped or read. These are the roads straight to my heart. The roads home.

Every time I return to Montana, I think about what home means. Because home, too, is where I sit tonight: in this house where I've raised my children, who are Washingtonians. We live in the Pacific Northwest, and I've learned to write love letters to blackberries and salmon and the smell of salty air. Maybe home is what the air smells like.

Yesterday morning, I woke to birds singing and the scent of mountain air: the best air anywhere in the world. The cool breeze blew through our tent. My daughter was already awake; I turned over and buried my face in my pillow, hoping she wouldn't notice me and insist we all get up. Isaac slumbered on. My kids sleep so soundly when we camp, and so do I. It's the air, the quiet, the breeze through the mountains. This is the first year in five that we haven't been rained on at least once, I think. Rain never bothers me. Falling asleep in a warm and dry tent with rain pattering (or pounding, we've had that too) on the roof is one of the deepest pleasures of summer.

The kids and I walked through the campground yesterday morning and into Apgar Village. We ate breakfast with my parents while Matt packed up our campsite. I bought a coffee for the road, and I drove us out of the park. We drove to St. Regis, snacked on free popcorn at the travel plaza, watched the rainbow trout swimming in their giant tank. I drove on to Coeur d'Alene, sipping huckleberry soda as we made our way over Lookout Pass. We ate a late lunch at MacKenzie River Pizza. Matt took the wheel then, and I napped until we hit a traffic jam: I-90 was closed due to a brush fire at Vantage. We crawled along in the early evening heat until we crossed over the Columbia River. We could see where the fire jumped across the road; the posts under the guard rails were still burning. By the time we made it to a diner the kids were hungry and hot. The folks at the restaurant graciously sat us five minutes before closing, and the kids ate ravenously while the servers stacked chairs around us.

"Thank you, thank you. So much," I said. "I'm sorry if we're keeping you here later."

"It's really okay! Enjoy!" they said. We must have looked more exhausted and desperate than I realized.

We rolled into our driveway about four hours after I'd thought we would. The house smelled so good to me. The kids brushed their teeth and crashed into bed; I unpacked the suitcases and started a load of laundry. Even as a young girl, I stayed up late into the night unpacking after a road trip, unable to sleep until I'd put everything away. When I finally crawled into bed last night, I knew I'd sleep well.

"I can't believe we started this day in a tent," I said to Matt as he curled sleepily around me. "And now we're back and the kids have swimming lessons in eight hours."

One month ago we spent the weekend at Great Wolf Lodge for Suzannah's birthday celebration. We stopped at a brewery on the way home, and that afternoon Suzannah and I got matching pedicures. Mine still looks pretty good, though hers has been thoroughly battered. Three weeks ago Suzannah and I had a girls' day out in Seattle, her birthday gift from me: lunch and book shopping. Two weeks ago I wrapped up my sixteenth year of teaching and began making plans for my seventeenth.

I spent a week lounging in my backyard, reading and drinking iced tea and watching my children run through the sprinkler.

One week and one day ago we descended into the Lewis and Clark Caverns and ate popcorn from my dad's 46-year-old popcorn popper. A week ago today I had coffee with my favorite high school teacher, ate Pickle Barrel sandwiches in the park and splashed in the same pool I splashed in when my family first moved to Bozeman twenty-five years ago. Six days ago Matt and I hiked to Emerald Lake; five days ago we had a date night at the places in my hometown that have become uniquely ours. Four days ago we picnicked with my parents in Missoula and dined on trout in Apgar for dinner; three days ago we all hiked to Avalanche Lake, the first hike Matt and I took together the summer we started dating and Matt boarded a Greyhound bus to visit me for a few days. Two days ago I watched a mountain goat flop down to cool itself in a patch of snow at Logan Pass. I watched my children paddle kayaks around Lake McDonald and I swam through that clear blue water, the mountains rising just beyond. One day ago I greeted the dawn in a tent. Last night I drove through the dark of another mountain pass and wound up back at home, tucking my children into their own beds. This morning we hauled ourselves out of bed and went to swimming lessons, went to the store. I ran loads of laundry. I checked my e-mail.

Life rolls on.

Sometimes when I go back to Montana I feel like I'm taking a tour of my whole life, that I'm every age I've ever been. But returning to the life I've built here, between the mountains and the ocean, feels exactly right. It's the way the air smells here, too: the evergreens and saltwater, and the smell of home after ten days on the road.

Spring Break 2017

We woke up early on Saturday morning; our goal was to be out the door by 5:45 a.m. We had a shuttle to catch to the airport and an early-morning flight to Omaha, followed by a drive to Sioux City, Iowa. We've been looking forward to this trip for months, and in the last couple of weeks I have so desperately just wanted to get out of town. I deeply love my home and I'm normally pretty happy with "staycations," as there are so many wonderful ways to fill our days here. But sometimes you need a break from your environment to clear your head, and this break, for me, couldn't have been better timed.

Although it didn't feel that way at 6:30 in the morning as we checked into our flight and my son threw up his entire breakfast all over the floor in front of the airline kiosk. Or when he threw up again just as we were pushing our carry-ons through security.

Shit.

Here is something we've learned: our son doesn't do well with early-morning travel. Suzannah insisted on setting her own alarm clock for some absurd middle-of-the-night time, as if she ever even needs one. She was up and dressed and tapping her foot impatiently while the rest of us fumbled around trying to load everything into the car without forgetting anything. Isaac doesn't wake up that way; it's always best to make sure he has enough sleep to wake up on his own. Unfortunately, Saturday morning's departure time didn't make that possible. So there was that, and there was the shuttle ride to the airport (which made me feel a little queasy too; I'm afraid my son inherited my sensitive stomach).

The same thing happened last year when Matt flew to Minneapolis alone with the kids. I'd gone the day before for IB training, and he followed the next morning. He knew I'd be anxious about them getting to the airport on time and probably worrying about that as I sat in my workshop, and he was right, so he texted cheerfully when they made it through security with plenty of time to spare. What he chose not to share at that point was that our son had barfed all over the food court. And then again on the plane. And then again as he got off the plane. He was perfectly fine after that.

(I should say that Matt handled it really well, and I was sorry I wasn't there to help.)

So I didn't exactly panic when my son threw up, partly because I remembered last year and partly because when you're at the airport and your son is barfing everywhere and you are suddenly those people that require someone to appear with a yellow sign to block off the area and a mop and you have a child who has just barfed all over his pullover, you don't exactly have time to panic. Someone has to take the child to clean up, and someone has to hustle the other child and all of the luggage over to the bag drop. Did I mention I hadn't had any coffee yet?

When Matt led our son out of the bathroom, his pullover damp and only slightly smelly, I tried to stay optimistic. Isaac insisted he felt much, much better. The lines at security weren't terrible and we made it to the front in a few minutes. And then it started again. This time Matt grabbed a nearby trash can (which I suspect might have actually been a recycling container) and most of it went in there, but not all of it, so an irritated TSA agent started barking: "Folks, do not step over here! Watch it! Watch where you're walking!" Matt and I mumbled our apologies and hustled our kids through.

Isaac insisted, once again, that he felt much better. I still hadn't had coffee and it didn't sound particularly good, but neither did the headache I was sure would follow. So while Matt took Isaac to clean up again, I bought a 12-oz. drip and managed to sip about half of it before we got on the plane.

Right away we asked for extra airsick bags (Matt learned very unfortunately last year that you are no longer guaranteed to find them in the pocket on the back of the seats).

"We've got a kiddo with an anxious tummy," we said.

The flight attendants were incredibly kind. One of them said right away, "Oh, this happens all the time! Sometimes these little ones have a really rough time so early in the morning!" Another one confessed that her son always got sick on the plane. They offered to bring ginger ale right away, and they slipped us a few bags.

Isaac insisted he was fine.

Until the plane started to move. Then he said, "I have to go to the bathroom!" and Matt and I looked at each other with real panic this time. What Isaac meant, though, was that he had to puke again, and Matt grabbed frantically for a bag while Isaac pressed his lips together and his eyes filled with tears. Matt managed to hold open the bag in time, but just barely.

After that, Isaac insisted he was fine.

When the beverage cart came through, he insisted he was thirsty. We let him have some ginger ale. He barfed again. We let him have more ginger ale. He barfed again.

This happened four times, I think. But oddly enough, my memory of the flight isn't terrible. In between these pitiful heavings, he watched a movie with his sister and seemed more or less content. We were seated in the back of the plane, where we could discreetly dispose of the bags in the bathroom. We were also surrounded by a couple of understanding moms who kept catching my eye and saying, "Oh, I've been there. Would you like a hand wipe? Are you okay?" It reminded me of the time we flew with Suzannah when she was about 18 months old, and she had a cold, and the flight was delayed a couple of hours, and she was slightly too old to just nurse to sleep on my lap (I tried) but not old enough to be interested in a movie. A dude sitting in front of us rolled his eyes as soon as he saw us get on the plane with a toddler, but the woman sitting behind me put her hand on my shoulder and said, "We have so been there. Whatever your girl does, it's fine. And we're here to help if you need anything!" I literally teared up, and I vowed to become that kind of person on a plane for the rest of my life. I have probably unnerved young parents by my eager offers of help ("Oh, can I grab that for you? Can I hold this? It's okay! I remember what it's like!").

By the end of the flight, Isaac seemed pretty bouncy. He was starting to annoy his sister. He grinned and flashed me a thumbs-up.

I relaxed. We got off the plane, picked up our rental car, and headed downtown to find lunch. We parked near Omaha's Old Market, which I remembered from our last visit eight years ago. This time I was not newly pregnant and thought I could really use a glass of wine with lunch, all things considered, and Matt clearly felt the same, so we headed for a nearby brewery that looked promising.

Isaac threw up on the sidewalk.

He insisted he was fine. We nervously carried a few bags into Upstream Brewery, where we were seated blessedly quickly. Isaac burst into tears when we told him we did not think it was wise for him to eat a cheeseburger.

"But I'm hungry," he wept.

