2020 in Books

I read a lot less in 2020 than I have in recent years and I'm trying not to be too hard on myself about this, even though I went into lockdown with the best of intentions. (Didn't we all, before this year kicked us in the face?) Still, I did read some truly excellent books, and I love sharing reading lists.

Trust Exercise, by Susan Choi
Reading this reminded me both of The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer and Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann, maybe more because of the language than the content (although there are some connections for me there, too). I almost didn't pick this up because I've read so many lukewarm reviews on Goodreads, but that was true for Anthropology of an American Girl, too. What can I say? Reading experiences differ. I simply loved the writing, and this was just such a deeply satisfying reading experience, because what she does with language and structure is brilliant.

I also feel that this is a novel best enjoyed without knowing too much about it because of her structural choices, so I'll leave it at that. I loved this one.

Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church, by Megan Phelps-Roper (The latest edition is titled Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope)

"I couldn't allow bitterness to steal the beauty in my family, or love to conceal the destructiveness in it. I wouldn't rewrite history. I would hold the whole messy truth of it to myself all at once."

I've been fascinated by the Westboro Baptist Church for years, and I couldn't wait to read Megan Phelps-Roper's story. It's markedly different from Lauren Drain's Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church, a book I devoured seven years ago for its story but not its writing. I appreciated that for the insider's glimpse into the daily workings of the church, but Lauren Drain wasn't born into it; her father joined as an adult, bringing his family along. Steve Drain seems absolutely monstrous to me in every account I read or see, and I've never been able to see him as anything but a small man hungry for power.

But Phelps-Roper has a different story. She was born and raised in the church, and her book takes us into the heart of her family and her love for them. For their love for each other. We can't forget that the people she has lost--the people who reject her now--are the ones who read her stories, braided her hair, comforted her during sickness and sadness, played games and shared meals, and did everything that any loving family would do. And because she was part of a family who rejected the people who left before her, we're given painful insight into what that's like--to truly believe, and then to doubt. And, ultimately, to leave her family as well.

I appreciate not only her desire to tell her truth but her call for all of us to "foster a culture in which we have the language to articulate and defend sound arguments as to why certain ideas are harmful, the precise ways in which they're flawed, and the suffering they have caused in the past." She didn't change because of people who threw cups of soda at her head while she marched on the picket line, or by those who surrounded her--quite literally--with hatred. She changed gradually, through interactions with people who were willing to share ideas and conversation. The people she condemned to hell even as she played Words With Friends with them. This matters so much right now. What horrifies me is the realization that the WBC doesn't seem particularly "fringe" anymore; they seem like part of a larger cultural phenomena in which people feel newly emboldened in their hateful views.

I still have so many questions about people still in the church (Jael Phelps fascinates me, though she doesn't get much attention in this book, and for the first time I have real empathy for Megan's mother Shirley) and about others who have left (she and Lauren Drain seem to have no contact; in fact I don't think she mentions Lauren's name here). But I think this is a story that will continue to unfold.

Hard to Love: Essays and Confessions, by Briallen Hopper
This book was a gift from a friend, and it really felt like a gift from her soul to mine. I'm not sure how else to describe it; it honors relationships and emotional investments we often overlook but that matter so very deeply to a human life. I know I'll return to this collection when I need the comfort of friendship and the solace of good writing.

How We Fight For Our Lives, by Saeed Jones
Saeed Jones tells stories of growing up black and gay in the south during a time when Matthew Shepherd was murdered and a black man could be tied to the back of a white supremacist's pickup truck and dragged to his death. So it's strange to say that this is a beautiful memoir, but Jones is a poet and his prose lights up every page, showing the real power of language to draw us into common human experiences of love and loss and grief. It's a gorgeous, heartbreaking, necessary story.

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
The fact that the third installment of the Thomas Cromwell trilogy would be released in the spring spurred me into finally picking up the first, which has been on my to-read list for a long time. This was both deeply pleasurable and a lot of work to read -- simply because my knowledge of the history is fairly superficial, and I found myself flipping frequently to the character lists and family trees. But the work is absolutely worth it and I loved the writing, and somehow Hilary Mantel made Thomas Cromwell a likable character. It's brilliant historical fiction. I'm looking forward to sinking into the rest of the story.

How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi
There really is no comfortable ground between racism and anti-racism, and anti-racism takes work. This book is an excellent resource for folks willing to take on that work, which should be all of us. It's a courageous, insightful piece of writing from an important voice, and I think it's a challenging, uncomfortable read for pretty much anyone. As it should be. Because we have work to do, and that work won't happen if we're comfortable where we're at. (Sidenote, I loaned my copy to someone last winter, before lockdown...who still has it?)

Love, by Toni Morrison
I wouldn't start with this novel if you've never read Morrison before, but every sentence was a pleasure even when the story was dark, and as always, every character is allowed to be flawed and human.

The Topeka School, by Ben Lerner
This novel delivered a reading experience I wasn't expecting when I picked it up. I love every sentence Ben Lerner writes. He hasn't been on my radar as a writer I urgently need to read, but he is now.

Weather, by Jenny Offill
I read this novel in two sittings and it really felt like it was written straight to my soul. (For me it paired rather beautifully with Ducks, Newburyport and I love that I read them close together.) After I finished, I wanted to keep carrying it around with me because I might just need it.

Memories of the Future, by Siri Hustvedt
I believe books find us at the right time, and this was certainly the right time for me. I think Siri Hustvedt is brilliant, and I've loved every novel of hers that I've read, but I couldn't have fully appreciated this if I were in my twenties. And I still don't know how to talk about it. It's a novel that reads like a memoir, but that doesn't quite fit, either. It's the "multilayered Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman." I loved this like I loved The Blazing World.

Tell Me a Story, by Cassandra King Conroy
I had to read this because I love Pat Conroy, and his widow clearly loved him dearly, but it's impossible to rate. What I wanted was more of his voice, and this wasn't the place to find it.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk
I loved the protagonist of this strange and wonderful novel; never underestimate the power of an old woman used to men dismissing her as crazy. This book succeeds as both a philosophical study of human behavior and a surreal crime novel.

Sabrina & Corina: Stories, by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Gorgeously written punch to the gut: luminous, beautiful, and sad. This will join my favorite collections of short stories.

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays, by Alexander Chee
It's always a little difficult to rate collections of work; some essays and stories soar above the rest and some fly a little lower. I think Chee is a brilliant and important writer and his voice matters, and the last essay in this collection, "On Becoming an American Writer," is worth the purchase of the entire book.

The Glass Hotel, by Emily St. John Mandel
I loved Station Eleven, which is perhaps the only reason I picked up a novel about subjects I didn't know I was remotely interested in reading about (Ponzi schemes and the shipping industry?). And I'm probably still not interested in reading novels about those subjects, but in Emily St. John Mandel's hands they become compelling character studies that also evoke a vivid sense of place (from a remote and wild corner of Vancouver Island to Manhattan), two of my favorite things in fiction.

