30 Days of Thankfulness

Despite the fact that I am angry and heartbroken a lot these days, I still also try to be intentionally grateful, every day. What I've realized is that it takes very little for me to be deeply content and happy in my own daily life -- and despite the horror of the big picture, our individual lives are still made up of these beautiful moments and experiences that matter.

Social media in November is often full of folks sharing what they're thankful for, and it's not a bad practice, but I find that if I just try to list "Things I'm thankful for" every day for a month it just turns into the same list. Of course I'm thankful for my family, my home, my friends. This year, though, I'm borrowing from my old friend Jen, who shared a new approach on Facebook: "Thirty Days of Thankfulness" grounded in the ordinary details of our daily lives. I've been writing them down all month long, and tonight I thought I'd share them here.

Day 1: Person
One of my very truest friends. I call him "Coach" when I write about him online. He's one of the most important people in my life, and I can't imagine my life without him in it or the person I would be without him. He makes me want to be the best version of myself, and he loves me even when I fall short. He's honest with me. He always manages to find my re-set button, even long-distance, and he always seems to bring the perspective I need. He's really raised me as a teacher, and as a human.

Day 2: Animal
The otters and harbor seals at the Seattle Aquarium, where we spent a couple of hours this month with my friend Jessica and her kiddos. Also the octopus, who was alert and energetic and fun to watch. (The animals were great, but thinking of them really reminds me about how thankful I am that I still have this friendship from my childhood, and that our kids know each other, and even when we don't see each other for a long time we can still hang out like no time at all has passed.)

Day 3: Cozy Place
My living room couch on late fall or early winter Sunday afternoons, especially with Isaac's fleece Batman blanket.

Day 4: Snack: Pop Secret Homestyle Popcorn (only because I can't have my dad's homemade popcorn whenever I want it). My absolute favorite time for this is after school on Fridays...I pop some for the kids and me, change into pajama pants, put on a movie for them, pour a little red wine for me, and curl up with a really good book.

Day 5: Place
Kalaloch, on the Olympic Peninsula. Matt and I love staying in a bluff cabin for anniversary getaways in December. My soul is so peaceful there -- the wild ocean in winter, the empty beaches. I think it does for my heart and psyche what Lake McDonald does in summer, with fewer people. (A lot fewer people.) We spend all our daylight hours exploring the beaches, and at night we curl up with books and drinks and snacks and a fire, and it is perfect. Also: there is absolutely no wi-fi. The cabins do not have televisions or telephones. In case of emergency, there is a phone at the main lodge, and if you really need to watch a movie or whatever the main lodge also has a cozy library/game room with a TV, but I love (love) the opportunity to disconnect with technology and connect with the human I'm with and really just be present in my surroundings in a way that feels like a luxury.

Day 6: Pair of Shoes
I so don't care about shoes, like at all, and I would happily go barefoot all the time if I could. I'm thankful for my Danskos because they last a long time and I don't have to think about what to wear most days, and I can kick them off as soon as I walk in my door.

Day 7: Scent
Roasting chicken on Sunday evenings (one of my favorite meals, and we have this once or twice a month, always on Sundays). Pumpkin or caramel or cinnamon-scented candles. Christmas trees. My husband's t-shirts when he wears them fresh out of the shower. (My husband, freshly showered.)

Day 8: Restaurant
The Elliott Bay Brewery in West Seattle, which we have loved for our entire married lives. Actually, our love for EBB dates from before we were married. We've practically raised our children there. I love their cozy booths, their grown-up grilled cheese, their Cabernet (Matt loves the beer more than I do; I prefer wine), their burgers (the BEST!), their ahi tacos, their vegetarian chili, their monthly specials, and the folks who know us well enough to know exactly how our kids like their carrots steamed.

Also, Plum Bistro, one of our favorite kid-free date spots. (I really, really hope we can go soon.) Their Fresh Thyme Quinoa Pie is so good I could cry just thinking about it, because suddenly I want it and I can't have it right this second. I also really love their Olive Pesto Tofu and their Tempeh Vermouth. Bonus: it's easy walking distance from my favorite bookstore.

Day 9: Blog/website
Goodreads! Do you like to read? If you do, and you're not on Goodreads, GET ON GOODREADS. I love reading what people think about the books they're reading. I love writing about what I'm reading.

I also love jennibick.com because I am always in search of the perfect journal and all my favorites come from there, and the customer service is above and beyond.

Day 10: Time of Day
I really love early mornings, if I need to be out earlier than usual. I love the still quiet. I am, by nature, a morning person; it's just that since having kids I so adore having a little time to myself after they go to bed that it's hard to get enough sleep to really appreciate those early mornings. (My daughter, it seems, is following in my footsteps. Jazz band starts at 7 a.m., and I have no idea what time that child gets up. No matter how early I get up, she's always up first.)

On ordinary weekdays, I love the time when I get to school, Americano in hand, and -- unless I have a meeting, which happens about once a week -- I have a quiet hour in my classroom.

On weekends, I love the time when the kids have gone to bed and I'm curled up on the couch writing and/or watching Neflix or tucked in with a book and often and gin and tonic on the couch. Matt and I are companionably together, even if he's watching something and I'm reading.

Day 11: Traditions
Every November, the week of Thanksgiving, I watch Pieces of April. Usually it's the night before Thanksgiving, while Matt bakes (or at least preps) the pumpkin and pecan pies we contribute to Thanksgiving dinner. It is my very favorite movie, ever since I first saw it shortly after it came out -- almost fifteen years ago, I think? I'll always love Katie Holmes as April, although everyone in it is absolutely perfect. It's a simple story, really; April, the estranged daughter, invites her family to Thanksgiving dinner at her apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The movie follows two strands -- the family's drive to the city, and April's meal preparations, which are foiled by a broken oven, so she has to rely on the kindness of her neighbors. The conclusion is beautiful and I sob every time I watch it. Someday I'd love to watch it with my mom.

Day 12: Gadgets
This isn't really a gadget, but I don't...know anything about gadgets, or what counts as one. So I'm going to say our new stainless steel refrigerator, which we had to buy because our freezer stopped working. And we got to buy it form one of my former students, a quiet boy with a radiant smile. I never forgot that smile, and seeing it again seven years later made everything about the experience pretty okay.

Day 13: Something old
Our dining room table, which came from my grandmother's house on the farm. The sides could fold down so that it fit inside the corner of the tiny kitchen in my first college apartment; I can also add heavy leaves to extend it across my dining room. It's sturdy and well made, and I've never seen a table with internal gears that turn when the table is widened to accommodate more people.

Day 14: Something new
The bookshelf in Suzannah's bedroom, because it restores my sense of order and gave us a reason to clear out so many things she no longer needs. Her piles of books are off her floor!

Also: our new roof. We've needed one for awhile, but not urgently. I'm glad we took the time to get it looked at well over a year ago so we could plan and save, and now we'll never need to spend another penny on this roof as long as we live in this house -- and my husband won't have to climb up there to try to scrape off the moss anymore. (I'm a worrier. I didn't love it when he did that.)

Day 15: Experience
Watching my daughter play soccer under the lights at night. We had this fantastic referee at a game in Puyallup last year who said, "Girls this age, you don't get 'em under the lights very often, but there's just nothing like it!"

Also, watching my kids compete in their first Tae Kwon Do tournament was so much fun. I love everything about Tae Kwon Do and I am so thankful it's become part of our lives, and I truly believe they're learning from the very best of the best.

Finally, I so love our family weekend getaways, and this is the point in year when I start to look forward to them: Great Wolf Lodge for the kids' birthdays, Leavenworth in late January, and Portland/Powell's in February. This is how we get through the post-Christmas slog: hotel pools, cozy meals, lights, sledding, bookstores.

Day 16: Recipe
My grandmother's potato salad, which is sublime. I remember watching her make it -- cutting the potatoes into precise uniform cubes. Her careful slicing of the egg. My mother makes it beautifully; I've never tried. I fear I lack the patience, because I take after my grandfather.

Something I do make, and something I love this time of year: soup. I love soup recipes. I love cauliflower-chickpea soup with cranberry chutney and Indonesian sweet potato and cabbage soup, both from the Moosewood cookbook. I also love pumpkin and white bean bisque, or coconut pumpkin soup topped with diced cooked chicken, or Portuguese kale and potato soup topped with sausage.

And I really enjoy the cheesy black bean and quinoa bake from the Picky Eater Blog. (We've gotten so many recipes from that site; I should add it to Day 9.

Day 17: Store
The Elliott Bay Book Company
Third Place Books
King's Books
Powell's
Basically any indie bookstore (which is where I choose to buy books, because I have access here and I believe strongly in supporting independent bookstores)

Day 18: Quote
From my two very favorite writers...

"You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up." --Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

"A story untold could be the one that kills you." --Pat Conroy

"My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call." --the first sentence of The Prince of Tides and, very seriously, possibly, my next tattoo

"The only word for goodness is goodness, and it is not enough." --Pat Conroy

"Love is the story and the prayer that matters the most." --Brian Doyle

"There are stories in the air as thick as birds around me, he would say. I will save these stories from starving, he would say. I have a great hunger for stories, he would say." --Brian Doyle, Mink River

Day 19: Clothing
My favorite socks from Kalaloch Lodge (otters, orcas) and my Turnip Shirt. I wear it with leggings and a stretchy skirt when I just need to Not Care. Also, the folks who work in the produce section at Marlene's, this fabulous natural foods store near me, love my Turnip Shirt.

Day 20: Keepsake
My maternal grandmother's wedding ring and my paternal grandmother's necklace, the one she designed and had made a few years after my grandpa died. They're not pieces I wear, but they are special to me. I am not usually sentimental about things, but these small things feel like tangible connections to my family.