He finally agreed to eat the toast that came with my salad (possibly the best salad I've ever had, by the way, for those of you who ever have reason to travel to Omaha--it was this beautiful creation of butternut squash, beets, quinoa, kale, a tiny amount of feta, and a dreamy lemon dressing. Matt's falafel was also delicious, and Suzannah proclaimed the chicken strips "awesome!" I can't believe any of us had any appetite, but we tired travelers feasted happily). I'd stashed the little complimentary cinnamon biscuits from the flight in my purse, and Isaac grumpily ate those as well. We hit the road for Sioux City, about 90 miles away, and he fell asleep immediately. Matt and I relaxed.

Until Isaac woke up and barfed again. We'd placed a plastic bag in the back with him, but he was groggy and disoriented and didn't quite make it.

We were pretty much in the middle of nowhere at that point. I reached back and used the last of my wet wipes to scrub at the seat. It wasn't enough.

"We need to find a gas station or something," I said to Matt.

We saw a sign for gas, food, and groceries and pulled off the interstate. We headed for what we thought must be a town, and apparently it used to be. The building with the sign for gas, food, and groceries was boarded up, its siding weatherbeaten. Weeds obscured the lot. The houses nearby looked the same, faded, with boarded windows. Others had porches piled high with junk: bikes, toys, rusted appliances.

A couple of kids played in one yard, kicking a ball around. As we drove slowly by, they stopped and stared. They seemed hostile and incurious.

We noticed American flags painted onto random pieces of wood, propped against the houses. And we saw confederate flags, actual flags hanging from flag poles.

"Let's get the hell out of here," I said to Matt. He nodded.

The next time we pulled off at a real gas station, the kind that has a Subway attached to it. Inside I grabbed paper towels, Dawn dish detergent, two giant bottles of water, and more wet wipes.

"Can I help you find somethin', Hon?" the cashier asked.

"Um...maybe plastic bags?" I said. "I've got a carsick kiddo..."

"Oh, here. I can just give you some! Don't buy any!" She reached behind the counter and produced a handful of plastic sacks. "I know how it goes."

"Thank you," I said, grateful. I went back outside, where Matt had unloaded the kids and the carseat. While he took Isaac to the bathroom, I got to work scrubbing.

"Hey! Are you the lady with the sick kid?"

I turned to see a woman crossing the parking lot.

"Yeah," I admitted.

"I heard you inside. Take these. My nephew always gets carsick, so I've learned to keep a stash in my car." She handed me a blue plastic bag held open with a wide plastic rim. "They can just puke in that, see."

"Thank you!" I called, but she was already waving over her shoulder.

After we'd checked into our hotel in Sioux City, I sent Matt and Suzannah to Dave and Tia's house and hunkered down in our room with Isaac. My mother-in-law was planning on serving a beautiful dinner, but after our day I couldn't expect Isaac to eat, much less behave. And he was so tired. Matt picked up some take-out and left the two of us snuggled in for the night. And honestly, it was lovely, that time with my little boy. He truly seemed to feel better, only spent. So he didn't eat, but we watched TV together, and I read the book I'd begun on the airplane, and we stretched out and relaxed. I suppose those quiet hours were the start of our real vacation.

And it was wonderful. Some of my friends saw sunshine this week, or traveled to fabulous places. On Friday night, I was feeling a little jealous of those people. On Sunday afternoon, the feeling had passed. Our nephews were baptized on Sunday morning. Matt and I became godparents. We visited Dave and Tia's brewery, the first time I've seen it. We ate and drank and laughed together. My children drove each other crazy but fell hard for their little cousins. We swam for hours in the indoor/outdoor pool at our hotel. We ate really good food. We drank really good beer (obviously). We visited the Mid America Museum of Aviation and Transportation and the Sioux City Public Museum. My handsome husband turned 39 and we celebrated. Mostly, we just enjoyed being with our family, and because this happened in Iowa, there was really no point in stressing about anything in Washington. It was, in every sense of the word, a break. It was so good.

Our return trip was much smoother. No one had to wake up before they were ready; we didn't need to hit the road until 9:30. We returned the rental car at 11:30 and had time for a leisurely lunch at the airport (though nothing as lovely as that salad from Upstream Brewery). The flight wasn't full, so Matt sat with the kids and I had an entire row to myself. My flight anxiety is sky-high these days, so this small grace was something. When the beverage cart rolled by, I bought a glass of wine; later the flight attendant returned, saw my empty glass, and refilled it for free.

"Let's call this girls' night out," she said with a wink.

I read a book. The kids watched a movie. Matt dozed.

We descended through the clouds in the late afternoon. Even though the winter has bled too long into spring, even though I am desperate for sunshine, there is still absolutely nothing more beautiful than breaking through the clouds above Seattle. Puget Sound shimmered against the mountains. There was the Space Needle. There was West Seattle. I peered through the window, watched the cars moving along I-5. Home. I smiled. Home.

We still have a few days left of Spring Break. Today the kids and I went to see Beauty and the Beast, went out for lunch, and ran a few errands. Suzannah organized her bookshelves. I vacuumed, and then I cleaned the vacuum (oh, shut up). Isaac made his daddy a belated birthday card. Tomorrow Suzannah and I are getting haircuts and I will feel like a new woman. I'm rereading MacBeth because I am teaching it in my freshman class after break, and it's the most excited I've felt about teaching them all year. I feel as though it may be possible to breathe again.

Here we are again

It is the night of the hottest day of the summer, after the warmest night on record. Fans whir in different corners of our house, and open windows catch the breeze. We don't have air conditioning, and we have no plans to get it, despite the fact that it would be really lovely right now. But here in our little corner of the Pacific Northwest, I can survive a few nights of sweaty discomfort. Usually, usually, when we keep our house closed during the day, the shade from the massive trees in our yard keeps the inside cool enough. And, truth be told, something about walking from the heat of the day into air that feels artificially cool and then back out again feels weirdly unhealthy to me. But I don't work in an air conditioned environment, either.

My daughter sleeps sprawled out with her blanket wrapped around her head; she gets hot, but she has this need to be cocooned, much like I do. When Isaac is hot, we wipe him down with cool washcloths and point a fan at his bed. He sleeps with his stuffed animals, clutching his nightly favorite (usually Shasta the wolf or Beagle, but this week he has added Foxy the Fox, who came home from Glacier with him) and surrounded by a few others.

"This is a lot of friends in bed, Bud," I say when I crawl into bed to kiss him goodnight. "I'm not sure there's room for all of you." And he screeches in protest when I pretend to take one for myself.

It is the night of the hottest day of summer. Tomorrow, after gymnastics, the plan is to spend the rest of the afternoon at Madison Beach, swimming in Lake Washington. We try to do this at least once every summer, twice if we're lucky, almost always in August. Matt and I take turns swimming out to the floating dock with the diving boards while the kids splash and swim and build sandcastles. We go out for pizza afterwards. It's our almost-end-of-summer ritual, to soak in these last lazy August days. I love this: to feel the heat on my shoulders as the shadows lengthen. To swim in Lake Washington with a view of Mount Rainier, to feel the sheer pleasure of water and sunshine on my skin, to put down the pressing anxieties of a new school year, the planning and the worrying and the anticipation, to just be present in the moment.

The other is my annual 5k for Northwest Hope & Healing along Alki Beach, the last Sunday in August. This year will be my seventh, and it happens next weekend. I will run, and my family will cheer at the finish. I'll eat a bowl of clam chowder from Duke's Chowder House, served from one of the tents set up along the waterfront, which is surprisingly perfect at the end of a morning 5k along Puget Sound. Then we'll go eat brunch at Easy Street Records and wander the farmer's market, just like we do on Father's Day.

"This bookends our summer," I said to Matt today. Father's Day, back in June, feels like so long ago. Isn't that funny? When teachers greet each other at the end of summer, it goes like this: "How was your summer?" "Too short!" But it hasn't been too short for me; it's been perfect. It's been enough. I've had my long summer afternoons in the sun. We've played at the ocean. We've played in the backyard. We've spent so much time in so much water: hot springs in Montana, swimming pools, sprinklers, splash parks, lakes. Matt and I have hiked. The kids and I have spent mornings at the school playground; they played while I jogged around the track. Sometimes we collected the neighbor boys along the way; sometimes they just ran back and forth between our houses. My kids have been bored and whiny and learned to deal with that when I said no, you may not watch a movie right now. We've sprawled listlessly in the heat. We've had spontaneous lunch dates with friends. We've spent time with family. There have been cookouts, gin and tonics at campsites, S'mores. Popcorn in my dad's ancient popcorn popper, deer in my parents' backyard. Sunsets spreading across an infinite dome of sky. I drove one of my favorite stretches of Montana highway at dusk while my family dozed around me. I've read great books. I've tried to write about it all. It has been exactly, exactly, what my soul needed. And we're all ready, I think, to embrace what comes next.

I used to describe August as one long Sunday afternoon, filled with a sort of low-grade anxiety bordering on dread depending upon all kinds of things. But in the past couple of years especially, it hasn't felt that way. Tonight I thought about how much I have always loved the beginning of the school year, both as a student and as a teacher. It's a gut thing. It's about fresh new notebooks, pencils, maybe a new outfit. New planners. Unbent edges. Possibility and potential. As a mother of two school-aged children who still love school, it's about seeing old friends and making new ones. Both of my kiddos, this year, know and love their school; Suzannah has the same teacher, and she still has a year's buffer between now and middle school. Isaac is still at that beautiful age when school is just purely fun and safe and his learning is exploding and he is so proud of it all. And now that I'm no longer birthing and breastfeeding and potty-training my little ones, now that they are growing into their own independent selves, it feels like the right time for me to grow in different directions myself. I had my babies and I loved having babies, and now I love having school-aged children who are content to hang out at school with me while I have meetings and plan professional development and set up my classroom. I love having children who are just used to this framework, who see school as their home base, their comfort zone.