This is an absolutely perfect novel to read while sheltering in place, when it's hard for me to concentrate on much of anything. It was delightfully escapist and absorbing, and her storytelling is just as wonderful in this novel as it is in her previous work. Considering how different the stories themselves are, I'll follow her anywhere now. Five stars because I was honestly sad for the story to end, and because it delivered exactly what I so needed in the moment.

Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart
This novel is dark, to be sure, but so big-hearted, expansive, and loving. And so evocative of a particular time and place -- in this case, 1980s Glasgow, Scotland. It's a story of addiction, sexuality, class, and, above all, love, in the many forms love can take. And I loved the characters, even Agnes, even at her worst, which is a testament to the author's love for them as well, and his skill in drawing them as complex, messily human, and real.

A House on Stilts: Mothering in the Age of Opioid Addiction, by Paula Becker
An affluent white Seattle mother's memoir of a family coping with a beloved son's drug addiction. It's a tough one to rate.

Night Boat to Tangier, by Kevin Barry
A few years ago, upon her return from a trip to Ireland, a friend of mine gave me a collection of short stories edited by Kevin Barry. And I love Irish literature, so when this hit the Booker longlist, I was eager to read it -- but I wasn't prepared to love this like I did. I was utterly charmed by these aging Irish criminals, and my heart was appropriately battered, too. Barry's language delivered everything I love about Irish lit, and he deserves every accolade.

Bring up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel
I admired Wolf Hall, but Bring Up the Bodies was just so much fun to read. The first novel in Mantel's Cromwell trilogy took me a few weeks get through (that shouldn't put anyone off; it's a brilliant book, but I had to work a little harder at it, perhaps because I needed to rely heavily on the tables of characters); the second took me four days. The writing is brilliant. I'm not often drawn to historical fiction, but Mantel's gift is that she imagines fantastic characters (who else could make Thomas Cromwell likable?) and I'm in awe of her prose. I'm glad I waited so long to read these two, simply because now I don't have to wait for the third and final volume, which is ready and waiting on my bookshelf.

August, by Callan Wink
I wanted to love this book, especially since Callan Wink writes from a place that is dear to my heart and soul. And there's a good deal about Montana that he gets exactly right, but when he's writing about people, I had a hard time not rolling my eyes. He had a woman in her late twenties talking to her teenaged lover about "the man that makes your womb glow." And every woman who made an appearance in this book was reduced to thighs (so many mentions of thighs, more than once "thick"), or breasts (either small or heavy and veined and swinging free). August's mother (the parent he lived with throughout his teenage years) was always smoking a cigarillo, and we don't know much more about her. To be fair, the story is written from the perspective of a nineteen-year-old boy, but this reader grew weary of feeling like women were little more than rotisserie chickens. ALSO. The rape scene near the beginning is an incredibly flimsy, shitty plot device in this book that seems to serve no purpose whatsoever beyond allowing two male characters to punch each other in the face and share a swig of whiskey a year later, and the more I think about it, the angrier it makes me. It's not quite enough to knock it down to one star (I still appreciate his evocation of a very particular place and the details that ground me there), but almost.

The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich
It's always wonderful to return to Erdrich's writing. As a reader, I just trust her. She's really telling two stories in this novel, and they're both important and beautifully told, but sometimes they didn't seem to fit together in a way that seemed natural to me. I still enjoyed it.

Conjure Women, by Afia Atakora
Incredibly important story, staggeringly good writing. Atakora's characters are fierce and her language is a wonder. This book is everything.

Unashamed: Musing of a Fat, Black Muslim, by Lean Vernon
Hers is an important story and I wanted to love it, but I didn't love the writing, and ultimately that took me out of the story itself.

Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative, by Jane Allison
This is a thought-provoking and inspiring book about narrative patterns. I love it as a writer, as a reader, and as a teacher of high school literature, and as I read I marked both sections that I would love to share with my IB lit students and sections that resonate with me.

Sharks in the Time of Saviors, by Kawai Strong Washburn
This book is incredible. I picked it up because a writer I love blurbed it, and all I knew was that a young boy on a cruise ship fell overboard and was delivered to safety by the very sharks everyone thought would destroy him. That's all I needed. But I didn't know it would be a gorgeous, layered story about family, love, anger, grief, rage, class, hope, and perseverance. The real story is about the family in the aftermath of a complicated miracle. The language is stunning, the story is everything, and I can't believe this is a debut novel.

Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do, by Jennifer L. Eberhardt
Another must-read for anyone interested in doing anti-racist work, and a truly fascinating and well researched study of bias in education, business, and the workplace. It's an incredibly smooth read and I recommend it to literally everyone.

Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernadine Evaristo
This book is both brilliant and truly pleasurable to read. I love the way Evaristo brings twelve different characters so beautifully to life in these interconnected stories, spanning years and families and illustrating the ways in which people lean on and love each other, though she never shies away from the complexities of families and friendships. Her language is a hybrid between poetry and prose, and I found it a joy to just fall into the rhythm of it all; I couldn't put it down, and I wept at the ending.

Not Light, But Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom, by Matthew R. Kay
A must-read for educators, administrators, or anyone working with kids. (Or anyone with opinions about those things, frankly.)

The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett
This is the story of twin sisters -- light-skinned black girls -- in a fictional small town in Louisiana, where light skin is the rule, carefully cultivated. They run away to New Orleans at the age of sixteen, and there they part ways; one sister marries a black man and gives birth to a daughter who is "blueblack" dark, and the other cuts off all ties with her home, begins passing for white, marries a white man, and gives birth to a blonde, blue-eyed daughter. Their stories converge once again when the daughters' lives converge quite by accident on the other side of the country, and while perhaps this requires a certain willing suspension of disbelief, Bennett is a storyteller I trust and I'll follow her anywhere. Bennet addresses race, gender, sex, and class, and while the book is absolutely a page-turner, she never sacrifices prose or characterization at the hands of the plot. I loved it.

Inland, by Téa Obreht
I loved The Tiger's Wife when I read it years ago, but I wasn't sure what to expect from this one, which is a historical western set in the American southwest with some supernatural elements, and...camels. Why not. The story follows Lurie, an immigrant and a man wanted for murder, and Nora, a tough frontierswoman waiting for her husband to return from his quest for water during a drought; her two older sons have also disappeared, leaving her with her youngest son Toby, her husband's young cousin (who claims to be clairvoyant), her wheelchair-bound mother-in-law, and the constant voice of her long-dead first child, a daughter named Evelyn. Lurie's story spans his lifetime, Nora's a single day, but they converge in an ending that left me breathless. Obreht's writing is every bit as masterful as I remember, and this novel was worth the wait.

Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, by T Kira Madden
I loved this memoir. It belongs on the shelf next to Ariel Gore, Lidia Yuknavitch, Briallen Hopper, Chelsea Clammer, Chanel Miller -- but it's not like them, exactly, it's just its own gorgeously honest work. I love writers who can take me inside a context so far from anything I've experienced and make me feel the humanity of it anyway, and do it with gorgeous language.