Day 21: A disappointment or a fear
This is hard. I want to come up with something more concrete to share, but for now, I'll just say that something I thought I wanted is something I am far better off without, and I'm thankful for that realization, for what it's taught me. There's a reason we have all these pithy sayings about hindsight.

Day 22: Book
The one I just finished, for providing the perfect Thanksgiving weekend reading experience: The Witch Elm, by Tana French. I was nervous about this being a stand-alone because I love the world of the Dublin Murder Squad, but it may actually be my favorite so far -- even though I warmed to so few of the characters, French's ability to take us inside their minds and learn what drives them is what sets her apart form the mystery writers I read "for fun."

The one I'm currently reading: The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley. It's a modern re-visioning of Beowulf: Beowulf in the suburbs. The language is stunning and I'm loving it.

Also: All the books I go back to when I need a particular page or passage...this quote from The Overstory by Richard Powers (also a stunning read) resonates:

Someday you'll need to take down a worn-out volume on the lower right-hand face, ten pages from the end, that fills you with such sweet and vicious pain.

Day 23: Feeling:
The moment I slide into sleep on a Sunday afternoon, cuddled under Isaac's fleece blanket
or
The way I feel when I'm completely caught up in grading and my desk is clear
or
Leaving my house on Wednesday morning after I've cleaned...scrubbed bathrooms and vacuum lines in the carpet. My colleagues make fun of me, but I'm up hours before I take my son to school, and I love coming home to a sanctuary in the middle of the week. And my house is my sanctuary -- I do better when it's not cluttered and dirty.

Day 24: Photo
My current Facebook profile photo, a drawing my son made for me -- two hearts holding hands, labeled "Mommy" and "Me." That's more of a drawing than a photo, though. I love photos of my children than show them being their absolutely true ridiculous selves, snapped in the moment. I love photos of our family in our favorite places: Bozeman, Glacier. Matt and me Kalaloch, the wind whipping my hair, the ocean in the background. Or even just the ocean, roiling at the shore in the first light of day.

Also: Google sends me "Rediscover this day!" notifications, and I love the pictures that remind me that four or five years ago my children were so short and round and little and soft. I would never wish them backwards, but oh. My babies.

Day 25: Luxury
Reading and/or writing alone for an uninterrupted stretch of time. Wandering through a bookstore by myself. Having alone time at the Elliott Bay Book Co. -- books, coffee, wine. Sitting alone an airplane, once I've calmed down. Reading, ordering a glass of wine.

Day 26: Charity, non-profit, organization, etc.
Matt and I have given to all of these, and all are worth of our support:
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society - https://hias.org
American Civil Liberties Union - https://www.aclu.org/
Southern Poverty Law Center - https://www.splcenter.org/
Everytown for Gun Safety - https://everytown.org/
Planned Parenthood - https://www.plannedparenthood.org/
Pat Conroy Literary Center - http://patconroyliterarycenter.org/
Homeless Humans of Tacoma - https://www.facebook.com/homelesshumans.help/
NPR - https://www.npr.org/

Day 27: Song
Right now I really love listening to my CD from the 2002 Concordia Christmas Concert when I'm driving, since that one is in my car. That and Sarah McLachlan's Wintersong. At this time of year, I want to feel everything -- the darkness and the light -- and this is the music that takes me through it all.

Day 28: Gift
At the end of the last school year, my departing seniors gave me a copy of Because I Had A Teacher. They'd written messages inside, and I keep it close by for days when I need to remember why I do this job. It works. Every time I read what they wrote, I'm reminded of what a deep privilege it is to do this work. And that gift is one of the best I've ever received.

Day 29: Something at home
Simple comforts that I love coming home to: my microwave heat pack (I love curling up with that in bed, or during Sunday afternoon naps, or on the couch at night when I'm curled up with a book); the candles I light in the kitchen that smell like caramel and cinnamon or spiced apple toddies; the Norwex cleaning products that allow me to clean my house really efficiently; my snowflake mugs that I only use during the holiday season; my kids' drawings hung up in different parts of the house; my pajama pants and slippers. Honestly, I'm a homebody. I love coming home and I love spending time here with my family. Which brings me to this...

Day 30: What I'm MOST thankful for
This is the most obvious, but I'm most thankful for my family. The family that raised me and the family I live with. My husband and my children, my reasons for breathing. I grumble about the dirty socks, the crumbs on the counter, the toys strewn across the family room, the noise, the bickering, the fact that I haven't had uninterrupted time in the bathroom in over a decade...but the things I bitch about are also the nudging reminders that the sources of those irritants are people I love with every breath I take, and I will choose it all, again, every single day, with my whole heart.

This tired old rage

I've been trying to write here for a week. Two weeks. I carry a journal with me everywhere and keep scrawling bits and pieces. Last week I wanted to write about fear, and anger, and grief. And then I didn't post, and then another mass shooting happened, and then it just all seemed pointless. Here we go again.

I just keep writing the same things, over and over again. I'm so tired. I'm so angry. I'm so tired of being angry.

Last week during warm-ups before Suzannah's soccer game, I walked around and around the track at the middle school where they were playing. The fine drizzle hadn't yet settled into the steady rain that would drench us by the end of the game, and I needed to move. Otherwise I would have scrolled restlessly and angrily through my phone, unable to pick up the novel I had tucked inside my purse. The world just feels so terrible. I wanted to be hopeful before election week, but in 2016 Donald Trump was elected president and since then --

I keep trying but I don't even know how to finish that sentence.

I went to church last week, on All Saints Sunday where we honor our dead. In faith, I will settle for nothing less than life. My pastor's own mother died last week, and she delivered a sermon on All Saints Sunday, and I can't imagine having to speak about that with the weight of such grief. We grieve and we honor the lives of those we love. We also grieve and struggle with the mass shootings that have become incredibly ordinary. In our America, a student shot and killed another student and classes resumed later that day. A man shot a couple in a Kroger after a failed attempt to enter a church. A man killed two women in a yoga studio. Another man killed eleven people and wounded several more in the Tree of Life Synagogue. Another week in our America, where toxic white men -- the most dangerous kind in America -- terrorize, and our administration fuels their rage.

I tried to write about all of that and then another man opened fire in a bar and killed a dozen people and wounded several more. One of those killed survived the shooting in Las Vegas, and does anyone find it sort of insane that these shootings are beginning to overlap? But within half a day it was halfway down the page on the news. When Columbine happened, the country seemed to stop; now we barely blink. All those people dead, not even two weeks after the mass shooting at Tree of Life, and how many mass shootings have we seen this year? Remember when I was going to blog only after they happened? I'm way behind. I'd have a couple hundred entries right now. I try to make up for it in some small way by donating money, but I'm finding it pretty tough to write (who will read this tired old rage anymore?) and even more difficult to pray.

My faith is pretty shaky these days.

These were thoughts on my mind as I drove to church last week while my son chattered in the backseat and my daughter sulked because apparently we did not explicitly tell her about Daylight Savings Time and therefore we deprived her of an extra hour of sleep, which I do not even understand because this child wakes on her own at some absurd hour every morning. (I'm not kidding. Never once in her entire life have I had to wake her up. Not when we had to rise at four in the morning for an early flight to Omaha. Not once to get ready for school, which for her starts at 7:00 because she is in jazz band.) The big picture was weighing on my heart quite a bit, all wrapped up in the small one, the picture of my senselessly privileged life that I happen to love quite a lot. It has been a difficult month, a difficult fall. I'm still recovering from one of the most intense experiences I've had as an educator -- our MYP 5-year Evaluation was brutal in ways I didn't anticipate, and it feels deeply personal. I understand it's not really personal, because it's so much bigger than me and it's also not about me, but it feels that way at times, since I've poured so much of my energy into this program that I love and believe in, and now I have to sit and wait for weeks (or more) for the team's findings, upon which everything that happens next depends, and our Matters to Be Addressed do feel like things I should have been able to better prepare for, even when they're matters out of my control. And it's still not the big picture, or the most important thing, but right now everything feels tangled together: passion and love and grief and anger and fear. I've felt all of those things, every day, for two months. Really ever since the morning my grandmother died, the same morning I stood in front of the staffs from three schools, three hours after I learned of my grandmother's death, to try to prepare for this visit, this thing I've told them all is not by any means a final exam but which, I confess, still feels like one to me.

The personal and the political, the public and the private, and the weight of it all. The lines between them blur.

*

On All Saints Sunday at my church, the names of the dead are read aloud, and a bell sounds for each one. I experienced this for the first time ten years ago, two months after my grandpa died. I submitted his name but wasn't prepared for the absolutely shattering love and grief I felt when I heard someone else speak his name. Charlie Griffith. It was beautiful, and sad. Six years ago I listened to the bell sound for my niece, Bailey Rae, the name of someone who was born and should have lived but didn't. Last week, I listened for three names: Jay Hoger, Matt's uncle and my children's great-uncle. Sean Mach, the husband of one of my oldest friends. Esther Griffith, great-grandmother of my children. My grandmother. The one who called me her "precious" for my whole entire life, right up until the last time I hugged her in July, the month before she died.

Jay and Sean both died from cancer and it absolutely disrupted the natural order of the universe. These men should still be here to raise their children and love their grandchildren.

My grandmother made no secret of her readiness to die, even before my grandfather did ten years ago. I don't know how to make sense of any of this.