I hold all of this close to my heart this week, because I am overwhelmed. It's not a bad thing, exactly. It's good work. But every single square on my calendar for August is full. Yesterday morning I sat with my new planner, looking at those two white pages with all of its writing, and I couldn't decide whether to scream or cry. Every day is full: meetings, soccer practice, gymnastics, a dentist appointment, more meetings, registration, professional development. I'm teaching a class I haven't taught before; when am I even going to plan for that?

I remember a day in college, so many years ago but still so vivid. I sat in a lit class, junior year, a semester in which nothing about my life felt okay, and I made a to-do list. I sat in that desk in Bishop Whipple Hall and looked at that list and pressed my fingers against my mouth to keep from literally screaming out loud. I was taking on too much and I wasn't okay. But I whispered to myself, "It will all get done because it has to."

It will all get done because it has to.

The great difference, I suppose, is that I can see the big picture in a way I couldn't when I was twenty years old, and I am living with great joy and love even when I am stressed out. But I still stop every now and then when things pile up, and I say: It will all get done because it has to. And I'm not twenty years old any longer, and I can see the bigger picture. It's one I believe in. The picture is constantly developing and evolving, but I love it. I'm in it. It's beautiful. Let's do this.

Where I am and where I’ve been

Sometimes summer days are like this: without a clear agenda, my anxiety begins to simmer sometime around mid-morning. I’ve had a few cups of coffee, which is as necessary as air but also doesn’t exactly soothe me, and then the children are screaming at each other.

“Isaac! You stepped on it!”

“Zannah, give it back!”

“Mom! Isaac hit me!”

“Sorry!”

I mean they are just so all up in each other’s business, and yet they cannot bear to be separated for even five minutes. I try! Oh, I try. This morning before we did anything fun they were given the task of dismantling yesterday’s “spaceships” -- Suzannah’s took up the entire living room and Isaac’s took up the entire family room. They’d created dining rooms and escape pods and control areas out of blankets; they’d made their favorite stuffed animals fellow travelers; they’d basically unloaded their entire bedrooms into different parts of the house. Which was great. Yesterday afternoon I had a tour of both ships, and I didn’t even mind that they stayed intact for the rest of the evening. I passed out on the couch last night as soon as the kids were in bed, and I just did not have the energy to care that much. This morning, I told them that they would clean it all up before we went anywhere or did anything fun and figured that would keep them busy for awhile. Additionally, we picked up some containers at The Container Store yesterday, and since Suzannah loves organizing as much as I do, it seems, I figured she could use some quality time in her room quietly organizing the disaster on the floor into her new bins. She’s good at this. She likes this.

It just wasn’t that kind of day.

It wasn’t a bad day. The kids were just kids in summer. It’s just that the only other adult I spoke to today happened to work at the Honda dealership. And they’re so great there, usually, but I really wasn’t in the mood to hear, “Huh. Doesn’t your husband usually do this?”

Respectfully: Bite me.

Anyway, I decided not to go ahead with the mini-service that was apparently due today, because I didn’t want to deal with two kids, one car seat, one booster seat, and a loaner car. I didn’t want to have to come back. So that was an hour in the car for no reason. We went to the spray park instead. I read in the sunshine and watched my children leap through the water. I still hadn’t had any adult conversation, but I had a book, and the day -- like almost all summer days in the Pacific Northwest -- was nearly perfect. Blue skies. A breeze. My children in the water. Fresh cherries and blueberries waiting in my refrigerator, and also just maybe some Flathead Cherry beer brought back from Montana.

I sent my husband a text: Can you stop and get milk, toilet paper, and some sanity?

He responded: Do we need to cage the children in the backyard?

Later, he sent a text from the store: Getting groceries now. I replied, Okay! I’m drinking beer.

But he’s home now, and the children are watching a movie and we’re all bathed and I’m feeling pretty calm. Matt is grilling veggie burgers and baking fries and promising me a little alone time tomorrow, and I’m basking in this evening sun, in the scent of sunscreen and shampoo, in gratitude. Because even though I felt my nerves begin to sizzle before lunchtime, and even though the unstructured nature of summer days tends to make me anxious in a way the school year does not, I do love this season.

We’ve been on the road and I’ve been offline. It was a beautiful break. Not necessary a vacation, but a break -- virtually no social media, internet, or phone. Lots of sunshine. Tons of time in the water, which feeds my soul when I don’t have time to myself. (I was going to link to a hilarious article about going on a vacation vs. going on a trip, but when I went to google it I found ten more hilarious stories. Just go read a few. They’re great. Vacation vs. trip. Yes, google it, especially if you’re a parent.)

We spent the first half of our trip in Montana at my parents’ house, which included taking the kids swimming at the outdoor pool downtown, Pickle Barrel sandwiches and huckleberry soda (obviously), a visit to the Museum of the Rockies, floating the Madison River, taking a 12-mile hike (that was just Matt and me), meeting my favorite high school teacher-turned-friend for coffee (a must-do on every trip home), visiting my grandmother, and eating popcorn from my dad’s famous 45-year-old popcorn popper. We spent the second half of our trip in Glacier National Park, which is my favorite place in the entire universe. As in, when I was hugely pregnant with Isaac and preparing for labor at a birth center with no drugs, my “happy place” in my mind was the shore of Lake McDonald in Apgar. Which is where we spent two full days last week. In the “happy place” version (which existed in my mind only), I was sitting at the shore gazing at the mountains, or possibly swimming by myself. In the “reality” version captured on film last week, my daughter was paddling a kayak all over the place by herself. And then she tried paddle boarding. By her damn self. It was both hard on me and totally heart-exploding in the best of ways.

Anyway, it was all wonderful. We spent the first two nights in a cabin with two bedrooms, which meant we could tuck the children in and then sit up with the lights on, read books, and drink fancy gin for ten minutes before I was all, “Well, I’m exhausted." I was absolutely giddy with it. The second two nights we camped, and that was lovely in the way that camping with our little family always it. It rained hard overnight, both nights, and I tell you what, there is honestly nothing better than curling around my children in the warmth of our tent with the rain drumming over our heads, knowing we are warm and dry and that our rain fly is indeed going to hold over the peaceful space beneath.

We also had the extraordinary privilege this time of spending a few days with my aunt and uncle and cousins and their partners and children, which has happened exactly never since Isaac was born. I think the last time I saw both of my cousins together, Suzannah was about five weeks old; needless to say, a lot of life has happened since then. Watching my kids play with their second cousins was, again, totally heart-exploding, and reconnecting with my first cousins was exactly what I hoped it would be. I’ve spent a little time with them both over the years, mostly separately, for graduations and funerals and the odd dinner, and I’ve always come away thinking, you know, I really like these people and I wish we could hang out. This trip gave us a little of that time, and I feel more determined to nurture these relationships through our adulthood. That’s a good place to be with family.

We’re home again, settling into whatever normal means during the summer months: play dates with friends, trips to the spray park, letting the sunshine slide over us in the backyard or while we hunker down inside with books or endless games of Uno, special lunch outings when I’m tired of making sandwiches and want fancier things in my salads. We go to the library. We go to the zoo. Sometimes I force my children to just be bored and figure out what to do about it; I refuse to over-schedule their summer days with activities and I also refuse to turn on the television, even though I was mightily tempted at ten-thirty this morning. We nibble fresh blueberries and Rainier cherries, maybe crackers and cheese in the late afternoons. I read terrifying articles about “the big one” sure to hit Seattle. I inform my husband that we need to put together emergency preparedness kits. (I am absolutely serious about this.) I read novels. I fret. I run the sprinkler in the backyard. I pour iced tea into tumblers. I breathe in, I breathe out.

In a few days I’m flying to Chicago for the IB of Americas conference. It is a huge, huge privilege to attend and I am so grateful for the opportunity. I’m also freaking out about it a little bit, because that is what I do. My husband cannot ease all of my fears but he can reassure me that he will vacuum the house before I come home again, and that small gesture speaks volumes. This man knows me and puts up with me and seems to love me even when I’m crazy.

I’ve been missing my dog, a lot. Still.

I’ve been reading excellent, challenging books.

I painted our master bathroom, finally.

I’ve slathered my children in sunscreen and turned them loose in the bright hot afternoons.

I’m getting tan.

I’m struggling with changes that have infused my first half of summer with unexpected melancholy.

I’m still grateful for the friendships that mean so much to me.

And I’m still excited for this upcoming year. I’m in no hurry for August, though, not just yet. So for now, despite my anxiety, despite the tough summer mornings in which my children can’t get out of each other’s faces, despite my attempts (sometimes successful, sometimes not) to shake it all off and just relax already, I’m content to just let these days flow over us. Like water, like sunshine.

These small moments

The thing about forming deep attachments to people is that they don’t always last. Or rather, the attachment might, but relationships change and fade away. This is the natural order of things. People grow up, move away, move on -- it happens. This is the rhythm of the universe. But sometimes, the relationships hold even as they change, and years later, you might find yourself gifted with a spectacularly beautiful day in which you spend time with people who meant so much to you years and years ago, and it feels, also, like the natural order of things.

Today felt like a gift. As a teacher myself I know how powerful and intense student/teacher relationships can be, and I also understand that despite their intensity, many of them -- most of them, really -- fade over time. People remember many of their teachers fondly (I hope) but they don’t necessarily stay connected. But I’m thirty-five years old, and still. Still! One of the people I always want to see when I go home is one of the best high school teachers I ever had (I spoke about her in the interview, thirteen years ago, that landed me the teaching job I still have today), and so we remain connected, years later. I love Becky, and I love her daughters, who I babysat for a couple of summers after I graduated. They were younger than my own children are now when I spent my days with them. They were candelighters at my wedding. And now they’re adults, twenty and twenty-three years old. I had coffee with their mother last week in Bozeman, as I always try to do when I’m there, and she mentioned that she and the girls were heading to Seattle for a few days this week.

