I do know what it means to be grateful

Well, it's been a minute.

I realized just now that I've only written two entries here in 2022, and only a handful since this time a year ago. I've never abandoned this space for so long. Although that's not accurate, either; sometimes we all just need to go quiet for awhile. It's easy for me to post a little brain-dump, a snapshot, a moment when it's social media, but frankly, I've had no idea how to approach this little corner of the internet -- how to write about the last year for an audience. I've wanted to, because I believe in telling the truth about our own lives and I think we should all embrace that particular act of bravery in whatever fumbling, messy ways we can, but I also know that all the stories weighing on my heart are not necessarily all mine to share, either.

Motherhood is wild. When my babies were delivered to my chest I couldn't imagine a love more all-consuming than what I felt for them in that new, raw moment. I had no idea that raising young adolescents and teenagers would break and expand my heart beyond anything I could have envisioned when I could still meet all their needs with a hug, with a snack, with a distraction or a bath or a bandaid. Even when I was delirious with exhaustion, even when I stood bleary-eyed in a shower at two o'clock in the morning rinsing off a child's vomit, even when I cried into my hands with frustration after a battle with a stubborn toddler at the end of a hard day and felt I was failing at the thing I thought should just always come naturally, there was always a solution: bedtime rituals, or an extra nap, or antibiotics for an ear infection, or whatever. Something. There was always a baby book nearby. If your child does this, try that.

Sometimes I'm nostalgic for those days, but I wouldn't return to them, either.

These days are hard in ways my new-mama self couldn't have prepared for, but also, the joy and moments of deep contentment and gratitude are everything I always hoped for. These people in my house? They're good people. They're my favorite people in the universe.

*

Teaching is wild, too. I only wrote a few entries here last year, and they are almost too painful for me to read.

One of my rituals at the beginning of a school year is to browse through old journals, to revisit and remember my first day of school as a first-year teacher, as a third-year teacher, as a fifth-year teacher excited to have a baby, as a ninth-year teacher pregnant with her second and a tenth-year teacher nervous about the changes in her school. I love the entries I wrote in the years when I took on the role of MYP coordinator, when Kailey and I sneakily painted my classroom in August, when I visited my classroom on a hot day in late July just to poke my head in, just to visit the space, just to remember that this, too, is home. 

I filled an entire paper journal last year, and the entire journal is too painful for me to read. I've tucked it away for a time when I'm a little less tender. I wrote here a handful of times, and it's hard to read that, too.

*

Some folks stop writing because they think they need to catch up after a long silence. I don't believe that at all. I believe in beginning again, from wherever you are.

So here's where I am: it is a Sunday evening in late September. The days are still so warm, and we haven't had any rain, but the nights are blessedly cool, and the mornings are crisp. The shadows spill across our backyard a little earlier. I'm so ready for the rain to return.

Suzannah is at Open Gym because she is already thinking ahead to basketball season, even though it seems the soccer season just started -- yesterday we all attended her Saturday game and took the dog and cheered for the girls on the dry field in the warn September sunshine. A couple of her teammates from her years of rec soccer play with her now, and a couple of them play on teams for other high schools. Those little girls are so grown now. And even when those girls find themselves playing against each other now, my heart just swells for all that they are becoming. As for mine? She's balancing a heavy academic load with sports and clubs and marching band and I wring my hands and worry a bit but mostly I'm just so thankful for where we are in this moment, which is so much better than where we were in so many moments last year.

Isaac is building something with his enormous Lego set, completely content and absorbed, and my heart swells to watch him, too -- still my little guy, still so unselfconsciously himself at home, willing to lose himself in creative projects. In a few minutes he'll scamper off to his room to play Roblox on his computer, and in an hour or so, I might coax him out to help me make corn bread for tonight's chili dinner. He is still so sweet, and he is absolutely the funniest person I know, full stop. He chose early-morning jazz band over cross country this year, and since he is still doing Tae Kwon Do, I think this is enough for a twelve-year-old. But I admit it: I'm a little sad, too, because one of the things that brought this mama so much joy last fall was watching my boy run, to see him quietly pleased when his teammates high-fived him. But it doesn't mean he can't ever do it again, and I don't want him to lose the joy in anything he happens to be good at just because his mama is the one who wants it more.