My feelings towards my grandmother were complicated. She loved me fiercely and unconditionally. I have also felt, since I was in college, since the days that I called her in my loneliness at the 800-number she and my grandpa bought just so I could call them whenever I wanted, that I would have disappointed them as much as I made them proud. At my grandpa's funeral ten years ago, one of his friends told me just how much he'd talked about me, and I cried about that for a long time. I know he loved me. And I know my grandmother loved me. But I'd also known since I was in college that I believed very different things than they did.

"You really think that?" my grandma asked me, when I told her about a paper I was writing. "You really, really do?"

I really, really did. And I still do. The "what" doesn't matter, really, does it? But that's the moment when I wondered, for the first time, whether love really was unconditional.

And all these years later, I'm still trying to reconcile that.

I've spent the past nineteen years preparing for both of my grandparents' deaths, in a sense, ever since my grandfather smoked his last cigarette. I was also utterly unprepared for the ways in which their losses would drive me to my knees. Their fingerprints are all over my life and my heart. I know they loved me. I loved them. And I have no idea how we would navigate this world together if they were still here.

*

We've had nearly as many mass shootings as there are days in 2018. That is not the natural order of things, but we treat it as such, and that makes me absolutely sick with rage. Last Sunday I wondered how long it would take to ring a bell for the names of those who have died from gun violence in our country. Opinions differ on what counts as a mass shooting, but the fact is that thousands of people have died when they should not have died. How long would it take to read 12,000 names?

*

It has been six years since Sandy Hook -- the span of the life of all those murdered first graders. My own daughter was in first grade that year, and I still cannot read a complete account of that day. I cannot. All those children should be in middle school, carrying instrument cases and telling terrible jokes and breaking out for the first time and using deodorant and slamming their bedroom doors and rolling their eyes at everything their parents say while still crawling onto the couch with them for a surprising snuggle at the end of a tough day. But they were murdered in their own classroom, and we did absolutely nothing. Now my children practice active shooter drills in their schools because we consider shootings as inevitable as anything else. I am not the first nor the last person to lose all hope because of that: when twenty first-graders can be murdered before they live to learn multiplication, when we prove that we love guns more than children, there is just not much hope to be had. And it just keeps happening, because our country only pretends to value life.

The same thing. I keep writing the same thing. And I am trying to write about too many things.

The same tired rage. Here we fucking go again.

The personal and the political. The public and the private. The blurred boundaries between them.

On being political and believing women

“Stay angry, little Meg,” Mrs Whatsit whispered. “You will need all your anger now.” -- Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

Things I want to write about: the way the sun hits the leaves in the afternoon right now, the way the shadows deepen and the nights are cool even as I'm still comfortable in a skirt and sandals while I'm teaching. I wear socks in the house at night now.

I want to write about going out for dinner last night with three people I am lucky to work with and luckier to call my friends, about how we treated ourselves to a restaurant with an absolutely gorgeous view of Puget Sound, the Tacoma skyline, and Mount Rainier. The sky was clear, the sunset soft and lovely over the water. We drank good wine and laughed a lot.

I want to write about the way my kids are bursting to tell me things about their day, still, and about how I know how lucky I am, and how very aware I am of time passing. The years are short. I'm grateful for my children's backseat chatter on the way to Tae Kwon Do and soccer practice, even if it's a rambling story that includes sentences like, "And then he showed me this cat picture, and it was really funny, but I can't really explain it so I guess you have to be there." Middle school stories. I want to write about the way I find my son every morning after breakfast: curled up on his bed reading under a fleece blanket, feet tucked under his bum, one arm clutching a stuffed animal.

And I could. I could just write about these things, and keep this blog pleasant and "not political." But I have a "getting political" tag, and most of those entries have been written since November 2016, even though I've been writing in this little corner of the internet for over ten years now.

A year or so ago, I posted this:

I'm tired of men silencing women. I'm tired of men who say, "Let's move on," when a woman's opinion makes them uncomfortable. I'm tired of men who think they can take up as much space as they want, especially when that space includes a woman's body. I'm tired of men mansplaining motherhood to me. I'm tired of the toxic garbage fires in our government who protect and promote sexual predators while they somehow think they get to claim "morality" and "values." I'm SUPER TIRED of Christians protecting and promoting sexual predators and white supremacists as long as they get the votes they want. I'm tired of men who spend more time nursing their feelings than speaking out and standing up against the status quo.

And I upset someone to the point where we no longer speak; he thought I was picking on men and said, "It goes both ways." (What?) We haven't really spoken since the day after I wrote this. And I am absolutely fine with that. I am perfectly okay with not having a relationship with someone who reads that, immediately centers himself in it, and focuses on his hurt feelings instead of trying to listen. This is a person who, more than once, suggested we just "move on" when I expressed an opinion he didn't want to hear. When he didn't control the narrative.

I am tired of men silencing women.

If you don't want to be political on social media, fine. Share pictures of your kids, your cats, your bathroom remodels. But be political somewhere. Call your representatives, write letters, wave signs, show up at offices, show up at protests, VOTE, help get others registered to vote, engage in dialogue. Somewhere. Read more. Do something. Because when you claim to not be political, you're frankly resting in your own privilege, and we simply do not have time for that. And if you do, if you're that safe, if your life can continue comfortably no matter what the government looks like, then use your power and your privilege and your voice to elevate those on the margins, those who aren't heard, who don't have a place at the table. (I mean, take a good look at that table. Who's not there?) Those of us in that position owe a debt, and we need to pay it. It's long past time to interrupt the narrative and disrupt the status quo. That's not going to happen if men continue to control the narrative and women are told not to speak.

Last night a friend reminded me of a quote from Eve Ensler, from this piece she wrote several years ago but is still horribly relevant:

I am over the passivity of good men. Where the hell are you?

You live with us, make love with us, father us, befriend us, brother us, get nurtured and mothered and eternally supported by us, so why aren’t you standing with us? Why aren’t you driven to the point of madness and action by the rape and humiliation of us?

I'm raising a daughter in Trump's America and I am sick over this every single day and I will not be quiet about it. I am raising a daughter who will likely have fewer rights than I have had and I will not be quiet about it. I've had my babies, and I'm seriously considering having my tubes tied, which seems ridiculous, but I don't think I'd have a lot of options should I wind up pregnant after a rape. This isn't hyperbole. Do you even know how many of my friends have expressed this exact sentiment in the last two years, much less this week? I had no idea, until I said it out loud. The America we live in does not value women and it does not care if women are harassed, assaulted, raped; it only cares if a rape results in a pregnancy a woman doesn't want to carry. Every single one of us knows someone who was raped or assaulted. And if you don't know it, there's a reason. Look at what we do to women who try to come forward. Most of us don't, because we know it won't matter.

I. Am. Tired. Of. Men. Silencing. Women. And I am tired of their complicity and complacency when we need them to be, yes, driven to the point of madness and action for us.

I'm tired of writing the same things.

November 12, 2016: When a woman is out for a jog and a man hollers out the window that he wants to grab her by the pussy, it's not that it's a frightening, invasive thing to say, although it is: it's that he's quoting our president-elect.

November 16, 2016: Last night I could not fall asleep, which is becoming my new normal, unless I take Tylenol PM. I swung between fury and terror. I've had horrible dreams about keeping my children safe. And my children will be among the "safe"; they are white, raised by two white, straight, "Christian" parents. (Is it any wonder that I put "Christian" in quotes? I'm really struggling with that one.) No one has threatened to come after them, although I absolutely worry about raising a daughter in a world in which our Commander-in-Chief objectifies women ("Not a 10!") and normalizes tearing them down and assaulting them.

November 11, 2017: 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.

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 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.

And I'm just tired.

I'm tired. Of men. Silencing. Women.

In case I haven't been clear: I believe women. I believe Dr. Ford. And I believe that most of America believes Dr. Ford, no matter what they say about Kavanaugh's "character." I just don't believe that most of America cares. At least not the America that elected a sexual predator to the highest office in the land. In this America, Brock Turners become Brett Kavanaughs. It's hard to be hopeful.

And in case I haven't been clear: I don't really want anyone near my life who doesn't believe women. And people who are too privileged to be political do not deserve access to my stories.

Everything a heart can hold

I think this is the longest I've ever gone without writing here in over a decade. I've written my stories in other places this summer...

...but I'm back now. It feels like time: the first real weekend I've had since school started. Has it only been two weeks? Was it only two weeks ago that we took the light rail to Seattle and the ferry to Bainbridge Island on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend? Was it only two weeks ago that we swam in Colman Pool at the edge of Puget Sound in West Seattle? That seems like another season already. We always say summer passes too quickly, but as a teacher, I'm always ready to go back to school, ready for the structure, for the natural rhythm of the seasons.

Our summer travels seem like they happened so long ago. Less than a week after we returned home from Minnesota, we drove to Montana to spend a few days in Bozeman and then headed for Glacier National Park. For the past several summers, this has been essential: I don't care what else we do as long as my heart can return to its roots and I can breathe the air south of Bozeman, or at a campsite in Apgar. These are the places that feed my soul and bring it home.

I wrote in my journal all summer, trying to capture the "hard kernels of memory" one of my best college professors spoke about on our May Seminar in Europe the summer I fell in love with Matt. I have a journal full of those. These are my hard kernels of memory from Montana:

5 p.m. Back at Zocalo, post swim. Kids with my mom, Matt at a brewery he wanted to check out. The sky darkened while we swam but only now decided to release spatters of rain. These sudden summer storms never show up in the weather forecast, it seems, but I love them. Thunder and lightning are muted in the Pacific Northwest--the thunder doesn't shake, lightning doesn't split the sky.

I bought Tin Man, Poems Across the Big Sky II, and Lowell Jaeger's latest collection: Earth-Blood and Starshine.

