Give Me Everything

“Here is all I ask of a book- give me everything. Everything, and don't leave out a single word.”
― Pat Conroy, My Reading Life

I don't really understand people who don't read books, or who don't, at all times, have a reading list -- fluid, ever-growing, ever-changing. I'm so excited about my list for 2019 that I'm writing about part of it before I read everything on it, and about ten months before my end-of-the-year book review. And it's not just the books on my personal reading list; I have the extreme privilege to teach literature in an IB school. About every seven years, each subject area goes through curriculum review and program changes, and the changes coming for literature starting next year are pretty exciting to me.

What I'm telling you is that my work wife and I armed ourselves with with index cards, stickers, and markers (all in different colors) and met at Starbucks on our day off to start working on our vision board. I have never made a real vision board in my life, but I am joyfully and unironically making one now. We are that excited. Today I skipped around my classroom singing softly about changing the world through literature. I don't think my students noticed anything out of the ordinary.

*

Last weekend I made my annual/semi-annual pilgrimage to Powell's Books in Portland. We plan a family trip there every winter, because I like to have something to look forward to in the slog of January and February. We work in activities for everyone, it's not just books -- folks want to eat and things, I guess. So we do that too. But this trip, I explained to my students this week, is really a spiritual experience for me. I work in at least two visits to The Bookstore in a 24-hour period (but I've been known to squeeze in more).

The first time, I take my list. We drive down sometime during the afternoon, check into our hotel, and head downtown. I have an agenda for that visit. At some point, Matt and the kids will wander across the street to put in our name for dinner at Deschutes Public House; the wait on a Saturday night is always long, so I can linger at the bookstore for anywhere from forty minutes to an hour.

(I should point out how absolutely wonderful it is to have children who a.) love to read and b.) are old enough for me to deposit in the enormous Children's/Young Adult section and leave them while I browse. These trips were more challenging when they required direct supervision, or carrying, and I will forever love my husband for taking on a great deal of this responsibility when they were little.)

On the second day, we do a Family Activity (OMSI, the zoo, etc.), followed by lunch at Laughing Planet, and then we return to the bookstore, and this is when I allow myself to wander through the stacks and let the books call to me. I don't know how else to describe it. Sometimes I discover books I didn't know I needed. Or I find a beautiful signed hardcover first edition of a book I've wanted for a long time at an absurdly cheap price. Often my family grows restless, so Matt takes them to a nearby park. He takes them to another brewery he wants to try, and the kids eat pretzels and drink root beer while he orders a beer sampler. They collect me in the late afternoon before we eat an early dinner and begin the drive home.

*

During our Portland trip three years ago, I learned that my very favorite writer, Pat Conroy, had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I wrote about it here, even:

Dear Internet: I do not know how to express my actual, real-life devastation. Pat Conroy changed my life. I never met him, but I fully intended to. I thought I would fly to Minneapolis if I had to the next time he went on tour (his tour for The Death of Santini didn't bring him to Seattle but it did take him to St. Paul) and I would tell him this. And then I would have him sign a book to one of my truest and dearest friends, a coach, because Pat Conroy made the word Coach so beautiful to me...

...but that day I handled the news by hunkering down in a coffee shop and writing him a letter while Matt took the kids to the park. I'm thirty-seven years old, yes, and I am writing a love letter to a man I will likely never meet. I sat in a coffee shop and wrote and wrote and wrote, sipping my little almond milk latte. I didn't pause until a young woman sitting near me said, "Excuse me, but do you mind if I ask what you've been writing?" And that little exchange launched an entire conversation about literature and death and philosophy. It turns out this woman was a former IB student from Quebec who is currently studying in Ontario. We talked about writers and exchanged book lists. She left a note in my journal.

I thought of her last weekend. I walked by that coffee shop, even, but I didn't take the time to stop.

I wish I would have. I had things to write about in the journal I always carry with me.

*

I bought eight books last weekend. At least one of them I won't read right away. I am slowly collecting every single book Brian Doyle wrote; he is my second favorite author, after Pat Conroy, and he died of brain cancer a little over a year after Conroy died and almost exactly a year before my oldest friend's husband died of brain cancer, and seriously, just fuck all of that cancer. I will ultimately read all of Brian Doyle's work, but I can't bear to read it too quickly.

I don't buy an obscene amount of books, ever. And I don't have books piled in corners all over my house. I do own a lot of books, and I think I reread books more than most folks, and sometimes even when I don't reread an entire book there are books I need to keep because sometimes I need to reach for them and swim in their sentences. I need to immerse myself in the "texture and cadence of the language" (as I tell my students). But I don't hang on to books I don't love or won't return to. I have a lot of credit built up at Pegasus Book Exchange in West Seattle. I've also worn the same pair of shoes for the past, like, hundred years, because I don't care about shoes. (And if I don't need to own a book but still want to read it, I use libraries. I almost always have something on hold there.) That's my answer to the "How do you keep up with/how do you afford" folks. I buy books and I read them because it matters to me, a lot. It's what I do.

Anyway, whatever, I bought eight.

I absolutely knew I wanted these:

An Orchestra of Minorities, by Chigozie Obioma: I read Obioma's first novel The Fishermen a few years ago and it was absolutely stunning, and the reviews for his new novel suggest that this one absolutely measures up to that expectation.

Lost Children Archive, by Valeria Luiselli: After I read Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions, an essay structured around the forty questions asked of migrant children facing deportation, I'd follow Luiselli anywhere.

All the Wild Hungers: A Season of Cancer and Cooking, by Karen Babine: Fun fact -- I graduated from Concordia with the author, which has nothing to do with anything except that I was lucky enough to attend a college that fostered and produced (produces) some great writing and an enduring love and appreciation for stories and language. Anyway. The only reason I didn't read this book in a single night is because I picked it up at nine o'clock on a school night, after my children were in bed, and I finished it the next day. It's SO good. It's a book that will resonate deeply with anyone who has a strong sense of place, of family, for anyone who understands how both food and language have the power to heal and connect us. It's beautiful. This is a book that will likely be categorized in the health/wellness/illness section of the bookstores, depending on which bookstore you're in, but that's a mistake. It should be front and center with any other memoir, because what she writes about is human experience and human love. And she does it in absolutely gorgeous sentences. I couldn't put it down.

Shameless: A Sexual Reformation, by Nadia Bolz-Weber: I'll read every book she publishes, because I love her, but I am all about dismantling conservative Christians' toxic obsession with sex and sexuality. (And I hope everyone who mailed her their purity rings has experienced some sort of healing.)

Black Leopard, Red Wolf, by Marlon James: I'm admittedly not a devoted reader of fantasy, but I am a devoted reader of Marlon James, and I am so here for this book, described as a sort of "African Game of Thrones." (I am 100% willing to bet it's better.) I still think it's tragically unfair that Marlon James was in Portland when I was in Seattle and Seattle when I was in Portland.

The next day, after much wandering, after much carrying books around the store to see how they felt after an hour, after much deliberation, I settled on these:

Days Without End, by Sebastian Barry: This made the longlist for the Man Booker Prize in 2017 (a year which yielded a really spectacular list in general, in my opinion), and it also comes highly recommended by some folks whose literary opinions I deeply respect. I found a beautiful used hardcover in impeccable condition, so it felt like a sign.

Parkland: Birth of a Movement, by Dave Cullen: I read Cullen's book on Columbine several years ago, and it was truly excellent. I absolutely trust him with this subject matter. If he'd chosen to write about Sandy Hook, I might have given it a pass -- I still can't read a complete account of that day, however condensed, without a stab of panic and grief threatening to choke me. Sandy Hook destroyed me in ways I still can't write about, because I identify too much with the mothers. Parkland destroys me in a different way, but as a high school teacher, and as a passionate advocate for AT THE VERY FUCKING LEAST sensible gun legislation, and as a person deeply privileged to work with passionate teenagers, I think this is one I need to read immediately.

The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World: A Novel of Robert Louis Stevenson, by Brian Doyle: Because this is the last of Brian Doyle's novels published before his death in 2017. Because every sentence he writes is magic. Because. I won't read this one right away. I have collections of his essays, prose poems, and stories that I also dip into here and there, slowly. I can't bear the thought of reading the last of his words, knowing there will never be any more. It's also hard to come to terms with the knowledge that at some point, I will have bought them all. So I collect them slowly. Powell's is a good place for this; he was an Oregon writer, and they loved him well.

*

I carried some books that ultimately went back on the shelves, as I always do. But I need to save something for my birthday next week. All I ever want for my birthday is this: a day to write and drink coffee by myself in the morning, to take myself to lunch and read and sip a glass of wine on a weekday at noon, to take a walk through a certain neighborhood with the trees I know are about to burst with spring cherry blossoms, to look out across Puget Sound, and to go book-shopping and out to dinner with my family at night. It's my perfect day, always, and it's more than enough.

Love and Gratitude, Grief and Loss

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Home is what the air smells like

There are times on the road where I don't want to talk, don't want to listen to the radio or an audiobook, don't need anything but the way the highway hums under the tires and the prairie touches the mountains, the way the mountains touch the sky. Kalispell to St. Regis, driving along the Clark Fork River. Bozeman to the Lewis and Clark Caverns, the drive where, in summer, Montana shows us her best self. Great Falls to Chester, where the road dips under the dome of sky and pheasants scatter across the highway. Havre to East Glacier, where the plains reach to the Rockies.

These are the landscapes of my heart.

I drove some of these roads this week while my family napped or read. These are the roads straight to my heart. The roads home.

Every time I return to Montana, I think about what home means. Because home, too, is where I sit tonight: in this house where I've raised my children, who are Washingtonians. We live in the Pacific Northwest, and I've learned to write love letters to blackberries and salmon and the smell of salty air. Maybe home is what the air smells like.