And that is how I wound up spending the day with them today. We met at the Woodland Park Zoo, and I brought Matt and the kids, and it was just delightful beyond words. I couldn’t believe how much they remember about the time we spent together -- they were so young! -- but I love that they do, because they were such a defining part of my summer days for awhile. I took them everywhere with me. I remember giving them piggy-back rides around downtown Bozeman, driving them in the backseat of my new car, taking them to ice cream, to the park, to the pool. When Matt and I took our children swimming at Bogart Park in Bozeman less than two weeks ago, I told him about taking these girls there, too. They really felt like family more than babysitting charges; I brought them out to my parents’ house all the time, and when we took my grandmother out for lunch on our way to Bozeman on our recent trip she asked about them because she remembers them, too.

“You trusted me so much,” I said to Becky today. “I just kind of took them everywhere I went.”

She shrugged. “I knew you,” she said.

Today I watched these two young women interact with each other in this beautifully sisterly way, still so different from each other, still so completely fabulous. I watched them play with my own children, which burst my heart in the very best way. And I thought about how strange time is, how these two little girls have become adults while I still feel so much like my eighteen-year-old self sometimes, how they have their own lives now, and how utterly lucky I am to be able to share this day with them. I think about how much their mother has meant to me for over half my life now. I think about the moment today at lunch when my two little children were both tugging on their arms, and I don’t even know what to call that, really. I could only smile and say, This is so great.

***
I didn’t forget about writing down three positive things each day for seven days; in fact, I scrawled them in a notebook on our trip, but I decided not to work to hard to post while we were on vacation. The internet break felt really, really healthy and necessary. But! I’m back now, so here are twelve good things.

Huckleberry riesling and huckleberry ice cream. Swimming in Lake McDonald, the way the cold water closed over my head when I finally worked up the nerve to plunge in, the view of the mountains when I resurfaced. Field roast and baked beans cooked over the fire. Falling asleep in our tent, curled around our children. Walking to Apgar Village in the cool dawn because Matt needed breakfast supplies, buying a hot chocolate, and returning to our campsite for pancakes and French press coffee. Driving across northern Montana, taking the wheel on the Chester road -- maybe one of my favorite quiet stretches of highway -- while my family dozed. The sunsets east of Shelby and just south of Great Falls. The first shower after camping. Showing my children the house I lived in when I was their age, driving them past my elementary school, my middle school. MacKenzie River Pizza (twice) and Leaf & Bean coffee (a bunch of times). Pickle Barrel sandwiches and huckleberry soda in the park. Swimming at Bogart in the afternoon heat and in the rain. Hiking to Emerald Lake and Heather Lake and Grotto Falls. Losing my sunglasses, and finding them again next to a rock where I’d stopped to rest and adjust my boots. Running along the highway with a view of the Bridger mountains. My dad’s famous popcorn in his ancient popcorn popper. Date night at Over the Tapas: poached pear salad, goat cheese croquettes, grilled asparagus, and vegetable Wellingtons (which I told Matt were the best thing I’d ever tasted). The trout aquarium at the St. Regis travel center. Homemade huckleberry scones. A cute neighborhood pub in Coeur d’Alene. Watching my son break into a grin on the carousel at Riverfront Park in Spokane, especially after he thought it would be too scary. The way our house smells when we return to it after a vacation -- like home.

Is that more than twelve? I stopped counting. They are all small, simple things, but they are the things I remember most. The small things make me appreciate the big things: my family and this time we had together.

At our campsite at Glacier, Suzannah turned to me and said, “Four things made this a perfect day. First, we got to ride the shuttle to Logan Pass. Then, we had ice cream, and then we played in the lake, and then we had s’mores. When you get four things like that it’s a great day.” Later, as we enjoyed our dinner, she said, “Ahh. Milk and a fire. Perfect.” Indeed, this is how my children bless me every day. They remind me to be present, right here, in the simple joys of our lives. Perfection is found in these small moments: in ice cream, in jumping into a lake, in a chocolatey mouthful of dessert roasted over a fire.

Dignity/Adulthood/Whatever

We’re home again and I am, as they say, a hot mess.

On Friday afternoon my mom took the kids to the splash park, Matt went for a run on a trail he found in Bozeman, and I took my journal and my book to the Leaf and Bean. The day was hot, and it felt so lovely to duck into the coffee shop for awhile and sit at my favorite little table in the corner by the window. After awhile the sky burst open in a sunshower, and I watched the water steaming in the streets. By the time I left, they were dry again. I headed towards my car, looking forward to going home to change for our night out alone. And I tripped. Spectacularly. Over nothing. I twisted my left ankle and landed mostly on my right knee and my hands. My hands were only a little scraped, but I didn’t need to look down to know that my right leg was a mess.

And I didn’t look down--I didn’t look anywhere but straight ahead as I limped towards my car. Thankfully, I’d at least turned off Main Street by this time, so there’s the slight chance that no one actually witnessed my undignified fall; I hope not, anyway, because no one asked if I was all right, and I’d rather think it was because no one was actually there than because my hometown is full of jerks. Anyway, I tossed my stuff in the front seat and sat there for a moment, trying to relax enough to drive myself home and dabbing ineffectually at my bloodied knee with a scrap of tissue. (I have to admit that my main concern was how ridiculous my bandaged knee would look with the cute little dress I was planning to wear. And it was pretty ridiculous, but there was no way I was not wearing that dress. I bought it two years ago just to wear out on fun summer date nights, and I never wear it any other time.)

“Oh, Baby,” Matt said when he saw it. “Wow. See, this is why I worry when we go hiking.”

“I DIDN’T FALL YESTERDAY.”

“Yeah, but...I’m just saying.”

He has a fair point. Matt and I hiked up to Heather Lake on Thursday, which is something like 10 or 11 miles round-trip. (More for Matt, though. After we’d been hiking for about ten minutes he hustled back to the car at the trailhead to grab a rain jacket “just in case” -- we’d be gone several hours, and the forecast tentatively predicted thunderstorms. We ended up not needing it. He also turned back to search for my sunglasses, which I realized went missing from my head somewhere between Emerald Lake and Heather Lake. He didn’t find them during the 15 minutes he was looking, but I discovered them next to a rock on the way down. They must have slipped off my head while I sat down to adjust my boots.) Apparently, I’m klutzier than I would like to admit. (I would, however, like to take this moment to tell you all that my new hiking boots plus my new stupidly expensive inserts plus the way the guy at REI showed me how to tie my laces kept me from having blisters, which is a first. I HIKED FOR FIVE AND A HALF HOURS AND I DID NOT GET BLISTERS, except for one tiny one that barely even hurt so it doesn’t count. This has happened exactly zero times; I figured blisters were just something I would have to deal with if I wanted to hike with the big kids.)

When my dad saw my banged-up knee, he seemed confused.

“So wait, what did you trip on?”

“Nothing.”

“You just...fell down? Over nothing?”

“YES.”

“Did you black out first or something?” he asked, genuinely concerned.

“This is just what Shari does,” Matt offered helpfully.

Fast forward to Sunday night. We’d arrived home by early evening, in plenty of time for dinner, but since we’d been gone for ten days there wasn’t much in the fridge. Matt picked up some milk and a few other essentials to tide us over until our veggie box arrived on Tuesday. I didn’t have much of an appetite after sitting in the car for most of the hot afternoon (temperatures were well into the 90’s by the time we left Spokane around lunchtime), and the only thing I really wanted to eat was pho, so while Matt set about making macaroni and cheese for the kids I went to get some. I was back home with it in twenty minutes. And I’m not sure whether I was just tired and careless or whether the container was unusually full, but when I went to dump the noodles and tofu into the steaming broth, it slopped right over the side and all over my fingers.

I don’t think I’ve ever been truly, painfully scalded before. I was standing right next to the sink and thrust my hand under the faucet within seconds, so it could have been much worse -- but when I pulled my hand out of the water, thinking all I’d need to do was run some cool water over it for a few moments, I nearly screamed. I’ve never felt anything like it. It didn’t stop burning.

Matt filled the sink with cold water and I kept my left hand submerged while clumsily fiddling with chopsticks with my right hand. The phone rang as I slurped my pho at the kitchen counter. It was my parents, calling to make sure we’d made it home, and I had to admit that I was standing there with my burned hand in the sink while I ate dinner. I assured them it was fine, though; when it was actually in the water it felt mostly perfectly okay. They told me to be careful, and we hung up.

I pulled my hand out of the water, planning to dry it off and help Matt put the kids to bed. I made it halfway across the kitchen and turned right back to the sink. It hurt so badly I couldn’t keep from yelping. This confused me, since on the surface it didn’t look all that bad. A little pink, maybe, but certainly not alarming. I gritted my teeth and sprinted into the study to retrieve my phone. Back at the sink I spent fifteen minutes googling terrible things that can happen to seemingly innocuous burns when left untreated. The internet basically told me that I should head to the ER or I might as well go ahead and bid farewell to my hand. Burns to the hand can be “quite serious” and are not to be messed with.

Once again, I lifted it experimentally out of the sink. I didn’t see flames on the surface of my skin, of course, but it certainly felt like they were there. I told Matt I was planning to just cut the damn thing off. He sighed and said that was a terrible idea, but I didn’t really feel like I had his full attention. (The children did. Settling two children into their regular old beds after ten days of camping and driving and grandparents and fourteen deserts every day is a little nuts.)

“The problem is that I’m holding it together too well,” I said to him. “I’m just too calm. If I allowed my voice to betray the amount of pain I am in, you would all be terrified and rush me to the hospital.”

“Well, do you think we need to go in?” Matt asked reasonably.

“No,” I muttered. “But I’m going to have to sleep with my hand in a bowl of cold water all night long. At the table.”

“Sorry, Baby,” Matt said, as he chased our daughter down the hallway with the dental floss.

I sat there feeling sorry for myself for awhile. I tried to appreciate the fact that Matt had taken over everything since I’d rendered myself completely useless. I told myself that my hand looked more or less fine, so if I could just get through the first few seconds of burning when I pulled away from the cold water I’d be fine.

But every time I tried to keep my hand out of the water, I wanted to scream. The internet told me that this sensation should last only five to ten minutes. Maybe twenty or thirty. After an hour, the hand would surely be lost. In the meantime, I could try painkillers. I sprinted into the bathroom and held my hand underneath the cold water tap while I awkwardly tapped a few tablets out of the bottle of ibuprofen.