Now the rain pounds the streets. It's the sweetest music. The door to the coffee shop is open, the air steamy.

*

We visited my grandmother yesterday. She is significantly more frail than she was last time I saw her, but when she hugged me good-bye she gripped me tight. She had a plate of half-eaten pizza next to her chair and accepted one of my mother's cookies. Drank two cups of coffee. When one of her young caregivers stopped by to check on her she beamed, even though when he asked her how she was feeling she said, "Lousy, like always." But this is not a woman who will slip away this week, even though I know she has just wanted to go and be with Jesus since I don't know how long ago. Feels like half my life or more.

But I still don't think I'll see her again in this life.

"You'll always be my precious," she said into my ear -- she's said these words to me for my entire life. "I love you so much."

*

Leaving Bozeman is easier when we're heading to Glacier. Cold Smoke coffee on the way out of town. Lunch at MacKenzie River Pizza in Missoula, a stop at Rosauer's in Kalispell. Pulling into the park past 6:30. Run down to the lake. Breathe deeply. I miss the air as much as anything. Dinner at Eddie's: Huckleberry Reisling and trout almondine. Back to the KOA for the night -- tucked the kids into bunks and sat out under the porch light, drinking beer with my husband and reading A Gentleman in Moscow. Thursday: Up early to secure a campsite. I walked into Apgar while Matt set up camp, ordered a coffee and a hot water for the fancy instant oatmeal with turmeric and coconut. I scooped the steaming spoonfuls at a table just outside the Cedar Tree.

We made sandwiches at the campsite, skipped the long line for the shuttle to Logan Pass, and drove the Going-to-the-Sun road. Hot sun over snow on the trail to the Hidden Lake overlook -- Matt and Zannah went all the way, but Isaac and I turned back, slipping over the slush on the way down, sliding snowballs down the backs of each other's shirts, shrieking and laughing.

Spotted: moose, bighorn sheep, mountain goats. No bears this time. (My dad found bear scat in their yard not long ago. I said, "I want to see a bear this trip." He said, "Well, then, slather yourself with honey and wait.")

Lake McDonald was colder this year after such massive snow-melt, but I swam anyway. Until I was too numb to keep swimming. Dinner at the campsite: hot dogs, potato salad, baked beans, S'mores, Huckleberry Honey Ale. And then my sleeping pad deflated in the night. I don't know if that woke me or if my stomach did. I was violently sick in the camp bathroom, hoping I didn't wake anyone even as I could hear a man snoring raucously somewhere out in the darkness. I couldn't sleep after that, feeling every rock on the ground, but I felt better in the morning. I ate one of Matt's pancakes and sipped coffee, slowly. After hiking John's Lake Loop we played in the lake all afternoon, renting kayaks and a paddle board. I tried to nap in our tent after my night of fractured sleep, but the trapped afternoon heat turned it into a sauna. I found refuge in the lake instead, and slept much more peacefully the second night.

The rest of the summer was exactly what I wanted: afternoons spent in my backyard while my kids rode bikes or played with the hose or the Slip 'n Slide. I read books on the patio and sipped iced tea. We slathered ourselves with sunscreen and spent hours at the splash park. We grilled salmon and sweet corn and ate outside. I've never craved travel during the summer months; unless we're driving to Montana, I want to stay exactly where we are. I love the way time slows down. I love the languid afternoons. I love noticing the way the water catches the light as the sprinkler rises over the lawn and my son kicks through the arc of water as he pumps his legs on our backyard swingset. My children whine about being bored and I say, "This is a privilege of childhood. Figure it out. No, you may not play on the iPad." They play board games until they're screaming at each other. They bike to the elementary school playground. They play in the water. (When I am cranky, it almost always works to put me in water.) My children grow tall and tan.

*

I went back to school early this year. When I discovered that my carpets had been shampooed the first week in August, I couldn't resist the urge to spend a sweaty afternoon setting up and cleaning several weeks before my students returned. I scrubbed desks and touched up walls I wasn't technically allowed to paint in the first place, but since our old, moldy school that's literally sinking into its foundations will be torn down and rebuilt in the next three years no one has bothered to scold me. And despite the mold, and the relentless ant problem, and the uneven sidewalks and the old carpets that never really get clean no matter how many times they're shampooed, I love my classroom so much. It's home, too. The kids spent hours with me there in August, as they do every year. They expect this; they are Teacher's Kids. They know their way around my high school in summer. They know the dark hallways and damp carpets. They see the chaos of registration when they hunker down in the corner of the cafeteria with their books and movies and games.

I do better when I can reclaim my space and spend some quiet hours planning there before the frenetic last week of August. Especially this year. My heart was thoroughly battered last June for reasons I can't even write about here, and on top of that the class of 2018 had the nerve to up and graduate and leave me after I taught them all for at least two years. I said to Carol, the IB Diploma Program coordinator/person who actually keeps our school running and who is essentially my mom at school, "I'm quitting this stupid job. I'm going to apply at COSTCO this summer. I need a job that I don't have to emotionally invest in. Teaching just ruins my life." I probably stomped my foot, too. She didn't even look up from what she was doing; she just flapped her hand at me and said, "You'd make a job at Costco emotionally demanding too, so you might as well just stay here."

So I'm back. And it's home.

*

My grandmother died the week before school started, early in the morning on a day I was helping to lead professional development for our school and our two feeder middle schools. I learned about it as I was getting ready to head out the door. I was expecting it; even so, I went back into the bathroom and cried quietly, so I didn't wake my sleeping family. Within the hour I was standing in front of a crowd of teachers with a microphone, trying to compartmentalize and, I think, mostly succeeding. I took a few breaks to walk around campus alone, blinking back tears. I couldn't even articulate what I was feeling. Families are complicated, and I have a lot of complicated feelings. But in the end, love transcends that.

My grandpa died ten years ago; four years before that, I heard his voice for the last time before his vocal chords were removed, the result of throat cancer. Your fingerprints are all over my life, I wrote to him. It occurs to me that this is true for my grandmother as well.

The parallels are eerie; my grandfather died over Labor Day weekend. My grandmother died almost exactly ten years later, within two days. Both times, I taught my first classes of the year for three days before hopping a late-night flight to Great Falls, in time to make a Saturday morning funeral. One week ago, I drove home from school, threw clothes into a suitcase, and went for a jog to clear my head. Soaked in a lavender-scented bath. Went out for dinner with my family. They dropped me off at the airport and somehow I'd checked my luggage and made it through security in ten minutes. I spent an hour sipping a glass of wine and reading a novel before boarding a late-night flight to Montana, where I slept for four hours in a hotel near the airport. In the morning, my brother and sister and nephew and mother piled into one car, and I drove with my dad through quiet morning on a road I've known since birth. We saw antelope in the fields along the Chester road. I wrote this when Suzannah was just over a year old, when we drove north to visit my grandparents:

There really is no sky like the Montana sky, even in other wide-open states. I can't explain it. The drive between Fort Benton and Chester is like breathing deeply for the first time -- your lungs expand and fill with air you didn't know you could hold.

"Wow," Matt kept saying. "This is just...huge." But it's really a struggle to find a word to attach to it. The evening sun lit the fields against the distant Highwood Mountains. We braked for pheasants, for a new spotted fawn. I lost track of time, my age, of what car I was even driving. I just kept breathing, clinging to the thought that at least some things never really change.

My grandmother was buried next to my grandfather. I'd last seen my grandfather alive in August that year, kissed his bruised arms and scrawled notes on the little pad he kept with him before driving west on highway 2 into the late summer heat. By the time I returned for his funeral a few weeks later, the weather had turned; clouds gathered over the Bears Paw mountains and rain spattered the roads. The sky at the gravesite last weekend was hazy, the air hot and slightly smoky. All of August, we've choked on smoke from wildfires as we continue to incinerate our planet.

But when I stepped out of the car with my dad at the church in Gildford, the first thing I did was take a breath: I could still smell the scent of harvest on the hi-line. And that smell, woven into my very DNA, is home.

And now I'm back in Washington, doing what I do, taking my kids to school and Tae Kwon Do and soccer. Zannah is in jazz band. She's almost as tall as I am. The kids compete in their first Tae Kwon Do tournament next month. Life rolls on. My 2018 seniors visit; I get to have lunch with them, or they burst into my classroom before they head to college. And my heart bursts in some way basically all day long, every day. This is life. This is the life I am senselessly privileged to have.

Tonight I'm home with my family. We let the kids stay up too late on Fridays, but Friday is Family Movie Night on normal school weeks. We put on pajamas as soon as we can, and we eat fun things (either takeout or whatever looks good and easy at Trader Joe's), and we watch something, who even cares what, and everyone is silly, and we fall asleep knowing that tomorrow we have a soccer game but we do not have to set an alarm, and we'll have time to make pancakes and Matt and I will sip extra cups of coffee, hoping to read on the couch but knowing the kids will fill up the house with their noise.

Here's a thing I think I am sort of good at, at this point in my life: noticing and appreciating moments that fill me with peace, even if they are not peaceful moments. Like the sound of my kids practicing their Tae Kwon Do on an ordinary afternoon. Like my daughter's trumpet practice, or the sight of my son reading in his room, the way he still tucks his feet under his bum while he hunches over his book. Like the view of the mountains in Montana, the familiar dip in a road I haven't traveled in years. The way the landscape changes as I see it from the airplane, even though I am an anxious flyer: from the sheared golden stubble in the square fields that give way to wilder landscapes, the rivers that wind through the prairies and then the mountains. Last weekend I was somehow bumped into first class for the short flight between Great Falls and Seattle, and I sipped wine from a real glass and started a new book. I looked out the window at the landscape of my life, at the prairie, the rivers, the mountains. And I could breathe.