Maybe next year.

*

Last night I spoke to one of my very best friends on the phone when he texted and asked if I could talk, and our conversation wrapped itself around my heart and reminded me to nurture what really matters. Another story that isn't mine to share, but the gratitude for the people I love? I can share that. I've spent this entire weekend just thinking about how lucky I am to have landed exactly where I am, all those years ago. How could I have predicted all that followed? The folks who raised and mentored me in this work. The folks doing the work with me now. The babies I've been blessed to raise myself. My friends and colleagues who have taught and continue to teach my daughter. The community in which I live and work. 

I don't know what it means to return to normal, but maybe we have something to learn from that.

I do know what it means to love what I do. I do know what it means to love the folks who are figuring this out with me. I do know what it means to love where I live. I do know what it means to be grateful.

It's late September, and tomorrow I will show up for my fourth week in a new year. I haven't found my groove yet, but I'm grateful all the same.

Balancing the scales

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes, the scales don't always balance.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

*

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

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

*

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

One of the questions is Who did you miss?

Everyone. Just everyone.

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

Gratitude in the anything-but-normal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And this: What is your biggest dream in life?

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

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

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

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

Because this is too much for a Facebook post

It's Monday evening, and my house is blessedly quiet. Suzannah is hunkered down in her room (because teenager), Isaac is in the family room with the iPad and his giant Lego organization project, and Matt is at Trader Joe's buying everything we might need for the dinners I have not planned yet for this week because that part of my brain stopped working sometime last Friday. I finished up my fourth day of remote professional development, promptly headed outside with Isaac for some biking (him) and jogging (me), came home and soaked in a bubble bath for a bit, and now...here I am. Just breathing. Just being.

To say I'm overwhelmed is just the most hilarious understatement of all time, but I am also grateful. I am also okay right now.

Friday was hard, and I stumbled into the weekend feeling exhausted and disheartened, my brain on a hamster wheel I couldn't quiet. There are so many unknowns. It's hard for me to begin a year feeling so unmoored, so unsure of what I'm doing. Back-to-school planning in August is something that usually fills me with so much joy, because I love this stuff! So much! I'm lucky to have the trust and relative freedom to teach my passion. I'm lucky to have a classroom space that feels like another home, falling-down moldy old building and all. One of the heartbreaking things about this pandemic is wondering if I taught my last class in my room back in March. Our new school is slated to open one year from now, and I'm sure it will be beautiful, but my classroom has held so much of my heart, and so many others' hearts. Hearts have been broken and put back together there and I feel it every time I walk inside. One of my favorite things about August is the quiet afternoons spent planning there, just sitting in that space. I'm still spending some time in that space this month, planning and writing and thinking, but it's different. The quiet isn't as cozy; somehow it's just a little nervous all the time.

I know what I need to teach, and the context doesn't diminish my passion for it. It's the "how" I'm still trying to wrap my brain around. But I keep reminding myself that we're all in this together, that we're all figuring out the how. And I really sat down here to write about that, I guess. I opened up this blog and found a draft of an entry I started a week or two ago, but what I started to write that evening isn't want I want to write tonight.

Tonight I'm not writing to convince my non-teacher friends that I deserve my paycheck. I'm not writing to my friends who think their children will fall behind (behind what, exactly?) in a remote public school setting, or who are frustrated because we can't give them what they think they need, which, I'm sorry to say, isn't possible in a pandemic. Those folks can just stop reading here and have a nice evening.

Tonight I'm writing to and for my colleagues. I'm writing to say: Thank you. Thank you for reminding me why I love where I work, that I'm not in this alone, that we take care of each other. Thank you for reminding me that the what and the why matters more than ever, and we will figure out the how together.

Thank you for reminding me that building authentic connections is not only possible but essential. We can still do that, and I truly believe that we will be creative and intentional in new and amazing ways this year.