“Did you take ibuprofen?” Matt called out the next time he heard me yelp.

“Yeah, but that’s not enough,” I said. “I need a gin and tonic. Possibly two. The only way I am going to be able to get any sleep tonight is to be a tiny bit tipsy.”

He seemed unconvinced, but he was distracted and I am bossy, so he made me a nice strong one. I alternated between sipping that and trying to read a few pages of The Cuckoo’s Calling. Matt eventually went to bed, and I sat there with my burning hand and my scabbed leg and felt absolutely pitiful. Shortly before midnight, I wrapped my hand in a cold dishtowel I’d thrown in the freezer and managed to fall asleep, no doubt in part because of the gin.

Thankfully, my hand felt much better in the morning. Still tender -- the thought of putting it in warm water to shower made me cringe, so I put that off for the better part of a day -- but much better. As in, I felt there was the slightest chance I would pull through, and possibly be able to pick up the dog from the vet and make the kids' lunch.

So I survived all that only to lock myself out of the house yesterday, for the second time this summer. I am just not feeling like a very competent human being these days.

The first time it happened back in June, the kids and I were on our way to the splash park and it was fairly late in the day. We could have just played in the backyard and waited for Matt to come home; we could have even walked to Starbucks for a treat, since I’d managed to grab my wallet along with our towels and sunscreen. Yesterday, though, I was supposed to pick up my friend Becca and take her to the airport to catch her flight back to China. Also, it was barely noon. Waiting for Matt was not an option.

Thankfully, my brother lives only ten minutes away, has a key to my house, and happens to fly airplanes at night so is generally home during the day when I am prone to fits of stupidity like this. I was worried that I’d wake him up, but I didn’t see any other good options.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s up?” (Oh, good. He sounded awake.)

“HI. UM, WHAT ARE YOU DOING RIGHT NOW? ARE YOU HOME? BECAUSE I LOCKED MYSELF OUT OF THE HOUSE AGAIN AND I HAVE TO GET BECCA TO THE AIRPORT BECAUSE SHE IS FLYING BACK TO CHINA AND IF YOU COME OVER RIGHT NOW I WILL BUY YOU ALL THE THINGS.”

He laughed, like he was totally used to me sounding so unhinged, and drove cheerfully into our yard a few minutes later. I hugged him (he was covered with sawdust or something from some mysterious project he’d been working on, but I did not care), told him he was my favorite person in the whole world, and took off. I managed to retrieve Becca and take her to the airport without incident, so there’s that.

Someday, I might manage to behave like a real adult, but my scabs are going to have to heal first.

Nothing good can come from too much reading.

A couple of years ago, we spent a day of our summer vacation at Yellowstone National Park with my parents. We hadn’t been there since Suzannah was a year old, and we thought the kids would enjoy Old Faithful. They did -- we have video footage of Suzannah exclaiming, “That is so cool! Whoa! I’m pretty sure that’s even taller than all the people!” (Isaac, not yet three, turned to us and said, “Water gone? Turned off?”)

Later, while the kids licked at ice cream cones, I wandered through the gift shop. I don’t really feel like a tourist when I go to Yellowstone or Glacier National Park because I spent so much time there growing up, but I still occasionally buy t-shirts, and sometimes I find great books tucked into the corners of these little shops. A few years ago, I bought a collection of poetry by Montana writers and it is still one of my absolute favorite poetry anthologies of all time; last summer, I found a book of poetry by one author featured in that book.

But when we found ourselves in Yellowstone two summers ago, I didn’t buy poetry. I sidled up to my husband, who was innocently tucking into his own ice cream cone, and said, “Will you buy me just one book?” He nodded, distracted, and so I got to take home Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park.

Death in Yellowstone is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: an account of the 300 deaths that have occurred inside Yellowstone National Park. The book is divided into two sections -- Death by Nature and Death by Man. I am not particularly concerned about Death by Man; I am unlikely to travel by wagon or stagecoach, and I’m just as likely to be killed by a drunk driver or murderer anywhere else.

I am smart enough not to try to pet the bison and grizzly bears.

I don’t eat plants while I’m hiking, even though I have learned (supposedly) once or twice which ones are “safe” and which ones are the kind that will twist up your insides in ten seconds before you drop dead right there on the trail. Look, I saw Into the Wild; I’ll just stick to my own snacks.

Death by lightning doesn’t worry me because while I worry a lot (just you wait) I can’t do much about a thunderstorm. I’ll enjoy it, actually, but I probably won’t be standing on top of a mountain while I do so.

I’m a strong swimmer. I always swim sober, and mostly in lakes (rather than rivers), so the little chapter on Death by Drowning didn’t keep me awake at night.

Death by falling actually worries me a lot, and it kind of makes me no fun to hike with sometimes, especially when we have the kids with us. There’s a really lovely hike we enjoy here in Washington -- I’m not going to tell you where it is because if you know it you’re definitely going to make fun of me -- and I can barely even get through it sometimes because it involves crossing a bridge (a fairly wide, wooden bridge with a substantial railing) and I am utterly convinced that one of our curious children will somehow scale the railing before we can grab them and fall into the water below. (It’s not that far below. If it were, I wouldn’t be walking over it, believe me.) Matt was not appropriately empathetic that first time, and there may have been some tension between us for the rest of the hike. It’s fine, though. Bygones.

My point is that there are really high places from which to fall in Yellowstone and I did not enjoy reading about them. I shared this with my husband, along with the rather strong opinion that we should avoid any place that boasts a spectacular view; nevermind the fact that I love a lot of those places. (I can’t believe I am confessing this publicly, but years ago when we went to Snoqualmie Falls I couldn’t bring myself to walk up the steps to the viewing area. I got close, but I seriously almost threw up when Matt thought he was going to carry our little daughter to see the waterfall. We can get a perfectly good view of the falls on the opening credits of Twin Peaks.)

The worst chapter, though, was the very first one: “Hold Fast to your Children: Deaths in Hot Water.” Just the title is bad news for a mother, especially one who spends so much time in Crazyland. Later that night, after we’d tucked our exhausted children into bed, I curled up in my parents’ living room with my new book. It wasn’t long before I sat up, horrified.

“Matt, do you know what happens to your eyeballs if you fall into one of those hot springs and get boiled alive? They turn white. Not just the part that’s already white. The whole thing.”

“Good grief, Shari,” my mother said. “Don’t you have anything nicer to read? What were you reading before you started reading this book?”

I showed her my copy of Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus.

“For Pete’s sake,” my mother said.

“I’m glad I got you that book after we walked around the hot springs,” Matt said.

“Well, we’re not going back until the kids are teenagers, obviously.” My what-if’s (what if one of my children broke away from me and stumbled and fell in? What if one of us turned our back long enough for one of them to try to touch the pretty water?) were quieted only by the knowledge that Isaac was solidly contained in either the stroller or the backpack the entire time, and Suzannah had a firm hold of someone’s hand all the time and was also well-behaved enough to listen when we told her seriously that it was important to stay with Mom and Dad and Grandpa and Grandma and not touch the water. Also, we were safely home again by the time I had to visualize someone boiling alive in the hot springs.

I’m not sure what prompted me to write all this tonight, except that soon we’ll be in Glacier for a few days during our annual Montana trip and I suppose I was feeling nostalgic. There are no hot springs in Glacier, although I have no doubt I’ll find something to be anxious about. Still, as far as I know, no one has written a book called Death in Glacier, and Matt probably wouldn’t let me have it anyway. (When Suzannah was about two, we spent a few days in the park with Matt’s family. At night, after everyone else had turned in, I stayed up late reading a book about grizzly bear attacks. I know I said that’s not a particular fear of mine -- it’s still not -- but the book gave me such chills that I half-expected a grizzly to come charging through the cozy living room of the house we were renting near Whitefish.) I don’t really know what to say about this. The other day Becca said to me, "I mean, horrifying documentaries about rabies and/or gangs and/or religious cults are how you relax.”

Okay, but seriously, I will try to be reasonable on this trip.

Relatedly, I’ve been mostly off Facebook -- all the grandparents have been here over the past week and we took a quick trip to the ocean -- and I plan to stay mostly off until we’re back in Washington. One of the things I appreciate about vacation is the permission I give myself to truly unplug and be present where I’m at. I’ll check my e-mail a few times, and I still might post here, because I love to tell everyone what I think all the time. Also, my friend Mandy recently tagged me in a challenge to post three positive things for seven days. This is a Facebook thing, but maybe I can do that here, and it’s a nice way to check in and capture the moments I want to remember from our trip. I won’t promise seven consecutive days -- I don’t plan to try to punch in a blog entry on my stupid smartphone somewhere in the mountains -- but I’ll shoot for seven days before I post on Facebook again.

Here are my three for today:

1. The light summer drizzle that greeted me when I stepped outside this morning. I love our sunny Seattle summers, but these moments of softness that make everything smell new again are a gift. The droplets shone on our pretty purple flowers in the front yard.

2. The pound of fresh roasted coffee from Valhalla, which I bought on a coffee outing with Suzannah and Kyanne. Have you ever physically just hugged a package of coffee because it smelled so good?

3. The freshest, lightest, loveliest dinner -- butter lettuce, roasted beets, cucumbers, kohlrabi, and roasted broccoli. Every single week I am grateful for such easy access to gorgeous local produce here. I love this season of salads, and I’m so looking forward to pluots and peaches in a couple of weeks.

I’m signing off to finish The Mill on the Floss, because while I do love a nice meaty Victorian novel in the summer, I’m not sure I want to pack along my hefty hardcover. I’m planning to bring a few paperbacks instead -- and who knows what kinds of books I’ll pick up along the road this year.

Birthday Weekend

“Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer." -- Maya Angelou

And just like that, I have an eight-year-old.

