This magical moment

Days like today remind me to live in gratitude for this place, for our little house in our lovely little neighborhood, just up the street from the shore of Puget Sound, where the soundtrack to our weekends is birdsong, the rumble of lawn mowers, and the joyful shrieks of children who have finished their breakfast cereal and told that no, they don't need to watch Netflix. Because it's a beautiful day.

The morning was bright with sunshine when I woke to the sound of my children's boisterous Saturday morning activity. (I use "boisterous" to spin their arguing in the best possible light. The truth is that they were being totally obnoxious and all up in each other's business.) We turned them loose outside as soon as we could. Matt mowed the lawn while they played with kids across the street; after lunch, he walked them over to Zannah's best friend's house for a birthday party, a fantastic backyard gathering in which Matt and I were also free to hang out, eat, drink, chat with the other adults, and watch the kids pelt each other with water balloons. I treated myself to my first pedicure of the season during the first hour of the party and headed over afterwards. At one point Matt walked back to our house to finish mowing the backyard and go for a run. I left once to scrub my kitchen, which was still full of breakfast dishes and spatters from the grill Matt used to make French toast. We popped in and out, sharing pot stickers from a nearby teriyaki place and chocolate birthday cake. Our hostess poured me a glass of dry Reisling, and I sipped it on the deck, chatting with other parents and half-watching the kids.

Shortly before five, I took my exhausted children home. I stuck one in the bathtub and one in the shower; they were covered with a sheen of sugar, dirt, and sweat. My son's mouth was ringed with remnants of birthday cake; Suzannah's lips were stained blue from Otter Pops. Their bare feet were grubby. Their hair clung to their sweaty cheeks and foreheads.

I love all this. I love that my children spent nearly all of their waking hours outside today. I love that we live in a neighborhood where we can pass the children back and forth: Our yard after school, yours after dinner. This yard on Saturday mornings, that yard on Sunday afternoons. Matt takes the kids to the park and swings by to pick up their friends on the way. We meet after school on the playground and say, "Why don't you send 'em over for awhile?" We intervene when someone's foot accidentally connects with someone's lip during a spirited game of tag, or when someone gets a little too enthusiastic with hurling water balloons at close range, but for the most part we can let the kids just be kids. We can let them just be.

Today there were no guided activities, no structured games, no Pinterest crafts we could later share on social media--just the comfortable being. The magic of childhood requires exactly this: that we let them run away from us, create their own games, and navigate their own roles. Figure it out, my loves. Over there. We are here, we are nearby, but we will not interfere in your world. Because deep down, we remember that the best part of childhood had nothing to do with whether or not our mothers decorated our birthday cakes or brought them home from the store and everything to do with the secret world we inhabited when they stepped back just enough to let it be ours. And the world we are learning to inhabit as your parents, this world in which we watch you grow and become and be from this barely tolerable distance, is equally full of magic.

For the record

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

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

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

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

Bless. This is why I love Facebook. But.

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

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

Any. Day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But all moments are not so fraught:

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

Quiet within the chaos

It was a beautiful Saturday. The air smelled like pure heaven this morning, crisp and cool and sweet. I parked the car, walked to the middle of my driveway, and just looked up at the sky, breathing. Breathing. The neighborhood was quiet, except for the birds; they were already greeting the dawn in ecstatic song.

I made it, I thought. I'm here. I'm home. This moment is mine.

I let myself into the house, kicked off my shoes, dropped my purse to the floor, draped my hoodie over my desk chair, and walked into the kitchen to warm up a couple of my special breakfast egg "muffins" -- paleo and whole30 approved, and yes, isn't that so precious. But they're delicious, and I hadn't eaten anything but a handful of cheese puffs and a Cherry Coke since last night's 11:30 "dinner." My son padded into the kitchen.

"Hello, Mommy," he said. He turned around to trot back to his room -- or to ours, to wake up his daddy.

"Come here, Bud," I said. He returned to my hug, kissed me sweetly on the cheek.

I finished my breakfast quickly; I only wanted to quiet my hunger with something that felt truly nutritious and then fall into bed. Matt was still there. I crawled in next to him, slid my cold hands against his back.

"This bed is the most wonderful place in the world," I said. "I've been thinking about this moment for hours and hours. Forever."

We talked sleepily for a few minutes. He was just waking up; I was about to give in to the deepest slumber. We reminisced about last year's lock-in, about how I'd come home for a nap around two in the morning because I had to to take Suzannah to a track meet shortly after seven. About how I'd been irritated by the messy kitchen and thought I should just stay up and watch Friends and clean it. These are the kind of ridiculous fights we have.

"I left the kitchen in pretty good shape this time," Matt said. Indeed he did. I arrived home to clean, wiped counters, although I was so tired I wouldn't have cared if it had been otherwise. We laughed for a few minutes, snuggled sleepily, and then he got up to make breakfast for the kids and I pulled the covers around myself, took a moment to appreciate the sheer physical comfort of our bed, and lost consciousness.

I choose to spin this as a cozy moment because it is one. Even though I looked at the clock shortly past one this morning and thought, "Hm. When Isaac was born, my water broke around one in the morning, I think. He was born just after five. We took him home a couple hours after that. So basically I just have to get through all of childbirth and then I can go home to bed." Those were my thoughts halfway through this year's leadership lock-in; I'd downed a latte at six and a Starbucks Doubleshot out of a can around, I don't know, midnight? But I was struggling. I hit my second wind a little later, only to find myself desperately struggling to stay awake at four o'clock in the morning. My friend and fellow chaperone managed to curl up on the concrete floor of the commons area and nap, but I knew that would be futile, so I didn't even try.