 Thank you for your willingness to be vulnerable, for your fierce love of our kids and your fierce support of each other. 

Thank you for reassuring my terrified mama heart. My daughter is starting ninth grade in a new school while her friends head to a different one, and the thought of her trying to make connections with other kids over a computer screen breaks my heart a bit but not completely, because I am trusting her with the best of the best. I truly believe that she'll gain as much--if not more--than she'll lose. Thank you in advance for loving my girl. It has been my prayer, every single September of her school-aged life, that her teachers will love her like I do. Today we all posted little videos to introduce ourselves to our students, and when I mentioned this to my daughter, she was so excited to see her teachers. I watched some of the videos myself, and it reinforced my deeply-held belief that I work with the most phenomenal folks. It is no small thing to trust a school with your children, and when parents get a little crazy at me sometimes it helps to remember that. Thank you to my friends, my colleagues, for making that an easy choice for this mama, and apologies in advance if I ever get a little crazy. I'm lucky you already know me enough, probably, to anticipate that anyway (and please don't hold it against my girl, who is probably far more level-headed than her mother. She's a good girl).

While Friday found me disheartened, anxious, and exhausted, Monday afternoon left me literally weeping with gratitude, right there on the Zoom screen. I don't think that's ever happened at PD, but there you go, and I wasn't alone. I'm still so overwhelmed, and it's easy to start to panic if I look beyond the exact moment I'm in. To feel like I'm floundering after so many years of trusting that this is what I was born to do is a scary place to sit, but somewhere in all of this there are life rafts that not only pull me to safety but offer me a blanket, a glass of wine, a shared knowing glance, some real belly laughs, and the belief that even in this strange context, I am deeply privileged to be exactly where I am.

To Imagine the Future: A New Morning

My baby girl, my firstborn, my smart and impatient and funny and compassionate and silly and sweet daughter, turns fourteen years old tomorrow morning. Today, right on schedule, I find myself just staring at her, remembering the day before her birth. Have I told this story here before? Probably yes, probably a hundred times, probably everyone is tired of it; my daughter rolls her eyes because I tell her some version of it every year. I intend to do this for as long as I can speak.

Suzannah was born on the Sunday morning of Memorial Weekend, four weeks before her late June due date. I remained staunchly in denial that I was in labor, although in hindsight (and after birthing another baby since then), I now understand I'd been in labor for quite some time. I taught my classes on that Friday before Memorial weekend, sitting awkwardly on top of a student desk because I couldn't fit anywhere else, because it hurt to stand and it hurt to sink into the chair behind my desk. So I perched on top of one of those desks and coached my students through the opening act of Othello. I wasn't sure I would make it all the way until the end of the school year, but I was determined to get through the damn play before I gave birth, and I figured that if I needed a sub, they could show the movie.

One of my sophomore boys called over his shoulder on his way out of my classroom, "Bet your water breaks this weekend."

"Shut up," I said to his retreating back.

That afternoon I loaded my pug into the car and drove her to the vet. She'd been digging at her ears again and I was absolutely sure she had an ear infection. I wanted to sob at the thought of getting in the car, of having to bend over and lift all of her fifteen pounds onto the exam table. She did have an ear infection, and twenty-four hours later I would be very sorry I hadn't just left her there for the weekend. But Matt brought home pizza for dinner that night, and we settled in to watch a movie, and I actually slept pretty well -- better than I had in recent weeks.

This is an excerpt from my journal entry on Saturday afternoon, less than twenty-four hours before she was born:

Today we're shopping for last-minute things we need. We are packing the hospital bag (which I meant to do over a week ago -- though we did get the carseat installed). And then we're going on a double-date at a pub, where the boys will drink pretentious microbrews and Ky and I will drink root beer.

In between shopping and dinner, I need two things. One: Bubble Tea. Two: To lie down on the couch for awhile.

I don't remember the bubble tea. I do remember walking very, very slowly around Target and pretending to look at things on the bottom shelf because it felt sort of good to squat.