Who will we choose to be?

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

Today I left the house before eight o'clock, stepping into the humid Minnesota morning, propelled up the street by Shirley Manson's voice -- the only music that could get me moving. But movement was the thing I needed after a night of broken sleep. The heat rises to the second floor where I sleep at my in-laws' house, and the fan could only do so much; more than that, though, I couldn't quiet my brain. So I tossed and turned, and then I ran.

The morning was quiet, even as I jogged along a busy road before turning onto a quieter, shadier street. The thick, muggy air seemed to muffle even the traffic. Insects whirred in the grass. A sprinkler shuddered to a stop just before I could reach it and cool off; I suppose it had been on a timer to run in the cooler dawn.

I ran to quiet my own thoughts for awhile. It mostly worked. By the time I reached the spot where I usually turn around, I was so drenched in sweat that I nearly just sat down on the sidewalk. But I had to finish packing, and we had a rental car to return and a flight to catch. So I panted my way back to the house and vowed not to check the news until I'd folded the rest of last night's laundry into the kids' suitcases, showered, and had some coffee.

It has been a terrible week.

I mean, it has and it hasn't. I've just returned from a lovely family trip to Minnesota. We spent a few days in Duluth, a city I haven't visited since college. We stayed in a beautiful old mansion with Matt's parents and his brother and family. Carmen drove over and we spent a day together, and it was wonderful and necessary -- we haven't seen each other in nearly four years, which is the longest we've ever gone without seeing each other since we were eighteen years old. Suzannah and Isaac loved spending time with their cousins. We shared meals with relatives we don't see often, both near Duluth and back in the Twin Cities. I read a few books and carved out a little time to write. Matt even made sure we stopped by Birchbark Books -- a favorite stop of mine in Minneapolis -- so I could finally use a gift card from my mother-in-law.

So all of that should have made for a lovely start to the summer, except that underneath it all I have felt a relentless churning dread, a sickening shame over what our country is revealing itself to be. I sat upstairs while the kids played downstairs, listening to the sound of their laughter. I sat right down on the carpet and leaned against the bed and clutched my head and exchanged a few texts with friends who were also sitting somewhere clutching their heads, literally or figuratively. This has been a very, very bad news week. I'm just sick. I don't know where to start. We traumatize thousands of children. Children. Without apology or shame. We have no regard for human life if it isn't white, "Christian," and born on American soil (or unborn on American soil. We seem to stop caring once babies are earthside). We now rank in the top ten countries where it's worst to be a woman. As a public school teacher I'm no stranger to anti-union rhetoric, but now, suddenly, I'm actually receiving e-mails on my relatively public school account encouraging me not to pay union dues. And on, and on, and on. Seattle, a city with appalling rates of homelessness, now has an app to make it easier to eject folks from camps. Where, where is our humanity? Tell me that, Christians. Tell me. Talk to me about what it means to be pro-life. Talk to me about family values. And also, what piece of your soul did you sell, Judge Kennedy?

And then today, after my run, after my shower, after our trip to the airport, after I settled in with a white wine flight and my journal and the novel I'm reading while Matt took the kids to work out their wiggles before our trip home, I read the news again: another shooting, five journalists killed.

(When you read that the suspect is in custody, you know right away that it's another angry white man -- the kind most likely to commit mass shootings, and the kind most likely to be taken alive.)

(Nothing about this is surprising, considering the president's constant and vicious attacks on the media and some of his most ardent and vocal supporters actively encouraging assaults on them. This is our country. This is America.)

It would be pretty easy for Matt and me to say we don't like to be political, because honestly, we'll probably be fine, and being political means getting uncomfortable. We don't have to do that. We're white. We're "Christian." We were born into fucking senseless privilege. No one is coming for our children. But because we are white, because we are "Christian," because we are fine, this is our work to do and it is our mess to clean up and it is our debt to pay. It just is. And we're not doing it nearly damn well enough, which is one of the things I'm struggling with tonight. I know this. (Another thing I'm struggling with: people who still say they're "not political." Isn't that great for you? Sleep tight, I guess?)

After our kids were showered and bathed and tucked into bed tonight, Matt and I caught up on this week's episode of The Handmaid's Tale. I first read the novel when I was nineteen, huddled under a blanket in my freezing crew quarters at the fishing lodge in Alaska where I would spend my first summer in college. Now, twenty years later, I teach it in IB literature as part of the junior curriculum. It has always both moved and terrified me, but now that terror is an entirely different beast because it feels real and immediate. The terrifying brilliance of Margaret Atwood is that all of her writing feels real, but this has moved several solid steps away from "speculative" fiction since she wrote it three decades ago.

I don't really even know how to end this. It's nearly midnight, and my family is sleeping. Matt kissed me a bit ago and said, "Don't stay up too late." I want so badly to just go to sleep, to turn off my brain. He calls it the hamster wheel inside my head. I'm exhausted, but what is my exhaustion? It's nothing, really.

Tonight maybe I just end with this, with Rebecca Solnit's words instead of my own: You can't know, won't know how and why it matters, and when the results will appear, but that didn't stop the abolitionists or the suffragists or the civil rights heroes or the environmental champions or the Dreamers. Ask yourself what would Harvey Milk do? What would Harriet Tubman do? What would Ella Baker do? What would Emma Goldman do? Maybe you can't do all they did, but you can do something, and that matters, and doing it is a much better way to survive this regime than doing nothing, for your soul as well as your nation.

It's not just that we can; it's that we have to. I think I still believe that.

Love and Gratitude, Grief and Loss

It's a Sunday evening in June. Matt is mowing the lawn and the kids are sprawled in the family room watching a movie. It's cool outside, not even sixty degrees. Raindrops spatter the sidewalks. The wood floors feel cold underneath my bare feet, and the light is subdued. Right now, today, I am entirely okay with this. It's nearly summer, but I'm feeling quiet tonight. Tonight, I'm okay with feeding the kids fish sticks from Trader Joe's instead of grilling salmon in the backyard, carrying glasses of iced tea or chilled white wine out to the patio, calling the kids home from the neighbors' house. I need this moment to just be still.

We've been moving nonstop. Something scheduled every day. Suzannah's band concert, Isaac's choir concert. Soccer practices and Tae Kwon Do. Family Engagement/Multicultural Night. On Friday, all the sixth grade music students traveled to Leavenworth for the day and Matt graciously agreed to chaperone; I suspected he would be the parent better able to roll with the chaos of middle schoolers in June, and I think I was right -- he had a good day, whereas I was beginning to feel the effects of the week: I "taught" my last senior class on Wednesday, which really just meant that I sent them outside with sidewalk chalk to scrawl literary quotes around campus (a beloved tradition in senior IB Literature) and then cried while I tried to tell them how much I've loved teaching them. I'm still processing that. I've been teaching for quite awhile now, and it's definitely not the first time I've shed a tear saying goodbye to my seniors, but I've never looped with an entire class for two years (and in this case, I've had some of them for three or four), and somehow I was lucky enough to loop with a class of really phenomenal kids, and it was the first time I cried like that while addressing an entire class because while I am a pretty emotional person I really do try not to cry at school, at least in front of students, but I sort of feel like about seventy of my own children are leaving home at the same time and it's just. I don't know. It's a lot.

Yesterday morning we were up as early as though it were a school day. Suzannah's last soccer game of the spring season was scheduled for nine, which meant that warm-ups started at eight-thirty, which meant that we needed to have the car packed up by eight-fifteen. (It also meant we needed to have the kitchen cleaned and counters wiped down, because I cannot deal with coming home to dirty dishes or crumbs on the counter.) After Zannah had called end-of-season goodbyes to her teammates, most of whom she'll be joining in eight weeks for practice once again, we headed down to Great Wolf Lodge for her belated birthday celebration. We had a beautiful time. This has become sort of a birthday tradition for the past couple of years, and Matt and I enjoy it as much as the kids do because we have never outgrown our love for playing in the water. So we put in a good four hours in the water park before drying off for dinner, and because this isn't our first rodeo, we've learned that instead of staying onsite for dinner (with every other exhausted family) we can drive ten minutes to McMenamins Olympic Club in Centralia, which has fancy beer samplers for my beer snob of a husband and pinball machines and root beer for my kiddos, which means that I get to relax in a lovely old wood booth with a glass of wine and read a book for awhile. It's one of my favorite parts of the weekend. I fell asleep before the kids last night, before the lights were off, and slept harder than I have in weeks. (Here's the thing about Great Wolf Lodge. It's a giant resort full of families with kids, which means there's chaos literally everywhere, but all of those families want their babies to sleep, so it's a pretty quiet place after a certain hour -- I never worry about people running through the halls and yelling and pissing me off when I'm exhausted. We were even on the ground floor this time, close to everything, and the hallways were pretty quiet by nine o'clock.) This morning the kids were up at dawn because they always are, and we were back in the water park as soon as it opened. We played hard for another few hours before heading home. Rain spattered the windshield and the smell of chlorine filled the car, even though we all showered before we left. Isaac passed out in the back seat, clutching his new stuffed wolf. Suzannah and I read our books.

It really was a lovely weekend. I'm spent, and I haven't even looked at the to-do list I absolutely know I wrote on Friday afternoon, but Friday was hard in ways I don't get to write about here.