Raising a Rare Girl, by Heather Lanier

"But when you push away disability, you also push away your humanity. When you push away any fissure of vulnerability, you also push away the tender truth about yourself. You were not, were never made to be, SuperHuman. You were made to be human. And this doesn't exactly break the heart, but it does split apart every clapboard and nail and piece of barbed wire you've hammered to it."

I've been following Heather Lanier's blog for years, every since I read an essay of hers in The Sun. This is her story of trying to create the perfect "Superbaby" -- like so many of us expectant moms do -- by doing everything right (organic this, Hypnobabies that), only to realize that maybe we're completely wrong about what makes a body and a life worth valuing, loving, and celebrating. It's a beautiful story and she's a beautiful writer, and this book is one I wish every single educator could read before they enter a classroom, or every single parent before they welcome a child, or everyone who has ever grappled with the messiness of being human. Which, wait, is everyone. (This is one of those rare books I would literally recommend to anyone.)

Actress, by Anne Enright
I loved this story of a complicated mother, narrated by her daughter Norah, the child of a celebrity and no stranger to scandal. I love even more the ways in which Norah's life stands in contrast with her mother's. Norah never comes across as bitter; her life lacks the fame and celebrity of her mother's (not to mention the drama and trauma), but she is a successful writer and happily married mother, who manages to see her mother with clear eyes and loves her anyway.

I really think Enright is brilliant. Period. She takes us straight to the heart of her characters and she does it in perfectly crafted sentences. She writes about difficult people with grace and humor, and I found this a pure pleasure to read.

Summer, by Ali Smith
This couldn't have been a more timely read, although that's how I feel about all of Ali Smith's Seasonal Quartet. I read this one more quickly than the others, determined to finish while it was technically still summer, but it was actually that propulsive.

This is the book that made me really consider the connections between all four novels, and the one that made me see it -- the Quartet -- for the masterpiece it is. All the stars. I'm looking at them on my shelf all together now, and it feels like one book instead of four, and one I should revisit now that I have all the pieces.

Sisters, by Daisy Johnson
Fall is a perfect time to read this slim but unsettling and haunting novel. It's best to go in not knowing anything about it, but the reading experience was something I'd expect from Shirley Jackson. Perfect for a chilly, dark autumn night.

The Searcher, by Tana French
Like most of Tana French's fans, I love the Dublin Murder Squad and hope we haven't seen the last of it; but I've loved these last two standalone novels. The Searcher is nothing like The Witch Elm, which I loved but which left me feeling more gutted than I expect to after reading what is supposed to be a "fun" mystery. But it is what I needed this October, when I'm gutted all the time and really wanted a cozy mystery on a chilly fall weekend. Her latest novel is a much quieter book, and the mystery is less of a focus than the atmosphere and the characters -- both of which are everything I love about her work. All the different kinds of Irish rain, the hidden cottages tucked up in the mountains, ominous shadows and sounds in the night, the isolation, the lively pubs, the cozy shops, the mentions of food. And I loved Cal and Trey and Lena. Loved. If she keeps them around for a future novel, I am here for it.

Real Life, by Brandon Taylor
Taylor makes it clear that this book is not written for the "white gaze" but rather for queer, black folks like himself; he never saw himself reflected in the kind of novel he loved to read. He addresses race in academia, but he also goes straight to the heart of human experiences: loss and longing and our most tender, vulnerable moments. And he does it in absolutely stunning prose. I loved Wallace as a character and I love the way Taylor draws us so intimately into his lived, physical experiences.

Transcendent Kingdom, by Yaa Gyasi
This novel is so different from Homegoing (which I also loved). This book focuses less on the sweep of history than on one young woman in a very particular context. Gifty is a graduate student at Stanford, trying to make sense of her family's history, her upbringing as the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants in Alabama, and her relationship with her evangelical mother after the death of her opioid-addicted brother years earlier. Gyasi's exploration of mental illness, evangelism, and complicated family ties is nuanced and tender. Her writing is equally powerful in her second novel, and it showcases the incredible range of her talent.

One by One, by Ruth Ware
I think this was my favorite of Ruth Ware's mysteries. She is no Tana French (I'm not going to buy her books; I can wait however long for a library copy), but she is fabulous for a day of escapism, and I read this one almost all the way through on Thanksgiving Day. Who are these people who say it's boring? I had a great time reading it. I didn't want to put it down.

I don't know if it's objectively her best; it might not be. But it was exactly what I wanted to make a holiday during a Pandemic seem cozy.

The Great Offshore Grounds, by Vanessa Veselka
This might be my favorite book of 2020. I'm not quite sure how to characterize it: Part road trip novel, part sprawling family saga, part epic journey of discovery. I absolutely loved the sisters at the core of the story, and the way Veselka centers the poor and marginalized, those who usually remain unseen and forgotten. And she's a writer of incredible agility, "[spinning] a tale with boundless verve, linguistic vitality, and undeniable tenderness" (from the publisher; I couldn't say it any better than that). This won't be for everyone, but I absolutely loved every moment of reading it.

The Cold Millions, by Jess Walter
What a fabulous book for the end of the year. Walter draws us into Spokane, Washington (and to some extent Seattle, Idaho, and Montana) in 1909 and the story of two brothers, Gregory "Gig" and Ryan "Rye" Dolan, orphaned and trying to survive in the world. It's a historical novel about the struggle for fair working conditions and free speech, but it's also just so much fun to read. The characters are some of my favorites in any book I've read this year, and Walter is a marvel as a writer. This was the perfect follow-up to The Great Offshore Grounds: fantastic characters, exhilarating language, and a story I would follow anywhere.

My list for 2021 is already long and I love it; creating reading lists makes me feel hopeful. I'd love to know what folks read this year, so if you're reading this, please share!

Float On (or, the strange juxtaposition of grief, gratitude, and joy)

I sit on the couch in the early morning dark, Christmas tree lights twinkling in the living room. A neighbor wearing a reflective vest walks his dog up the street. The quiet lasts just long enough for me to read for five minutes, and then I hear my son’s bedroom door open. He pads into the living room, wrapped in his fleece Batman blanket. When he sees that I’m up, he takes a flying leap and lands on the cushion next to me.

“Morning, Baby,” I say.

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Reading the news. Looking at the neighbors’ Christmas lights.” Across the street, our neighbors, who are always up early, have turned on their Christmas tree lights as well. 

"Less than twenty-four hours until I’m eleven!” he whispers.

“How are you so old?” I ask him. I lean over to wrap him in a hug; he is tall and bony, but his cheek is still so soft when I kiss it. He wriggles out of my grasp and shoves his bare toes in my face.

“Smell,” he says, wiggling them.

“Ew. Get away,” I say, and he hops off the couch, cackling, then heads to the kitchen to toast himself a bagel.

His sister emerges a few minutes later, ear phones in, cords trailing to the phone tucked in the pocket of her robe.

“Morning,” I call to her. She pours herself a bowl of cereal and settles in at the dining room table across from her brother and eats, looking at her screen. I walk by her on my way to the shower and touch her shoulder. She takes out an earbud. 