She isn’t too old yet to tire of her birth story. I share different details with her every year. Last year she was fascinated by photographs documenting her week tucked into the bili blankets in our kitchen as she recovered from jaundice. This year, I told her about the little ordinary details of the day itself, the hard kernels of memory that anchor her birth firmly in our family story. I told her that as soon as she was born someone brought me a grilled cheese, and it was the best grilled cheese I believed I’d ever tasted. As soon as I wolfed that down I turned to Matt and demanded a hamburger. He went off in search of one while they wheeled me into my postpartum room, my brand-new daughter in my arms.

We laughed about the nap Matt took on the little fold-out chair in our room that afternoon, how he slept so hard he didn’t even stir when a group of friends came to visit. (“Wasn’t that nice for you,” I grumbled playfully. Eight years out, I think I can finally laugh at the horror of sleep deprivation I faced in those first few days. The first night, I didn’t sleep because I was in labor. The second night, I didn’t sleep because I had a newborn who needed to be fed and who I couldn’t figure out how to feed very efficiently. The third night, we were home in our house with a newborn who would not sleep and I had no earthly idea what to do about that, so mostly I rocked her and cried.) I told her that eight years ago today her daddy changed his first diaper and he figured it out just fine. I’m not sure I even helped.

And I forget what prompted me to say this, some little show of attitude or resistance, but tonight I definitely said, “Oh yes you will, because I am your mother and I pushed you out of my body and it was a lot of work and it hurt and I think you can do this one tiny thing for me.” She laughed, rolled her eyes, and complied.

I crawled into bed with her for goodnight snuggles just a bit ago, something that still happens every night. More often than not I will say, “Okay, but nice snuggling tonight, not too silly, okay?” and then we wind up shaking with barely suppressed giggles. Tonight, we were both tired. I curled around her -- so different than curling around a newborn, to be sure -- and she pressed her backside into my stomach, tangled her feet with mine, and fell asleep. When this happens it’s hard for me to tear myself away, because I know these moments are limited, although secretly I hope that she won’t give up on the snuggling any time soon. I stayed there, breathing in the scent of her hair, the faint whiff of cake still lingering on her breath despite bedtime teeth brushing, and the slightly grubby undertone of elementary school kidness.

It is nothing like sleeping with an infant. But in some ways it is just as sweet.

We spent Memorial weekend in Vancouver, BC with my parents, Matt’s parents, and my brother and sister-in-law. Suzannah’s birthday gives us the chance to be together all at once and it was a nice reason to decide to take a mini vacation, so the ten of us squeezed into two Honda CR-V’s and headed north on Saturday morning. We stayed long enough to take in the aquarium and Stanley Park, eat a couple of good meals, check into a hotel, sleep more or less peacefully, and go swimming in the morning. I wound up sharing a bed with Suzannah, which didn’t surprise me much. We originally tucked the kids in together after all sorts of promises and admonitions to behave! and they were so worn out from walking that I really thought they’d just go right to sleep. But then Matt went out for a walk, and I tried to read for a bit before turning off the lamp next to my bed. Right away I heard the whispered “Tee hee hee!” and “Isaac, stop it,” and after about five futile conversations involving my patiently explaining to them how frustrated I was, I said, “Okay, that’s it. One of you is going to have to come and sleep in bed with me.” Suzannah popped right up and said, “Can one of us?” And that is how I wound up with Suzannah in bed with me, and when Matt returned I explained that I was very sorry but he would be sharing a bed with Isaac. Within about forty seconds of the switch they were both completely unconscious and sprawled diagonally across both beds. Matt and I curled ourselves between their limbs -- no amount of shifting and shoving could get them to keep to their own side of the bed -- and slept, too.

***
There is a particular tree in Stanley Park with a curved trunk that appears in a handful of our family photographs dating back to 1979, the year I was born. In those first pictures, I’m sitting on that curved trunk, nestled between my parents.

The summer I was nine, my parents took us on a two-week long road trip through the Pacific Northwest—Spokane to Portland, Portland to Seattle, Seattle to Victoria and Vancouver, BC. In Vancouver we watched the killer whale show at the aquarium. My brother and I planted ourselves squarely in the “splash zone,” shrieking when the orcas rose from their pool and belly-flopped again, sending a wall of water cascading over the lower bleachers. We were drenched and delighted. Afterwards, my parents took us on a little walk along the waterfront until we found it.

“This,” my father said, “is our tree.”

And so it was. I recognized it immediately. I even noticed the same name carved into the trunk—JAY, in block letters. Who knew how long ago someone had left his mark there? My brother and I arranged ourselves side-by-side on that strange curved branch, worn smooth over time. A Mountie rode past on his handsome black horse and offered to take our family photograph; then, he posed with my brother and me. When I look at the photographs now, I can see the faint crimp marks in my hair, flattened by that salty wave back at the aquarium—I can still feel the itch of salt drying on my skin.

We found it again this weekend, all ten of us, after a bit of blundering up and down the walking path. My parents and I attempted to recreate the picture from 1979 (I didn’t need so much help sitting upright this time), and then Aaron and I squeezed in together to duplicate 1988 -- a bit more challenging than it was when we were nine and seven, and our behavior hasn’t particular improved over the years. (“Smile! Shari! Put your tongue back in your mouth! Come on, a nice picture!”) And then I settled my own two children into the sturdy arm of this tree, taking my place in the background, my hand on the smooth wood. Isaac flailed and stuck out his tongue; Suzannah struck all sorts of bizarre poses. I’m sorry, Mom and Dad. They come by it honestly. Maybe they’ll try to look normal in pictures someday, but I wouldn’t count on it.

On a cellular level, I am every age I’ve ever been. I feel this often, especially when I look at my children. It’s a little disorienting to remember standing at this very spot when I was their age, to remember the way the moment felt. The itchy drying salt. The smooth wood. The oceany waterfront smell. Adding another photograph to our timeline of trees feels like a sturdy thread connecting my present to my past.

And what a blessing it all is, indeed.

Settling into August

And then there comes a day when you take your children to a water park, and your daughter tells you she wants to go down one of the water slides -- one of the big water slides, let’s be clear -- and you are torn between heart-bursting pride and just the tiniest wish that she was a little more afraid of it. And finally, finally, you relent, and you climb the wet stairs to the top with her. It is so high up there. You can see the entire water park from the top of those slides. Your son is throwing himself down the little slide in the kid’s pool, wild with joy and totally confident that a grown-up will keep him from drowning should he hurl his little body into deeper water. Your husband and mother-in-law are standing guard; you are often glad that you married such a tall man, because he is easy to spot in a crowd. You can also see the surrounding neighborhoods, which seem so quiet on this hot afternoon in August. Everything is green -- the urban forest of Minneapolis and its suburbs. For a moment you are vaguely disoriented, caught between the peaceful surroundings spread out before you and the chaos right there in front of you.

And you’re about to watch your daughter go swirling down into the midst of all that.

She steps up to the top of the slide when her turn comes, and she turns attentively to the lifeguard, waiting for his signal, just like you’ve coached her. He nods impassively. She hesitates, just barely, just enough for you to notice, and the lifeguard says, “You can go.” And before you can blink she’s pushing herself off, and you watch from the top as your seven-year-old slides away, down and around and around. She doesn’t attempt to slow herself by bracing her legs against the side, the way she did so long ago on those slides at the playground. She’s sailing now, and at the very bottom she plugs her nose and you catch your breathe just a bit as she shoots into the pool, pushed completely under the water.

She emerges, dripping and triumphant, and swims towards the edge. And when she finally sees your smile she can’t contain her own.

When you ask her if she was a little nervous she says, “No, not at all!” and you remember the first day of first grade nearly a year ago when you asked her the same question and she gave you the very same answer.

This is your baby girl, your firstborn, your beautiful little fish.

***
Years ago, in college, when I traveled to Ireland, England, Wales, and France on a May Seminar, my professor talked about recording the “hard kernels of memory” from each place. Last night, I returned from a week-long trip to Minnesota with my own little family, and when I sat down to write tonight, the hard kernel of memory that came to mind was this: my little girl on that water slide. Which surprised me a bit, truth be told, because while our day at the water park was incredibly fun, I didn’t expect it to be such a moment. And yet -- and yet. The moments in which I am completely overcome by the spontaneous joy of parenting these two children of mine tend to hit me upside the head when I am least expecting it.

Of course there were other moments as well: watching the airplanes take off at sunset while we waited to board our own flight from Seattle, and hearing Isaac shriek, “Oh, look! A plane!” Tucking my children into bed with the Star Wars blankets their Grandma Cindy made for them. Running up a quiet highway in northern Minnesota one muggy morning, dense trees on either side of me. Waking at three, four, five o’clock in the morning to claw desperately at my mosquito-bitten feet. Playing board games with Matt’s cousins late into the night (or what feels like late into the night for me these days). Watching my daughter hug every single person there -- aunts and uncles and cousins -- before she would consent to going to bed. Isaac’s temper tantrum on a napless afternoon when he realized he didn’t have his Legos at the cabin and responded by throwing himself down on the grass and screaming about it. The lake, always the lake -- splashing at the water’s edge with Isaac, swimming out a little deeper with Suzannah, and the way it felt when I plunged in myself, the surface closing over my head like a cool curtain. (One evening, I went by myself shortly after a sudden rain sent us scattering inside after dinner, hurriedly gathering up the last of the plates. The clouds parted just a half hour later as the sun began to set across the water. I swam back and forth for forty-five minutes. The lake was perfectly still and reflected the orange light and pink clouds moving across the sky. I was completely alone; I could see the odd campfire through the trees on shore and heard distant bursts of laughter and conversation. Closer to me were the loons, swimming near the reeds. Their eerie cry, that sad crazy laugh, is one of my favorite things about the lakes in northern Minnesota. I swam until the sun dropped behind the trees, obscured by the last of the rain clouds, and the lake was glassy and dark.)