Please just imagine the sight of a very pregnant woman squatting and breathing in the middle of Target and be appropriately horrified. My mother certainly was when I recounted our shopping trip later.

Kyanne and I didn't get our double-date with our husbands. I called her and asked if we could maybe go somewhere closer to my house, because the thought of sitting in the car any longer made me want to die.

"Or we could just...not go," Kyanne said.

I spent the afternoon and evening trying to doze on the couch. I demanded McDonald's chicken nuggets for dinner, which Matt bought and which I promptly threw up. By midnight, I couldn't walk to the bathroom without dropping to my knees and howling, at which point I agreed that maybe I was in labor. I called Kyanne to come and pick up our pug, and twenty minutes later she was standing above me in the hallway with her arms crossed.

"I am definitely never having kids," she said.

"It's not that bad," I panted. "Go look at the baby's room! We just finished it last weekend!" (Note: the joke was on us, since Zannah slept in our room for over a year. But I also have no regrets about that.)

“You’re crazy,” she muttered, as Matt helped me into the car.

“I can’t sit in front,” I said. “I have to stretch out.”

We sped south on I-5, the freeway nearly empty at two o’clock in the morning. I howled and panted in the backseat, refusing to put on my seatbelt.

The light inside the emergency room seemed too bright. I was being asked to do impossible things. To write my name. To wait. To sit.

This wasn’t supposed to be happening yet -- not for a month. But eight hours after we arrived at the emergency room and two-and-a-half after I started to push, our daughter was delivered to my chest. She was four weeks early, but healthy and pink.

“I know you,” I said. We laughed and cried. Our little family of three.

Someone brought in a tray of food: grilled cheese and a small bunch of purple grapes. The sandwich was lukewarm and too soft, but in that moment it was the finest grilled cheese I’d ever tasted. My swaddled baby was nestled into my arms while a nurse wheeled us to our new room on the fourteenth floor.

As soon as I could stand, I hobbled to the small oval-shaped window. The sky was heavy, overcast for late May. I gazed down at the city streets of Tacoma, under the gray sky: a new morning.

***

If birthing my daughter taught me anything, it's that sometimes we need to roll with things we didn't plan for. That's difficult for those of us who like to plan. Perhaps ironically, my daughter is one of those people; on the first weekend after schools closed, she wrote out a very detailed daily schedule. On the first day of "Spring Break" (in quotes for perhaps obvious reasons), when we learned that schools would be closed for the rest of the year, she balled it up and threw it in the trash and we both cried. But during the first week of official remote learning, she was back at it, and she brandished her new daily schedule at breakfast. And every single day she shows up to her class meetings, completes every activity her teachers post, practices her trumpet, and makes sure she spends time outside if it isn't raining.

The end of her eighth grade year wasn't supposed to look like this. She was supposed to have more concerts. She rehearsed with musicians from all over the district for the all-city Honor Band only two days before schools closed. She was supposed to go to Silverwood with the band. She was supposed to be able to celebrate the end of middle school before transitioning to a new high school. The fact that she'll be attending a different high school than her friends adds a layer of sadness we couldn't have anticipated a few months ago, when she thought she would still be able to say good-bye. And while I know how her new school welcomes freshmen, and I know the opportunities that await her (because I happen to teach there), I don't know what that will look like in September. She's lost the end of eighth grade, and the beginning of her high school career will look far different than either of us imagined. My heart hurts for her. But I also trust that neither one of us can grasp the bigger picture yet, not while we're stuck in the small one. What graces, what gifts will come from this? How will we remember these days? How will she tell her own story ten years from now?

Both of us mourn what we've lost. She misses her friends. I miss my students, my seniors. But I wonder if what we're mourning will translate into something worth celebrating. In our weekly Zooms, my students talk about taking care of each other and holding themselves accountable. They appreciate the chance to sleep and understand the importance of sticking to a schedule. We've talked about strategies for managing stress and anxiety and staying organized when there's no teacher there to yell at you. These are lessons it may serve them well to learn as they gain their independence in a world that changed, fast. They're sad, but resilient. And they can articulate this.