“Sorry, what? I’m listening to a podcast.”

“Well, untangle yourself for two seconds,” I say, but I smile and kiss the top of her head.

*

Eight years ago, my son’s birthday fell on a Friday. He was three. I’d planned to pick up his sister from school, gather him from daycare, and drive north to meet my husband in West Seattle after work. We’d enjoy a cozy family dinner at our favorite family-friendly pub, and the next evening we were going to take the kids to Chuck E. Cheese and Build-a-Bear. But at lunchtime, a coworker started screaming from the copy room.

“He killed them! He killed all the kids!”

An entire first-grade class, murdered.

I couldn’t reach my own first-grader fast enough, all the way across town. The horror on the other side of the country gripped my throat until I saw my daughter safely at the door of her own classroom, standing in her purple coat next to her teacher. None of the parents lingered on the playground with their children that day.

I drove north on I-5 that evening, Sarah McLachlan’s mournful Wintersong in the CD player, my children buckled snugly into the backseat. And I wept.

*

One year ago, I wrote: My son will never again have a birthday where I do not remember this horror. My children's lives are forever linked with one of the darkest days, the day I realized that if our country could fail to respond to the slaughter of children then what hope is there? I still don't know if what I have can be called hope, because I'm mighty full of anger and, too often, despair. What I have is a crazy, incomprehensible mix of gratitude and grief.

Tomorrow morning, just after five o'clock, my boy will turn eleven, which is five more years than the children at Sandy Hook Elementary would ever see. 

My daughter started high school this year. I think of the twenty children who will never play the trumpet or clarinet on a school cafeteria stage, never get their first periods, will never get their braces off—they never had the chance to lose their baby teeth. They will never take algebra and cry over it. They will never get a driver’s license, or back into the mailbox with their parents' car.

Their mothers will never have the inexpressible, tender joy of having bony adolescent feet waved in their faces, those lanky limbs sticking out of fleece pajamas. They will never knock on their teenager’s bedroom door and say, “Come out of your cave. It’s lunchtime.” They will never open the door to an overpowering wave of too much Bath and Body Works Winter Candy Apple lotion, or the fug of unwashed socks when the room’s occupant has failed to empty his laundry basket into the washing machine. They will never threaten to remove those bedroom doors when their teenagers slam them.

*

Every year, I feel it: the gratitude and the grief. But more than that, I feel the crazy joy that my son has brought to our lives every single day of his existence. 

I write some version of his birth story every year, and often in this space. Tonight, near the end of 2020, which is universally acknowledged as a dumpster fire of a year, I think about joy. I think about how eleven years ago, Matt drove me to the birth center on Lake Tapps in the middle of the night while I howled through contractions and sang along with Modest Mouse at the top of my lungs, one of the songs he included on the mix CD he made for the moment. No soothing Enya for the hard work of birthing a baby, but something to keep me moving:

Alright don't worry even if things end up a bit too heavy
We'll all float on alright
Already we'll all float on

And less than four hours later, he was born into Matt's hands and delivered to my chest while I laughed. I laughed. And every day since then, every single day -- even on the darkest ones -- my son has made me laugh. 

(Mustache Day at school.)

Tomorrow morning, I'll wake up before he does, and I'll curl up on the living room couch in the glow of our Christmas lights. I'll remember the frosty darkness before the dawn of his birth. I'll fiercely miss sharing this season in person with his grandparents and auntie and uncle and cousin and feel grateful that we can gather over Zoom later in the evening to celebrate anyway. And I will give thanks for this sweet, ordinary life in an anything but ordinary year, because one of the unexpected blessings of 2020 -- while I'd never have wished it this way -- is this time with my family, and there's more than a little sweetness in that.

Balancing the scales

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes, the scales don't always balance.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

*

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

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

*

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

One of the questions is Who did you miss?

Everyone. Just everyone.

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

Gratitude in the anything-but-normal

Every now and then a mood strikes me and I spend an afternoon reading old journals. I've been filling journals my whole life, ever since my first diary with a teddy bear on the cover, given to me shortly before Christmas when I was six. At the tender age of fifteen, I burned them all, weeping. I swore I'd never do that again, and while I did shred all the pages of one old volume several years ago (and I have no regrets about that one), I still have a lot of them, even after burning nearly a decade's worth.

Today I thought about my own teenager, and about how one of the unexpectedly beautiful things about this year -- a year in which everything is absurdly horrible -- is this time with her. I never would have wished her high school years to begin this way, attending class through a screen, hunkered down alone in her room. I especially never would have wished this when we chose to choice her into my school when all of her friends headed off to a different one.

Then again, as terrifying as it still is to send my baby girl into a new school (I was beside myself with anxiety the entire summer before she started kindergarten, and I didn't sleep at all the night before she started middle school), this time I knew in advance that I was trusting her with the best of the best, that she would be in good hands. If anyone can make connections during a global pandemic, through a screen, it's the folks I work with. I know exactly how hard they're working, and I've always been proud to work alongside them, but now I see the results of their efforts in a brand-new and deeply personal way. My girl is doing well, feeling supported, even making her own connections in this strange new environment. And that's everything to me.

I was always sort of excited about having her at my school. I didn't harbor ideas that she'd want to spend her lunches eating with me in my classroom, but I loved the idea of having her close. And that's what I love now. I love that we sign off of our last period of the day and eat lunch together at our dining room table. I love that she'll walk by me sitting at the table, getting ready for my afternoon office hours just as she's getting ready to practice her trumpet or finish her homework, and lean in for a quick hug, for no reason. 

In many ways, I wish she could just have a normal ninth grade year. Of course I do. But I also know exactly what I'd be missing in a normal year as my teenager grows up and grows into her own independence.

So this is the journal entry that stayed with me today, written when Suzannah was about three months old:

I used to be a terrible insomniac. College was the worst, but I've always been a light sleeper, and when I go to bed I have a hard time turning off my mind, which is not always a good place to hang out in the middle of the night. If something is bothering me, even something relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, I toss and turn and ruminate and obsess to a ridiculous degree.

I used to, anyway. Now, when I snuggle into bed with Suzannah in my arms, all of that evaporates. I hold my baby and watch her sleep and smell her head and everything else is just gone. I may sleep lightly, but it's a peaceful sleep.

Sometimes she's not completely asleep when we lie down. Sometimes if she's not completely asleep, I get up and walk with her, or nurse her a little, and she conks right out. But sometimes we'll just lie there together, and our eyes will lock, and she stares at me for what seems like a long time. And then she smiles sleepily. It just doesn't get better than that.

People ask when we're going to move her into her crib. People say she needs to learn how to sleep alone. People say she'll grow up clingy. But one thing I am learning to do is trust my own instincts instead of a book, or someone else's experience, and nothing feels right about trying to get her to sleep away from me. These moments are too fleeting already.