Free time--the hours between three and six o'clock in the morning--are hardest. Kids either find little corners to curl up and nap or they spend those hours being hyper and insufferable. Some of the kids with energy to burn played in the gym; the ones near me watched videos on their phones and screamed with laughter. I resisted the urge to punch them in the throat, only because I am thirty-seven and not seventeen, not because they were doing anything wrong. Teenagers at a lock-in are supposed to be silly and ridiculous.

I didn't nap. I alternated between wandering around like a zombie and trying to read (I'd brought a book that is entertaining enough to hold my attention in the middle of the night). Shortly past four, one of the Leadership kids came over with a camera, politely inquired as to whether I was "busy" (no, Sweetie; I'm slumped against a wall), and interviewed me for the lock-in video. (To my pleasant surprise, when they played it at breakfast a couple of hours later, I sounded much more coherent than I felt at the time.) At five, I thought, "I wonder if Becca is up yet. It's eight o'clock in New York." But it was Saturday morning, so I resisted the urge to call her and demand that she talk to me to keep me awake. Shortly before six, kids started to set up tables for breakfast and I thought, I made it. Also, everything my fellow chaperones said for the next half-hour was hilarious. Or maybe they weren't funny, I don't even know. But I laughed a lot.

And it was worth it. This is my third lock-in, and I always think, okay, I've done this, I can check it off, someone else can do it now. But I keep going back, because there is something really beautiful about sharing this experience with other teachers who are also willing to step out of their comfort zones, and with kids who create these safe spaces for each other in which to be vulnerable, reflective, silly, trusting, accepting. I watched two girls who couldn't stand each other during first semester curl up together on a couch and giggle. I saw kids I know have trouble fitting in find a space in which they felt included, and I pray that carries over into the rest of their high school experience. Something about this thing, this event -- it embodies everything I love about teaching, about teenagers, about human potential, really. It's all about kids who are trying to figure out who they are and who they want to be. I listened to freshmen talk about their goals for the rest of their high school years and I listened to seniors talk about what's mattered to them. It was beautiful. I love it. I love it.

And it was a good way to end my week, even though, truth be told, I was dreading it. April has been frenetic. I began the month flying to Minneapolis for IB training over spring break, which was wonderful but not altogether relaxing; I could tell the story about how Matt and the kids drove me all the way to the airport but my suitcase was left behind, for instance. But it all worked out, especially because on that very stressful day of flying my little brother, a pilot, just happened to be at the airport that morning and was waiting on the other side of a hellish security line with a latte in hand, and the next day my family joined me, and Matt stayed with me in my cozy room at the Hilton while his parents lavished attention on our kids, and then we all spent the rest of the week just enjoying our time together.

But it was busy. And by the time all the Winslows had landed safely back in Washington, seventy-five percent of us had colds. I slept in the study for a couple of nights because I didn't want to keep my better half awake with my coughing and, frankly, he wasn't doing so hot himself. And grades were due. And we had conferences, which meant I had to stay at school until eight o'clock for a couple of nights. And because my physical defenses were lowered my emotional ones were as well, so when I encountered a spectacular instance of adult mean girl behavior, I didn't weather it very well; I sent my children over to the neighbor's house and cried for an hour, exactly like a girl who has nowhere to sit in the middle school cafeteria, and I e-mailed Becca, who happened to be online at that very moment and e-mailed me back right away. And that made everything okay, because she gave me the perspective I needed in that exhausted, foggy-headed moment.

Yesterday morning the kids and I had a day off, so I decided to get my hair cut; I didn't really need one, but nothing makes me feel better than a fresh hair cut. I decided that this will be the weekend I deep-clean my oven with baking soda and vinegar. I decided that the kids and I were going to go out and have a cozy lunch together, and then we came home and I let them watch Full House (Suzannah loves it so much!) while I napped on the living room couch. I decided that yesterday, just for a day, I would try my very best to forget about everything but what was right in front of me. These little moments: the way my freshly shampooed hair feels swinging around my shoulders, the way my kids hold my hands when we walk across a busy parking lot, the way the afternoon settles cozily around me when I pull a quilt around my shoulders for a nap, knowing my kids are hunkered down in front of a movie in the next room. Everything else fades away.

This morning, I napped for a couple of hours and then rose to brush my daughter's hair into a ponytail before gymnastics. I collapsed back into bed and slept again. I got up before my family came home, stood under a hot shower, was drying my hair when I heard them return. I told Matt that I wanted to go out for dinner, because if we didn't, I'd just spend the rest of my waking hours slumped on the couch. We headed out in the afternoon sunshine; he dropped me off at Starbucks to write while he took the kids to the park. We ate at our favorite place. We treated the kids to ice cream for dessert. These moments are all so ordinary, like so many we have had before, and yet they are the ones I crave, the ones I think are the foundation of our collective memories. The way I curl up on the couch with a particular quilt, one my aunt made for my college graduation. The way we head out for gymnastics every Saturday. The afternoons in which we play in the sunshine, and wind up at one of our favorite restaurants, and decide where to go for dessert. It could be any weekend, really, but these are the moments are the hard kernels of memory I want to hold in my hand. They become tangible, and for that very reason, I want to make sure I really feel them, their weight and texture, before I tuck my children into bed each night before they wake again, another day older.

I'm very tired, and in one sense I've almost lost half my weekend; I slept through half of our Saturday, and I've felt a little loopy even as I've joined my family in the land of the living. On the other hand, I haven't lost anything. Time churns, it passes so quickly -- I'm grateful for anything that makes me want to hold each moment up to the morning light, to say, I'm here, to breathe, to be thankful for it all.