Yesterday morning, I woke to birds singing and the scent of mountain air: the best air anywhere in the world. The cool breeze blew through our tent. My daughter was already awake; I turned over and buried my face in my pillow, hoping she wouldn't notice me and insist we all get up. Isaac slumbered on. My kids sleep so soundly when we camp, and so do I. It's the air, the quiet, the breeze through the mountains. This is the first year in five that we haven't been rained on at least once, I think. Rain never bothers me. Falling asleep in a warm and dry tent with rain pattering (or pounding, we've had that too) on the roof is one of the deepest pleasures of summer.

The kids and I walked through the campground yesterday morning and into Apgar Village. We ate breakfast with my parents while Matt packed up our campsite. I bought a coffee for the road, and I drove us out of the park. We drove to St. Regis, snacked on free popcorn at the travel plaza, watched the rainbow trout swimming in their giant tank. I drove on to Coeur d'Alene, sipping huckleberry soda as we made our way over Lookout Pass. We ate a late lunch at MacKenzie River Pizza. Matt took the wheel then, and I napped until we hit a traffic jam: I-90 was closed due to a brush fire at Vantage. We crawled along in the early evening heat until we crossed over the Columbia River. We could see where the fire jumped across the road; the posts under the guard rails were still burning. By the time we made it to a diner the kids were hungry and hot. The folks at the restaurant graciously sat us five minutes before closing, and the kids ate ravenously while the servers stacked chairs around us.

"Thank you, thank you. So much," I said. "I'm sorry if we're keeping you here later."

"It's really okay! Enjoy!" they said. We must have looked more exhausted and desperate than I realized.

We rolled into our driveway about four hours after I'd thought we would. The house smelled so good to me. The kids brushed their teeth and crashed into bed; I unpacked the suitcases and started a load of laundry. Even as a young girl, I stayed up late into the night unpacking after a road trip, unable to sleep until I'd put everything away. When I finally crawled into bed last night, I knew I'd sleep well.

"I can't believe we started this day in a tent," I said to Matt as he curled sleepily around me. "And now we're back and the kids have swimming lessons in eight hours."

One month ago we spent the weekend at Great Wolf Lodge for Suzannah's birthday celebration. We stopped at a brewery on the way home, and that afternoon Suzannah and I got matching pedicures. Mine still looks pretty good, though hers has been thoroughly battered. Three weeks ago Suzannah and I had a girls' day out in Seattle, her birthday gift from me: lunch and book shopping. Two weeks ago I wrapped up my sixteenth year of teaching and began making plans for my seventeenth.

I spent a week lounging in my backyard, reading and drinking iced tea and watching my children run through the sprinkler.

One week and one day ago we descended into the Lewis and Clark Caverns and ate popcorn from my dad's 46-year-old popcorn popper. A week ago today I had coffee with my favorite high school teacher, ate Pickle Barrel sandwiches in the park and splashed in the same pool I splashed in when my family first moved to Bozeman twenty-five years ago. Six days ago Matt and I hiked to Emerald Lake; five days ago we had a date night at the places in my hometown that have become uniquely ours. Four days ago we picnicked with my parents in Missoula and dined on trout in Apgar for dinner; three days ago we all hiked to Avalanche Lake, the first hike Matt and I took together the summer we started dating and Matt boarded a Greyhound bus to visit me for a few days. Two days ago I watched a mountain goat flop down to cool itself in a patch of snow at Logan Pass. I watched my children paddle kayaks around Lake McDonald and I swam through that clear blue water, the mountains rising just beyond. One day ago I greeted the dawn in a tent. Last night I drove through the dark of another mountain pass and wound up back at home, tucking my children into their own beds. This morning we hauled ourselves out of bed and went to swimming lessons, went to the store. I ran loads of laundry. I checked my e-mail.

Life rolls on.

Sometimes when I go back to Montana I feel like I'm taking a tour of my whole life, that I'm every age I've ever been. But returning to the life I've built here, between the mountains and the ocean, feels exactly right. It's the way the air smells here, too: the evergreens and saltwater, and the smell of home after ten days on the road.

Spring Break 2017

We woke up early on Saturday morning; our goal was to be out the door by 5:45 a.m. We had a shuttle to catch to the airport and an early-morning flight to Omaha, followed by a drive to Sioux City, Iowa. We've been looking forward to this trip for months, and in the last couple of weeks I have so desperately just wanted to get out of town. I deeply love my home and I'm normally pretty happy with "staycations," as there are so many wonderful ways to fill our days here. But sometimes you need a break from your environment to clear your head, and this break, for me, couldn't have been better timed.

Although it didn't feel that way at 6:30 in the morning as we checked into our flight and my son threw up his entire breakfast all over the floor in front of the airline kiosk. Or when he threw up again just as we were pushing our carry-ons through security.

Shit.

Here is something we've learned: our son doesn't do well with early-morning travel. Suzannah insisted on setting her own alarm clock for some absurd middle-of-the-night time, as if she ever even needs one. She was up and dressed and tapping her foot impatiently while the rest of us fumbled around trying to load everything into the car without forgetting anything. Isaac doesn't wake up that way; it's always best to make sure he has enough sleep to wake up on his own. Unfortunately, Saturday morning's departure time didn't make that possible. So there was that, and there was the shuttle ride to the airport (which made me feel a little queasy too; I'm afraid my son inherited my sensitive stomach).

The same thing happened last year when Matt flew to Minneapolis alone with the kids. I'd gone the day before for IB training, and he followed the next morning. He knew I'd be anxious about them getting to the airport on time and probably worrying about that as I sat in my workshop, and he was right, so he texted cheerfully when they made it through security with plenty of time to spare. What he chose not to share at that point was that our son had barfed all over the food court. And then again on the plane. And then again as he got off the plane. He was perfectly fine after that.

(I should say that Matt handled it really well, and I was sorry I wasn't there to help.)

So I didn't exactly panic when my son threw up, partly because I remembered last year and partly because when you're at the airport and your son is barfing everywhere and you are suddenly those people that require someone to appear with a yellow sign to block off the area and a mop and you have a child who has just barfed all over his pullover, you don't exactly have time to panic. Someone has to take the child to clean up, and someone has to hustle the other child and all of the luggage over to the bag drop. Did I mention I hadn't had any coffee yet?

When Matt led our son out of the bathroom, his pullover damp and only slightly smelly, I tried to stay optimistic. Isaac insisted he felt much, much better. The lines at security weren't terrible and we made it to the front in a few minutes. And then it started again. This time Matt grabbed a nearby trash can (which I suspect might have actually been a recycling container) and most of it went in there, but not all of it, so an irritated TSA agent started barking: "Folks, do not step over here! Watch it! Watch where you're walking!" Matt and I mumbled our apologies and hustled our kids through.

Isaac insisted, once again, that he felt much better. I still hadn't had coffee and it didn't sound particularly good, but neither did the headache I was sure would follow. So while Matt took Isaac to clean up again, I bought a 12-oz. drip and managed to sip about half of it before we got on the plane.

Right away we asked for extra airsick bags (Matt learned very unfortunately last year that you are no longer guaranteed to find them in the pocket on the back of the seats).

"We've got a kiddo with an anxious tummy," we said.

The flight attendants were incredibly kind. One of them said right away, "Oh, this happens all the time! Sometimes these little ones have a really rough time so early in the morning!" Another one confessed that her son always got sick on the plane. They offered to bring ginger ale right away, and they slipped us a few bags.

Isaac insisted he was fine.

Until the plane started to move. Then he said, "I have to go to the bathroom!" and Matt and I looked at each other with real panic this time. What Isaac meant, though, was that he had to puke again, and Matt grabbed frantically for a bag while Isaac pressed his lips together and his eyes filled with tears. Matt managed to hold open the bag in time, but just barely.

After that, Isaac insisted he was fine.

When the beverage cart came through, he insisted he was thirsty. We let him have some ginger ale. He barfed again. We let him have more ginger ale. He barfed again.

This happened four times, I think. But oddly enough, my memory of the flight isn't terrible. In between these pitiful heavings, he watched a movie with his sister and seemed more or less content. We were seated in the back of the plane, where we could discreetly dispose of the bags in the bathroom. We were also surrounded by a couple of understanding moms who kept catching my eye and saying, "Oh, I've been there. Would you like a hand wipe? Are you okay?" It reminded me of the time we flew with Suzannah when she was about 18 months old, and she had a cold, and the flight was delayed a couple of hours, and she was slightly too old to just nurse to sleep on my lap (I tried) but not old enough to be interested in a movie. A dude sitting in front of us rolled his eyes as soon as he saw us get on the plane with a toddler, but the woman sitting behind me put her hand on my shoulder and said, "We have so been there. Whatever your girl does, it's fine. And we're here to help if you need anything!" I literally teared up, and I vowed to become that kind of person on a plane for the rest of my life. I have probably unnerved young parents by my eager offers of help ("Oh, can I grab that for you? Can I hold this? It's okay! I remember what it's like!").

By the end of the flight, Isaac seemed pretty bouncy. He was starting to annoy his sister. He grinned and flashed me a thumbs-up.

I relaxed. We got off the plane, picked up our rental car, and headed downtown to find lunch. We parked near Omaha's Old Market, which I remembered from our last visit eight years ago. This time I was not newly pregnant and thought I could really use a glass of wine with lunch, all things considered, and Matt clearly felt the same, so we headed for a nearby brewery that looked promising.

Isaac threw up on the sidewalk.

