2017 in Books

I have a handful of half-finished blog entries that I never posted. I've been writing so much, but not posting here. I think I've just been too angry. And maybe that's what's driven me to read like I'm starving, to read more books in a year than I've probably read in my adult life. It's not just for the escape from the horrifying face America has shown in the last year; it's also an act of resistance, just like writing is. It's another way to stay awake, to pay attention, to remind myself that stories matter, to slip inside others' lives and see the world differently. And also to remind myself that human beings are capable of so much creative beauty and brilliance.

2017 wasn't better than 2016, but I read some truly great books. I also read some mediocre books and some that were merely entertaining, but every now and then, I think that's okay. (Don't ask how I have "so much time" to read because I'll punch you in the throat. This is what I do. I haven't watched whatever everyone else has watched on TV this year, except for The Handmaid's Tale and Twin Peaks. I don't make crafty things. I don't bake. I don't go out much. I read at night when my kids are in bed, and I read in line at the store, and I read during soccer practice. Because that's what I do. That's how I keep breathing. That's how I keep learning how to be a better writer. Okay?)

What I read in 2017, not including rereads...

Today Will Be Different, by Maria Semple
I ended 2016 with some pretty heavy reading, so I was in the mood for something a little more fun for New Year's. This delivered exactly that. I enjoyed it in the same way I enjoyed Where'd You Go, Bernadette (and I loved the Seattle setting again, even when she's making fun of it), and I read it in a single day.

Let Me Be Frank With You, by Richard Ford
This is somewhat of a departure from the long, dense Bascombe trilogy; really this is four linked stories set in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Frank Bascombe is now 68, musing on the "Default Period" of his life. I was glad to read it, especially having been as immersed as I was in his inner life just a week ago, and it felt like an appropriate closure (assuming this really is the last we'll hear from him). It's not a book to become wholly absorbed in -- there isn't enough for that -- but it seemed right for a few quiet winter evenings.

Running in the Family, by Michael Ondaatje
Gorgeously written, as is everything I've read by Ondaatje, but also unexpectedly funny. I read this in two sittings and practically ran a blue Papermate dry marking my favorite lines and writing notes in the margins. Brilliantly evocative.

Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance
I wonder if this would be a better book if Vance had waited a little longer to write it.

His Bloody Project, by Graeme Macrae Burnet
Solidly enjoyable. This was an interesting choice for the Booker Prize shortlist, which doesn't usually include crime novels. Although this isn't exactly the "historical thriller" it claims to be, simply because there is never any doubt that Roderick Macrae did, indeed, commit the three murders of which he is accused (and this is made clear from page one, so it's not a spoiler). The setting is the Scottish highlands in the 19th century, and the book is comprised of a series of "found" documents: statements made by witnesses and neighbors, writings by an expert in the "nascent discipline of Criminal Anthropology", an account of the trial, and Roddy Macrae's memoirs, written in prison. The way in which the story unfolds is fascinating, challenging our assumptions about the young prisoner's sanity and the motives for his crime as well as revealing layers of power and class struggle in a particular historical and geographical context. If that sounds heavy, it might be, but the story was engaging enough to keep me reading late into the night and I read it in a single weekend.

Love Warrior, by Glennon Doyle Melton
I thought I would enjoy this at least a little more than I did, but I need a memoir to ground me in someone's experience with a few more concrete details. This felt like a lot of rambling thoughts on love, a few passages I found poignant and appreciated, and a couple of descriptions of the softness of her baby's cheek and the ocean and hot yoga. I just couldn't with all the breathing and the hot yoga. Forty pages from the end I almost threw the book at the wall.

Swing Time, by Zadie Smith
This reminded me a little of reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah in that it seemed to be about so MANY things: class, race, colonialism, to name a few. Which is something I liked, most of the time, but sometimes I felt that just as I was settling into one aspect of the story I was hurtled into another.

I didn't love this the way I loved White Teeth, but I did end up liking it quite a bit. I think the best parts are those that focus on the treacherous dynamics between Tracey and the unnamed narrator; friendships built on arbitrary commonalities in girlhood can be complicated and frankly inexplicable when they continue into adulthood.

Every Falling Star, by Sunju Lee
My daughter just finished this and immediately insisted I read it, too. I wish the epilogue would have been longer; I wanted to read more about the aftermath and how Lee went from kotjebi ("street boy") to educated activist in such a relatively short period of time, and I finished the book with so many questions remaining. Still, the story of his survival on the streets when he was hardly older than my own child is pretty compelling.

Pond, by Claire Louise Bennett
Readers looking for a plot won't encounter one here, but I found these meditations? musings? ramblings? delightfully absorbing. I love Bennett's language and the way she slips us into the ordinary circlings of a woman's mind, of the close attention paid to the most ordinary moments; these are what make a life.

Strangers in Their Own Land, by Arlie Russell Hothschild
For me, this accomplished what Hillbilly Elegy did not. I appreciated Hochschild's tone; a Berkeley liberal, she forges real relationships with Tea Partiers in an attempt to cross the "empathy wall." I think I'm still a bit baffled by the attention we're suddenly given to the "loss" of the white working class; this drives home the point that we never had them to begin with. And it's not as though poor whites are the only folks who have a working class that feels forgotten or like "strangers in their own land." But she does explain their perspective in a way that I think more of us need to understand if we're going to have any hope of becoming less divided. Is that possible? I'm still not sure.

Giovanni's Room, by James Baldwin
Just devastatingly, astonishingly good. We should all read every single thing Baldwin ever wrote.

The Hunger Angel, by Herta Müller
Shortly before the end of WWII, Leo Auberg, a German Romanian, is deported to a Soviety labor camp. His story emerges through vignettes that are connected not so much by any sort of linear plot but with stunningly poetic language.

Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders
Weird, wonderful, compulsively readable. Brilliant from start to finish.

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick
Barbara Demick follows the lives of six North Koreans who ended up defecting, and the stories that unfold give a clearer picture of the reality of North Korea than anything I've ever read. Gritty, intense, and heartbreaking. It's so strange to read these stories and think about what my life looked like at the very same time; it's difficult to believe a country like this exists now.

Good as Gone, by Amy Gentry
Possibly? Probably? inspired by the Elizabeth Smart story, with plenty of twists (mostly predictable, some not). A fairly entertaining one-day read when I needed a distraction after a grueling week.

The Small Backs of Children, by Lidia Yuknavitch
This book is stunning -- difficult to stomach, but difficult to put down. Yuknavitch takes us to the place where art meets violence, and the thing that cannot survive is our complacency. Many parts of it are reminiscent of her memoir, The Chronology of Water, a book I keep close to my writing desk.

If Yuknavitch were a man, its brilliance wouldn't even be questioned, but that's a different conversation.

History of Wolves, by Emily Fridlund
I read this book within 24 hours, completely absorbed, and I absolutely loved it.

Linda is a teenager living in the north woods of Minnesota, the only child of her parents who stayed behind in their primitive cabin after the other members of their failed commune left. Over the course of one summer she befriends the family who moves in on the other side of the lake, especially four-year-old Paul and his young mother. The effects of the events that unfold that summer follow Linda well into adulthood. This is all I knew of the book when I picked it up, and I think it's best to let the unease build without knowing much about it.

It's not a perfect book; I wished the two main threads of the story could have been connected a bit more smoothly. However, that didn't keep me from loving it. Fridlund's prose is gorgeous and absolutely precise, and that is what made the effect of the tragedy, when it finally hit, all the more devastating. When I finished I handed it immediately to my husband and said, "You need to read this."