After I birthed my babies, I decided that no matter what, I would try to write something every single day, even it it was only a sentence, even if that sentence was just "sometimes motherhood is really fucking hard and lonely" scrawled across the page. Because something in me knew that if I didn't capture those moments, they would pass too quickly and fade into a blur. I wanted to keep and hold the moments I could, even the mundane ones, even the hard ones. Now, looking back, I'm so desperately glad I did. I love all the pictures we took; of course I do. But the words tell a more complete story, and a more honest and tender one. Many of them I'll just hold close; they're not for social media, or even this blog. They remind me to extend myself a little grace when we're all out of sorts. To apologize readily. To hold my arms open, always. To stop and breathe when I need it. To love our children as the absolutely unique people they are, rather than some idealized version of ourselves. To experience all of our moments, feel it all, and resist the temptation to rewrite the narrative for public consumption. I've written this before -- that sometimes it's hard to see the big picture when we're stuck in the small one. Looking back over our stories, though, and when I look at our lives right now, it occurs to me that this is exactly what I've always wanted. This, right here. These people. This partner, this girl, this boy, this family.

I've written this before, too -- that we don't ever turn dreamily to our partners and say, "Let's get pregnant and have teenagers." But it occurs to me now that this is exactly what we wanted: to raise these babies into people we love to spend time with. Those early journal entries show so clearly that our children have always been so very much themselves, and it is not lost on me how lucky I am to have have so much time with them now. In a normal year I'd be greedy for it. In this anything-but-normal year, I'm grateful for it.

This fall, I stole an idea from one of my favorite colleagues and had all my students sign up for five-minute one-on-one check-ins during office hours. It's probably the best thing I did all quarter. We didn't talk about school at all, unless the kids wanted to; rather, they chose a question from a list and we talked about that. Who's one person you really admire? What's one thing that makes you really happy? What's something that annoys you? What's the best book you've ever had?

And this: What is your biggest dream in life?

One of my kiddos chose that question, but she struggled to answer it. "I guess my dream is just to make a lot of money somehow," she said. "I want to make my parents proud. They've worked so hard, so I feel like it's my responsibility to really make something of myself." She paused, and then said, "What's your dream, Ms. Winslow?"

"Hm. Wow. Honestly? What I've got," I said. "I knew in high school that I wanted to be an English teacher, although honestly, I couldn't even have dreamed then that I'd love it like I do now. Like, I couldn't have imagined what it would actually look like. And I always knew I wanted kids, and mine have brought me, just, so much joy. Anything else, I guess, is a bonus."

"That's really cool. Wow. I love that a lot," she said. 

What I didn't have time to say, but what I wanted her to know, is this: there are things I want, sure. There are things I wish for, hope for. But something I've realized as I've gotten older is that I don't need to get everything I want to be truly, deeply joyful. To be happy. To realize that if I never have more than what I have now, it will be more than I knew to dream for when I was seventeen. It will be more than I could have asked for. It's more than enough.

"Now is when the real work begins."

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

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

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

"Did Biden win yet?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

Yes, yours.

*

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

The Day After

I was awake at five o'clock this morning again, but not in despair. Just restless.

I walked for an hour as soon as it was light enough, and I walked for another hour at dusk, as wind sent the leaves skittering across the streets. Streetlights came on. I could see inside people's living rooms and kitchens as they watched TV or stood at the kitchen sink, little glimpses of ordinary lives hidden in the daylight.

On one particular part of my route I noticed several Biden/Harris signs and Black Lives Matter signs that weren't there two days ago (and haven't been, this entire election season). I wondered if they were worried about someone taking the signs, or worse. Nearby is the only blatantly Trump house I've noticed. It's hard to miss. The yard is full of clutter, and a Trump banner covers half the shabby siding. The light-up Budweiser signs in the window add a nice touch.

*

I walked seven miles today. The day was almost balmy, really strangely warm, but cloudy. Quiet. I needed the head-clearing quiet.

I think we know, now, how this will go. Now, my fear is complacency. I woke up in the same deeply racist country that existed yesterday and last year and since our country was born and built on the backs of Black people whose descendants have always known what I had the privilege not to see, not really. I shouldn't have been shocked four years ago, and today we should all know that what was really on the ballot was whiteness.

*

None of my conservative-leaning friends are posting angrily about voter fraud. Maybe they're hiding those posts from me, or I've blocked them already. But I have this really terrible habit of reading posts by friends of my friends, and some of my friends have some gems on their lists. I follow a few of them sort of regularly out of this weird masochistic curiosity and I KNOW, I SHOULD STOP THIS. It's ridiculous. But they really do believe, apparently, that Biden cannot win, and if he does, it's a total fraud. Whatever "news" sources they read have told them that Trump was slated to win by a landslide, and I can tell you which sources they're citing, all the while they rant about the "fake news media." And my word, these people needed more school, or teachers who could teach them how to assess the reliability and validity of their sources. Did they not learn this? (These particular folks, mind you, are big fans of "doing your own research.")

Trump is following his own playbook to the letter. He was always going to cheat, because he knew he couldn't win any other way. He was always going to declare voter fraud if he lost. There will be no gracious concession. What's horrifying (although no longer shocking) is how many people believe him. How do you explain, calmly, using small words, that counting all of the mail-in ballots is not voter fraud? Mail-in ballots favor Democrats. It is not a great conspiracy that as those come in, Biden gains votes. This seems very simple to me. These are not even the protestors in Michigan trying to shove their way into downtown Detroit's TCF Center; these are people who live among us and are probably perfectly sweet when they're shopping at Jo-Ann's Fabrics. See my post from last night about being nice.

(Friends, if your friends are posting this garbage -- and they totally are, because I'm following some of them in some weird streak of masochism -- please address it. I know it's uncomfortable, but it's also important. I'm happy to engage with anyone on my actual friends list if I see it, but I'm not going to get into it with my friends' friends. After the 2008 election I told someone that no, Obama wasn't going to take away all this person's guns and 2008 wasn't the last hunting season he'd ever have, and for my troubles I received a message calling me a libtard. I have precisely zero shits to give about what someone thinks about me on the internet, but I do think we need to do work with the people in our lives. And I fully admit I have to figure out how to do this more effectively.)

Do all of the folks who are sure this is massive voter fraud think Trump should sue ALL the states who vote blue? Maybe he should just sue all the voters?

And if we were that good at conspiracies, and fraud, then...wouldn't COVID also be gone today? Instead of hitting our record number of new cases? Asking for a friend.

*

I've been texting or messaging with a couple of former students in the last couple of days. They give me hope and I love them so much and they remind me exactly why I do the work that I do. Plus, one of the great gifts of teaching is keeping relationships with some really fantastic humans I grew rather attached to over our time together.

And they're voting. 

Election Night, Part 3

It's strange to pray so hard and yet not really believe in what I was raised to believe is the "power of prayer." I don't know. I still pray, sometimes. But not because I believe it does anything. (I'd be terrified if it did. Because the most terrifying white supremacist misogynist evangelicals probably pray far more eloquently and far more often, if that's what it's about, and I wouldn't stand a chance in hell.) 

I guess I still do it because, as Madeleine L'Engle once wrote, it's an act of love.

Election Night, Part 2

I could just keep adding to my last post, but part of me wants to write more posts than I did in 2019, so here we are.