I've been trying to be positive about this while also holding space for whatever feelings Suzannah has. She is, after all, my daughter, so there are frequently some big feelings in this house. But while my heart hurts for my girl, while I hate that all of her grandparents and her aunt and uncle and cousin can't join us for grilling and ice cream cake tomorrow, while I hate that her birthday trip to Great Wolf Lodge has been canceled, I'm also taking my cues right from her. She has decided that tomorrow she should have the day "off" from school, considering she hasn't missed a beat, and I agree. We picked out an ice cream cake together, and the kids and I will frost brownies sent by her grandmother. Matt and I came up with a gift to surprise her that, hopefully, will lessen the sting of not sharing her day with more people -- at least not in person. We'll eat outside in the sunshine. I ordered special Quarantine Birthday decorations, which Zannah seems to enjoy. We'll appreciate the technology that allows us to see her grandparents until we can hug them in person. She's pretty good at enjoying the moment she's living in, and I think (I hope, I pray) she understands how much she is loved. The daughter of my heart.

***

Even as I miss our daily routines, I appreciate the routines I'm privileged (and I do understand it is a privilege) to create now: Waking early to walk through my neighborhood, watching the spring unfold and flower. Sipping coffee slowly. Playing Uno with my children, which started when Isaac and I were the only ones awake at dawn, but sometimes in the afternoons (because he never tires of it) Suzannah asks to join, even if it's not written into her schedule. Walking to the school playground, where I walk or jog and Isaac rides his bike. Letting Suzannah stay up a little late and then sleep a little late. Frequently I am ready for bed before she is, because I still like to rise long before everyone else in my house, and when I go to bed she slips in beside me for awhile to snuggle. Still, at fourteen! I loved snuggling my babies, so very much, but there is something profoundly special about my teenager nestling against me while we giggle and talk and sigh. May I never take this for granted. These are moments I will cherish and probably definitely miss when we resume whatever "normal" life will look like again and our rhythms change again. My deep hope is that we are creating connections now that will carry us through whatever comes next.

Motherhood is like this. Nothing could have prepared me for the enormity of the life change when my daughter was born and delivered straight to my arms. I could only imagine, and my imagination wasn't big enough. I think about that now. How can I expand my imagination to hold all that awaits?

What I want is what I've got, exactly where it is

This morning, on our last morning before the school year begins in earnest, I poured myself a cup of coffee and curled up on the couch with a book. I have to snatch these quiet moments when I can, because Winslows don't really sleep in. But Suzannah is also a teenager now, and this summer she has been "sleeping in" for the first time in her entire life -- which means she emerges from her bedroom, rumply and sleepy-eyed, sometime between 7:30 and 8:00 in the morning. (Once or twice she even slept in just past 8:00, at which point I wondered if I should check to make sure she was still breathing.)

She curled up on the recliner across from me, not quite awake. I didn't say anything right away, hesitant to disturb the quiet balance -- or, more accurately, hesitant to attract the attention of the youngest Winslow, who was already breakfasted and wide awake and ready to troll someone. But I watched her. She didn't even really seem aware of me right away. She arched her back and stretched her arms way over her head, exactly the way she did when she was an infant. Arching her back, sticking out her little bum in her tiny pink sleeper, stretching her arms out wide, pursing her sleepy lips.

I watched my daughter stretch and fold her long limbs back in. She turned toward me.

"Hi," she said.

I can't even put into words how I fall in love with my children all over again in these moments. Again and again.

I wanted to tell her how I was feeling, somehow. How in that moment of just watching her stretch I really saw her, the way she has always been exactly herself. I wanted to tell her about the way I used to open the door to her room after her nap, when she was old enough to pull herself up in her crib. The way she would already be standing up, beaming.

Instead I just held out my arms, and she crossed the living and crawled up on the couch with me, folding herself to fit so I could rest my chin on top of her head, and I breathed in her sleepy scent, warm skin and shampoo from last night's shower.