There were more moments back in the Twin Cities, after we packed up most of our belongings (there is always at least one forgotten t-shirt) and returned to Matt’s parents’ house -- making pizzas in the wood oven, experimenting with beets and goat cheese and trout. Walking to the local library in our swimsuits before the water park opened. My deep-in-the-gut panic when Suzannah threw up a couple of times 24 hours before we were scheduled to fly home, tapping into my deepest anxieties (flying, flying with a sick child, the fear of all of us finding ourselves similarly afflicted during the night; thankfully, she was fine the next morning, so we chalked it up to too much heat, humidity, activity, and greasy food for lunch that day). Watching my children tear around the play area at the airport and thanking God that such a thing exists, for our flight home was delayed a couple of hours. On the plus side, I had time to go have a glass of wine on my own and breathe a few quiet breaths first.

We’re home again now, settling into some kind of late-summer normal for a couple of weeks before back-to-school preparations begin in earnest. I spent most of July feeling a little desperate, which, I’ve learned, is what I do; it all moves so fast, these summer days, even when they’re filled with languid afternoons running through the sprinkler in our own backyard. But then we usually take our family vacation in early August, and by the time we return to our home in Washington, I am ready to make my peace with the end of summer.

This year, we returned from a long weekend in Glacier National Park (one of my oldest and truest friends was kind enough to get married there, my very favorite place in the world) a mere four days before our Minnesota trip. And that trip was wonderful as well, because I love weddings and because my parents were there too and because every time I visit Glacier I feel like I am visiting every self I’ve ever been, at every age. As soon as I breathe the air I start to hurt, because I know my time there has to end. I can’t explain it, really; it’s just so physical, so visceral. It is the most perfect place in the world. The shore of Lake McDonald brings me more peace than any other place I’ve ever been in my life, ever. We tried camping with the kids for the first time, and while I admit I approached this with a certain amount of anxiety, I can tell you that my hard kernel of memory for that first attempt was falling asleep in our new tent, a soft rain spattering the roof, knowing that we were all safe and warm and dry and everything important in the world was contained right there in that cozy little space. I hope I always remember how peaceful I felt in that moment.

So it was a lot of summer in that last week of July and in this first week of August, a lot of swimming in lakes, a lot of reconnecting with people from my past, a lot of deep breathing, a lot of gratitude. And that is what allows me, in some form, year after year, to settle into the golden afternoons of August. Vacations are behind us, and just enough of those lovely languid summer afternoons lie ahead. The light has already shifted. A month ago, my evening runs were hot and sunlit; tonight, the shadows stretched across the sidewalks. I’m beginning to make notes about lesson planning, the new books I’m going to teach soon. I’m filled with the earliest twinges of excitement instead of dread at the end of summer. It’s a cycle I know, and I’ve learned not to fight it. Summer is sweet because it doesn’t last forever.

Home, again

Last night at this time I was driving east on I-90, Kyanne next to me in the front seat, kiddos sleeping (or nearly sleeping) in back. We’d stopped for the last time in Ellensburg for Chinese food and a bathroom break, and as we hit the road on that final stretch, the sky pinkened over the mountains and cast a lovely, soft light over the hills. It is my favorite time of day to drive through beautiful country.

One week ago at this time we were all heading east, the sun setting in the rearview mirror as we drew closer to Bozeman. When we rolled into the driveway, crunching over the gravel, my dad was sitting on the front step waiting for us. I stepped out of the car, stretched my legs, and breathed the most beautiful air in the world.

This evening, I stood outside one of my favorite places in Seattle, waiting for Matt and the kids to come and pick me up. They’d dropped me off for a little alone-time while they looked at camping gear. The air was warm and smelled nothing like the mountain air I breathed in yesterday morning; instead it was a combination of coffee, food from the cafe next door, and the faintly marine scent from Puget Sound not far away. People milled around me, relaxed. I clutched the book I’d just bought, a memoir by the writer who’s leading my workshop this summer, and thought about where I’ve been in the last couple of days, about how I left one mountain state for another, and how both places are so deeply home, something I’ve written about again and again.

I talk about going home, and I mean it both ways.

Leaving Montana is always hard for me. I used to choke up a little as I drove out of town, even when I felt homesick for my little house right up the street from the Sound. It’s not that I don’t love where I am now. In fact, I still remember returning to Washington after Christmas during my very first year of teaching; I remember the feeling of coming home to a land of wet and green Januaries and feeling like I belonged here. I still feel that. Matt drove us across the West Seattle bridge tonight and I felt the same thing. I watched the soft evening light settle over the water, and I thought, I love this city. But a piece of me is planted in another state, too. Sometimes I wonder if my children, who are Washingtonians by birth, will feel that in their blood.

It was a beautiful week. Kyanne was a fabulous road trip partner and I found myself wondering how we’ve been friends for a decade without experiencing this until now. We took the kids to the splash park, made our own solo trek to the Lewis and Clark Caverns with a side trip to the Heritage Headwaters Museum in Three Forks, checked out the Farmer’s Market, drank a lot of coffee, hiked to a waterfall, watched some pretty spectacular fireworks, and saw some even more spectacular sunsets. Not a bad way to kick of July. Kyanne weathered lots of hours in the car with two children who were not her own, and she didn’t seem too ruffled when they became overtired and whiny and unreasonable. Instead, she took pictures of them when they were a.) adorable or b.) asleep.

Strangely, I think one of my favorite memories of the trip is one that doesn’t have much to do with the mountains or the sunsets or the sweet, sweet mountain air. On the Fourth of July, my parents’ neighbors invited us to a barbecue in their backyard. Matt and I went a couple of years ago, when Isaac was just a baby. They have a little girl just about Suzannah’s age, so we thought that might be fun, and Suzannah remembered that. This year we arrived to several kids tearing around the yard, playing in a large inflatable pool and jumping on a trampoline (with a safety net. Every house but ours had a trampoline when I lived there, it seemed, and none of them had safety nets and someone was always nearly breaking their neck on them, but now people surround them with these nets and therefore I didn’t mind if my children were allowed to jump with abandon).

“Do your kids have bathing suits?” our hostess asked.

My kids had spent the afternoon in bathing suits already as we’d recently returned from the splash park. I briefly thought about walking them back over to Grandpa and Grandma’s house and wrestling them into their cold, damp suits -- and quickly decided that they could just get their shorts and t-shirts wet, if they wanted. I stripped off Isaac’s t-shirt and he spent the next three hours tearing around the lawn, throwing himself in and out of the pool. A couple of the older boys, experienced big brothers, played with him good-naturedly. Suzannah went nuts on the trampoline. The kids set up a sprinkler underneath, so they jumped in squishy, wet, delighted joy. I sat on a lawn chair, munching my mom’s fruit pizza, and watched my kiddos run around like wild things, so unselfconsciously themselves, so in the moment, and I thought, this is everything wonderful about summer.

Later, we wandered over to another neighbor’s house for a fireworks show that rivaled the one at the fairgrounds. It began with a free-for-all with the kids; they shot off a bunch of those parachute things, followed by about a half an hour of unlimited sparklers. Then things got real. The only thing missing was the accompanying radio program, and afterwards we only had to walk back across the street. This is Montana, people.

I will not write about how my son screamed, “I don’t wanna go inside!” as I carried him across the street, or about how he refused to put on his pajamas and thrashed around on the floor, bare-bottomed and wailing and just done until absurd o’clock that night. I sat with him on the floor in my parents’ bedroom, speaking quietly, waiting him out, reminding myself that in a few days I would be able to hand him off to his father and be all, “You take this one for awhile!” Eventually, he turned to me pitifully and said, “Where my jammies?” He allowed me to put them on, and then he crawled grumpily into bed.

And it’s funny, isn’t it -- how in the moment, I was frazzled and exhausted and wanted to howl right along with him, but a few days later I think of that moment with something resembling tenderness, both for my overstimulated little son and for my desperate mama self. And I love that moment, that snapshot. This is the absurdity of parenthood -- that we look back on those moments that take us to the edge of our sanity, and we fall even deeper in love with the fierce and funny little people who threaten to push us over.

Jury Duty, Spring Break, and Loving the Ordinary

It’s the season for cherry blossoms scattering across the sidewalks, for running outside in a t-shirt, for falling in love (again) with the state I’ve grown to call home over the past decade. It’s also the season for dusting off this blog from its winter sleep, although I last updated in March. (Still, I’ve driven through a snowstorm since then.)

I’m supposed to be grading papers tonight. Grades are due on Friday or something, and we have conferences next week, and I have a large stack of senior essays awaiting feedback from my purple Pilot pen. (I prefer green, but I can’t find any of my green pens. I have about six purple pens floating around and so they will have to do, but I think the absence of green in my little red canvas pen pouch is inhibiting my ability to just get this done.) I hauled these essays to Montana with me last week and spent several hours grading them at my favorite coffee shop in my hometown, then spent a few more hours grading them at my parents’ dining room table after my kiddos were tucked into their beds, but after a day of that I decided not to let them have any more of my spring break.

So spring break is partly where I’ve been, and before that, it was jury duty, to which I reported rather cheerfully on a Monday morning a few weeks ago, not really believing I’d be chosen to serve on a trial but would spend a day or two sitting around and reading a book. Out of a couple hundred of us, what were the odds? But of course I was picked in the first group, and in that group, despite my valiant efforts, I found myself sitting in a jury box. Right in front. Juror #2. For two weeks.

The timing couldn’t have been worse, really. I had just spent two full weeks out of the classroom for senior IB orals, and I couldn’t even comprehend a month. I taught each class a grand total of two times between finishing orals and beginning jury duty. Still, when we were given the opportunity to explain why serving would present a hardship, the handful of people who were excused said things like, “I’m the only wage earner in my family, I have three kids, and if I don’t work for two weeks, we’ll have a tough time making rent.” I had to scramble a bit, and it certainly wasn’t ideal, but I know exactly how fortunate I am to have a job in which I still get paid for jury duty and don’t have to use any of my sick days.