An hour after I last wrote I'm breathing a little easier. Early results indicate that Inslee is safe as governor in Washington, and Reykdal holds a comfortable lead for the Superintendent of Public Instruction. These are important.

First results also look promising for two folks I was excited to support in our local elections -- Jamila Taylor and Jesse Johnson. Local elections matter.

My home state is more depressing, but I can't vote in Montana anymore, and Montana wouldn't welcome me home anyway. Montanans don't take kindly to outsiders (ask me how I know), and as someone who has put down deep roots somewhere else for her entire adult life, I think that's what I am now. I've written more about that than I can process here tonight. But I have to say, tonight when I was trying to distract myself I read a post that was one of those, "You know you might be from Washington when..." things, and I related to literally all of them. I didn't hate that. It made me smile. I chose my home well. And believe me, in this country, staying where I am feels like a matter of survival. Anyway, no one in Washington has ever suggested that I don't belong here just because I'm not a sixth-generation Washingtonian, and this is the state my children can claim as their birthplace. They'll have roots in other homes as well, because Matt and I love other landscapes and that runs in our blood, but tonight -- tonight especially -- I am clinging to the home I've chosen.

But toxic individualism is alive and well across landscapes that I love, I think, and it still saddens me. Maybe that's why my home state is likely to elect as governor the man who assaulted a reporter a few years ago. And I watched on national news as a former Montana neighbor, one who fed me peanut butter sandwiches as a child, on whose pullout couch I slept more than once, proclaimed that it just made her love him more.

Cool cool cool cool cool.

The "pro-life" party that celebrates and incites violence. (Trump obviously loved Gianforte for that moment.)

*

And Trump takes Florida.

*

I voted in my first presidential election twenty years ago. We didn't have the results that night, but I remember creeping out to the living room in the little apartment I shared with Carmen, turning on the tiny TV, and hissing, "Are you kidding me?"

I wasn't particularly excited to vote for Al Gore, but I did. And I was very excited to vote.

*

2000. 2004. 2008. 2012. 

As a white straight woman raised in a traditional Christian family, I didn't stand to lose a lot in any of these elections, obviously. I grew, I think. I learned. I hope. (I hope I learned to listen. I'm still learning how to put that into action.) I wept when Obama delivered his speech in 2008. And I breathed a sigh of relief in 2012, but I also had some great conversations with friends who voted for Romney.

Those friends didn't vote for Trump in 2016. Things are different now. If you still think it's just a matter of opinion and not folks's literal lives, I don't know how to talk to you, and I probably wouldn't have had a great conversation with you in 2012.

I'm so anxious. I'm not without hope (which is not the same thing as optimism) but I'm anxious all the same. Please, don't let this happen again. I fear the breaks that cannot be repaired.

Election Night, 2020

Sick with anxiety. That's how I feel.

I share a particular trauma with my colleagues; on the night of the election in 2016 we were hosting student-led conferences, and they brought in big screens so we could watch everything unfold while we talked about kids' grades in English.

I cried all the way home that night, rage-cleaned my bathrooms in the middle of the night, and wrote and cried and wrote and cried through the next week, and I surrounded myself with folks who were not silent in the face of the horror. 

The rage has not diminished.

I'm reading my posts from four years ago, and I find it difficult to breathe.

Please, spare me your religious platitudes about how "God is in control." It's not helpful. It's not comforting. It's patronizing. Tell that to someone who fears for the rights so many of us take for granted. If I felt whimsical enough to turn the fight for democracy into a BINGO game, or a drinking game, "God is in control" would be on there for sure.

I'm reading my posts from four years ago, and it really has turned out to be that awful. And people voted for him again, and I'm afraid of who those people are. If you voted for him again, please know I don't believe you value me, or my daughter, or my students, or any of our rights, no matter how much you might love me or tell me how much you love my stories. I parted ways with a long-time friend who spouted nothing but Christian platitudes, claimed to love my stories, and blithely supported the ones who would harm the students who made those stories possible. The ones who encourage literal violence against them. A vote for Trump is an act of violence.

If you voted for him, don't come near me for a good long while.

I just feel sick. 

*

Edited at 7:15 p.m: Okay, seriously, Trumpers. Stop telling us to be "nice" when you're voting for a person who literally incites, champions, and cheers his supporters on to violence.

Fascists can be perfectly pleasant in line at the grocery store, as I just commented to my friend who was admonished for her "hate" on her own Facebook page. I am so deeply uninterested in "nice." Nice keeps you comfortable, and comfortable is part of what got us into this mess, now isn't it?

It reminded me of a conversation on another friend's page after the debate in which Trump refused to condemn white supremacy. This is what I said, word for word, to a person (NOT my friend, by the way) who thought people weren't being "nice" to her for supporting Trump, and of course she wasn't racist: 

There is no such thing as "not racist." As a daughter of a conservative family in a red state, I used to believe...we were all equal without engaging in anti-racist work. Because I wasn't racist.

But now I believe there are racists and there are anti-racists. I have a LOT of baggage to unpack and it's work I still have to do. I strive every day to do anti-racist work, and I have to confront my complicity in racist systems every day. That's uncomfortable, sure. But I have benefited every single day of my life from systemic racism, and I have to do better. It's not enough to say I love and respect black people...we have real work to do.

The person to whom I was responding told me my "speech was conducted angrily."

Go hug a Nazi, I guess? Because be nice.

*

Still feel like I'm going to throw up.

*

8:26: Why is this even close? The second time? What is wrong with people?

(I'm asking that like I don't know the answer.)

I never want to be a closed door

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Miss?"

"Hi! Yes! I'm here!" 

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Can you help me?"

And my heart quietly broke again. 

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

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

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

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

Did you get it? Let me know!

Ninety minutes passed, but the reply came.

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

What matters most

Trump is a loathsome monster of a human being, but he is still a human being, and I don't want COVID to kill him.

Some of my friends have some outspoken Trumpers on their friends lists, and those I haven't blocked I sometimes watch with real curiosity. Some claim they're unfriending reams of folks, apparently, for rejoicing over Trump's diagnosis and wishing his dead and this is what's wrong with the hateful left.

None of my more conservative friends are posting this, thank goodness (or if they are, they're filtering me out of it, which I appreciate. Please keep doing that if it applies to you). I also call BS on the ones who are. It's not that I don't believe these posts exist somewhere; I just don't believe the folks who are all, "Time for some FRIENDS LIST CLEANUP because I don't need that kind of hate in my life!" First of all, I could show you just as many random internet posts "rejoicing" at the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg if I spent three seconds hunting for them, and second of all, four days ago your leader attempted to bully his opponent over his dead son, mocked his last living son, refused to denounce white supremacy and told the Proud Boys to stand by, and then he exposed how many people to this virus while he went on to attend events after knowing he'd been exposed (and likely after he tested positive)? The virus he called the "China Plague" on Tuesday night? Tell me more about loving people and being a good human. I'll wait.