She has always been exactly herself. I have always been this lucky.

*

The quiet doesn't last, of course. Soon my son was bounding into the living room, shouting his good morning, shrieking his silliness, irritating his sister. And I thought, too, of the way he used to thump his fat little legs with joy when he was a baby, when I was changing him, or even just playing with him on the floor. He'd thump his legs and let out these ear-piercing shrieks, his eyes wide and shining, his grin open-mouthed with delight. As soon as he found his voice he used it to scream, and the message was clear: Hey, world! Here I am! I'm a baby! It's awesome to be a baby! He has always seemed so happy to just be. Every single day with him is a gift, a reminder not to take myself too seriously.

*

So here we are, the first weekend in September. School starts tomorrow. My daughter will be in eighth grade, her last year in middle school, a fact I cannot process without my chest seizing a bit for all the uncertainty and fear. Is this what it always feels like? I couldn't sleep the night before she started sixth grade; I crept out to the couch at two o'clock in the morning to read a book, trying to distract myself from the fears I was trying desperately not to project onto my daughter. I spent the entire summer before she started kindergarten in a state of anxiety and nausea. Last week I stopped by the school to drop off a check for Isaac's school supplies -- his school takes care of all of them for a small fee -- and I ran into the kids' kindergarten teacher, who remains one of my favorite humans on the planet. We hugged each other and caught up on summer, and when I told her my girl came back from camp taller than me and did she remember that first day of kindergarten, she said, "Oh, yes. I remember." (Bless all the kindergarten teachers, for caring for our babies and for handling their anxious, wrecked parents with patience and grace. If every child could experience the love and warmth and competence of my kids' kindergarten teacher, we'd solve a lot of the world's problems.)

She was fine. I think she'll be fine in high school, too. But I know that this will be my struggle this year -- knowing that in only a few months, it's something I'll have to think about. This was the comfort of seventh grade, knowing she would be okay at her school and knowing we still had a nice buffer before high school.

I was significantly more relaxed when I left my son on the first day of kindergarten, because I knew, loved, and trusted his kindergarten teacher. This week I will leave him with the teacher who also taught his sister for two years, and I couldn't be happier about that. But there are little reminders that he is growing so fast -- like the fact that he signed up for morning patrol last spring, and Friday afternoon was his "training." He'll help with the drop-off car line in the morning, and after he turns ten in December he can be a crossing guard. I keep thinking of the way he used to grab one of the bright orange flags out of the can taped to the pole at the intersection across from the Elliott Bay Brewery, the way he would clutch it in his chubby fist and wave it as we crossed California Avenue on our way to dinner. On Saturday, we drove to Madison Beach in Seattle to swim in Lake Washington one final time this summer, and as we always do, we stopped at Pagliacci Pizza before heading home. We parked across the street and walked to the crosswalk, and Isaac, always the ham, snatched one of the little orange flags tied to a stick and waved it dramatically, bouncing across the intersection while his sister rolled her eyes. Both of them perfectly and always themselves.

*

So here's where I am this weekend: still feeling unmoored the night before school starts, feeling anxious and unsettled in a way I always have. But I will not wake up tomorrow morning sick to my stomach with nerves, and that's not nothing. More importantly, I've spent the last couple of days soaking up the last days of summer with my family and feeling just leveled with gratitude that this is my life, that the people I spend my days with are the people I want to spend my days with.

My kids might really need to go back to school, yes, and they're driving me a little crazy (and they're driving each other straight to insanity, to the point where I'm sort of worried Isaac will revert to biting and Suzannah will punch him in the nose), but to everyone who rolls their eyes at me and says, "Ah, you have a teenager, lucky you," while looking sort of sorry for me? Don't. I loved having my babies when they were babies, but it's these humans I live with now who remind me exactly what matters, and who are the source of my deepest joy. I would never wish us backwards. I love the now, and I've learned to trust that I will loves what comes. Maybe I've learned to choose to love it.