He insisted he was fine. We nervously carried a few bags into Upstream Brewery, where we were seated blessedly quickly. Isaac burst into tears when we told him we did not think it was wise for him to eat a cheeseburger.

"But I'm hungry," he wept.

He finally agreed to eat the toast that came with my salad (possibly the best salad I've ever had, by the way, for those of you who ever have reason to travel to Omaha--it was this beautiful creation of butternut squash, beets, quinoa, kale, a tiny amount of feta, and a dreamy lemon dressing. Matt's falafel was also delicious, and Suzannah proclaimed the chicken strips "awesome!" I can't believe any of us had any appetite, but we tired travelers feasted happily). I'd stashed the little complimentary cinnamon biscuits from the flight in my purse, and Isaac grumpily ate those as well. We hit the road for Sioux City, about 90 miles away, and he fell asleep immediately. Matt and I relaxed.

Until Isaac woke up and barfed again. We'd placed a plastic bag in the back with him, but he was groggy and disoriented and didn't quite make it.

We were pretty much in the middle of nowhere at that point. I reached back and used the last of my wet wipes to scrub at the seat. It wasn't enough.

"We need to find a gas station or something," I said to Matt.

We saw a sign for gas, food, and groceries and pulled off the interstate. We headed for what we thought must be a town, and apparently it used to be. The building with the sign for gas, food, and groceries was boarded up, its siding weatherbeaten. Weeds obscured the lot. The houses nearby looked the same, faded, with boarded windows. Others had porches piled high with junk: bikes, toys, rusted appliances.

A couple of kids played in one yard, kicking a ball around. As we drove slowly by, they stopped and stared. They seemed hostile and incurious.

We noticed American flags painted onto random pieces of wood, propped against the houses. And we saw confederate flags, actual flags hanging from flag poles.

"Let's get the hell out of here," I said to Matt. He nodded.

The next time we pulled off at a real gas station, the kind that has a Subway attached to it. Inside I grabbed paper towels, Dawn dish detergent, two giant bottles of water, and more wet wipes.

"Can I help you find somethin', Hon?" the cashier asked.

"Um...maybe plastic bags?" I said. "I've got a carsick kiddo..."

"Oh, here. I can just give you some! Don't buy any!" She reached behind the counter and produced a handful of plastic sacks. "I know how it goes."

"Thank you," I said, grateful. I went back outside, where Matt had unloaded the kids and the carseat. While he took Isaac to the bathroom, I got to work scrubbing.

"Hey! Are you the lady with the sick kid?"

I turned to see a woman crossing the parking lot.

"Yeah," I admitted.

"I heard you inside. Take these. My nephew always gets carsick, so I've learned to keep a stash in my car." She handed me a blue plastic bag held open with a wide plastic rim. "They can just puke in that, see."

"Thank you!" I called, but she was already waving over her shoulder.

After we'd checked into our hotel in Sioux City, I sent Matt and Suzannah to Dave and Tia's house and hunkered down in our room with Isaac. My mother-in-law was planning on serving a beautiful dinner, but after our day I couldn't expect Isaac to eat, much less behave. And he was so tired. Matt picked up some take-out and left the two of us snuggled in for the night. And honestly, it was lovely, that time with my little boy. He truly seemed to feel better, only spent. So he didn't eat, but we watched TV together, and I read the book I'd begun on the airplane, and we stretched out and relaxed. I suppose those quiet hours were the start of our real vacation.

And it was wonderful. Some of my friends saw sunshine this week, or traveled to fabulous places. On Friday night, I was feeling a little jealous of those people. On Sunday afternoon, the feeling had passed. Our nephews were baptized on Sunday morning. Matt and I became godparents. We visited Dave and Tia's brewery, the first time I've seen it. We ate and drank and laughed together. My children drove each other crazy but fell hard for their little cousins. We swam for hours in the indoor/outdoor pool at our hotel. We ate really good food. We drank really good beer (obviously). We visited the Mid America Museum of Aviation and Transportation and the Sioux City Public Museum. My handsome husband turned 39 and we celebrated. Mostly, we just enjoyed being with our family, and because this happened in Iowa, there was really no point in stressing about anything in Washington. It was, in every sense of the word, a break. It was so good.

Our return trip was much smoother. No one had to wake up before they were ready; we didn't need to hit the road until 9:30. We returned the rental car at 11:30 and had time for a leisurely lunch at the airport (though nothing as lovely as that salad from Upstream Brewery). The flight wasn't full, so Matt sat with the kids and I had an entire row to myself. My flight anxiety is sky-high these days, so this small grace was something. When the beverage cart rolled by, I bought a glass of wine; later the flight attendant returned, saw my empty glass, and refilled it for free.

"Let's call this girls' night out," she said with a wink.

I read a book. The kids watched a movie. Matt dozed.

We descended through the clouds in the late afternoon. Even though the winter has bled too long into spring, even though I am desperate for sunshine, there is still absolutely nothing more beautiful than breaking through the clouds above Seattle. Puget Sound shimmered against the mountains. There was the Space Needle. There was West Seattle. I peered through the window, watched the cars moving along I-5. Home. I smiled. Home.

We still have a few days left of Spring Break. Today the kids and I went to see Beauty and the Beast, went out for lunch, and ran a few errands. Suzannah organized her bookshelves. I vacuumed, and then I cleaned the vacuum (oh, shut up). Isaac made his daddy a belated birthday card. Tomorrow Suzannah and I are getting haircuts and I will feel like a new woman. I'm rereading MacBeth because I am teaching it in my freshman class after break, and it's the most excited I've felt about teaching them all year. I feel as though it may be possible to breathe again.

Family Weekend

So it is May, again. May is full of so much, so many feelings. Beginnings and endings. Anniversaries. Rememberings. May is the month in which I fell in love with my husband sixteen years ago. May is the month in which he slipped a ring on my finger. May is the month in which I became someone's mother.

May is a tough month in which to teach, but I have decided to teach with abandon, like a crazy person. Forget the symbolism of the yellow car in The Great Gatsby; find me spectacular sentences instead. My sophomores are not complaining. One of them tiptoed to my desk last week and said, "Ms. Winslow, I actually really like this book." Oh, child. If only you knew how far those whispered words carry my soul.

I am tired, bone-tired, as all teachers are. But at the same time, there is a sweetness to this time of year that I deeply love. It's the anticipation of summer before the feeling of summer going too fast, of fading, flowing between my fingers in the sunshine. Everything is before us, the whole wide expanse of languid shimmering afternoons. What I want this summer is not to be able to say we did this and this and this, although there are things I am looking forward to: a trip home, and a trip to Toronto for the IB of Americas conference. Some of my colleagues are planning exciting trips, and I wonder if someday, I will also want to plan exciting trips during my summer breaks. Right now, summer vacations spent visiting our families are enough, more than enough. And right now, what I deeply love about summer is its slowness. Swimming lessons. Spending the afternoons in the backyard, watching my children run through the sprinkler while I sip iced tea and read. The splash park -- are my children outgrowing it? I hope not, because I love the smell of the water, the sound of their shrieks carrying across the playground. My children are both still young enough to play, just play, and I recognize that this is an incredibly sweet time in our lives.

Next Saturday, my daughter turns ten. Ten years ago, I waddled uncomfortably through the month of May, believing I would still be pregnant into the month of June. What a surprise my girl is. How she continues to surprise us.

We spent the weekend at Great Wolf Lodge as an early birthday celebration, instead of having a birthday party this year. We've never been there, and I didn't know what to expect. On the one hand: our family loves the water. On the other hand: I am deeply introverted, and that's a lot of chaos. In the end, we had a fantastic time, and it gave me the opportunity to watch my children just be exactly who they are. One child is fearless in the water, loves throwing himself under the waves in the wave pool to be tossed around like a little stone, and is a naturally stronger swimmer than his sibling. But he doesn't like rides. Not at the water park, not at the fair, not anywhere. My firstborn never liked to put her face in the water as a little one, and still resisted real swimming until we put her in private lessons with someone who worked with her and said, "You will swim across this pool." But she loves the thrill of the drop on the scariest waterslide. She'll go down facing backwards. She is not afraid of heights. Standing in line for the Howling Tornado, high up on the steps above the water park, she gripped my hand--not because she was scared, but because I was.

"Just look at me, Mom. Look at me. Then you won't be thinking about how high up you are, okay? It's going to be okay."

I have a memory of my parents taking us to an indoor water park when I was about the age my kids are now. There was a wave pool, and a waterslide. I don't remember how big it was, but I remember going down a waterslide again and again by myself for maybe the first time. I remember how I loved the feeling of being tossed around in the water. Decades later, the memory of just having so much fun remains. I hope that's what my children remember from this weekend: how much fun they had, how they loved wearing their little souvenir wolf ears when they weren't in the pool, how excited they were for bunk beds and their own little space in their "wolf den." How they went screaming joyfully down the slides, how they threw themselves ecstatically into the waves, emerging from the water with peals of laughter.

Isaac says he wants to do this for his birthday. Since our kids are born in opposite seasons, this might not be a bad idea; twice a year, six months a part? Maybe. Maybe this will become our family tradition for a year or two: stopping at the Spar in Olympia to eat both on the way down and on the way back (we love it and rarely go, since we're not often in Olympia). Glancing at our kids in the rear-view mirror, smiling at their jumpy anticipation on the way to Grand Mound and their sleeping faces on the way back home. It's a beautiful snapshot, in any season.