And anyway, it’s a great experience. I was a little surprised at the amount of “advice” I received on getting out of jury duty. I’m going to go ahead and assume that most of it wasn’t serious -- at least I hope not, because I can’t imagine actually representing myself as a total whackadoo just to avoid it. Also, at the end of the trial, the judge thanked us and said, “We know it’s a great inconvenience for just about everybody to take this much time away from their lives, but if we only kept people for whom it was easy, we would only have one kind of juror.” A fair point. Also, I learned a lot. I honestly gained a tremendous amount of respect for both lawyers and judges. The courtroom proceedings were occasionally boring (mostly after lunch, which is a tough time of day for me to sit still and not speak or move -- yawn) but mostly fascinating. And it wasn’t lost on me that the twelve random people on this jury would be responsible for making decisions that would impact real people in real ways. When my students asked me if I’d do it again, I said yes, I absolutely would. It wasn’t always fun, but it felt important. And I found small ways to make the experience enjoyable, since it was outside my daily routine; to counter the afternoon chaos of driving to pick up Suzannah from my friend Bonnie’s house or Morgan’s work and switching cars at the transit center before dashing to pick up Isaac so late in the afternoon, I left a little early each morning -- early enough to walk to the coffee shop across from the courthouse and drink a hot chocolate as I watched the streets shake off their morning sleepiness. I read half of Midnight’s Children. I wrote a lot. I took some quiet, head-clearing, solitary walks. I had a nice long lunch break each day, much longer than what I get at school. All that, I will miss. (Sometimes it’s good to step just outside the boundaries of normal, everyday routine, and find the hidden graces there.)

Oh -- and I was the presiding juror. No one seems surprised by this, which, I guess, means I’m bossy. All I know is that no one else seemed to want it (which surprised me), and also, facilitating conversations is actually part of my job, and maybe I was missing that just a bit.

We finished up just in time for Easter weekend, a visit from my parents, and spring break. The day after Easter, the kids and I drove back to Montana with my parents and spent four blissful, relaxing days in Bozeman. April is generally not the most attractive time of year in my home state. When we spent spring break there five years ago, Suzannah built a snowman with her grandma in the backyard, and I went jogging through piles of slush on the roads. Three years ago, we drove to Montana for my grandmother’s eightieth birthday and encountered snow worthy of December. This time, we were blessed with sunshine and temperatures nearing seventy degrees, but the newly-melted snow left the grass matted and brown and the trees are still mostly bare.

And yet, as I breathed the sweet air of my home state as spring struggled upwards from that muddy ground, I understood that I was feeding my soul exactly what it needed. I unplugged. I didn’t read Facebook. I barely checked my e-mail. I ate my mom’s homemade muffins with gjetost in the mornings, I jogged up the highway towards town in a light spring rain, I drank the same coffee I loved when I was twenty-one years old. I spent a couple of hours with someone who changed my life sixteen years ago and who I love to this day. I spent a morning with my mom and the kids at the Museum of the Rockies and followed that with lunch at MacKenzie River Pizza. I ate my dad’s popcorn, made in his 44-year-old popcorn popper -- something I insist upon every time I go home. I had no real agenda. It was a perfect week.

Matt stayed home all week, not really feeling like he could take five days off right now, but he flew into Bozeman late on Friday night. On Saturday afternoon after brunch, the Winslows headed west once again, stopping overnight in Spokane. (We always drive straight to Bozeman from Seattle on the first leg of a trip; heading home, we like to relax.) A cozy dinner at a brewpub, an early night in a comfortable hotel, a leisurely brunch at Huckleberry Bistro before we hit I-90 once again -- it was a lovely end to the week and a nice transition back into teaching and some sort of normalcy, if that’s what you call it.

And even though I appreciate the occasional departures from the normalcy, from the routine -- the hot chocolate across from the courthouse, the solitary walks along unfamiliar streets, a temporary return to the home of my childhood -- it’s also pretty sweet to settle back into the life I live every day here and remember why I love that, too.

Home again, home again...

On Sunday night -- well, really, Monday morning, well after midnight -- I signed online, unable to settle into sleep. It's like that, at the end of a road trip. We'd tried to make the last day of our vacation an easy one, going as far as Spokane on Saturday night. Before we had children, we never would have considered splitting the drive from Bozeman to Seattle into two days, nor would we consider such a thing at the beginning of the trip, all anticipation and eagerness to put in as many miles as possible. But after nearly two weeks of travel, from Washington to Montana to Canada back to Montana, after a couple of colds, after a trip through Glacier National Park and a day in Yellowstone, we thought a nice hotel room halfway on the last day, in a city we enjoy, would be a nice way to stave off post-vacation blues and prevent total meltdown from one or more members of the family.

And it was great, really, a total luxury to sleep in on Saturday morning and then go for a four-mile run with a view of the mountains and then pack and then enjoy a nice lunch with my parents and then hit the road only to stop in time for dinner and a semi-reasonable bedtime. Suzannah snuggled into her bed in the hotel and fell asleep on her own. Isaac willingly went to bed in his pack-n-play (which is a Big Deal; he started the first few nights in bed with me, and my sweet son does love to snuggle but sleeps like a pinball, so if I was hoping for a cozy little temporary return to co-sleeping -- which I was -- I was in for a rude little surprise, plus some happily kicking feet right in the kidneys). Matt brought me a drink from the hotel bar, and we stretched out and read our books in the peace and quiet.

I'll just gloss over the part about how when we arrived at our hotel, after trying unsuccessfully to use our room key like a thousand times and then having it reprogrammed twice (or whatever they do with those dumb little cards) and then having some maintenance guy up to the room, we learned that the main reason none of us could get inside was that it was actually occupied already. We learned this because when the maintenance guy finally got into the room, a pissy voice called out, "Someone's in here, dude." So he called down to the front desk, and they insisted that the room was still assigned to us.

"Well, that's interesting," the maintenance guy said. "I wonder who's in there, then. Either they made a mistake, or someone scooted in there after housekeeping finished up and locked it. They do that sometimes. We've had guys try to make off with a coupla TV's." We were led to a new (unoccupied!) room and given vouchers for free breakfasts in the restaurant for our trouble.

We had all these ambitious ideas about heading out early the next day, but we lingered over our awesome free breakfast -- Matt really rocked the huckleberry pancakes -- and took the kids swimming in the pool so Suzannah could get just a little more mileage out of her new Spiderman kickboard. (She has come a long way in her swimming this summer, and this mama is proud. And Isaac just loves the water, loves to be tossed, loves to jump into it without bothering to look and see if we're actually ready to catch him. Little Dude will be in real swimming lessons next summer, for sure.) After we checked out of our hotel, we stopped for a quick visit to Riverfront Park because we cannot pass up the carousel. And as it turns out, we cannot pass up the Riverfront Rotary Fountain either, especially when it is at least two hundred degrees at noon.

We didn't leave Spokane until three o'clock in the afternoon. The kids, post-splashing and post-lunch (where there may or may not have been some overtired whining and one almost-tantrum) were passed out in the back before we'd finished filling the car with gas. Matt turned to me and said, "I'm just gonna drive until I need gas again, is that cool?"

Crazy weekend traffic just west of Ellensburg added probably an hour to our drive time, but Matt didn't stop until we were nearly home, and then only because we needed a few grocery essentials so we could at least get through breakfast the next morning. I didn't stretch my legs until I climbed out of the car in my own driveway.

I can't describe how much I love the smell of my house after we've been gone awhile. Every time we return from someplace -- not an afternoon away, but a real trip -- the smell of our house reminds me that coming home is awfully sweet.

That feeling lasts for about five minutes. Then the study fills up with luggage and the previously clear kitchen counter fills up with everything that was in the cooler and our snack bags, and I begin to despair about the state of the back seat of the car and its handfuls of crumbs. I am too tired to unpack, but no way can I leave the suitcases until morning, so somehow, in between getting the kids in the pajamas and putting together a late-night supper, I put all their clothes away and stash their suitcases. I unload the duffle bag with Isaac's blankies and Twilight Turtle and Suzannah's Twilight Ladybug and all the sunscreen and beach towels and extra diapers and Suzannah's kickboard. Somehow, I kept putting things away but the house still seemed to be strewn with stuff. So much stuff. (I have never, ever been able to go to sleep after a trip until I've unpacked at least most of everything and put it away.)

And then the blues set in. I wasn't quite ready to let go of this vacation -- I hadn't really felt quite ready to drive out of Montana the day before. I had a really gross sinus infection for a good part of this trip, but in almost every other important way it was a really healthy time for me. I stayed off Facebook entirely (good grief, I seriously need to do that more often) and only logged in to my e-mail three times in twelve days, because the thought of tons and tons of messages just piling up in my inbox made me a little nuts. I connected with people I love a lot, people I don't see often. I filled my lungs with the best air in the world, I dipped my toes in my favorite mountain lake, I went for solitary runs along quiet highways, I watched my children experience Old Faithful for the first time, I saw once again how loved and lucky we are, I had a long-overdue date night with my husband, I read good books. My cup was filled.

It's always a little strange, trying to settle back into normal. Especially late at night, with remnants of our trip sort of scattered all over the house, when I'm still feeling a slightly sticky layer of sunscreen on my skin, applied in a different city. When I've slept awkwardly against a car window and gotten a little carsick trying to read as we wound around over the pass.

So I was just sort of puttering around, unable to settle down and relax. I signed online, frittered around there for awhile. Glanced at the news. Learned that conditions were perfect for viewing a meteor shower after midnight.

I grabbed Matt's hand and said, "You have to come outside with me." And that's how we found ourselves lying on our backs on our rotting old (soon to be replaced) deck in the middle of the night, gazing up at the stars. Our neighborhood is quiet, but I could hear soft laughter from a few streets away; I wondered if people were out there with the same idea.

I tried not to think about spiders in my hair as my eyes adjusted to the night, and then I wondered why I don't spend more time lying on my back on my rotting old deck gazing up at the stars. It wasn't quite the same as appreciating the stars under a wide-open sky in the mountains of Montana, of course, but it was its own wonderful thing, framed by the outlines of the huge trees at the edges of our yard. And after a moment, I saw the first meteor, streaking across the inky sky.

We didn't stay outside long. We watched a handful of those meteors, those sudden little blazes of light, there and then gone. And then I sat up, rubbing my bare arms, kissed my husband, and went inside. Sometimes all it takes to beat the post-vacation blues is to notice something wonderful quite literally in my own backyard.