In a lot of ways, I love this time of year so much. Everyone is so ready for summer, and sort of burned out, but something about June is so sweet -- infinitely sweeter than May, when everyone is already so done but we're really not, because we still have weeks to go, and none of September's freshly-sharpened pencils still have their erasers, and everyone is out of paper, not to mention patience. But June! We're there. Summer is blooming just barely out of reach, but we can see it. June is often cloudy and cool in the Pacific Northwest, so I've never been sorry to stay in school until we get the truly beautiful days (I'd far rather teach in the coolness of June than the heat of late August), and nothing is so angst-ridden in June than I can't cope with it. In theory, nothing keeps me up at night. And I love this feeling of almost. Because once summer is actually here, every teacher understands that we're immediately aware of its inevitable end.

This year, June is hard. This year has been hard. But when I say that, what I really mean is this: the ways in which it has been hard are just a testament to how lucky I am, because what hurts right now is letting go. This year has been hard, but it has also been as wonderful as it has been hard. Tremendously so. This is not always true, but it is true this year: I have never, not once, wished for time to hurry this year to its inevitable conclusion. The very fact that I am feeling this tidal wave of everything means that I have been extraordinarily lucky. And lucky isn't the right word. What is? I don't know.

But it's not just the natural order of things. That always brings with it a bittersweetness, bound to ache a bit. There are things -- losses -- that are anything but natural. For instance: last Monday, the day my daughter turned twelve, my oldest friend lost her husband to a glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. What kind of bullshit is that? She and I grew up together. A few weeks ago, I posted this on Facebook: I've known Jess my whole life. She and I grew up together in Great Falls and both wound up at Concordia College. She was my roommate for the entire month of May in Europe eighteen years ago, the first witness to Matt and me falling in love. We were at each other's weddings, and three years ago I held her newborn son in the middle of the night while she napped. She is a deeply wonderful human, and it is unsurprising that she and Sean have handled everything thrown at them with more grit and grace than I can imagine, all the while raising two beautiful kids. They need help I wish they didn't have to ask for. Next month they would have celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary. Next month I'll be camping in Glacier National Park with my family, remembering their wedding near West Glacier, remembering that weekend as the first time we took our family of four camping in our new tent, and thinking that absolutely nothing about losing your partner after five years of marriage and two babies fits within the natural order of things.

I didn't go to the funeral on Friday. All weekend, I've wondered whether I should have tried harder to make it. But Matt and Suzannah were out of town, and I'd have had to take Isaac out of school, and Friday was difficult in other ways I don't get to write about, and so I didn't. I told myself that she didn't really need me there, that so many people love her and would show up that day. And I hope I can actually help her out when she might need more hands on deck, even if it's just to help clean her bathrooms or help organize her office or take out the recycling or send my kids into the playroom with hers (my kids spent an afternoon with hers a few weeks ago while I sent Matt out for groceries and tried to help her mom a bit while she was at the hospital, and since then both Suzannah and Isaac have talked about how much fun they had and would like to play with them again) while she takes a few minutes to breathe.

This isn't remotely about me; I have nothing to complain about. But grief doesn't respect boundaries, and even though Jess and I haven't seen a lot of each other in adulthood, I told her this winter that our friendship is practically woven into my DNA. So I'm grieving with and for her.

And so this is the state of things. Love and gratitude, grief and loss. The boundaries between them blur.

A week or two ago, an hour before I had to teach a class, one of my best friends walked into my classroom to find me crying at my desk and just wrapped me up in a long hug. I tried to explain it, but I couldn't. This person understood anyway; it's just everything. Love and gratitude and grief and loss. I have nothing to complain about and sometimes my heart breaks anyway.

Eight students, two teachers

Where were you when you learned of the 22nd school shooting in the United States in 2018?

Can you name all the shootings that happened before this one? Because I can't. Because they happen all the time. A flicker on a screen. Another white male shooter (the kind that is responsible for most of our mass shootings and the kind that is almost always taken alive and fed a meal instead of shot on sight--the police do have that skill set). Another school. Another day in America.

In 2018 I was going to donate money and I was going to write every single time a school shooting happened and I have not and I cannot name them all. So consider this night my catching up.

I can tell you where I was today, even if I cannot, off the top of my head, name all of the shootings that have occurred this year. I had to look them up. Some don't even make my screen flicker. Today, I was at school. Early. Hours earlier than my contract requires, because my job is bigger than my contract recognizes. I kissed my sleepy children good-bye, I kissed my husband who went to work late so that I could go to work early. I drove into the dawn, prepared to work through the day that was supposed to be the joyful (?) culmination of nearly two years' worth of work in a role I feel I am still clumsily learning. Of collecting and cajoling and planning and organizing and praying that all the adults I work with won't hate me at the end of the day, because I am still learning the ways in which asking for things from adults is different from asking for things from kids. Or maybe it's not different. I don't know. It's hard in different ways.

My friend Kailey was out today, on an airplane this morning, but she is still a teacher and teachers work from airplanes, so we messaged each other via Facebook.

She sent this message after she landed: "I just got off the plane to see the news."

I hadn't seen the news. By then, I was deep into the work of the day. I looked at the news.

Jesus, I thought. Again.

The students of Santa Fe High School said, I wasn't surprised. I was just scared. It was going to happen eventually. This is the country we have created for our children.

Eight students, and two teachers. No one is surprised, and we all know it will happen again. My eight-year-old son is not surprised. My children know this will happen again. When I was in second grade, or sixth grade, or tenth grade, it never occurred to me that I could be shot in my own school. This is a thing my own children think about. This is a thing my children's teachers prepare for. This is a thing I talk about with my students.

Not long ago, out of the blue, one of my sophomores said, "Winslow, if someone came to our door with a gun, what would we do?"

I said, "If they came to our door, you run that way," I said, gesturing to the computer lab. "You get the hell out the other door, and you run." (This is just good sense. It's also what we're taught in our Active Shooter Training. Because Active Shooter Training is a thing in my job now.)

"Wait, what about you?"

"I make sure you all get the hell out, Babies."

"But you come too, right?"

"I mean, after you're all out. Yeah, I'll come."

"But what if he starts shooting?"

"You run out the back door, and you keep running."

"But what do you do?"

"I do my damndest to make sure he doesn't get to you."

"You just stay and get shot? That's messed up. We'd stay with you."

"No. You don't."

I teared up a little. With love and anger, both. Love, because these kiddos of mine were so, so incredulous and indignant. Anger because this is an actual conversation we have. No, it's not part of my job description. This is not what I signed up for. And yes, it is what I would do. It's not a question. It's not okay, but it has become part of the job expectation for those of us who teach kids. Our bodies are on the line. They just are. And our great, broken country seems to have very little interest in changing this reality.

And I have to tell you, I'm tired of donating money for this shit, because I really feel like this shit shouldn't be a thing I worry about. If it happens at my school, or my children's school, and let me tell you how typing those words constricts my chest to the point where I can barely stand to type this (my children's teachers are parents to their own children, and their bodies are on the line for mine), I won't be surprised. And I hope it doesn't happen, and I pray (I do pray) it doesn't, but it is clearly going to be happening again somewhere in this broken country, because it just always does.

So where were you? I was in the Instructional Resource Room at my own school, working with the coordinators at our feeder middle schools to finalize nearly two years' worth of work we need to submit to the International Baccalaureate Organization in order to maintain our authorization. I checked my phone. I gasped out loud. The others already knew. We didn't talk about it at all. What is there to say? It's another one. It's another one.

I cried a lot today, in the end. I worked, I felt my body growing tense with the effort to stay on task, I spoke like a normal adult human being to other adult human beings and a few students. Or I tried, anyway. We finished our work. Have a good weekend, we said. And I sat there this afternoon, finally alone with all of it, with the strangeness of letting go of nearly two years' worth of work, with the weight of this day, with the strange heartbreak of this entire week that will not be made clear on this very public blog. I packed up my laptop, my notebooks. I walked back to my empty, quiet classroom. I sat down at my desk in a building that empties quickly on a Friday afternoon, and I cried for twenty minutes. I couldn't tell you exactly why. One of my best friends found me there before I left, someone who always checks in at the end of the day, and I didn't need to say anything. That this person was there to hug me before I drove home mattered. That Kailey was there even when she wasn't physically there mattered. I was suddenly so overwhelmed: by love and grief and gratitude. By anger and helpless rage. And by something I couldn't name. What is the word for that?

This love, messy and beautiful

And somehow, just like that, it's already April. The end of it, even. This is the point in the year when all of us feel the approach of summer, but it's just beyond our grasp, just enough to be sort of soul-killing. My family and friends in Montana and Minnesota were still shoveling snow last weekend. Last Saturday I watched my girl play in her first soccer game of the spring season in the pouring rain on the muddiest field in King County, but honestly, it wasn't terribly cold and she played so well on that slippery, clumpy field, and at some point when you're drenched and covered in mud you might as well just relax and decide to have a ton of fun, and it seemed that the girls did just that. Yesterday they played on their home field, on smooth and beautiful turf, and I just...still love it all, so much. We haul our camping chairs out of the back of the car and carry them to the field, but mostly I can't even sit down, because I get too excited. Yesterday, my parents were here to watch -- they were in town to meet my tiny new nephew James, and they managed to set aside time for Isaac's track meet and Zannah's game -- and my mom made the same comment she made last March, at Suzannah's first spring soccer game: "It's fun to watch you, too." Because I never saw myself as a soccer mom, ever. But damn if I don't love watching my girl play.

Spring soccer is just beginning (the games, that is; practice started in early March, not long after our own snow day); the girls will play until June. Their last game is just a couple of days after I teach my last class of 2018 seniors. I'm trying not to think about that. I kind of feel like all I've done for the past two months is yell at them and clutch my hair and beg and cajole and threaten and beg some more. Every single class feels like I'm blurting some PG-13 version of "Goddammit, I love you, please get your shit together, I don't even sleep anymore because of you, I am fucking worried about some of you and I am proud of all of you and absolutely beyond blessed to have you in my life and you are all ruining my life and you make me furious and crazy and I am going to miss you more than you even know."