Shifting towards spring

Somehow, Matt and I managed to produce a child who not only enjoys football but who can sit and watch a game without us, stay interested, and understand what's going on. Were it not for Suzannah, I might have forgotten about the Super Bowl. I've written a couple of blog entries about football but that's because I like the Seahawks, and yes, I suppose I am one of those fans, the not-real ones, because I mostly just don't give the remotest of craps about football but I do love our Seahawks--mostly for reasons that don't even have a lot to do with football, although watching some of them do these amazing things on the field is kind of a beautiful thing. (I learned some stuff--really all I think I strictly need to know about football--from Friday Night Lights.) Anyway, the Seahawks aren't in the Super Bowl this year, so when Suzannah asked me if we were doing some sort of Super Bowl party and received a blank stare in return, her disappointment drove us to the grocery store to procure root beer and Cheetos, which, to my daughter, is apparently a special treat.

So I'm writing this at my dining room table while my children watch football. They've been totally absorbed in the game all by themselves for over an hour and a half now. I don't understand this at all; even when the Seahawks did make it to the Super Bowl, I spent the game cheering when the other people's screams led me to understand I should also be screaming, but mostly I lingered by the snack table and wondered if I could manage to read a few pages of my book if I did it subtly in the corner.

Matt is off running in Dash Point State Park. It is a beautiful, sunny day which is turning into a lovely early evening, with soft light falling across the backyard. Our lawn, after eight weeks of lying fairly dormant, seems to be struggling to grow again, and I know that soon Saturday morning will mean that Matt fires up the mower while I take the kids to gymnastics. I am a girl who loves the winter, who craves the dark and stillness of October, November, December. It might even by my favorite time of year. But what I think I really love is the turning of the seasons. Spring comes early in the Pacific Northwest. Never was I more aware of this than the year my son was born; he arrived during the darkest part of the year, but I spent nearly every day during January and February walking to the park with my children, watching Suzannah play with my new son strapped to my chest. The outside world began to wake up, and I could breathe. Had I spent the first months of my son's life hunkered down in a dark house with two children, I'm certain my post-partum anxiety would have been much, much worse.

February in Washington means the first cherry blossoms, the first outdoor runs in which I wear a short-sleeved t-shirt. In February of 2008 I wrote: The air is sweet with the first breath of spring. I never feel the need to crawl up, crawl out from winter's quiet depths until I smell it, that singing fresh scent under the mud, under the earth and the grass. It's almost painful, that first gasp of sharp sweet air, like a birth, like a death. Every year it's an ache in a way I can't explain. I feel the same thing as spring inches towards summer, as August gives way to September, as the late autumn sun turns into the foggy, still mornings of October. I love the season of Advent. But every year, despite the fact that I was raised to observe the feast of Epiphany which means the Christmas tree stays up into January, I find myself wanting to pack up and put away and move swiftly into the new year. To clean up, to declutter, to breathe. To let the light in.

We spent last weekend in Leavenworth, which is becoming one of our favorite winter traditions. Driving through the snowy mountains to arrive at this delightful village, still dazzled by Christmas lights in the town center, is nothing short of magic. My children love sledding down the hill in the middle of town. I love wandering through the shops, even though there is never anything I care about buying. I love smelling the pastries and the German sausages, I love drinking hot chocolate or hot buttered rum. I love our post-sledding pizza and our children's red cheeks and I love, more than just about anything in the entire world, hunkering down in our modest little hotel room with popcorn and a movie, snuggling with my kiddos in beds I do not have to make. It's a simple vacation, really. We stay in a little hotel, not one of the fancy ones right there in the center of town but a decent one with a little swimming pool and a continental breakfast my kids love (Froot Loops and mini muffins and juice and all the things they don't get at our house!), a five-minute walk from the village. We buy only food and hot drinks. Matt goes skiing or snow-shoeing while the kids and I wander and play. Matt takes the kids sledding yet again while I wander alone and wind up at a coffee shop. We give ourselves breathing space and we come back together. It is incredibly cozy and incredibly restorative, and I have begun to think of this trip as our own way to enjoy winter, real winter with mountains and snow, before we come home and breathe deeply the scent of fresh earth and new grass. I'm ready. For the breath, the shift, the ache as we push up through the darkness. Bring the light.

Where I am and where I’ve been

Sometimes summer days are like this: without a clear agenda, my anxiety begins to simmer sometime around mid-morning. I’ve had a few cups of coffee, which is as necessary as air but also doesn’t exactly soothe me, and then the children are screaming at each other.

“Isaac! You stepped on it!”

“Zannah, give it back!”

“Mom! Isaac hit me!”

“Sorry!”

I mean they are just so all up in each other’s business, and yet they cannot bear to be separated for even five minutes. I try! Oh, I try. This morning before we did anything fun they were given the task of dismantling yesterday’s “spaceships” -- Suzannah’s took up the entire living room and Isaac’s took up the entire family room. They’d created dining rooms and escape pods and control areas out of blankets; they’d made their favorite stuffed animals fellow travelers; they’d basically unloaded their entire bedrooms into different parts of the house. Which was great. Yesterday afternoon I had a tour of both ships, and I didn’t even mind that they stayed intact for the rest of the evening. I passed out on the couch last night as soon as the kids were in bed, and I just did not have the energy to care that much. This morning, I told them that they would clean it all up before we went anywhere or did anything fun and figured that would keep them busy for awhile. Additionally, we picked up some containers at The Container Store yesterday, and since Suzannah loves organizing as much as I do, it seems, I figured she could use some quality time in her room quietly organizing the disaster on the floor into her new bins. She’s good at this. She likes this.

It just wasn’t that kind of day.

It wasn’t a bad day. The kids were just kids in summer. It’s just that the only other adult I spoke to today happened to work at the Honda dealership. And they’re so great there, usually, but I really wasn’t in the mood to hear, “Huh. Doesn’t your husband usually do this?”

Respectfully: Bite me.

Anyway, I decided not to go ahead with the mini-service that was apparently due today, because I didn’t want to deal with two kids, one car seat, one booster seat, and a loaner car. I didn’t want to have to come back. So that was an hour in the car for no reason. We went to the spray park instead. I read in the sunshine and watched my children leap through the water. I still hadn’t had any adult conversation, but I had a book, and the day -- like almost all summer days in the Pacific Northwest -- was nearly perfect. Blue skies. A breeze. My children in the water. Fresh cherries and blueberries waiting in my refrigerator, and also just maybe some Flathead Cherry beer brought back from Montana.

I sent my husband a text: Can you stop and get milk, toilet paper, and some sanity?

He responded: Do we need to cage the children in the backyard?

Later, he sent a text from the store: Getting groceries now. I replied, Okay! I’m drinking beer.

But he’s home now, and the children are watching a movie and we’re all bathed and I’m feeling pretty calm. Matt is grilling veggie burgers and baking fries and promising me a little alone time tomorrow, and I’m basking in this evening sun, in the scent of sunscreen and shampoo, in gratitude. Because even though I felt my nerves begin to sizzle before lunchtime, and even though the unstructured nature of summer days tends to make me anxious in a way the school year does not, I do love this season.

We’ve been on the road and I’ve been offline. It was a beautiful break. Not necessary a vacation, but a break -- virtually no social media, internet, or phone. Lots of sunshine. Tons of time in the water, which feeds my soul when I don’t have time to myself. (I was going to link to a hilarious article about going on a vacation vs. going on a trip, but when I went to google it I found ten more hilarious stories. Just go read a few. They’re great. Vacation vs. trip. Yes, google it, especially if you’re a parent.)

We spent the first half of our trip in Montana at my parents’ house, which included taking the kids swimming at the outdoor pool downtown, Pickle Barrel sandwiches and huckleberry soda (obviously), a visit to the Museum of the Rockies, floating the Madison River, taking a 12-mile hike (that was just Matt and me), meeting my favorite high school teacher-turned-friend for coffee (a must-do on every trip home), visiting my grandmother, and eating popcorn from my dad’s famous 45-year-old popcorn popper. We spent the second half of our trip in Glacier National Park, which is my favorite place in the entire universe. As in, when I was hugely pregnant with Isaac and preparing for labor at a birth center with no drugs, my “happy place” in my mind was the shore of Lake McDonald in Apgar. Which is where we spent two full days last week. In the “happy place” version (which existed in my mind only), I was sitting at the shore gazing at the mountains, or possibly swimming by myself. In the “reality” version captured on film last week, my daughter was paddling a kayak all over the place by herself. And then she tried paddle boarding. By her damn self. It was both hard on me and totally heart-exploding in the best of ways.

Anyway, it was all wonderful. We spent the first two nights in a cabin with two bedrooms, which meant we could tuck the children in and then sit up with the lights on, read books, and drink fancy gin for ten minutes before I was all, “Well, I’m exhausted." I was absolutely giddy with it. The second two nights we camped, and that was lovely in the way that camping with our little family always it. It rained hard overnight, both nights, and I tell you what, there is honestly nothing better than curling around my children in the warmth of our tent with the rain drumming over our heads, knowing we are warm and dry and that our rain fly is indeed going to hold over the peaceful space beneath.

We also had the extraordinary privilege this time of spending a few days with my aunt and uncle and cousins and their partners and children, which has happened exactly never since Isaac was born. I think the last time I saw both of my cousins together, Suzannah was about five weeks old; needless to say, a lot of life has happened since then. Watching my kids play with their second cousins was, again, totally heart-exploding, and reconnecting with my first cousins was exactly what I hoped it would be. I’ve spent a little time with them both over the years, mostly separately, for graduations and funerals and the odd dinner, and I’ve always come away thinking, you know, I really like these people and I wish we could hang out. This trip gave us a little of that time, and I feel more determined to nurture these relationships through our adulthood. That’s a good place to be with family.