Big Little Lies, by Liane Moriarty
Even though I've had several friends recommend this book, I had zero desire to pick it up before this week. I thought it was a book about a bunch of white ladies and, I don't know, mommy wars? Nope.

However, I bought it right before a flight home at the end of a trip; I was tired and didn't feel I could concentrate on the book I'd brought along, but I didn't feel like zoning out with a movie, either. Spending nine dollars on a mass-market paperback seemed reasonable, I thought, for a fun, mindless, two-star read. I like those sometimes.

But I actually had so much fun reading it. I hate flying, and I was sad for my flight to end because I was so absorbed. I stayed up late that night, even a bit jet-lagged, because I could not go to sleep until I'd finished. It was funny and sharp and poignant and I love what Liane Moriarty did with all of her characters. The satire was spot-on. I laughed a lot. And perhaps I was just feeling incredibly punchy by midnight, but I cried at one spot, too. I thought I could predict everything; I couldn't. I'm actually trying to convince my husband to read it. The cover does not appeal to him at all, but it didn't appeal to me either.

I realized I didn't actually know much about this book before I read it; I was sailing along on my assumptions. Later, I appreciated the fact that I had no idea what I was actually in for. Totally worth the nine dollars.

H is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald
In my time with Mabel I've learned how you feel more human once you have known, even in your imagination, what it is like to be not.

This book made me care about falconry in the way that Pat Conroy makes me care about basketball and The Citadel. I likely wouldn't have picked it up on subject matter alone, but I was lured by the promise that this book is also about grieving and loving, and, yes, rediscovering what it means to feel human. It is one of the most beautifully written memoirs I have ever read. Macdonald also parallels her story with that of T.H. White, author of The Once and Future King and aspiring falconer himself. I kept thinking of this part of White's novel as I was drawn deeper into Macdonald's memoir:

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

And it seems to me that in this is a particularly fitting time and reason to read this book: to learn something, to fully immerse myself in a world completely unfamiliar to me, to believe that despite the horror and uncertainties of the world our ordinary lives can be works of artistry.

The Past by Tessa Hadley
Four siblings gather at their grandparents' old home for a three-week "vacation"--and to decide what to do about the house. Tessa Hadley slips us into the lives of these characters while they revisit memories and navigate their relationships with each other. Attempts to summarize this book make it sound either like it could be given to melodrama or just be really, really boring; happily, it is neither. This is the first I've read of Hadley's work, and I enjoyed it so much--her writing is so absorbing, and her prose is close to perfect.

Fever Dream, by Samanta Schweblin
Apologies to the students whose papers I'd intended to grade the evening I picked up this strange little novel...because this is a book that should be read straight through in one sitting. It's unsettling and frightening and lovely in the best of ways. The title is perfect.

Moonglow, by Michael Chabon
Is it fiction? Is it memoir? Does the line between them matter? However you want to categorize this book, Chabon's writing is brilliant, and I'm a sucker for stories like this--stories gleaned from his dying grandfather's bedside. It is everything you might imagine that to be.

Narrow River, Wide Sky, by Jenny Forrester
Jenny Forrester's new memoir is gorgeously written; she is both unflinchingly honest and generous of heart when she navigates the tricky territories of family and the ways in which place can shape our identities. And while her story is grounded in a very specific time and place, the truth of the story transcends it. I deeply appreciate a writer who can capture the beauty of a place without romanticizing it and write about people in all their messiness while still allowing them to be fully human.

Another Day in the Death of America, by Gary Younge
On November 23, 2013, I went out for a cozy pizza dinner with my family. Afterwards, my husband took our kids for ice cream and I sat in the cafe of a bookstore around the corner, writing in my journal. It was a perfectly ordinary Saturday. I recall it not because it was noteworthy or newsworthy; it was no Sandy Hook, after all. I simply happened to document it in my own quiet way. But it wasn't quiet for everyone. It was also a day in which ten kids in America lost their lives to gun violence. It could have been any day; Gary Younge chose it at random. This, obviously, is the point.

Younge shifts our focus from statistics to stories, putting a human face on each of these tragedies. And yes, no matter the circumstance, each death is a tragedy, leaving in its wake the same grief any mother of any child would feel were her child to die in her arms. These kids--ranging in age from 9 to 19--were black, white, and Latino. They lived in inner cities and in the rural Midwest. They defy easy categorization. This is not a book about gun control (although as Younge correctly states, it is a book made possible by the lack of it). These are stories of human beings, told with clear-eyed compassion. Younge is unflinching in his honest portrayal of each family; he doesn't shy away from conversations of race, class, crime, or "personal responsibility." It would be impossible to leave them out; each shooting happens in a specific context. In her review of this book for the NYT Jennifer Senior writes

Many of the kids in his book, maybe most of them, made bad decisions at some juncture. Mr. Younge acknowledges that. But making bad decisions is also what kids do, especially in adolescence. The difference is that some children are lucky enough to make mistakes in an environment that simply nudges them back on course. “That does not make you a better person,” Mr. Younge writes. “It simply makes you better equipped to be safe in a country where guns are in plentiful supply.”

Younge's perspective is also interesting; he is a Briton, and he is also a black man, so he is well aware of the vast differences between America's gun culture and that of virtually every other "civilized" country. Add to that the fact that he is now raising black children in America--he has "skin in the game," as he rightly puts it.

I believe with everything in me that we learn from each other by hearing each other's stories. As a mother, and as a teacher who can see her students reflected in these stories, I can tell you this book broke my heart. As a human being, I can tell you it's required reading.

The Republic of Imagination, by Azar Nafisi
I read this as I taught Reading Lolita in Tehran to my junior IB literature class for about the eighth time, so I couldn't help but compare the two. Where Reading Lolita in Tehran focuses on the lives of Nafisi and her students in Iran as they read works of western literature in secret, The Republic of Imagination shows us a view of America through the perspective of a new American citizen reading its literature. At times it felt as though she were trying to do too much with this book, and I'm not sure I was ever clear on what, exactly, it was supposed to be. It was a bit of preaching to the choir, I guess, and why was James Baldwin only given the epilogue, and not an entire section like Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis, and Carson McCullers? All the same, the teacher in me appreciated much of it, and I definitely want to reread The Heart is a Lonely Hunter after reading her section on Carson McCullers (I read it when I was in my early twenties, and I think I'd read it differently now. Better).

This book wasn't quite as compelling as Reading Lolita in Tehran, but it made a nice companion.

The Givenness of Things, by Marilynne Robinson
First of all, I think Marilynne Robinson is brilliant. Brilliant novelist, brilliant essayist. But her novels, for me, are both intensely thought-provoking and deeply pleasurable reading; I was utterly absorbed in Gilead, Home, and Lila.

This essay collection is incredibly rich, but it is real work to read. It took me four months to make my way through the seventeen essays. I found myself underlining and making notes as I read, and ultimately it was absolutely worth the effort, but I didn't find myself excited to pick it up each time I did. (This is not vacation reading!) Still, I'm glad to have read this -- I think I'm better for it -- and it's one I'll be glad to keep on my shelf for now.

The Underworld, by Kevin Canty
The story is based on the fire that occurred in a silver mine in Idaho in the 1970's, a tragedy in which 91 miners lost their lives. More than that, though, it's the story about the bonds within a community and the dark underside of a small mining town. Canty writes about a place close to home for me; he goes right to its heart, and I think he gets it absolutely right. I actually think there's enough here for much more story to unfold, though, which is perhaps my only complaint. I read this in 24 hours, but would have stayed for much more.