This is love, though. It's just love. Messy and hard and beautiful.

I've been a teacher for my entire adult life, and I was really barely an adult when I started. Now, seventeen years in, these kids really feel like my kids. I've loved so many students over the years, and I've had the deep privilege to stay connected to some of them, but this class is something new for me. I've taught all of them for at least two years, since I looped with them for junior and senior year -- a first. I taught a lot of them as sophomores, too, and a good handful of them as freshmen. All this to say: it's not that I love them more than I've loved students I've taught before, because I have had the deep privilege of loving a lot of kids, but I've never before felt so deeply attached and emotionally invested in an entire class. And it's probably not very healthy or balanced. I really have lost a lot of sleep over them this semester -- or maybe I've lost sleep wondering if I've been enough or done enough for them. I worry about that a lot, actually -- about how I could have taught them better, been better. (Teaching really does parallel parenting. So much, so much.) Mostly, though, I'm just going to miss them. This is the natural order of things; they need to move on, and more kids will come, and I will love them, too. But I think what I'm feeling is -- dare I say it -- grief.

And there's the bittersweetness of my own beautiful life, my own children. I love this stage of parenting so very much; I hardly even know what to say about it. I've loved all of it so far, truly. I loved my babies, and I loved my toddlers, my preschoolers. But to be the mother of school-aged children who make me laugh every day, who can get themselves up and dressed, who sprawl on their stomachs to read books but still curl up against me at night to read together, who run in track and hi-yah! in Tae Kwon Do and play hard on the soccer field -- I love everything about this. My kids make me crazy every day; they can't stay out of each other's faces, they hi-yah at each other all afternoon. Mom, Isaac's copying me. Mommy, Zannah kicked me. There's that. But mostly, I wish I could stop time, right here, at this year: this time with my children, when they are growing so much but still yell, "Tuck me in!" when they're finished brushing their teeth, and they tolerate me crawling into bed with them for snuggles for a few minutes. I can take a nap on Sunday afternoon and I don't have to worry about it lining up perfectly with a baby's nap, or a toddler's (although really Isaac was my only toddler who ever napped). I can send them outside to play while I work, and I don't have to think about it much; the reassuring sound of the basketball bouncing in the driveway or their shouts to the backyard neighbors are enough. They need me still. When they spill something, when they're scared, when they need help: they call for me. We talk about things. I pick them up from school and they are still both bursting to tell me about their day. But they can make their own beds and help me with laundry. They settle in to do their homework after school and they don't even need me to nag at them. (Teacher's kids? Luck?) I love living with these people, and wondering who they will be, how their joys and talents and passions will manifest themselves as they grow. They have always been themselves, but as they grow they continue to reveal more and more of who they are, and that is joy I could not have fully understood when Matt and I said to each other, yes, we want to be parents, let's have babies. What an unspeakably beautiful gift.

In the meantime: this April, as the cherry blossoms fall to soft pink carpets over the sidewalks, I am so acutely aware of time passing. This year, the cherry blossoms feel as achingly, beautifully sad as autumn leaves. I am in no hurry for summer; I just want to keep and hold each moment. I am not counting down the days until the end of this school year. I don't want to measure my days that way. I love summer, but this year, somehow, its approach breaks my heart a bit.

But probably that's always true. I love the turning of the seasons, but they come at a necessary cost. A loss.

We need a better word for this

On this cold and drizzly Friday afternoon, I'm sitting at my dining room table across from my son, who is coloring. He shed his socks like normal within five minutes of dropping his backpack on the family room floor, and now he's in his usual position, kneeling on the chair, bare feet tucked under his bum.

Let me back up a bit.

Last night, I attended a district-wide meeting on Gun Violence and School Safety. Twelve hours later, I'm still processing the intensity of it all. I sat across the room from teachers at my daughter's school. I sat across the room from my son's teacher, and I listened to her speak about how sometimes, she has to sacrifice the sacred math and reading time for more important things--the kids' social and emotional needs. ("Even if I get in trouble," she said.) I wanted to tell her then that as the mother of a child in her classroom, I appreciate every single second she spends on these kids' social and emotional needs. My son comes home from school talking about that. He doesn't come home from school eager to talk about what he's learning in math.

But I didn't have the chance last night, or at any rate, I lost the ability to speak.

We had some important conversations last night, and teachers raised important questions. We talked about what we need, as educators, from our district. I was grateful to be there with friends and colleagues who, as one of them said, could lead and listen and hold space. It was a difficult, necessary, and emotional night.

Gun violence and school safety weighs heavily on my heart as an educator every day now. And it weighs on me as a mother who understands that other teachers put their bodies on the line every day for my children. Last night, I was overwhelmed both as a teacher and as a mother, sitting in a room with my children's teachers and watching a video called "Surviving a School Shooting." I watched my son's teacher watch this video, and something in me broke. Tears began streaming down my face, and I couldn't stop them. I tried, but I just could not stop crying. Many teachers were visibly upset after this video, but during the debrief, all I could say to my table was this: "My son's teacher is here. I watched her watch this video." I couldn't articulate any more than that.

I cried all the way home. I wasn't sobbing; it just felt like something inside me had come loose, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to tighten it back up. I walked in the door after thirteen hours away from my family, exhausted and spent and trying to tighten whatever it was that had come loose. Unsuccessful, I just went to bed instead.

I woke up at four o'clock this morning, unable to go back to sleep. My eyes were sore and swollen enough that I soaked a cotton pad in witch hazel and pressed it against my eyelids for a few minutes. But I actually had a decent day; these days, going to school heals my heart even when my heart is so frequently broken there, because if there is hope to be found in this broken world, in this broken country, it's in our kids.

And then this happened: Twenty-five minutes before my son's school day ended, as I drove from my own school to pick him up, his school went into lockdown. Someone had set off illegal fireworks outside, near enough to my son's classroom that it sounded like gunfire. The adults heard it. The kids heard it.

Imagine what it feels like to be a teacher, emotionally drained after a night of intense discussion surrounding what steps our district will take to deal with the threat of gun violence. Imagine a night of intense discussion of our individual schools' safety needs, a night in which teachers see a simulation of an elementary school shooting and see their own students--see themselves--in that video. Then imagine the very next afternoon: a sound just outside the classroom door that sounds like gunfire, because an entire box of fireworks ignited at once is no joke, especially in March. Imagine the lockdown, imagine sheltering frightened second-graders behind overturned desks in the corner, away from the door.

I didn't have the whole story when I met my son at his door; the call from the district office referenced only "loud noises" and reassured us that students and staff were safe at all times. But I watched those nervous kids leave class today, and I saw the tears in their teacher's eyes, and all I could do was hug her and say Thank you. Thank you for being there for my son.

My son sits across from me, coloring.

We're talking about it, intermittently. I ask him how it made him feel.

"It was so scary," he said. He told me exactly what they heard and how they hid. His teacher is wonderful; she kept them calm, and they talked about it afterwards. Shared a group hug. She creates a safe space for these kids to process their feelings, which matters far more to me than math or reading. At home, Isaac and I talked about how teachers work to keep kids safe. We talked about how it was good to practice, so they know what to do.

Less than 24 hours ago, I watched my son's teacher watch that video, and this afternoon, my son sheltered behind an overturned desk after hearing what he thought was a shooter. My little boy was terrified in his own classroom. He has never felt anything but safe in schools. My boy has spent his entire life in schools. And today, that safety was stolen from him a little bit. I'd hoped it wouldn't happen so soon.

I'm well aware he was never in any real danger. Do you understand that our souls are shaken, though? Because we understand that we are not safe in our schools, and teachers understand that the rest of the country is placing that burden squarely on our shoulders. We have to learn to defend ourselves, to secure ourselves. In the meantime, our country doesn't seem to think it needs to make it any more difficult for those would do harm to have access to the weapons that would harm us. That would violate our "rights."

The insanity defies all words.

So I hold my son on my lap and kiss his cheek before he wriggles out of my grip. So I sit across from my little boy at the dining room table and talk to him about how he felt this afternoon when he thought a shooter was outside his classroom door. So I cry in the shower, cry in my car. So I talk to my students about where to run and how to hide, and I'm learning more about how to fight. So I say to a crying fifteen-year-old boy who is angry and scared, "It's okay not to be okay, because nothing about this is okay." So I scream at the news and nod with my children who already know the adults running the country have failed them. (But the teenagers speaking out may very well be what saves us.)

*

A couple of weeks ago I pondered how active this blog would be if I only posted after a school shooting. Had today "only" been about illegal fireworks and my son's fear, about the collective rage and heartbreak of teachers, I probably would have posted anyway. But as it turns out, two people were shot dead at Central Michigan University, which brings the total count to twelve school shootings so far in 2018.

Shortly after the shooting this morning, my dear friend Alicia posted this:

Shooting at CMU in Michigan. Where a colleague of mine now waits and worries on lockdown, his wife also on lockdown because she works on campus too. And his two daughters? They are on lockdown because of their school’s proximity to campus. It started from a domestic dispute. Never say to me we don’t need stricter gun laws.

It is too damn easy to shoot someone.

And tonight, again, I am making a donation to counter those who believe their right to their weapons weighs more than my child's right to attend school in safety. To live without this fear. To live.

I'm furious. I will never not be furious. We need a better word for this in our language: what word is enough for this fear, this rage, this heartbreak?

The burden is real, and it's difficult to breathe

Teaching, like motherhood, is lonely.