For the record, I haven't seen a single person on my own friends list who has "celebrated" Trump's diagnosis. Not one.

It doesn't mean we're wringing our hands, though. It doesn't mean we're wearing our "Oh no, I'm shocked!" faces.

I don't wish him ill. But Trump has access to the best care in the world, and my concern still lies with the folks who have fallen ill and don't have access to those resources and state-of-the-art care, who have lost their lives, who have battled with long-lasting effects of this disease. Who fell victim to his negligence and his lies and his utterly disgusting lack of empathy. Some of these folks are my students and their families. 

I wish the president could feel the effects of this virus enough to empathize with the folks who've suffered far more than he likely will, but I simply don't believe that's possible. He mocked Biden for wearing a mask; four days later he's making a video about "fighting for" all the millions of people who have been infected. I couldn't finish watching after that. Trump has only ever been about one person on this planet.

(Edited to add: See also the bizarre joyride he took today, forcing folks to share a hermetically sealed Covidmobile in what looks like a Weekend at Bernie's moment.)

I don't want him dead. I want him out of the White House.

***

And now for something completely different.

It's October, and we're nearly halfway through our first quarter. I spent nearly the entirety of the last two weekends and all of my weeknights until bedtime planning and uploading and planning and uploading every moment I wasn't actively teaching. This week I felt something shift; it is possible to breathe. Literally breathe.

Every day after school, the kids and I go outside. Often I convince Isaac to head over to the school playground, where he rides his bike and I jog around the track for awhile. Sometimes Suzannah joins us. Often Matt takes a quick work break to walk over as well. Sometimes the kids play basketball or ride the scooter around our house and I walk several miles alone through our neighborhood streets, because I appreciate the burn in my legs and love the sweeping views of Puget Sound. The afternoons have been sunny and warm. The leaves are turning gold against a brilliant sky. Every single day I go outside, just to notice it. To see everything I can, to breathe it in. This, I believe, is what living fully means. It's not about whether or not I can do whatever I want. It's about staying fully present in the moment I'm in.

***

I can complain all day long about how I miss teaching in my classroom. Well, I can teach in my classroom, but I can't be with kids in my classroom. That's unlikely to change any time soon, and as much as I want to be back I also understand that in a Pandemic, what we want is less important than lives, and that is actually what is at stake here. So I choose this instead: to become a better teacher. Even now, especially now.

Remote learning isn't "best" for most of us, but it is what we have, and it is necessary. And it doesn't mean that we give up and grow complacent, because our purpose isn't tied to a place; it is all about the folks we serve, in any context. It is critically important to be intentional in what I teach, and how. It is critically important to think about what matters.

Connecting with kids matters the most, full stop. In a remote setting, this takes intention and work but it is is not impossible.

Helping kids connect their learning with the bigger picture -- the "why" -- matters too. This is why I'm grateful to teach in an IB school, because this is the heart of good IB teaching (well, really good teaching anywhere, period; IB didn't invent that, but the IB mission statement acknowledges that our work is to create a better world, not just to get into a better college, and it's made my teaching more intentional in that way). Concepts over content. Inquiry. Curiosity. Empathy. This week one of my students sent me an e-mail in which she explained that she was worried her responses to an assignment weren't as concise or as clear as she'd hoped, but that she felt incredibly passionate about the topics we've been studying and discussing and she hoped that would come through in her writing.

Yes, I need to teach them how to write well. But first -- first -- I need to tap into their passion, if I can. I need to consider what they care about beyond the walls of our "classroom." I tell them I didn't become an English teacher because my passion is perfect thesis statements or grading essays. I'm an English teacher for the same reason I'm a writer and a reader: to connect. To feel that incredibly solidarity of "Me, too." To share a human experience with someone whose context is different from my own. To feel something enough to act on it. And to share, simply, what I love. This is the essence of what I do, and why.

And doing this over a screen is significantly harder for me. I don't really know how to work a faceless audience, when I'm mostly looking at my own face staring back at me. At least that's how I feel in my low moments, when I'm exhausted and overwhelmed. But I can't drop anchor at exhausted and overwhelmed, because the needs of my kids don't change based on my daily mood or energy level. So I try to remember this: I have an opportunity to try to be better, and I'd best take it. So what I care about this quarter isn't so much whether my students can practice enough for an IB assessment they don't even understand yet; what I care about is making connections with them and guiding their thinking, so they can make their own connections between what we read and the world in which they live. If they can do that now, the rest will follow. And it means they send me these little notes attached to their assignments. Sorry if this isn't clear, I just really get worked up and I'm trying to express that in sentences that make sense.

And that resonates with this teacher. 

***

During the winter of 2019, I met with my friend and colleague Shonda at Starbucks. We were armed with colored index cards and sharpies, the new IB subject guide, and plenty of energy. We decided to keep The Handmaid's Tale because we love that novel (and we had our picture taken with Margaret Atwood herself back in 2013 when she appeared at Seattle Town Hall after the publication of Maddaddam, and you are jealous). We also decided to add James Baldwin. We've gone back and forth over other others to include in other parts of the course, but Baldwin was at the top of the list, and we never considered cutting him. And so when I was faced with the daunting task of choosing what mattered most in a two-year curriculum I love deeply, it was a difficult choice--but then again, not so much. I taught The Handmaid's Tale in the fall of 2016, and it couldn't have been more relevant In the fall of 2020, it feels even essential. I'm teaching a quarter of Revolution and Resistance: James Baldwin and Margaret Atwood. There's no way I'm teaching it well enough, but I'm teaching it with everything I have, all the same. And maybe, maybe, the fact that I can't afford to be careless--I don't have a single moment to spare, really--means I can see this as an opportunity to do better and be better, in any year. 

To Really Live

Friday nights are so full when you're a teacher. When the day ends, my lungs expand to accommodate the biggest breath I've taken all week. Inhale. I can breathe. Exhale. Relief. Inhale. Hope. Exhale. Gratitude.

Relief. Breathing space.

Hope. Things are starting to click with these kids. They might be starting to trust me.

Gratitude. In any setting, remote or otherwise, I haven't lost sight of my purpose, because on most days I remember it isn't tied to a place, to a building. It's embodied in the kids I serve every day, exactly where they are, where we all are.

Friday nights are everything right now. And sure. I ended my work day in my own house today. I walked into the bedroom, changed my shirt, and went out into the breezy, damp afternoon -- just an hour after the rain stopped -- to go for a walk. I needed, desperately, to clear my head.

Clear my head of the comments on literally every single news article about schools and whether they're reopening or not. The comments demanding I get back to work.

Do my job.

Earn my paycheck.

Clear my head of the comments from some of my own friends and family on social media. (Friends, maybe you don't know that when you comment on news articles, it shows up on my feed. If you wonder whether I'm talking about you, rest assured, I absolutely am.)

I'm so tired. I do not know how to explain to people in my life who are not teachers how much harder this is than it has ever been before. I have enough experience in this career -- in this calling -- to make this claim, and to be believed.