Into the Water, by Paula Hawkins
I actually enjoyed this more than The Girl on the Train; there were parts that had me rolling my eyes and some of the dialogue was pretty ridiculous BUT WHATEVER I chose this book precisely because I needed a fun end-of-the-school-year mystery. This is a story told from multiple perspectives, which seems to be problematic for some folks, but I have to say -- I don't think any single character could have kept me engaged for the entire story, so it worked for me.

Anything is Possible, by Elizabeth Strout
This is a companion to My Name is Lucy Barton, fleshing out the stories of secondary characters in that novel. I suspect I appreciated this more because I read Lucy Barton first, although it's not strictly necessary. This book reminded me very much of Olive Kitteridge -- it's really a novel-in-stories. Each adds a layer to what came before, and the whole is sublime. I loved every moment of reading this.

4321, by Paul Auster
This was exactly the sort of wholly absorbing novel I wanted to read at the beginning of summer. This weighs in at a hefty 866 pages, and I loved every moment. As the novel opens, Auster lays the groundwork for Archibald Ferguson to enter the world in 1947 where, for a few seconds, he is "the youngest human being on the face of the earth."

From that point, the plot diverges, and we are given four parallel versions of Archie's life, with wildly varying outcomes but also with similar threads running through all of them--a tragedy at his father's business, a girl he loves and is doomed never to have, the enduring love of his mother, and the context of the postwar years through Vietnam. It's a look at the different paths a life can take, given the exact same origin story and the exact same genetic material.

Comparisons to Kate Atkinson's Life After Life are inevitable, but it's a distinctly different book, and I am in awe of Auster's achievement: the way he brings his characters thoroughly to life, how he shows the ways in which people can influence each other, and the force of the writing itself--it drew me in immediately and held me until the end.

Salt Houses, by Hala Alyan
I read this novel, a story of a Palestinian family's displacement, in two days. Spanning four generations and three different continents, and told through multiple perspectives, the story is grounded in intimate moments between family members: mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, husbands and wives, siblings, grandparents and grandchildren. It's a story of what it means to lose one's homeland, and how that loss ripples through the generations that follow.

Alyan writes with the language of a poet--which makes sense, as she was that before she turned to prose--and while the story is often painful, it is also beautiful, even funny, and deeply human.

Idaho, by Emily Ruskovich
Devastatingly, staggeringly good. I will follow Emily Ruskovich anywhere after this.

Having only the barest idea of what this was about--some unspeakable tragedy that sends a mother to prison and destroys a family--I wasn't sure I would be able to stomach this. But it's not a mystery or a thriller; rather, it is a deeply moving exploration of memory and redemption. The force of the story lies in its language, which is exquisite, and its structure. Ruskovich takes us back and forth through time, from the mid-90s back to 1973 and forward to 2025, with stories folding in on themselves and then expanding again. She also tells the story through the perspectives of different characters, including Wade, the bereaved father who is losing his memory; Ann, who marries him within a year of the incident; Jenny, Wade's first wife who is now in prison; and May, Wade's murdered daughter.

This book doesn't provide answers, but it might reveal the ways in which it is possible to go on living with the questions.

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, by Roxane Gay
Courageous and compelling. I'd recommend it to anyone.

The Green Road, by Anne Enright
I love Irish literature, so how is it I've never read Anne Enright? I loved this novel, set in a small Irish coastal town. The first half focuses on each of the four Madigan siblings in turn, providing context for their lives--who left, and who stayed. The second half brings us into the present, when they are reunited at Christmas to discuss with their mother--every inch the Irish family matriarch, head of the dysfunctional family--the possibility of selling the family home. And I thought, of course, this tired old storyline. But in Enright's capable hands, the story is anything but tired. Her observations are clear and true, and her writing is precise, transcendent, reminiscent of Alice Munro. Gorgeous without ever sliding into sentimentality.

All the Missing Girls, by Megan Miranda
I read this entire book on my flight from Orlando to Seattle, and it was a perfect way to pass the hours: twisty and structurally interesting. I hate it when every new novel branded as a psychological thriller is "the next Gone Girl" or "the next Girl on the Train," but it's the same kind of reading experience for me (kind of terrible but fun...terribly fun?), and I did like that I became less and less sure of the characters as well as the narrator as I read on.

Pachinko, by Min Lee
This novel follows one Korean family through several generations as they are exiled from their homeland, telling the stories of humans struggling to find a home in the world, "caught in the indifferent arc of history." I read this book in just a few days, despite its length; the writing is smooth and unadorned, the plot never dragging. I particularly appreciate the women, who lend the story its real strength. A page-turner for sure, and a look into a historical context I knew little about.

The Bingo Palace, by Louise Erdrich
Beautiful novel about hope, dreams, the clash of the contemporary and the past, the sacred and the secular. I loved returning to the world Erdrich created in this cycle of novels. I've read Love Medicine a handful of times (I teach it in senior IB literature) and I will always revere it as one of her best, but I love reading beyond it as well, and I love the interconnectedness of stories and characters. Every time I read her work it feels like going home.

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things, by Jenny Lawson
I like Jenny Lawson, but I like her blog better than her book. After awhile the writing in this one felt a bit wearying to me. I think I just appreciate her in smaller doses.

(Still like her better than Dooce.)

Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood
This has been on my to-read list for a very, very long time. Why, why did this take me so long to pick up? This is one of Atwood's best. I like everything she writes and I often LOVE it, yes, IN ALL CAPS. I teach The Handmaid's Tale, and The Blind Assassin is at the top of the list of books I want to re-read. And even though I awarded a mere two stars to The Heart Goes Last, I still had fun reading that (as she must have had fun writing it, even though it was nowhere near her best work).

Anyhow, this novel is everything I love about Atwood: the sharp voice, the compelling plot, the characterization. And she's joined the ranks of writers who've made me fall in love with contemporary Victorian historical fiction. I spent an entire evening reading everything I could find about the case on which this novel is based: the story of Grace Marks, the Irish-Canadian maid who was convicted of murdering her employer and his mistress, and later pardoned.

This book had me completely absorbed throughout a flight from Seattle to Minneapolis and a few lovely afternoons at the lake, but it would also have been an absolutely delicious read on gusty, rainy nights or snowy afternoons. I loved it.

Chicago, by Brian Doyle
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

I fell in love HARD with Mink River and knew then that I'd follow Brian Doyle anywhere. I read The Plover and loved it almost as much. Chicago falls in that tiny crack between the two. Mink River will always be my favorite of Brian Doyle's novels, but Chicago gave me everything I love in his writing. I really don't even know how to write about it. If you've never read anything by Doyle, read Mink River. Fall in love. Then read everything else. Chicago is absolutely transcendent, like all of his work. The folks who complain that there's not much in the way of plot aren't technically wrong, but still, I couldn't put it down. The characters are everything. His language is everything. There's a reason I shed true tears over Brian Doyle's death this year.

The Essex Serpent, by Sarah Perry
I picked this up because of its gorgeous cover and because I have a thing for good contemporary writers who evoke Victorian times, I guess. (And one reviewer's nod to Wilkie Collins helped, too. I do love an actual deliciously Gothic Victorian novel.) On the surface it's about the mystery of the Essex Serpent, a mythical creature terrifying the residents of a small village with rumors of its return. Enter Cora Seaborne, a widow and amateur naturalist, and Will Ransome, a devoted husband, father, and minister with a devotion to God and reason. An unlikely friendship blossoms between the two, and this relationship forms the true heart of the novel. But it's not just the two of them; through all of her characters Sarah Perry shows us a deep understanding of human nature in all its complexity. I was drawn completely into the story because of the plot, but eventually the plot was beside the point. Perry's writing is lovely. It's the perfect novel to wrap up with over a long, cozy weekend.