*

Matt took the kids hiking yesterday so I could get some work done. We have been married nearly seventeen years, together for nearly twenty, and he understands the need for quiet and space the weekend before school starts. He packed lunches and sunscreen and took the kids to Denny Creek while I spread my notebooks and binders and laptop all over the dining room table and worked on my unit plans and curriculum maps. I also took a little time to read through journals from my first years of teaching, which has become another back-to-school ritual. It helps when I'm feeling anxious and overwhelmed, because it will never be harder than my first year of teaching, ever. But I don't only read about my first year; I read through the entries of my first few years. I started to feel like I knew what I was doing after that first year, but I was also always anxious. The year I was privileged to teach my first IB classes I spent my last week of summer with a severe case of Imposter Syndrome. (It is interesting to note that I felt the same way many years later, when I was given my first class of regular freshmen. I've taught "regular" sophomores of all stripes more years than not, but freshmen? They require skills.)

I wrote this, a week before my college graduation, when I was feeling more terrified than excited: Probably when I'm forty I will look wistfully back at this wonderful, exciting time in my 22-year-old life and wish I could be here again. I guess it's all about perspective.

Oh, Sweetheart. I would never, ever wish myself back to my twenties. God. I had so many opinions without the life experience to temper them. And other people's opinions mattered too much. I said yes when I should have said no. I stayed in rooms I didn't want to be in, literally and figuratively, and I don't do that anymore. I was not objectively unhappy, but I am so much happier in my own skin now. Hang in there, Kiddo. It gets so much better.

Where were you? (Or, Grief and Despair and Teacher Appreciation Week)

Every day, I write in a Gratitude Journal. It's not my regular journal, the notebook I carry with me at all times that catches whatever happens to fall out of my head and onto the paper; it's just a place for me to jot down something every single day. That's all this notebook holds. Because I believe deeply in the importance of practicing daily intentional gratitude, even when things are garbage. Maybe even especially then. It tethers me to hope, I guess, and it also reminds me to notice things, which is essential for a writer. The way the cherry blossoms fall to the sidewalk. The smell of the morning. The increasingly fleeting moments when my son slips his hand into mine, just for a second, when we're crossing a street together. Realizing that we have vegetable spring rolls from Trader Joe's in the freezer after all -- or, even better, that I mentioned offhandedly to my husband that I really wished we had those lava cakes from Trader Joe's, and two days later he slipped some into the freezer without saying anything. He's seriously awesome like that.

I haven't written anything today, even though I have plenty of gratitude welling inside me. But there's something else welling inside me: Fatigue. Heartbreak. Rage. Right now, as I write this, I feel exhausted with the effort of trying not to let it completely and totally consume me, because I'm afraid of what that looks like. If I were to pick up my Gratitude Journal right now, I might write that I'm grateful I got to bring home both of my babies from school today when other parents are waiting in the hospital because their babies were shot at school. And isn't that sick? Isn't that just ridiculous? Rage. Fatigue. I'm so tired of this.

Where were you when you learned about the eleventy billionth mass shooting of 2019, or the eleventy billionth school shooting since Columbine, since Sandy Hook, in the United States of America? I tried to search the actual numbers, but they vary a bit. Basically, it's more than one mass shooting per day, and how many days have there been in 2019 so far? I don't know, I'm too tired and angry to do all that mathing. It all adds up to this: Way Too Fucking Many.

Here's where I was:

I was sitting in my car, waiting for my kids after school. Feeling guilty because I didn't teach well today. Because I haven't parented particularly well today. I've been snappish and tired at all of my kids lately, the kids born of my body and the kids who also share my heart. They all piss me off because that's what happens in May and I am not always good at Rising Above.

I was reading another article about extinction and all the ways we are incinerating the planet. I was reading Mike Pompeo's actual words: “Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade." This is from our Secretary of State. Are we living a horrible dystopian novel? I think we are.

I was reading about the man in Ohio who raped and impregnated an eleven-year-old child, and because of Ohio's "Heartbeat Bill" (House Bill 493), that child will be forced to carry that pregnancy to term (or as long as her child's body can) unless her family has the resources to get her the hell out of there. A child that is younger than my child. If you think there is ANYTHING okay about that, if you think this is in any way "pro life," then you're a fucking monster. Exit stage left, good-bye, we're done here.