And I'm lucky, because I teach alongside the best of the best. All of the best friends in my life are either teachers themselves or they are related to teachers or they work with kids in schools, and so when they know teachers are grieving, frightened, angry, and damn near paralyzed by love for this terrible job, they are there. Teaching is one of my callings, but I am here to tell you we cannot do it without the support of those in the trenches with us.

The last week has been particularly hard. It's been hard for every teacher I know, because we are all grappling with the implications of yet another school shooting, and our schools and our districts are grappling alongside us, albeit some with more effectiveness or empathy or action than others. At my school, we went into an unannounced lockdown drill on Friday, and by the end of the day, one in which a neighboring community college had also gone into a real lockdown, we were so on-edge it felt surreal. We were just an absolute mess. We were messy with each other. We were a mess in front of our kids, who seemed to find some measure of comfort in that. We were a collective mess all over social media. We are not trying to hide this. It is becoming critically important that we not.

Teachers are not quietly enduring these days. And I think that's why it feels so lonely; it reminds me of what it felt like sometimes to be a new mother, especially -- isolated and criticized and wishing the folks who didn't share my experience could try to empathize and reach out anyway when I was obviously exhausted and desperately lonely. (I think it's probably no coincidence that the best friends who managed to do this without fail even though they didn't have their own children were teachers, because teaching is an awful lot like parenting.)

I've been thinking about this for a few days now. On Friday, I cried intermittently throughout much of the day. I wept all the way home from school. I couldn't hide this from my own kids, nor did I think I should try; I don't want to frighten them, but they are savvy teacher's kids with questions and I owe them honesty in age-appropriate answers. And they had questions. Like: why are guns so easy to get? And why would someone want to shoot kids? And why won't our president and government even try to stop them? (God, a few teenagers eat laundry detergent and now they're trying to legislate that, even though some idiots will always manage to get Tide Pods if they really want them, right? Because TRYING TO MAKE IT HARDER FOR PEOPLE TO CAUSE HARM EVEN IF IT DOESN'T WORK EVERY SINGLE TIME seems like the obvious thing to do, and my children understand this.)

On Friday, I pledged to donate a specific dollar amount to fight this fuckery based on a number of things: comments regarding arming teachers in the classroom, comments about how "It's not a gun problem" or some such nonsense, as well as an amount for the top recipients of N.R.A. money. I had to stop reading social media. I actually blocked one friend-of-a-friend (who has all kinds of opinions about what teachers should do and what we should be fired for), because I don't have that much money in my bank account.

So it's been a rough few days, but I've already made that point. I sat down to write this: I am so grateful for the teachers willing to have the hard conversations, who are willing to be raw and real. Not only the teachers I work with, but the teachers I'm friends with from Seattle to New York City (hi, Becca) and everywhere in between. We've held each other in this heartbreak before, and we are doing it now, but we are angry, and it would be nice if we knew that the rest of the world had our backs as well. Every other week we're talking about what it means to be a teacher who understands that part of the job is putting our bodies on the line for our kids. The silence from those who claim to love us is deafening at times.

But while I drove home with tears in my eyes, and while I cried into my husband's shirt on Friday night and said, "I'm sorry, I don't know how to stop my feelings from pouring out my face, I'm okay and I'm hungry and can we just make some Trader Joe's appetizers?", I texted back and forth with colleagues feeling the same things. Mostly we just loved on each other. I chatted with and e-mailed teacher friends all over the country, and I thought, we're in this together.

Tomorrow I go back to school after a long weekend, and I'm going back feeling grateful for the folks who are going back with me. We've had four days off with our babies, with our families. I ate good food in Portland, played with my kids, laughed with my husband, and bought all the books at Powells. Last night I had dinner with one of my best friends, who is obviously a teacher. This afternoon I curled up on my couch and my daughter covered me with her favorite fleece blanket. I chatted with a couple of my best friends, who are obviously teachers. We're a mess, but we're a mess together. Also: we're not a mess. We're strong, angry, driven by fierce and unrelenting love, and ready to roll up our sleeves and organize. We're powered by a generation of fierce and passionate kids we are privileged to teach (and more importantly, to learn from).

If you love a teacher, surely you know that teacher is heartbroken and angry and damn near paralyzed by love.

But not quite paralyzed. We're not going to stop what we're doing. We're not going to stop having the conversations about what it means to place our bodies between bullets and our kids. Do you think the teachers in Parkland hadn't had those conversations already? I one hundred percent promise you they had, because that is what it means to be a teacher in America in 2018. More of us will have to do this, and it really could be any of us. Our kids are scared. On the west coast, thousands of miles from Parkland, my kids were not okay last week. Our kids are also angry, and they're ready to move, they're ready to act, and we're with them.

And if you love a teacher, it would actually help a great deal if you stood with us, because the burden is real and it is crushing. Say something. Anything.

Our national disgrace

I've been quiet here since winter break, mostly because I've been working on a writing project that has pulled me in another direction. But it seems school shootings hit a nerve with me, since I'm a teacher and a mother and I guess I have just the tiniest issue with the idea that our disgraceful country wins at mass shootings and not much else.

Maybe I'll add this blog as another project of its own: what would I end up with at the end of the year if I only post when America experiences a school shooting? (Will I have more entries than I posted in 2017? I only posted 18, a record low for me.)

There is, of course, much debate on what "counts" as a school shooting. Everytown for Gun Safety classifies it as any event in which a live firearm is discharged in a school building or on school grounds; that happens a lot. But if we "only" count those incidents in which a firearm kills or wounds someone in a school or on school grounds, during school hours, it's still way, way too many for a country that likes to brag about itself the way we do. And it's way too many for this mama, this teacher.

And after the latest massacre this week, even mere reports of gunfire have everyone here on edge. This morning my school chose to hold a surprise lockdown drill (I'm withholding comment on that for now). During that drill, we learned that gunfire had been reported on the campus of a local community college, where many of our students attend classes for Running Start. My students, held in a lockdown drill in our school, were texting their friends (also many of our students), held in a real lockdown. At that point, it didn't matter whether or not there was an actual shooter with intent to cause harm.

We are not okay.

Let me tell you about my morning, about how it felt to smooth my daughter's soft blonde hair away from her face and kiss her forehead as she called, "Dad, are you ready yet?" and glared at her watch. (He drops her off on the way to catch his bus, and my girl likes to be early.) Let me tell you about taking my son to his school on the way to my own, about reaching into the back seat to find his warm little hand, because for years now that has been our last good-bye in the morning -- before they jump out of the car and run into the gym for Morning Assembly I reach back and squeeze their hands three times. I (squeeze) love (squeeze) you (squeeze). Let me tell you about how it feels to hold those sensory images in my heart: my daughter's soft hair, my son's warm and slightly dry palm. Let me tell you about calling good-bye to one child as her dad drove her to school, about calling good-bye to the other as he jumped out of the car and ran into the gym, his backpack bouncing over his little butt, and the way I could just barely see the top of his Batman underwear peeking over the waistband of his jeans.

Let me tell you about my conscious thought: What if these were the last images of my children, alive? What if these moments were our last living memories?

I cried all the way to school. I listened to NPR. They read the names of all the victims who died in Parkland on Wednesday.

She was a soccer player and a creative writer. He unlocked a door to allow students in to hide from the shooter. She loved the beach. He had had just earned an academic scholarship to the University of Indianapolis. She was 14 and a member of the school marching band's winter guard. He reportedly died from wounds he sustained while shielding students from bullets.

"I sent her to school yesterday, and she was supposed to be safe...My job is to protect my children, and I sent my kid to school."

This is what it means to be a parent in America now. To live with that fear. Every fucking day, really.

And this is what it means to be a teacher in America: To understand that my students are scared, and the ways in which they process that are as varied as the students themselves. To cry with my colleagues every time this happens. Every. time. Do you have the vaguest idea what "every time" means? What is the number that means "fucking enough already"? Because we've done this so many times. And today we broke, at least at my school. We came to school shattered, and we were met with an unannounced lockdown drill. And then we heard about the real lockdown just up the road. And we tried to be calm for our kids but some of us were better at that than others, and when one of my kids brought me cookies he'd baked for me before lunch I couldn't keep the tears out of my eyes, and he just hugged me. And then kids came to eat lunch in my room and one of them was really, really not okay, and his friends told him to chill out, and then he was even less okay, and I couldn't make it better. And then some of my kids really just wanted "normal" by noon, so I tried to give them that, too. I don't think I did any of it particularly well. I taught with tears in my eyes all day long. I cried hard during my planning and once at lunch and twice in the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face. I cried hard after school, twice, before I walked to my car to drive home, trying to calm myself before I wrapped my own children in my arms.

And make no mistake: I was not the only teacher in tears today. And that's just in my school, three thousand miles away from Parkland, Florida. Ours weren't the only hearts breaking (again, fucking again) this week. I wasn't the only mother grieving and afraid as she kissed her children good-bye this morning.

And this is what I posted on Facebook this morning, before school, before I kissed my children good-bye, before our unannounced lockdown drill, before the lockdown at the nearby community college:

On President's Day, I will be making a donation to Everytown for Gun Safety.

I will give a specific dollar amount for:

Every friend or friend of a friend who comments that America doesn't have a gun problem (or any equivalent, like "America has a HEART problem" or "Cain killed Abel with a rock", etc.)

Every friend or friend of a friend who comments that teachers of our children should be armed

The top recipients of N.R.A. funding in the House and Senate
who have the gall to express thoughts/prayers/condolences to the victims of gun violence in schools

I have more ideas, but I fear I will run out of money.

I will be donating for every school shooting in America in 2018. And I'm furious about it.