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas
It's not often that I would categorize a YA novel as Required Reading for everyone I know, but this one is pretty solidly exactly that.

The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, by Stephanie Coontz
Nothing was terribly surprising for me here, but a thoroughly researched response to anyone who still holds this bizarre nostalgia for the 1950s, or anyone who believes that all of our country's problems can be traced back to some sort of moral breakdown of the family. I appreciated the 2016 update to the original, but the whole thing still reads as relevant and timely.

The Legacy of Lucy Little Bear, by Barbara Robidoux
I'd never have found this book if it weren't for a book club I'm a part of, as I think it's only available on Amazon? But I'm so glad I had the opportunity to read it. It's a story of life on the reservation, of the reality of missing and murdered women, of a beautiful yet unforgiving setting and deeply human characters. When I picked it up before bed one night I thought I'd read the first chapter; instead I read the entire thing. Parts reminded me of Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine.

We Crossed a Bridge and it Trembled: Voices from Syria, by Wendy Pearlman
This is the story of Syria's revolution and war, told entirely through the voices of Syrians themselves. Heart-stopping in its power. This was a library book, but I didn't want to return it after I finished, so I suspect this will be one I add to my personal collection. It's also one of the books I would unequivocally recommend to any human seeking to learn from other people's stories--and that should include every single one of us, by the way.

We Were Witches, by Ariel Gore
"If you don't like the fairy tales you've been handed, Ariel, you don't have to conform to them. You can reauthor them. You can write your story however you choose."

I thought nothing could top The End of Eve as my favorite work by Ariel Gore, but if this doesn't top it, it comes awfully close. I knew from page one that I was in, and from there the book just soared.

Also, I haven't read Tillie Olsen since college, but this book makes me think I need to rediscover her.

You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, by Sherman Alexie
I have loved Sherman Alexie's writing for my entire adult life. I don't even know what to say about this yet except that this is arguably his most powerful work so far.

The Husband's Secret, by Liane Moriarty
I never would have picked this up if I hadn't surprised myself by enjoying Big Little Lies on a flight several months ago. This weekend I was in the mood for that kind of reading experience--entertaining and absorbing, requiring little work or commitment on my end. This delivered, and I read it in a few sittings. The perfect book to curl up with after my first full week of the school year. I don't need to own this book or read it again, but it was pretty enjoyable in the moment.

Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward
I have read some truly phenomenal books this year, so I don't say this lightly, but Sing, Unburied, Sing might be my favorite of 2017. It shattered me in every way I think it was intended to.

Ward returns to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, to a farm near the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, the setting for her earlier novels (Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the Bones). The story is told through the voices of Jojo, a thirteen-year-old boy; his mother, Leonie; and Richie, the ghost of a dead inmate from Parchman, the Mississippi State Penitentiary where Leonie heads with her children to collect their white father, Michael, upon his release. Equally important are River and Mam, Leonie's parents and the people who essentially raise Jojo and his baby sister Kayla, but her choice to tell the story through the perspectives of a young boy and his mother--not to mention a ghost from Riv's past--is brilliant and necessary. We love Pop and Mam from the beginning, but Leonie is more complicated, and the back-and-forth between Leonie and her son draws us not only into their worlds but the sweep of history. It's an important book, and a beautiful one, which is why Jesmyn Ward is possibly my favorite living writer. She tells the truth with a poet's prose, and when it matters most she makes it impossible to look away from the brutal weight of it.

Exit West, by Moshin Hamid
What is a homeland, and what is home? What Hamid does with language in this short novel is powerful; I found myself swept away by his sentences, though not a word is out of place. It's the story of migration and all the ways we lose each other. Timely, moving, strange, and lovely. This wasn't the book I was expecting, but I think it might be better.

Home Fire, by Kamila Shamsie
This is a modern re-visioning of Antigone, set in contemporary London, Amherst, Massachusetts, and the Middle East and featuring Isma, a young Muslim woman, and her younger twin siblings, Aneeka and Parvaiz. A working knowledge of Antigone isn't necessary; more important than the plot are the themes we are asked to grapple with: which is higher, duty to family or country? To follow man's law, or God's?

The thing I most admire in this novel is Shamsie's ability to humanize each character, the ones who might be most easily reduced to caricatures: Britain's Muslim home secretary, for instance. Parvaiz, the son who never knew his jihadist father, a loss that makes him vulnerable. Shamsie's prose, too, is lovely, especially in the last third of the book (when it truly takes flight, in my opinion), and it's a heartbreaking story gracefully told. And even though I'm familiar with the story of Antigone, I wasn't prepared for the ending, a stunner that happens on live television. This one will stay with me, I think.

Autumn, by Ali Smith
This is the first of Ali Smith's works I've read, but it won't be the last. I hadn't planned to pick this up, but I enjoyed so many of the Booker finalists this year that I thought I should finally read her as well. When I finished, I found myself thinking she probably should have won (despite my love for Lincoln in the Bardo). The book has been hailed as the first great "Brexit Novel," but I simply loved her language, her stream-of-consciousness storytelling, and the tenderness between Elisabeth and Daniel. It reminded me a bit of one of my favorite films, Lost in Translation. This is the first in a planned four-novel cycle, and I'm eager to read the rest.

The Good Daughter, by Karin Slaughter
I read Slaughter's Pretty Girls last year -- a gritty mystery novel that delivered a couple of days of pure escapism at the beginning of the school year. Her new novel intrigued me enough to put it on hold at the library months ago. I was expecting a similar experience, but instead this delivered a story with characters I'm still thinking about. The novel begins 28 years after a horrific crime was committed and takes the reader into a looping backwards narrative, connecting the past and present in increasingly layered ways. Karin Slaughter doesn't spare us any of the excruciating details, and I was unhappy about having to read about the same terrible event through multiple perspectives, even though I later understood that particular narrative choice, but what stuck with me were the characters. Karin Slaughter is not Tana French, but I think those who enjoy Tana French might enjoy this one.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing, by Madeleine Thien
I admit that I didn't read The Sellout, and maybe it's spectacular, but after reading Do Not Say We Have Nothing I feel Thien should have taken the 2016 Booker. This is a masterpiece. Reading it reminded me so much of reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun, not only because of the way it brought me into the history of something about which I knew very little (in this case, Mao's Cultural Revolution and the later Tiananmen Square protests) but because of the way she shows this sweeping history through the particular dreams, fears, friendships, and secrets of interconnected families over three generations. Stunning from start to finish, and well worth the time I took with it.

Future Home of the Living God, by Louise Erdrich
This is definitely not Erdrich's masterpiece, although I didn't expect that so soon after her brilliant LaRose. For the first third of the novel, I wasn't sure I even liked it; I don't love the epistolary format, the writing seemed clunkier than the Erdrich I love, and I had a hard time feeling for the characters. But I won't abandon an Erdrich novel. It read quickly, and around 100 pages in I found myself much more invested--at that point I didn't stop reading until I finished. And even Erdrich at her not-best is worth reading. The plot is fascinating, even if it does feel like it's trying too hard to be The Handmaid's Tale, and there are moments when the writing I love shines through. And I still liked it better than Shadow Tag.

