The Natural Order Of Things

School officially ended a week ago, but it still feels impossible to relax. For one thing, I still have to unpack in my new classroom after bidding farewell to the room I called home for so many years. For another thing, temperatures in the Pacific Northwest are predicted to top 100 -- up to 112 in my area, according to one forecast -- for three days. Every time I look at the weather reports, anxiety and dread sit heavily on my chest. For all the "it's just weather" climate change deniers, do you realize that not once in my lifetime has the temperature hit 100 degrees in June here? And I can count on one hand how many times we've hit 100 ever. I've lived here for my entire adult life, and when I moved here twenty years ago, "fire season" wasn't a thing. I didn't assume we'd start the school year choked with smoke. But by the time I was old enough to be a soccer mom, I knew that yellow, smoky skies meant canceled practices, closed windows, and hot, stuffy homes for weeks at the end of every summer. Last fall, one of my closest friends had to evacuate her home; she began the school year living in a hotel room as wildfires raged, blown in from eastern Washington.

This is not the natural order of things.

But then, some things are: like my daughter coming out as Queer.

I should mention here that I have her permission to share this; she's comfortable with herself, which is what I've always hoped. She should be. She is completely fantastic exactly as she is. She has always been so very much herself, and she has always been so loved. And even that moment was the most beautiful manifestation of her unique and beautiful self, and remembering it will always, always make me smile. I wish it could be that way for everyone, and until I take my last breathe, I hope, I'll find ways to work towards that. The world needs to be better. We need to be better for each other.

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When I can't relax, like during the first week after school is out (every year), it helps to focus on the sweet early-summer moments, to notice them, to write them down. Time seems to slow just a bit that way. This week the kids and I went to the beach on a sunny morning, we ate lunch outside at the Des Moines Dog House, we bought everyone new shoes, we ate frozen yogurt, we spent a lot of time in the backyard (well, Isaac and I did, and he even dug out our slip 'n slide and spent many happy hours throwing his skinny body through the water on that surprisingly durable strip of plastic), I took Suzannah shopping, and she got her hair cut.

Oh, her hair. It's so fabulous.

She has had long, golden waves for her entire life. She had almost no hair until she was two, and then it came in fast, curling in fine blonde waves. I couldn't bring myself to cut it until she was four years old, when it reached her butt and it was a pain to shampoo and comb. I still have a lock from that first trim, tucked away. But she's really never cared about her hair. She's never wanted me to do anything with it; she only consented to ponytails for Tae Kwon Do and soccer. She has definitely never been excited about a haircut; the closest she came to excited over her hair was when she had the ends dyed blue last August.

So when she told me that she thought she wanted to cut it short -- "like, short" -- I thought, okay, yes. This is you.

So many folks have asked me how I feel about her cutting her long hair, and I completely understand that. But this is what I wrote yesterday: I loved Suzannah's hair, but SHE didn't, and she never let me play with it anyway and certainly didn't care herself. I figured a long time ago that the most important thing to me is for my kids to feel comfortable in their own hair, body, skin, and soul -- far more than fulfilling some vision of those things I have.

I took "before" pictures, because that's what a mother does. But I resisted the urge to peek during the actual cut, because I wanted the big reveal. I listened to my daughter chatting happily with her stylist, I listened to all the advice about how to play with it, how to comb it, how much product to use. I tried to read my book, but I couldn't concentrate. I just kept beaming. My kid. And when she walked over to me with her new hair, my heart just burst. It was so perfect. She was so happy. She was so her.

I've written so much about what it means to call a place home, and why I've chosen this particular place for mine. I could have landed anywhere after college. At a job fair in Minneapolis shortly before graduation, I interviewed with districts in Alaska, Colorado and Minnesota. Alaska offered me a job on the spot, but I knew it wasn't right. Colorado seemed promising. But there was a tug to the Pacific Northwest, and I followed that like a fishhook was caught in my heart. I've never once been sorry. I knew I wanted the mountains and the water, both. I was raised as a daughter of the prairie who felt the pull of ocean tides. But I couldn't know then, as a young adult leaving college behind, how lucky I would be to stumble into the community I found here. My students. My colleagues. My friends. Our neighbors. Our incredible affirming church. They've all challenged me to be better than I was before I met them, and I owe them all an impossible debt. They're also the folks who truly see and support my kids, which is this mother's most fervent prayer.

Please understand this: a mother notices. I know who is important in my kid's life, and I pay very close attention to how they respond, or don't. I see the folks who see my children, who love and celebrate them. Those folks are our community. To the rest? Your words or your silence, whatever it is, you can come through me first. I have a lot of love behind me to block it.