We’re home again, settling into whatever normal means during the summer months: play dates with friends, trips to the spray park, letting the sunshine slide over us in the backyard or while we hunker down inside with books or endless games of Uno, special lunch outings when I’m tired of making sandwiches and want fancier things in my salads. We go to the library. We go to the zoo. Sometimes I force my children to just be bored and figure out what to do about it; I refuse to over-schedule their summer days with activities and I also refuse to turn on the television, even though I was mightily tempted at ten-thirty this morning. We nibble fresh blueberries and Rainier cherries, maybe crackers and cheese in the late afternoons. I read terrifying articles about “the big one” sure to hit Seattle. I inform my husband that we need to put together emergency preparedness kits. (I am absolutely serious about this.) I read novels. I fret. I run the sprinkler in the backyard. I pour iced tea into tumblers. I breathe in, I breathe out.

In a few days I’m flying to Chicago for the IB of Americas conference. It is a huge, huge privilege to attend and I am so grateful for the opportunity. I’m also freaking out about it a little bit, because that is what I do. My husband cannot ease all of my fears but he can reassure me that he will vacuum the house before I come home again, and that small gesture speaks volumes. This man knows me and puts up with me and seems to love me even when I’m crazy.

I’ve been missing my dog, a lot. Still.

I’ve been reading excellent, challenging books.

I painted our master bathroom, finally.

I’ve slathered my children in sunscreen and turned them loose in the bright hot afternoons.

I’m getting tan.

I’m struggling with changes that have infused my first half of summer with unexpected melancholy.

I’m still grateful for the friendships that mean so much to me.

And I’m still excited for this upcoming year. I’m in no hurry for August, though, not just yet. So for now, despite my anxiety, despite the tough summer mornings in which my children can’t get out of each other’s faces, despite my attempts (sometimes successful, sometimes not) to shake it all off and just relax already, I’m content to just let these days flow over us. Like water, like sunshine.

Saturday

I woke to our son bouncing his stuffed beagle on the bed this morning, asking for breakfast. Naturally, this was at least a good forty minutes before he wakes up on a school morning.

Matt slipped out of bed, poured Isaac some cereal. I think. He collapsed back on the bed with me for a little while before he rose for good, taking the dog outside. I dozed alone, not really sleeping, but deeply appreciating my husband for the way he gets up with the kids after he can’t sleep any longer, closing the bedroom door behind him.

When I pried myself out of bed after a night of strange dreams and a week of sleeping restlessly, I went for a jog in the cool morning air. I planned on a short run, but when I reached the point at which I would have turned back, I kept going. Ran four miles. Burst through the back door, sweating but feeling good. Showered while Matt made me a banana-walnut waffle. Played board games in the living room with Isaac. Took Suzannah to gymnastics. Matt had a grilled swiss-and-tomato sandwich waiting for me when we arrived home. I ate it quickly, and the four of us headed for Seattle, to the Pacific Science Center for the IMAX showing of the Great White Shark movie. The kids seemed enthralled, but walking through Seattle Center afterwards in the waning afternoon light, Isaac said, “I don’t want to see that movie ever again.” I asked him why not, and he said, “Because the shark SURPRISED me.” He doesn’t like scary things. Matt and I smiled at each other, remembering the way he tossed his popcorn in the air and hid his face at our first IMAX movie about the monarch butterflies. Those alarming six-story insect faces.

We walked by the fountain at Seattle Center afterwards.

“Look, a rainbow,” both kids said, noting the early-evening sunlight filtering through the spray of water. The day was warm enough that people still splash in the water, even in late September. Soon enough, these golden evenings will be replaced by clouds and rain. I’m ready for it, but still, the honeyed evening air was so perfect I didn’t want to leave it, even to climb into the car.

We made a drive-by stop at the Elliott Bay Book Company. Really, a drive-by -- I vaulted out of the car, ran inside to buy The Secret Place by Tana French and The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters, two books I’ve been awaiting for months. I originally thought I could wait for The Secret Place at the library, but there are still 70 people ahead of me in line, and I love everything else she’s written. I can’t wait for seventy people. I’m not that patient.

Dinner at the Elliott Bay Brewery. We haven’t been there in what seems like forever. They gave us fries without salt to share with Isaac. He’s such a good sport about his low-sodium diet; when we said he could have just a tiny bit of ketchup on his plain burger, he said, “But does it have salt? Actually, I don’t want any.” It made me want to cry, a bit.

Suzannah fell asleep in the car on the way home, a Kleenex clutched in her fist. She has a cold, or allergies; typical beginning of the school year. She’s so stoic about her runny noses. “I’m fine,” she says. “Just sniffly. It’s fine, Mom.” But of course, we are jumpy, since the only symptoms Isaac displayed in the weeks before we wound up in the hospital were a runny nose and a general crabbiness. Nephritic syndrome isn’t contagious, but our anxiety lingers.

The kids went right to bed when we made it home. Skipped flossing and stories, let us tuck them in without argument or drama. Matt and I collapsed on the couch with drinks and Netflix and I said, “There is laundry in the dryer, and I am not even going to fold it tonight.” He nodded solemnly.

I could not possibly be more in love or more grateful for all of this.

These small moments

The thing about forming deep attachments to people is that they don’t always last. Or rather, the attachment might, but relationships change and fade away. This is the natural order of things. People grow up, move away, move on -- it happens. This is the rhythm of the universe. But sometimes, the relationships hold even as they change, and years later, you might find yourself gifted with a spectacularly beautiful day in which you spend time with people who meant so much to you years and years ago, and it feels, also, like the natural order of things.

Today felt like a gift. As a teacher myself I know how powerful and intense student/teacher relationships can be, and I also understand that despite their intensity, many of them -- most of them, really -- fade over time. People remember many of their teachers fondly (I hope) but they don’t necessarily stay connected. But I’m thirty-five years old, and still. Still! One of the people I always want to see when I go home is one of the best high school teachers I ever had (I spoke about her in the interview, thirteen years ago, that landed me the teaching job I still have today), and so we remain connected, years later. I love Becky, and I love her daughters, who I babysat for a couple of summers after I graduated. They were younger than my own children are now when I spent my days with them. They were candelighters at my wedding. And now they’re adults, twenty and twenty-three years old. I had coffee with their mother last week in Bozeman, as I always try to do when I’m there, and she mentioned that she and the girls were heading to Seattle for a few days this week.

And that is how I wound up spending the day with them today. We met at the Woodland Park Zoo, and I brought Matt and the kids, and it was just delightful beyond words. I couldn’t believe how much they remember about the time we spent together -- they were so young! -- but I love that they do, because they were such a defining part of my summer days for awhile. I took them everywhere with me. I remember giving them piggy-back rides around downtown Bozeman, driving them in the backseat of my new car, taking them to ice cream, to the park, to the pool. When Matt and I took our children swimming at Bogart Park in Bozeman less than two weeks ago, I told him about taking these girls there, too. They really felt like family more than babysitting charges; I brought them out to my parents’ house all the time, and when we took my grandmother out for lunch on our way to Bozeman on our recent trip she asked about them because she remembers them, too.

“You trusted me so much,” I said to Becky today. “I just kind of took them everywhere I went.”

She shrugged. “I knew you,” she said.

Today I watched these two young women interact with each other in this beautifully sisterly way, still so different from each other, still so completely fabulous. I watched them play with my own children, which burst my heart in the very best way. And I thought about how strange time is, how these two little girls have become adults while I still feel so much like my eighteen-year-old self sometimes, how they have their own lives now, and how utterly lucky I am to be able to share this day with them. I think about how much their mother has meant to me for over half my life now. I think about the moment today at lunch when my two little children were both tugging on their arms, and I don’t even know what to call that, really. I could only smile and say, This is so great.

***
I didn’t forget about writing down three positive things each day for seven days; in fact, I scrawled them in a notebook on our trip, but I decided not to work to hard to post while we were on vacation. The internet break felt really, really healthy and necessary. But! I’m back now, so here are twelve good things.

Huckleberry riesling and huckleberry ice cream. Swimming in Lake McDonald, the way the cold water closed over my head when I finally worked up the nerve to plunge in, the view of the mountains when I resurfaced. Field roast and baked beans cooked over the fire. Falling asleep in our tent, curled around our children. Walking to Apgar Village in the cool dawn because Matt needed breakfast supplies, buying a hot chocolate, and returning to our campsite for pancakes and French press coffee. Driving across northern Montana, taking the wheel on the Chester road -- maybe one of my favorite quiet stretches of highway -- while my family dozed. The sunsets east of Shelby and just south of Great Falls. The first shower after camping. Showing my children the house I lived in when I was their age, driving them past my elementary school, my middle school. MacKenzie River Pizza (twice) and Leaf & Bean coffee (a bunch of times). Pickle Barrel sandwiches and huckleberry soda in the park. Swimming at Bogart in the afternoon heat and in the rain. Hiking to Emerald Lake and Heather Lake and Grotto Falls. Losing my sunglasses, and finding them again next to a rock where I’d stopped to rest and adjust my boots. Running along the highway with a view of the Bridger mountains. My dad’s famous popcorn in his ancient popcorn popper. Date night at Over the Tapas: poached pear salad, goat cheese croquettes, grilled asparagus, and vegetable Wellingtons (which I told Matt were the best thing I’d ever tasted). The trout aquarium at the St. Regis travel center. Homemade huckleberry scones. A cute neighborhood pub in Coeur d’Alene. Watching my son break into a grin on the carousel at Riverfront Park in Spokane, especially after he thought it would be too scary. The way our house smells when we return to it after a vacation -- like home.

Is that more than twelve? I stopped counting. They are all small, simple things, but they are the things I remember most. The small things make me appreciate the big things: my family and this time we had together.