Trouble I've Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism, by Drew G.I. Hart
I wish I could convince every single (white) Christian to read this book. Or every single person who loves Jesus and isn't sure what it even means to be a Christian in America anymore (I think I might fall into this category).

But for real, white Christians, we have some WORK to do. This book delivers a lot of truth and some concrete "what to do" baby steps. I love the reviewers who share that this book genuinely shifted their perspective. Hart is brilliant, thoughtful, graceful. Read it, share it.

The Lying Game, by Ruth Ware
I think I liked it slightly better than In a Dark, Dark Wood but maybe slightly less than The Woman in Cabin 10. It served up what I was expecting (and maybe even looking for) during a weekend in which everything was overwhelming and sort of terrible and I wanted a distraction. Not a bad way to hide from the world when the news is serving up so much garbage.

Here I Am, by Jonathan Safran Foer
I had to think about this for a few days after I finished reading, and I'm still not entirely sure how I feel. I was hesitant to pick this one up; I read a few too many unfavorable reviews, I suppose, and it's pretty massive. But I took it along on our anniversary getaway at the ocean, and it was perfect. I didn't want to put it down. It's been several years since I've read anything by Jonathan Safran Foer, but this seems like a departure from his previous work (which I love). It's somewhat less experimental and precious. It's sad in a way I wasn't expecting, and raw, and, for me, just deeply, humanly relatable. I suppose one could argue that he tries to do too much--write this intimate and raw family story set in a historical context much too large to combine them effectively--but it resonated powerfully for me. And his writing is still his writing, which is stunning.

Circadian, by Chelsea Clammer
I have Ariel Gore to thank for this; she shared the first essay, and I bought the book immediately after reading it. This is possibly one of the most brilliant collections of essays I've ever read. Chelsey Clammer is a master of language and form. Every piece awed me. Every one. Stunning.

A Book of Uncommon Prayer, by Brian Doyle
I carried this around with me for months, just to pull out and read when I had a moment. So touchingly human, so funny, so poignant. Brian Doyle breaks my heart with how he transforms every ordinary moment into something worthy of prayer and praise. I don't feel hopeful very often these days, but when I read him, I do. And my heart breaks for the fact that all of his words that will ever be in the world already are.

Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng
This is a fast, plot-driven read that I tore through in one day; it's pretty impossible to put down once the story starts turning. And the story itself is complex, ambitious, tightly-woven, and brought to an impressively crafted end (I was skeptical that could be done, and there are still a few threads that bother me a bit, but that's literature, and that's life). I think the characterization suffered a bit at the hands of the plot, though, and I'm sort of surprised that so many people are ready to call this their favorite of the year. I might be the only reader who prefers Ng's first novel over this one.

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
I'd read much of this collection of essays, as they were originally published in The Atlantic and I think Ta-Nehisi Coates is brilliant, but here they are brought together in a single, immensely powerful volume, one essay for each year of Obama's presidency, each accompanied by a more recent reflection (and those are, honestly, what make this book so poignant and timely). More Required Reading for America.

One year later

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I know. I'm far from Christlike myself.

Anyway.

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

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

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

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

***

So that's where my head is at.

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

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

***

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will never not be angry

I wonder: how many people who would rather see people murdered than vote for any kind of gun regulation at all, ever, are also "pro-life."

Probably most of them. What garbage that all is. (Like, guns are a right, but it's a privilege to access healthcare and services and help, yeah?)

And I wonder how many folks who "don't want to make it about guns" every time we have a mass shooting (Every. Time. We. Have. A. Mass. Shooting.) are also the same folks who wonder why everything "always has to be about race."

What a mess we are.

We don't need prayers. We need gun control. Have a nice day.

Someone I'm no longer friends with was angry with me after Sandy Hook for daring to bring up America's gun problem because it "wasn't the time" to talk about guns. She was "annoyed" that I was "making it all about guns."

She actually used the word annoyed.

But I see that a lot after every mass shooting. (God. "After every mass shooting." That's a thing. That's a thing we say.) I've been reading back through my blog and trying to count all the times I wrote, or tried to write, after a shooting. I should probably just add some sort of "another fucking mass shooting" tag, but all the entries sound the same. It's not changing or getting better and I'm totally, utterly hopeless that it ever will, because we allowed twenty children to be murdered in their classroom and still didn't change anything. My own children could be next. My husband. My students. Me. Anyone I love who ever leaves the damn house. So hey, folks who think it's "not the right time," can you please quick get it on the schedule sometime before the NEXT mass shooting? If we keep with this timeline, you have a few minutes, but not much more than that.

And if you don't think we should be talking about gun control, if you elevate your right to own guns over the right of folks to go to school or church or work or a concert or the public library or the park without someone shooting you, well, you know what you can do with your useless "thoughts and prayers."

I want a different America

I want to live in an America that loves its people as much as it loves its guns.

I want to live in an America that doesn't worship at the altar of guns.

I want to live in an America that doesn't just shrug and say, "Meh, what are you gonna do," after every mass shooting.

I want to live in an America where I don't just expect mass shootings.

I want to live in an America that doesn't just accept mass shootings.

I want to live in an America that cannot contain the phrase "after every mass shooting."

I want to live in an America where the guy on the radio can't begin a sentence with "Every time we see a mass shooting..."

I want to live in an America where churches, schools, concerts, clubs, coffee shops, offices, and workplaces are not targets for gun violence.

I want to live in an America in which elementary school children don't have to fucking practice active shooter lock-downs.

I want to live in an America where a man doesn't say to me, "Maybe if teachers aren't willing to arm themselves, they're not cut out to be teachers." (I want to live in an America where the idea of a teacher with a gun in a room filled with children sounds as insane as it is.)

I want to live in an America where my reality doesn't include a plan about what to do if a man with a gun comes for my classroom.

I want to live in an America where I don't say to my husband, "Of course it's my body between the gun and the kids. We protect kids first. That's our job."

I want to live in an America where I don't have to expect that the people who teach my children would also take a bullet for them.

I want to live in an America where the sight of a lone white man in a theater doesn't make me nearly stop breathing.

I want to live in an America that will call a white man a terrorist when he is a terrorist. I want an America where a terrorist's whiteness won't serve him with the label of a mentally ill lone wolf. I want to live in an America that doesn't push guns into his hands.

I want to live in an America that wakes up out of its complacency.

I want to live in an America that offers more than "thoughts and prayers."

Spectacular beauty, spectacular joy

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

It is spectacularly beautiful.

*

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

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

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

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

Let us all breathe

Labor Day Weekend. Here we are. This is September: it is hot, but temperatures that would leave me limp and miserable in July are bearable now, in this transition between summer and fall. And right now, where I live, I am safe from both hurricanes and fires. Watching the updates of evacuations in Montana is heartbreaking. This afternoon I took my son to a local splash park and watched him play with so many other neighborhood kids, and the sunshine was delicious, and I love these days in which I watch my children just fully immerse themselves in summer childhood: sunscreen, water, new friends made in the moment. And yet, I'm praying for an end to the days of sunshine and heat, and praying for rain. The photographs of Sperry Chalet burning in Glacier Park bring literal tears to my eyes. The places we spent some of our very best days this summer are closed off, evacuated, burning. Please, God, send all the rain to Montana. Bring an early snow. Let my home state breathe again.