This week I drove to a close friend's house to drink wine and snack on appetizers from Trader Joe's in her backyard, on her covered porch. Four of us met there, four of us who have been friends for nearly two decades now. We sat outside wrapped in blankets and hoodies and shared stories and solidarity in the evening breeze. 

We're all teachers, in four different schools, in four different districts. And still, they're my safe space to land. I don't trust many other spaces anymore.

Despite the fact that the four of us are probably as careful as anyone we know, we're still not really doing indoor gatherings. According to some of you, that means we're not really living. But the four of us also believe that 200,000 dead matters, that it's unacceptable, that it shouldn't have to be anywhere near 200,000 dead before we declare it unacceptable, and so we're okay with "sacrificing" a bit of what we're used to. Sharing appetizers on an outdoor porch, even after a storm, is a blessing and a joy, not a hardship. I love eating out on Saturday nights with my family! Love! And we've enjoyed outdoor patio seating many times over the summer. But eating takeout from our favorite places around our own table, while not "the same," is not a hardship. Losing someone you love to a virus that could be controlled so much better if people could prioritize human life over going to the gym or to the bar? That's a hardship. (I feel like pro-lifers should agree with me, but I also think most of us should understand that the pro-life platform is not about valuing human life, and I wish we'd start calling it something else.)

To my non-teacher friends who have extended your kindness and empathy, please believe me, it has not gone unnoticed. Please extend that to the teachers of your own children--they need it, no matter what their current context looks like. Face-to-face seems impossible. (If schools reopening is so crucial, where's our bailout? Do you think I've ever had sanitizing wipes provided for me? Let alone enough pencils, highlighters, paper, notebooks, markers? Nope, I buy those myself. And I would love to know if you can buy enough for your own family right now, let alone a full class load of students, and for a full-time high school teacher in my district that's 180 kids. Can we hire enough teachers to safely teach so many kids?) Hybrid seems so much worse. Prepare for face-to-face and remote learning? Where your in-person kids can't interact safely in student-centered ways that truly support best practices in education? When you still have to do all the work for remote learning, because you can't see all your kids at once? Because your classes have 35 kids or more, and your classroom space allows for sixteen at the absolute most, if you're maintaining anything resembling a safe distance? My kids are going to be able to do a lot more collaborative work, have more productive discussions, and form better connections with each other in breakout rooms online than they are in a classroom right now and that is the heartbreaking truth. This is a pandemic. There is no going safely back to normal, and normal is what we're asking teachers to provide. I'm so sorry. I truly am. I want that, too. But that's not possible in our current context.

To my non-teacher friends who are quick to point out that this is hard for everyone, believe me, we know. Many of us are parents ourselves. I am extraordinarily lucky in that my kids are old enough to manage quite well without needing me to be very hands-on during our school hours, but many of my colleagues have very young children at home, and teaching a class while you have a baby or a preschooler or a restless third-grader or a child with special needs who attends school in a different district that is also currently remote feels, quite simply, impossible. We get it. This is a Pandemic. It's not something that is happening unfairly to you because teachers are sitting around collecting an easy paycheck at your expense.

And to my non-teacher friends who are quick to point out the challenges they face in their own jobs while they're complaining about teachers (we're all allowed to freak out; I just think we should avoid doing the whole "Well, I have to______ so why shouldn't you______" when we don't have anything approaching an understanding for the person we're pointing our finger at), I would like to point out that I cannot open a single news article online -- from any source -- about education or the return to schools that does not include absolute vitriol directed at teachers in its comments. And make no mistake, public school teachers are pretty used to this, but usually I just ignore FOX news, where teachers are used to being screamed at. Now, though, it is incredibly demoralizing and personal in a way I've never experienced, largely because folks who have claimed to support us in the past are chiming in with their disgust now, now, as we're working harder than we ever have. Maybe we're an easy target, a faceless entity to absorb people's real need to vent (I understand so much of folks' frustration, I do). But we're not a faceless entity. Stop pretending you support the teachers in your life while ranting about us online. We see you.

On that note, if anyone wants to challenge me on this and send me an article about this very charged topic of schools reopening that doesn't include reams of comments explaining to me what a piece of shit I am, I'd love to see it. I don't think it exists. I'd love to be proven wrong.

***

I started writing this on Friday night; it's Sunday evening now.

This weekend, I finished reading one novel and started another. I played so many games of UNO and Blokus with my family. I walked thirteen miles around my neighborhood, winding through my favorite streets with the stunning views of Puget Sound and the Olympic mountains. I waved at my neighbors, the ones who have waved to me all summer while I walked in the morning hours. I haven't seen much of them this month because of the smoke and because I'm adjusting to a new schedule, and yesterday when a friendly grandpa who hikes around the same streets I do waved jauntily from a distance and said, "Haven't see you in a little while!" I grinned and grinned, because walking daily through this streets in the morning hours, meeting neighbors I've never known, has been an unexpected and beautiful blessing in quarantine.

Walking this same route every day over the past six months means I've noticed the seasons in an entirely new and intimate way. Spring. Summer. Fall. The way things bloom. The scents of different trees in different seasons. I've learned to name some of them. I've walked through the seasons of baby rabbits scurrying over the streets at dawn, and I've shared that with my kids. Now the squirrels are out in full force, as well as the neighborhood cats, hunting them. Yesterday I watched a black-and-white cat stalk a squirrel across a driveway, through a yard, and into the woods. I stopped and watched, just because I could. Just because I've become accustomed to noticing these small, ordinary moments that used to pass me by.

Maybe this is what it means to "really live" even while "sheltering in place." (I'm still curious about those folks who think they can't do that, to be honest, now that pretty much everything is open in some capacity. I asked that question last week and was answered with having the question deleted.)

Matt drove down to McMenamins and picked up takeout. We've enjoyed eating outdoors there, but the weather has been too tempestuous for the past two weeks (wildfires, rain) to open up patio seating this weekend. My burger was still delicious.

We had family movie night (The Art of Racing in the Rain, which checks all of the boxes for Dog Movies and it meant I cried a lot). Matt and I watched a few more episodes of Cobra Kai.

I had some face-to-face time with one of my best friends who teaches on the other side of the country, and we laughed and shared stories and flailed onscreen because everything is ridiculous and absurd. Becca and I haven't taught together in way too many years but every time we talk it's like we transport ourselves back to the same space, the space where we're planning a unit on The Great Gatsby or Purple Hibiscus together during a roundtable session for MYP and the world can be what it is but how amazing is it that we get to do this work?

I believe it's possible--and critically necessary--to stay present in the moment we're in, to notice the seasons, to care about each other, to practice self-care, and that's what "really living" means.

I miss people, desperately. Even people who disagree with me.

I miss the things I loved about our "normal" life. Desperately.

I miss teaching in the way I know how. I miss what I'm losing when I can't see my kids face-to-face.

But I also understand that we can't have normal. I believe that maybe, if we stop and listen, if we can try to be present, we can live deeply and fully and tap into our empathy for each other, that maybe we can be grateful for what we've learned and what we've gained, and maybe--maybe--that can make us better.

Anyway, it's the work of my life to try.