At our campsite at Glacier, Suzannah turned to me and said, “Four things made this a perfect day. First, we got to ride the shuttle to Logan Pass. Then, we had ice cream, and then we played in the lake, and then we had s’mores. When you get four things like that it’s a great day.” Later, as we enjoyed our dinner, she said, “Ahh. Milk and a fire. Perfect.” Indeed, this is how my children bless me every day. They remind me to be present, right here, in the simple joys of our lives. Perfection is found in these small moments: in ice cream, in jumping into a lake, in a chocolatey mouthful of dessert roasted over a fire.

Dignity/Adulthood/Whatever

We’re home again and I am, as they say, a hot mess.

On Friday afternoon my mom took the kids to the splash park, Matt went for a run on a trail he found in Bozeman, and I took my journal and my book to the Leaf and Bean. The day was hot, and it felt so lovely to duck into the coffee shop for awhile and sit at my favorite little table in the corner by the window. After awhile the sky burst open in a sunshower, and I watched the water steaming in the streets. By the time I left, they were dry again. I headed towards my car, looking forward to going home to change for our night out alone. And I tripped. Spectacularly. Over nothing. I twisted my left ankle and landed mostly on my right knee and my hands. My hands were only a little scraped, but I didn’t need to look down to know that my right leg was a mess.

And I didn’t look down--I didn’t look anywhere but straight ahead as I limped towards my car. Thankfully, I’d at least turned off Main Street by this time, so there’s the slight chance that no one actually witnessed my undignified fall; I hope not, anyway, because no one asked if I was all right, and I’d rather think it was because no one was actually there than because my hometown is full of jerks. Anyway, I tossed my stuff in the front seat and sat there for a moment, trying to relax enough to drive myself home and dabbing ineffectually at my bloodied knee with a scrap of tissue. (I have to admit that my main concern was how ridiculous my bandaged knee would look with the cute little dress I was planning to wear. And it was pretty ridiculous, but there was no way I was not wearing that dress. I bought it two years ago just to wear out on fun summer date nights, and I never wear it any other time.)

“Oh, Baby,” Matt said when he saw it. “Wow. See, this is why I worry when we go hiking.”

“I DIDN’T FALL YESTERDAY.”

“Yeah, but...I’m just saying.”

He has a fair point. Matt and I hiked up to Heather Lake on Thursday, which is something like 10 or 11 miles round-trip. (More for Matt, though. After we’d been hiking for about ten minutes he hustled back to the car at the trailhead to grab a rain jacket “just in case” -- we’d be gone several hours, and the forecast tentatively predicted thunderstorms. We ended up not needing it. He also turned back to search for my sunglasses, which I realized went missing from my head somewhere between Emerald Lake and Heather Lake. He didn’t find them during the 15 minutes he was looking, but I discovered them next to a rock on the way down. They must have slipped off my head while I sat down to adjust my boots.) Apparently, I’m klutzier than I would like to admit. (I would, however, like to take this moment to tell you all that my new hiking boots plus my new stupidly expensive inserts plus the way the guy at REI showed me how to tie my laces kept me from having blisters, which is a first. I HIKED FOR FIVE AND A HALF HOURS AND I DID NOT GET BLISTERS, except for one tiny one that barely even hurt so it doesn’t count. This has happened exactly zero times; I figured blisters were just something I would have to deal with if I wanted to hike with the big kids.)

When my dad saw my banged-up knee, he seemed confused.

“So wait, what did you trip on?”

“Nothing.”

“You just...fell down? Over nothing?”

“YES.”

“Did you black out first or something?” he asked, genuinely concerned.

“This is just what Shari does,” Matt offered helpfully.

Fast forward to Sunday night. We’d arrived home by early evening, in plenty of time for dinner, but since we’d been gone for ten days there wasn’t much in the fridge. Matt picked up some milk and a few other essentials to tide us over until our veggie box arrived on Tuesday. I didn’t have much of an appetite after sitting in the car for most of the hot afternoon (temperatures were well into the 90’s by the time we left Spokane around lunchtime), and the only thing I really wanted to eat was pho, so while Matt set about making macaroni and cheese for the kids I went to get some. I was back home with it in twenty minutes. And I’m not sure whether I was just tired and careless or whether the container was unusually full, but when I went to dump the noodles and tofu into the steaming broth, it slopped right over the side and all over my fingers.

I don’t think I’ve ever been truly, painfully scalded before. I was standing right next to the sink and thrust my hand under the faucet within seconds, so it could have been much worse -- but when I pulled my hand out of the water, thinking all I’d need to do was run some cool water over it for a few moments, I nearly screamed. I’ve never felt anything like it. It didn’t stop burning.

Matt filled the sink with cold water and I kept my left hand submerged while clumsily fiddling with chopsticks with my right hand. The phone rang as I slurped my pho at the kitchen counter. It was my parents, calling to make sure we’d made it home, and I had to admit that I was standing there with my burned hand in the sink while I ate dinner. I assured them it was fine, though; when it was actually in the water it felt mostly perfectly okay. They told me to be careful, and we hung up.

I pulled my hand out of the water, planning to dry it off and help Matt put the kids to bed. I made it halfway across the kitchen and turned right back to the sink. It hurt so badly I couldn’t keep from yelping. This confused me, since on the surface it didn’t look all that bad. A little pink, maybe, but certainly not alarming. I gritted my teeth and sprinted into the study to retrieve my phone. Back at the sink I spent fifteen minutes googling terrible things that can happen to seemingly innocuous burns when left untreated. The internet basically told me that I should head to the ER or I might as well go ahead and bid farewell to my hand. Burns to the hand can be “quite serious” and are not to be messed with.

Once again, I lifted it experimentally out of the sink. I didn’t see flames on the surface of my skin, of course, but it certainly felt like they were there. I told Matt I was planning to just cut the damn thing off. He sighed and said that was a terrible idea, but I didn’t really feel like I had his full attention. (The children did. Settling two children into their regular old beds after ten days of camping and driving and grandparents and fourteen deserts every day is a little nuts.)

“The problem is that I’m holding it together too well,” I said to him. “I’m just too calm. If I allowed my voice to betray the amount of pain I am in, you would all be terrified and rush me to the hospital.”

“Well, do you think we need to go in?” Matt asked reasonably.

“No,” I muttered. “But I’m going to have to sleep with my hand in a bowl of cold water all night long. At the table.”

“Sorry, Baby,” Matt said, as he chased our daughter down the hallway with the dental floss.

I sat there feeling sorry for myself for awhile. I tried to appreciate the fact that Matt had taken over everything since I’d rendered myself completely useless. I told myself that my hand looked more or less fine, so if I could just get through the first few seconds of burning when I pulled away from the cold water I’d be fine.

But every time I tried to keep my hand out of the water, I wanted to scream. The internet told me that this sensation should last only five to ten minutes. Maybe twenty or thirty. After an hour, the hand would surely be lost. In the meantime, I could try painkillers. I sprinted into the bathroom and held my hand underneath the cold water tap while I awkwardly tapped a few tablets out of the bottle of ibuprofen.

“Did you take ibuprofen?” Matt called out the next time he heard me yelp.

“Yeah, but that’s not enough,” I said. “I need a gin and tonic. Possibly two. The only way I am going to be able to get any sleep tonight is to be a tiny bit tipsy.”

He seemed unconvinced, but he was distracted and I am bossy, so he made me a nice strong one. I alternated between sipping that and trying to read a few pages of The Cuckoo’s Calling. Matt eventually went to bed, and I sat there with my burning hand and my scabbed leg and felt absolutely pitiful. Shortly before midnight, I wrapped my hand in a cold dishtowel I’d thrown in the freezer and managed to fall asleep, no doubt in part because of the gin.

Thankfully, my hand felt much better in the morning. Still tender -- the thought of putting it in warm water to shower made me cringe, so I put that off for the better part of a day -- but much better. As in, I felt there was the slightest chance I would pull through, and possibly be able to pick up the dog from the vet and make the kids' lunch.

So I survived all that only to lock myself out of the house yesterday, for the second time this summer. I am just not feeling like a very competent human being these days.

The first time it happened back in June, the kids and I were on our way to the splash park and it was fairly late in the day. We could have just played in the backyard and waited for Matt to come home; we could have even walked to Starbucks for a treat, since I’d managed to grab my wallet along with our towels and sunscreen. Yesterday, though, I was supposed to pick up my friend Becca and take her to the airport to catch her flight back to China. Also, it was barely noon. Waiting for Matt was not an option.

Thankfully, my brother lives only ten minutes away, has a key to my house, and happens to fly airplanes at night so is generally home during the day when I am prone to fits of stupidity like this. I was worried that I’d wake him up, but I didn’t see any other good options.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s up?” (Oh, good. He sounded awake.)

“HI. UM, WHAT ARE YOU DOING RIGHT NOW? ARE YOU HOME? BECAUSE I LOCKED MYSELF OUT OF THE HOUSE AGAIN AND I HAVE TO GET BECCA TO THE AIRPORT BECAUSE SHE IS FLYING BACK TO CHINA AND IF YOU COME OVER RIGHT NOW I WILL BUY YOU ALL THE THINGS.”

He laughed, like he was totally used to me sounding so unhinged, and drove cheerfully into our yard a few minutes later. I hugged him (he was covered with sawdust or something from some mysterious project he’d been working on, but I did not care), told him he was my favorite person in the whole world, and took off. I managed to retrieve Becca and take her to the airport without incident, so there’s that.

Someday, I might manage to behave like a real adult, but my scabs are going to have to heal first.

Nothing good can come from too much reading.