*

Here in my other home, the home of my choosing rather than the home of my birth, shadows slide across the sidewalk, long at dinnertime. The sun begins its business of setting early enough to cool the evening air, no matter how hot the afternoon sun. Yesterday morning I rose hours before dawn to drive my parents to the airport, and the dark of four o'clock had a pleasant chill; when I slipped back into bed at five-thirty, I pressed my cold feet against my warm husband and thought, blearily, that soon I will wrap a blanket around my body to ward off the night's chill. And I found pleasure in that thought before I drifted back to sleep.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm ready for September and everything it brings with it. The world keeps turning. Sometimes this feels like an atrocity and sometimes it feels like a comfort.

*

Like every teacher, each June I am desperate for summer. But every August, I am ready to go back. This year, I was ready early; the morning after we flew in from our last trip of the summer, I was back at work. That was weeks ago. I've been at school or at trainings every day since then, with the exception of Friday when I stayed home to paint the hallway bathroom. My children have logged a lot of hours at school with me as we set up my classroom, and they've spent many hours with their babysitter as well while I've been at trainings and professional development and a high-energy union meeting that made me immensely proud to teach exactly where I do. And while some of the early mornings have felt a little rough after the freedom to not be perfectly put together for awhile, the last few weeks have felt good. I couldn't wait to get back into my classroom. The kids helped me scrub the desks, move them together, and assemble supply boxes for each table group. They watched movies on their little DVD player in the computer lab while I sat at my desk and mapped out new curriculum. We watched the solar eclipse outside the library during senior registration, and there was no place I'd rather have been; I watched unfamiliar shadows fall across a deeply familiar place, felt the temperature drop, and soaked in the delighted reactions of my own children and the teenagers sharing eclipse glasses. I settled into this deep, late-summer contentedness in that room. Last week I found myself still there at nearly 4:30 on a Friday afternoon, and I'd settled into such a comfortable groove of productivity in my quiet space that I was reluctant to leave.

It was a good summer, but it was too full; all summer I didn't have two consecutive weekends at home, and I'm so ready to settle back into my routine, my own space. I'm ready to sleep in my own bed and have some measure of control of what I eat, where I go, when I want to go somewhere, what I drive. I already feel protective of next summer. I want the slower weeks, the languid afternoons. I want my kids to cope with boredom, and I don't want to spend each week planning the next trip. I hate for this to sound like a complaint, because it's such a privileged problem to have, and each trip was objectively good, but by the time we returned home in mid-August I was so desperately grateful to just be home. Our cozy house, our backyard. Our summer traditions: swimming in Lake Washington at Madison Beach and eating pizza afterwards, eating lunch outside every day, spending mornings at the playground and afternoons at the splash park, grilling dinner outside.

This weekend I'm trying to balance the last lovely moments of true summer with steady productivity, which keeps my anxiety at bay. Somewhat. Part of it is the normal anticipation of school, the return of the back-to-school dreams, and the frantic hope that my children will be happy and okay in their new classes. My daughter starts middle school, and my son is alone at the elementary school now. Three of us in three different schools will take a little juggling, and I'm eager to find our groove.

This morning I read something I wrote in a journal six years ago, when my daughter was starting kindergarten and I was getting ready to teach new classes. I could have written nearly the same thing today. That soothed me a little.

Facebook also reminds me that three years ago, instead of settling in for an early bedtime before the first day with my students, we tossed toothbrushes and a stuffed puppy in a backpack and rushed our little son to Mary Bridge Children's, where we spent a few anxious days.

Every place my mind lands brings a different sort of perspective: the wider world, and our closer one. Hurricanes, fires. Anxious nights in the ER and the way the world can narrow to the confines of the walls of a hospital room.

The world churns on, and much about the churning world feeds my anxiety, too. I'm anxious about the fact that the entire western half of my home state is on fire and this goes largely overlooked. I'm anxious for my students this year and what Trump's horror of a presidency continues to mean for them. I'm anxious over any number of things I can't control. Maybe this is why I was so eager to return to school this year; I know it's dangerous to focus too much on outcomes when we work so hard against forces we can't control. We might not be able to change the big picture, and certainly not by ourselves, but I believe strongly in the power of doing what we can, where we are. I don't know how else I can continue just breathing in and out.

The burden is light

I'm in a funk right now. It's a strange thing to feel, to write, when the sky is so brilliantly blue and I've just returned from an afternoon at the splash park, but there it is.

I've been waiting for this week all month, this beautiful week of sunshine and pure Pacific Northwest summer (not to be confused with summer in Las Vegas or Orlando), this week in which we have absolutely nothing scheduled. No lessons. No trips. Just the day, stretching before us.

In four weeks I've taken three trips: one with my entire family, one with my husband, and one alone (well, with colleagues, but without anyone in my family), for work. I'm grateful for each of them. Our trip to Montana was everything I love about Montana and my family; my trip to Vegas pushed me way out of my comfort zone (literally and figuratively; it was a horrible 112 degrees while we were there but also I drove a race car!) while keeping me quite comfortable in a fancy hotel room and eating fancy dinners I didn't have to pay for; and Orlando, while hot and muggy and...flat, was the site for the IB Global Conference this year, and attending it is always a great privilege. I learn a lot and return home inspired and energized.

It's strange to think that I'll be back at work soon, but summer has, already, been so full.

Which is why I've been looking forward rather desperately to this week. As I've written before, really my favorite part of summer isn't the trips we may or may not take (although I need those trips home to Montana), it's the afternoons spent in my backyard with a book and a glass of iced green tea while my children run through the sprinkler. I landed in Seattle shortly before eight o'clock on Sunday night, at the end of a day in which I attended a breakout sessions and a closing general session, spent four hours in the Orlando airport, and read a book on a five-and-a-half hour flight. My body thought it was eleven o'clock, and it wanted to be fed some dinner. Matt picked up pho on the way home, the only thing that sounded good. And because I knew I wouldn't be able to crash immediately into bed--I never can, at the end of a trip, no matter how late I get home--he settled into the couch with me to watch the latest episode of Twin Peaks: The Return. I won't tell you want time I finally crawled into bed, but it was ridiculous, and my daughter scolded me the next morning. But I could sleep. It was the best sleep I've had in days. And on Monday, I vowed to go no farther than our own backyard.

The kids were already dressed in their pajamas when Matt pulled up to the curb outside baggage claim. They've had such a wonderful time with both of their grandmas; Matt's mom flew out to stay with them when we were in Vegas, and my mom took over when I headed to Orlando so that Matt could go to work. They're thoroughly spoiled, and Matt and I are thoroughly lucky to have had such willing and loving help. The kids were so sweetly happy to see me, and full of stories: they've lost teeth this week, baked cookies, finished their swimming lessons, gone on hikes, seen movies. Matt made sure to mention that he'd gotten them bathed and cleaned the kitchen before they picked me up, but when I leaned in to hug them, to bury myself deep in their summery tanned skin, I could still smell the sunscreen.

I can't breathe deeply enough when I hug my children in summer. There is nothing I love more than this: their warm necks and the scent of sunscreen, sunshine, water. Pool water, river water, lake water. The faint sheen of sweat and hard play. My babies. How I love them.

I rubbed sunscreen into my son's lean, warm little back yesterday afternoon, just before I settled back with my book. He's so tall and lean. Pictures from just a few summers ago remind me of the way his chubby toddler belly used to poke above his swim trunks; now they slide down his hips and reveal the cutest hint of butt crack. We are forever telling him to pull up his shorts. He is all movement when he is awake, bouncing and wiggling, but he sleeps so hard. He always has.

My daughter can wear my flip-flops in the backyard, and they're a little long but they basically fit. She moves differently now, carries her body in a new way. She's a preteen for sure. Some moments take my breath away: the way she walks, the way she settles herself into the swing before kicking off the ground and touching her toes to the tree branch she couldn't reach a summer or two ago, the way she crosses her leg and tucks her big toe behind her calf as she reads or eats her lunch on the patio. She is lovely in these moments. The in-between is difficult and awkward and I remember it well, but still, I hope some part of her understands how lovely she is. This juxtaposition unsettles me sometimes, but it also swells my heart: she is so grown, but then she's also a little girl. Since she was born I've always said I would never wish her backwards, that while I want to stop time I also understand that bearing witness to her growth, this beautiful unfurling into the person she is, is the greatest joy of my life.

I snapped at her recently. We were both exhausted, and she said something careless, and I responded without the patience or grace I pray for as a parent. Her eyes welled up and her mouth pursed in the way it does before she cries. I deflated inside.

"Zannah, I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't need to talk to you like that." She rushed right into my arms, weeping, her own grace extended to me in that moment. She allowed me to hug her instead of stomping angrily away. She tucked her head underneath my chin and I held her, so aware that soon she will have to fold herself to fit that embrace.

It has been a gift, for the past two days, to just hang out with these kids. I write this to remember this moment in time, these days in which my kids bicker and squabble and poke all the time and also cannot bear to be separated. These days in which my daughter will still come to me instead of pushing me away when we butt heads: the energy of mothers and daughters. (May I someday find the words to tell my own mother how much I love and need her still, even when we butt heads.) These days in which my son allows me to crawl under the covers with him at bedtime and noisily smooches my cheeks. These years are so short.

Today has been strange. Our beloved babysitter spent the morning with the kids while I did some work (because teachers do work in the summer, even in July, because so much has to happen before the beginning of the school year) and went for a run. I slept well last night, because I am still just so grateful for my own bed, and so in love with this week in which I can rise slowly and drink coffee before I get dressed. I cleaned up and made lunch for the kids, which they ate in the backyard because in the summer we eat nearly all of our meals on the patio. We ran a few errands. We changed into swimsuits and headed for the splash park, because the sky was wide and blue and the temperature was perfect: warm enough to love the water, not so hot as to be unbearable.

And yet, I've been in a funk today, because sometimes the world is too much. That's all I can say right here now.

We went to the splash park and my children ran off while I sat with our towels and read my latest copy of The Sun, the magazine I will subscribe to as long as I am alive or as long as it lasts. It was the 500th issue, with a special section called "One Nation, Indivisible," and it broke my heart, right there in the splash park. It really did, it broke something in me, in the necessary ways we all should be broken sometimes. (If you're reading this and can get to a decent bookstore, go pick up this issue. Or better yet, subscribe.)

So I read The Sun and I felt everything, everything. How it is possible and arguably essential to love my country without being blindly proud of it, which, at the moment, feels both impossible and dangerous. I thought about how our country is in the hands of a terrible, ugly, power-hungry bully of a leader who will never be anything but that, but the rest of us need to just hold up a mirror and take a hard, honest look and try to be better versions of ourselves. I thought about how we all have so much work to do.

And then I looked up and saw my son leaping through the spray of water in front of me, saw the arc of diamonds against a blue sky. I saw my daughter spinning with a group of kids on the merry-go-round. I watched them both join the line to play on the zip-line.

And I started to cry, just enough to have to lift my glasses off of my face and wipe my eyes. But there it was. There were tears. Hidden behind dark glasses, in the middle of a splash park--it's a safe enough place to have a moment like that, and easy enough to hide.

And I can't even tell you why. There is no why sometimes. It's just everything, and the time to notice and feel it. This world, and the weight of it. And the light.

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.

Sometimes I need this reminder

Tomorrow I am chaperoning my son's field trip, and the timing couldn't be better. I'm fairly certain I would make a perfectly dreadful first grade teacher, but spending a day with the littles is pure joy. Mostly, I think, because six-year-olds aren't grumpy and negative all the time. First graders don't seize every opportunity to complain about how busy and overworked and tired they are to everyone who says, "Hey, how's it going?"

I need a day of holding the grubby little hands of human beings who find the world delightful. Isaac has already informed me who is in our group, so I'm fairly confident that these hands will, in fact, be pretty grubby. But they are good little fellows, and I have plenty of wet wipes.

Yesterday I drove through my favorite espresso stand for my Americano and the barista said, "I just want you to know we appreciate you. You smile at us every day."

"I appreciate you guys too!" I said. I do. I love this espresso stand. The women who run it are so friendly, and one of them leads a life practically parallel to mine. She's been working there since I moved out here. We're about the same age, we got married at the same time, our kids are the same ages, and she's a fellow soccer mom who actually finds it all really fun. Also, they make my coffee perfectly, and they remember when I want a splash of cream and when I'm going dairy-free for awhile. Once, one of them accidentally added a shot of vanilla to my drink, which I didn't realize until I'd driven away. (I used to add vanilla all the time. Then I turned into one of those obnoxious folks who does a whole30 every now and then, and since then I rarely do flavors because I can't stomach the sweetness.) I didn't much care. After watching an acquaintance make no fewer than three posts complaining that her coffee shop messed up her fancy drink, and not being able to deal with the righteous indignation, I decided to literally never care about a coffee order. I go to places I like because they generally serve good coffee. If they generally don't serve good coffee, I likely won't frequent them. If my coffee order is ever less than perfect at a place I generally like, I just don't think it's worth dumping it out and having someone re-make it, someone who probably hears stupid complaints about the amount of foam or the precise temperature of milk all day long. I'm not saying this to prove how chill I am, or how saintly. I am emphatically neither. But coffee orders in particular are the thing I've resolved not to worry about, because it's just coffee. I love coffee. But I have lots of other stupid things to freak out about.

The next day, the very first words out of the barista's mouth were, "Oh my gosh. I know I totally screwed up your drink yesterday. I'm so sorry!"

The fact that she realized it and remembered it twenty-four hours later is impressive. It made it that much easier to say, "Please. If that's the worst thing that happens to me in a day, my life is pretty sweet."

"As sweet as that Americano, though?" she asked. We laughed. "But seriously, you're really chill about your coffee."

"Just wait," I promised. "One day I'm going to come in here and you won't be able to predict what I order. I'm going to order the most complicated drink you have. What's that caramel thing?"

I think I just enjoy being told that I'm "chill" about anything, because that is not something I hear often.

Yesterday, after I told the baristas that I appreciated them too, they said, "No, seriously. So many people just want to complain about their lives every single day. No one is busier or more tired than they are."

"Do you get that from a lot of people?" I asked.

"Yeah. We really do," she said.

I shouldn't have been surprised, I guess, because we all know those people. Hey, how are you? SO BUSY. SO TIRED. No matter what. Look, we are all busy and tired and everyone has a hard job. It's so easy to romanticize people who work in different fields, right? I'm a teacher and I hear all the damn time from people who are not teachers about how I should be so grateful to have summers "off," among other things, and that's a different entry. But I think we teachers make assumptions as well, about "how nice" it must be to work in the private sector, where there is often significantly less job security. (This is a real thing; my husband was laid off with only 24 hours' notice a few weeks after I returned to work after having Isaac, when the company he'd been with for seven years was bought out.) And might I just point out that while my husband is nicely and appropriately compensated for the work he does (which is perhaps the difference, which is also a different entry), he worked late into the night every single day over the long weekend, our daughter's birthday weekend, long after I'd gone to bed. He's still battling work as I write this tonight, and he'll be home late. He's dealing with something stressful at work right now, and it sounds like it won't be resolved before this weekend, either. I'm just grateful he has the option to log in from home now; years ago, there were times he drove home from work in the middle of the night for a few hours of sleep before he'd be called back in the morning. The point is not who works harder, or who is the busiest, or whose job is the toughest. That's a battle none of us will ever win, and when we try, we mostly just turn into folks other people avoid running into just so they don't have to say, "Hi! How's it going?"