A couple of years ago, we spent a day of our summer vacation at Yellowstone National Park with my parents. We hadn’t been there since Suzannah was a year old, and we thought the kids would enjoy Old Faithful. They did -- we have video footage of Suzannah exclaiming, “That is so cool! Whoa! I’m pretty sure that’s even taller than all the people!” (Isaac, not yet three, turned to us and said, “Water gone? Turned off?”)

Later, while the kids licked at ice cream cones, I wandered through the gift shop. I don’t really feel like a tourist when I go to Yellowstone or Glacier National Park because I spent so much time there growing up, but I still occasionally buy t-shirts, and sometimes I find great books tucked into the corners of these little shops. A few years ago, I bought a collection of poetry by Montana writers and it is still one of my absolute favorite poetry anthologies of all time; last summer, I found a book of poetry by one author featured in that book.

But when we found ourselves in Yellowstone two summers ago, I didn’t buy poetry. I sidled up to my husband, who was innocently tucking into his own ice cream cone, and said, “Will you buy me just one book?” He nodded, distracted, and so I got to take home Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park.

Death in Yellowstone is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: an account of the 300 deaths that have occurred inside Yellowstone National Park. The book is divided into two sections -- Death by Nature and Death by Man. I am not particularly concerned about Death by Man; I am unlikely to travel by wagon or stagecoach, and I’m just as likely to be killed by a drunk driver or murderer anywhere else.

I am smart enough not to try to pet the bison and grizzly bears.

I don’t eat plants while I’m hiking, even though I have learned (supposedly) once or twice which ones are “safe” and which ones are the kind that will twist up your insides in ten seconds before you drop dead right there on the trail. Look, I saw Into the Wild; I’ll just stick to my own snacks.

Death by lightning doesn’t worry me because while I worry a lot (just you wait) I can’t do much about a thunderstorm. I’ll enjoy it, actually, but I probably won’t be standing on top of a mountain while I do so.

I’m a strong swimmer. I always swim sober, and mostly in lakes (rather than rivers), so the little chapter on Death by Drowning didn’t keep me awake at night.

Death by falling actually worries me a lot, and it kind of makes me no fun to hike with sometimes, especially when we have the kids with us. There’s a really lovely hike we enjoy here in Washington -- I’m not going to tell you where it is because if you know it you’re definitely going to make fun of me -- and I can barely even get through it sometimes because it involves crossing a bridge (a fairly wide, wooden bridge with a substantial railing) and I am utterly convinced that one of our curious children will somehow scale the railing before we can grab them and fall into the water below. (It’s not that far below. If it were, I wouldn’t be walking over it, believe me.) Matt was not appropriately empathetic that first time, and there may have been some tension between us for the rest of the hike. It’s fine, though. Bygones.

My point is that there are really high places from which to fall in Yellowstone and I did not enjoy reading about them. I shared this with my husband, along with the rather strong opinion that we should avoid any place that boasts a spectacular view; nevermind the fact that I love a lot of those places. (I can’t believe I am confessing this publicly, but years ago when we went to Snoqualmie Falls I couldn’t bring myself to walk up the steps to the viewing area. I got close, but I seriously almost threw up when Matt thought he was going to carry our little daughter to see the waterfall. We can get a perfectly good view of the falls on the opening credits of Twin Peaks.)

The worst chapter, though, was the very first one: “Hold Fast to your Children: Deaths in Hot Water.” Just the title is bad news for a mother, especially one who spends so much time in Crazyland. Later that night, after we’d tucked our exhausted children into bed, I curled up in my parents’ living room with my new book. It wasn’t long before I sat up, horrified.

“Matt, do you know what happens to your eyeballs if you fall into one of those hot springs and get boiled alive? They turn white. Not just the part that’s already white. The whole thing.”

“Good grief, Shari,” my mother said. “Don’t you have anything nicer to read? What were you reading before you started reading this book?”

I showed her my copy of Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus.

“For Pete’s sake,” my mother said.

“I’m glad I got you that book after we walked around the hot springs,” Matt said.

“Well, we’re not going back until the kids are teenagers, obviously.” My what-if’s (what if one of my children broke away from me and stumbled and fell in? What if one of us turned our back long enough for one of them to try to touch the pretty water?) were quieted only by the knowledge that Isaac was solidly contained in either the stroller or the backpack the entire time, and Suzannah had a firm hold of someone’s hand all the time and was also well-behaved enough to listen when we told her seriously that it was important to stay with Mom and Dad and Grandpa and Grandma and not touch the water. Also, we were safely home again by the time I had to visualize someone boiling alive in the hot springs.

I’m not sure what prompted me to write all this tonight, except that soon we’ll be in Glacier for a few days during our annual Montana trip and I suppose I was feeling nostalgic. There are no hot springs in Glacier, although I have no doubt I’ll find something to be anxious about. Still, as far as I know, no one has written a book called Death in Glacier, and Matt probably wouldn’t let me have it anyway. (When Suzannah was about two, we spent a few days in the park with Matt’s family. At night, after everyone else had turned in, I stayed up late reading a book about grizzly bear attacks. I know I said that’s not a particular fear of mine -- it’s still not -- but the book gave me such chills that I half-expected a grizzly to come charging through the cozy living room of the house we were renting near Whitefish.) I don’t really know what to say about this. The other day Becca said to me, "I mean, horrifying documentaries about rabies and/or gangs and/or religious cults are how you relax.”

Okay, but seriously, I will try to be reasonable on this trip.

Relatedly, I’ve been mostly off Facebook -- all the grandparents have been here over the past week and we took a quick trip to the ocean -- and I plan to stay mostly off until we’re back in Washington. One of the things I appreciate about vacation is the permission I give myself to truly unplug and be present where I’m at. I’ll check my e-mail a few times, and I still might post here, because I love to tell everyone what I think all the time. Also, my friend Mandy recently tagged me in a challenge to post three positive things for seven days. This is a Facebook thing, but maybe I can do that here, and it’s a nice way to check in and capture the moments I want to remember from our trip. I won’t promise seven consecutive days -- I don’t plan to try to punch in a blog entry on my stupid smartphone somewhere in the mountains -- but I’ll shoot for seven days before I post on Facebook again.

Here are my three for today:

1. The light summer drizzle that greeted me when I stepped outside this morning. I love our sunny Seattle summers, but these moments of softness that make everything smell new again are a gift. The droplets shone on our pretty purple flowers in the front yard.

2. The pound of fresh roasted coffee from Valhalla, which I bought on a coffee outing with Suzannah and Kyanne. Have you ever physically just hugged a package of coffee because it smelled so good?

3. The freshest, lightest, loveliest dinner -- butter lettuce, roasted beets, cucumbers, kohlrabi, and roasted broccoli. Every single week I am grateful for such easy access to gorgeous local produce here. I love this season of salads, and I’m so looking forward to pluots and peaches in a couple of weeks.

I’m signing off to finish The Mill on the Floss, because while I do love a nice meaty Victorian novel in the summer, I’m not sure I want to pack along my hefty hardcover. I’m planning to bring a few paperbacks instead -- and who knows what kinds of books I’ll pick up along the road this year.

Birthday Weekend

“Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer." -- Maya Angelou

And just like that, I have an eight-year-old.

She isn’t too old yet to tire of her birth story. I share different details with her every year. Last year she was fascinated by photographs documenting her week tucked into the bili blankets in our kitchen as she recovered from jaundice. This year, I told her about the little ordinary details of the day itself, the hard kernels of memory that anchor her birth firmly in our family story. I told her that as soon as she was born someone brought me a grilled cheese, and it was the best grilled cheese I believed I’d ever tasted. As soon as I wolfed that down I turned to Matt and demanded a hamburger. He went off in search of one while they wheeled me into my postpartum room, my brand-new daughter in my arms.

We laughed about the nap Matt took on the little fold-out chair in our room that afternoon, how he slept so hard he didn’t even stir when a group of friends came to visit. (“Wasn’t that nice for you,” I grumbled playfully. Eight years out, I think I can finally laugh at the horror of sleep deprivation I faced in those first few days. The first night, I didn’t sleep because I was in labor. The second night, I didn’t sleep because I had a newborn who needed to be fed and who I couldn’t figure out how to feed very efficiently. The third night, we were home in our house with a newborn who would not sleep and I had no earthly idea what to do about that, so mostly I rocked her and cried.) I told her that eight years ago today her daddy changed his first diaper and he figured it out just fine. I’m not sure I even helped.

And I forget what prompted me to say this, some little show of attitude or resistance, but tonight I definitely said, “Oh yes you will, because I am your mother and I pushed you out of my body and it was a lot of work and it hurt and I think you can do this one tiny thing for me.” She laughed, rolled her eyes, and complied.

I crawled into bed with her for goodnight snuggles just a bit ago, something that still happens every night. More often than not I will say, “Okay, but nice snuggling tonight, not too silly, okay?” and then we wind up shaking with barely suppressed giggles. Tonight, we were both tired. I curled around her -- so different than curling around a newborn, to be sure -- and she pressed her backside into my stomach, tangled her feet with mine, and fell asleep. When this happens it’s hard for me to tear myself away, because I know these moments are limited, although secretly I hope that she won’t give up on the snuggling any time soon. I stayed there, breathing in the scent of her hair, the faint whiff of cake still lingering on her breath despite bedtime teeth brushing, and the slightly grubby undertone of elementary school kidness.

It is nothing like sleeping with an infant. But in some ways it is just as sweet.

We spent Memorial weekend in Vancouver, BC with my parents, Matt’s parents, and my brother and sister-in-law. Suzannah’s birthday gives us the chance to be together all at once and it was a nice reason to decide to take a mini vacation, so the ten of us squeezed into two Honda CR-V’s and headed north on Saturday morning. We stayed long enough to take in the aquarium and Stanley Park, eat a couple of good meals, check into a hotel, sleep more or less peacefully, and go swimming in the morning. I wound up sharing a bed with Suzannah, which didn’t surprise me much. We originally tucked the kids in together after all sorts of promises and admonitions to behave! and they were so worn out from walking that I really thought they’d just go right to sleep. But then Matt went out for a walk, and I tried to read for a bit before turning off the lamp next to my bed. Right away I heard the whispered “Tee hee hee!” and “Isaac, stop it,” and after about five futile conversations involving my patiently explaining to them how frustrated I was, I said, “Okay, that’s it. One of you is going to have to come and sleep in bed with me.” Suzannah popped right up and said, “Can one of us?” And that is how I wound up with Suzannah in bed with me, and when Matt returned I explained that I was very sorry but he would be sharing a bed with Isaac. Within about forty seconds of the switch they were both completely unconscious and sprawled diagonally across both beds. Matt and I curled ourselves between their limbs -- no amount of shifting and shoving could get them to keep to their own side of the bed -- and slept, too.

***
There is a particular tree in Stanley Park with a curved trunk that appears in a handful of our family photographs dating back to 1979, the year I was born. In those first pictures, I’m sitting on that curved trunk, nestled between my parents.

The summer I was nine, my parents took us on a two-week long road trip through the Pacific Northwest—Spokane to Portland, Portland to Seattle, Seattle to Victoria and Vancouver, BC. In Vancouver we watched the killer whale show at the aquarium. My brother and I planted ourselves squarely in the “splash zone,” shrieking when the orcas rose from their pool and belly-flopped again, sending a wall of water cascading over the lower bleachers. We were drenched and delighted. Afterwards, my parents took us on a little walk along the waterfront until we found it.

“This,” my father said, “is our tree.”

And so it was. I recognized it immediately. I even noticed the same name carved into the trunk—JAY, in block letters. Who knew how long ago someone had left his mark there? My brother and I arranged ourselves side-by-side on that strange curved branch, worn smooth over time. A Mountie rode past on his handsome black horse and offered to take our family photograph; then, he posed with my brother and me. When I look at the photographs now, I can see the faint crimp marks in my hair, flattened by that salty wave back at the aquarium—I can still feel the itch of salt drying on my skin.

We found it again this weekend, all ten of us, after a bit of blundering up and down the walking path. My parents and I attempted to recreate the picture from 1979 (I didn’t need so much help sitting upright this time), and then Aaron and I squeezed in together to duplicate 1988 -- a bit more challenging than it was when we were nine and seven, and our behavior hasn’t particular improved over the years. (“Smile! Shari! Put your tongue back in your mouth! Come on, a nice picture!”) And then I settled my own two children into the sturdy arm of this tree, taking my place in the background, my hand on the smooth wood. Isaac flailed and stuck out his tongue; Suzannah struck all sorts of bizarre poses. I’m sorry, Mom and Dad. They come by it honestly. Maybe they’ll try to look normal in pictures someday, but I wouldn’t count on it.

On a cellular level, I am every age I’ve ever been. I feel this often, especially when I look at my children. It’s a little disorienting to remember standing at this very spot when I was their age, to remember the way the moment felt. The itchy drying salt. The smooth wood. The oceany waterfront smell. Adding another photograph to our timeline of trees feels like a sturdy thread connecting my present to my past.

And what a blessing it all is, indeed.

A perfectly imperfect mini-vacation

The worst sound in the entire world is this: a child’s sudden whimper, followed by a violent spray of projectile vomit splashing on a tiled bathroom floor.

I was just lounging on the bed, enjoying the snow falling thickly outside the window of our cozy hotel room. We’d just had some popcorn and watched a movie and were ready to tuck into bed early on the first night of our family mini-vacation in Leavenworth this weekend. And then that happened.

To all the people who say, That’s why I’m not having kids -- I kind of get it. I do. I actually remember watching a poor boy throw up his lunch in the cafeteria when I wasn’t much older than my own daughter and feeling so nauseated that I wondered, at the tender age of eight, whether I had it in me to ever clean up someone else’s vomit. It’s horrible. And as a mother who has caught more puke in her bare hands than she cares to think about, I can tell you that it’s still horrible, but when it’s actually happening I don’t really have time to worry about that. (Raise your hand if you’ve ever caught your child’s puke in your hands and felt triumphant for sparing the carpet. Right? You know what I’m talking about.)

So when I heard that first splash, I vaulted out of bed and landed squarely in front of the bathroom door. My poor little son was sitting on the toilet, which is why the next spray of vomit -- oh, we weren’t done! -- narrowly missed my feet. I’ll tell you what it didn’t miss: pretty much every inch of the floor, his pajamas, his underwear, the bathroom door, and the side of the tub. He looked at me with wild-eyed panic.

“It’s okay, Buddy,” I said, hoping I sounded both cheerful and soothing. “It’s okay. We’ll clean it up. Let’s get you in the tub.” I stripped off my own pajama pants and tossed them on the bed. I’d only packed one pair, and I was going in. I managed to grab a couple of towels from the rack above the toilet and drop them onto the floor before I stepped into the bathroom, turned on the faucet to the tub, and lifted my son off the toilet seat. Suzannah had scuttled in horror to the other side of the hotel room, and Matt headed down to the front office for more towels. (The twenty-year-old kid working the front desk seemed hesitant to give us more than our “fair share” of towels and suggested that maybe we should take our kid to the doctor. I shouldn’t be so hard on him, but I am still rolling my eyes two days later. Look, kid, I’m sorry about the towels, but I feel pretty good about the fact that I cleaned that bathroom well enough so that the housekeeping staff wouldn’t have noticed anything amiss the next day.)

I tell you what, it was a good idea to bring along a sleeping bag. Last summer, the first time we stayed in a hotel without bringing along a Pack ’n Play, we thought the kids might peacefully share a bed. They seemed excited about it, but they were, predictably, all up in each other’s business, and then Isaac decided he wanted to “camp” on the floor anyway. I thought it might not be a bad idea to have that kind of back-up along this time, too. This time, though, it was because Suzannah was not about to share a bed with someone who had the potential to throw up on her, and I wasn’t wild about the idea myself. We made Isaac a nest on the floor next to the bathroom with his sleeping bag and a towel and the trash can right next to his head.

He was pretty brave about the whole thing, and we hoped it was a fluke -- the result of too much greasy food, maybe, combined with an afternoon of crazy sledding and excitement and no nap in the car and whatever please please God let it just be a fluke please. He said his tummy felt better after that, and so we tucked him in and I laid down myself, tense as a board. Not five minutes later, it happened again. This time I was listening for it, though, so I managed to hoist him over the trash can in time to catch almost all of it. His second pair of pajamas wasn’t so lucky, so he spent the rest of the night in sweatpants.

“Well,” I said to my husband, feeling rather hysterical, “I guess every family needs a vacation story like this.”

Ever since our entire family came down with a stomach bug at the same time a couple of summers ago, I panic at the thought of it happening again. I forget that most of the time, a child throwing up doesn’t mean doom for everyone. Kids puke. For the rest of the weekend I asked Suzannah how she was feeling so often that I got on her nerves. “Mom, I’m fine,” she said. “I feel perfectly fine. I feel great.”

But the night was rough. Suzannah decided to sleep on the bed farthest from the bathroom -- the bed Matt and I had originally claimed -- and Matt and I took the bed closest to Isaac. I’m the one with the sensitive hearing, though, so every time I sensed a change in Isaac’s breathing I would leap out of bed and haul him upright, holding him under the armpits over the trash can before he’d woken up enough to realize he was gagging. By midnight he was heaving pitiful dribbles of bile. He barely woke up for it; still, I had him drink a bit, even knowing he’d throw it all back up. Finally he was sleeping for an hour or two at a time. I crawled into bed with Suzannah, who seemed less disturbed by my constant jumping out of bed. She only woke once, to sit up and say, “Is Isaac throwing up again? That’s like five times.”

I slept restlessly, achy with tension and queasy myself, but when we all woke up for good Isaac was thirsty enough to gulp some Gatorade -- which stayed down -- and everyone else seemed hungry for breakfast. My husband has a deep love for continental breakfasts with waffle makers, and Suzannah goes crazy for mini muffins and all the kinds of cereals we never buy but hotels always seem to have. After I’d had toast and eggs and some coffee, I allowed myself to feel a little optimistic.

And we did have a lovely weekend. Leavenworth was so beautiful in the snow, which fell steadily all day when we arrived. Matt took the kids sledding in the center of the village while I wandered around, snowflakes catching in my eyelashes. We ate pizza in a cozy restaurant and enjoyed the last weekend of the Christmas lights twinkling in the center of town. I supported the local independent bookstore, naturally, and drank a lot of hot chocolate. On Sunday afternoon, Matt went snow-shoeing while the kids and I napped at the hotel; later, we all swam in the hotel pool. Our second night was infinitely more restful than the first, although in the interest of minimizing drama I slept with Suzannah and Matt slept with Isaac (and as it turns out, both of our children hog all the covers).

I didn’t care so much what we did this weekend, truthfully. I just wanted us to get away together. And even if it included a sleepless night and an upset tummy, as well as inching over an icy mountain pass and terrible roads on the way home, I’d do it all again. Last night, as we watched Up on some Disney movie channel and the kids piled on top of me and we looked out the window at the snow, which had started to fall again, I thought about how lucky I was to be in this warm little room with all of my favorite people in the world, about how crazy we can all drive each other, about how we’re all in each other’s faces all the time and about how a slightly different setting -- a hotel room in a little mountain village instead of, say, our family room -- can make that seem so perfect.