And I get that sometimes we all just need to vent. I will not pretend that I have never complained about being busy and tired (or complained about things that are not problems). But I also never want people to just expect that when they smile and say good morning and ask me how I'm doing that I will roll my eyes and sigh noisily and explain how tired and busy and overworked and unappreciated I am. I don't understand what people expect when they do that. An award, for being the busiest and the most exhausted? The most frustrated at work? The least appreciated? Sometimes all of those things feel true--for all of us, I suspect. I certainly don't want that to be the thing I'm known for, though, especially by the folks who make the coffee I am privileged enough to buy on my way to school. (Maybe those other folks haven't had their first cup at home already?) And today was just the kind of day in which I felt the weight of the negativity of the adult world.

And it's part of why I'm taking tomorrow off, to get outside with my son and his class and just enjoy the day with kids who find delight in a school bus ride, who already know they're excited about the aquarium and the show at the amphitheater and seeing the monkeys. They will not complain about the traffic, or about how they need a nap on the way home. I'm romanticizing first grade too, I know; I actually hated first grade (but that is another entry as well). But I'm looking forward to recharging my own batteries, so to speak, so I can continue to smile at the baristas who make delicious Americanos and with whom I can chat comfortably about the weekend.

There are real reasons to be exhausted, frustrated, sad, angry. And sometimes we just feel things, and that's okay, too. And it's okay to express that.

But I also think that sometimes we could make someone's day a little better, instead of a little worse. And maybe that would make the tiniest of differences. And maybe sometimes, that matters.

The state of things at the end of May

It is nearly Memorial Weekend, which means I feel all of the things. Every year.

Today is the day, seventeen years ago, when a very tall boy kissed me in St. Malo. We kissed again at the top of the Eiffel Tower a few days later. Two years later he asked me to marry him, and I've been wearing that ring for fifteen years.

Eleven years ago this weekend, I gave birth to our girl, our Suzannah Grace. Our girl. Words aren't enough. That girl goes to middle school in a few months. I still tip-toe into her room at night to make sure she's breathing, to kiss her softly before I slip into my own bed.

Seven years ago this weekend, our infant son was baptized. I cried and laughed that day, too.

Every year of my children's life, they've had at least one set of grandparents here for Memorial Weekend, and usually both. We celebrate. Matt and I try to slip off for a little dinner date to quietly celebrate us, too. Sometimes I stress out about making sure everyone is happy during their stay, about making sure everyone eats what they like and no one is bored or restless. It makes me anxious sometimes. I cherish the togetherness--I truly do, and it is not at all lost on me how lucky our family is to have this weekend together each year--but sometimes it overwhelms me.

Last night as I waited to present awards for the English department at Senior Awards night, a group of teachers fell into a conversation about introverts and extroverts. One teacher looked at me with real surprise when I said I'm totally an introvert.

"How can you be an introvert?" he said. "You're a teacher!"

But the thing is that I can perform. I can take the stage, so to speak, and I have fun with it. I played the trumpet through college, an instrument that requires a girl to find her voice. I can stand in front of a class, and I love the microphone. Public speaking doesn't terrify me. What I'm not good at is, say, accepting invitations to parties or events. I'm not good at being with groups of people and socializing. It's not that I don't want you to invite me to your gatherings; I do. And often I will talk myself into going, especially if I'm going with someone I feel comfortable with. And I usually have a good time. But I also feel depleted afterwards, and in real need of a recharge in the form of solitude. That's what truly fills my cup. It's why I've learned at this ripe old age that I don't want to throw myself a huge birthday party when I turn any significant age, why I've taken the day off for the past few years and indulged in my absolutely perfect day: spending the morning at a coffee shop reading and writing, taking myself out to lunch alone, going for a jog. If it's possible, I will choose that every year of my life.

I'm not sure where I was going with this anymore.

Mostly just this, I suppose: I'm lucky and I know it and sometimes I still feel a lot of messy feelings.

There's this: My life is pretty wonderful. I've been married for nearly fifteen years to a man I love and trust and am happy to kiss at the end of every single day. He leaves his socks on the floor but he mows the lawn and cooks wonderful dinners and cleans the kitchen and loves me even when I'm crazy and haven't washed my hair. He sends me out of the house to write when he knows I need it. We produced two children who also happen to be humans we love to live with, and we just like them so much. We can walk to the shore of Puget Sound in minutes, and we can hop on the light rail and have lunch at Pike Place Market without much fuss on a Saturday. We live in a blue state, near the water, and near the mountains. Matt has a job he is good at and seems to enjoy (nevermind the fact that I cannot tell you what he actually does because it is too complicated for me). I have a job that both exhausts and energizes me, and I love it deeply. It challenges everything I believe in. It demands that I examine the person I want to be in this world. And I am so honored to do this work, even when it's hard, even when I don't get my way in every little thing. In the big picture, I am senselessly privileged in so many ways.

Memorial Weekend is always a time when I recognize and appreciate my family: my husband, my children, and our support network. Even if I'm overwhelmed, and scrabbling towards the finish line of the school year. It really is all awfully sweet.

But there is also this: the bigger picture often terrifies and sickens me.

Betsy DeVos confirmed that she she has no problem awarding federal money to schools who discriminate against whomever they please. Not surprising, but sickening. This is deeply personal to me. I have more words for this than I can share tonight. What a horrible human being.

And tonight my home state, a place I love so much it physically aches, was tasked with choosing who will take Montana's lone Congressional seat. The Republican candidate physically assaulted a reporter last night. I listened to the audio, I read the FOX news report. And then I kept reading. And oh, how desperately I wanted to believe that Montanans are better than this. Montanans believe in human decency. Right? We want to believe that about our homelands. But I admit I never expected Quist to win. Because we've already shown that, as a country, we are uninterested in human dignity or decency, and there's nothing we won't excuse to get what we want. Trump is an unapologetic bully and sexual predator and that wasn't a deal breaker. Gianforte can assault a reporter and be celebrated and defended because he was "baited" by the "liberal media." All day I hoped, wildly and desperately, that Montana would do better, but I was not optimistic. What I am is heartbroken. Because my home state voted for a man who donated to campaigns of white nationalists. Because my home state voted to elect a man who can assault another human being and receive absolutely no consequences. In fact, his actions only strengthened his status with his base. We saw this happen in November; there's no reason we should be surprised now.

(At what point is my home state no longer my home? For a long time I thought Montana would welcome me back. I no longer believe that's true.)

Nothing about this is okay. It has never been okay, and I will not participate in normalizing it. Just do me a favor, anyone who voted for him (though honestly, if you did, why in the world are you reading my blog?): Please never, ever talk to me of "values" or "personal responsibility" ever, ever again.

I don't know, this is just the state of things these days. Things aren't okay, even as I am senselessly privileged. Even as the ordinary, everyday circumstances of my own life make me as happy as any human being probably has a right to be. I don't really know what to do with that tonight, other than write about it here in my tiny little corner of the internet.