I was reading more posts about Rachel Held Evans. And grieving. Grieving. I would never have guessed that her death could have impacted me on such a visceral level, perhaps because I never could have imagined her death. Not now, not as a writer and wife and mother of two very young children, not as a person I've wished for years was one of my actual real-life friends. I'm just about to start reading her latest book. I'm looking at pictures of her with Nadia Bolz-Weber, and these two women -- this is not an exaggeration -- changed my life and gave me back faith I'd thought I'd lost, women whose words felt like a whisper in my ear when I wasn't sure there was any room left in church for me. Rachel's blog has been on the "Required Reading" list of this blog since I discovered it, way back whenever. (I've been trying to write about her for days. I think I still will.)

I was tired and angry and sad and defeated. It's May, which is the worst time of year to be a teacher. The worst. I don't want to do it anymore. I feel inadequate in every way, exasperated in every way, and utterly convinced I've come to the end of my time of being any good at it. I know this is just what happens in May; I have years of journals to back me up. This is part of the cycle, and I've learned to trust that. But still. Still. The feeling is hard. Add to that the feeling of pressure to just keep up with everything and be competent in other areas of my life, because hey! I'm not just a teacher, I'm a wife and a mother, and when I leave campus I have to enter into a totally different space. Most of the time, that is a deep blessing and I have the privilege of finding a beautiful balance in my life. I have a partner who is wholly involved. I have the privilege to choose to work "part-time." (Which comes with a whole lot of bullshit I've written about and will write about again, but never believe I don't understand the privilege in the choice -- to do the work I love and maximize my time with my family in a way that supports us all.) But today, I was tired of juggling track and Tae Kwon Do and soccer and band and confirmation. Matt and I are chaperoning four field trips in as many weeks. This month we have belt testing and two concerts and I forget how many games and track meets. (These are the things that make me realize that the sources of some of my stress and fatigue are also the things I write about in my Gratitude Journal. This is what it means to be a mother.)

This is the month in which our daughter turns thirteen, and it matters to me, and I am also exhausted already trying to make it matter and be the perfect hostess and make it special for her, because I'm her mother, and so far all I can manage to do is say to Matt, "So, we'll grill food outside over Memorial Weekend one night." What else? How do I do this well? How can I make it matter to my girl, my firstborn? One of the only things that tethers me to any sense of hope? And also, how can I look her in the eye, knowing what a horrible mess we adults are handing her?

That is where I was this afternoon, when I learned of the latest school shooting. How many times have I written about those here? Isn't that absurd? I was angry and tired and sad, sitting in my car, waiting for my children. Compartmentalizing, because I can't be dumping all that on kids who are nine and twelve when they jump in the car bursting with things to say: "Can you sign my field trip form?" and "Let me tell you what happened in Conditioning today." (Please, God, let me never forget the loveliness of these ordinary moments when my children tumble into the car, elbowing each other, arguing over whose backpacks are taking up too much space, one person heaving her trumpet case into the front seat, the other shoving a permission slip in my face and reminding me that Popcorn Day is tomorrow.)

That was four hours ago. Only four hours later, and the school shooting (two suspects in custody, UPDATED ONE STUDENT DEAD, eight others injured) is already way down on the news, underneath "Mueller fought Comey memo release" and "Tax documents show Trump businesses lost more than $1 billion in a decade."

This is where I am now: sitting at my table, after Tae Kwon Do, after soccer, dinner simmering on the stove, trying to write through tears in my eyes while my kids relax in front of the TV, which is a rare treat on a weeknight. I apologized for snapping at them earlier. And I told them: "There was a school shooting today."

And they said, "Another one?"

How does that response not shatter your heart? How can we have that conversation again? Again? But we did. And we will. Hey, America, maybe for Teacher Appreciation Week, instead of free notepads and pens or highlighters and cute little notes in our mailboxes, you can get us some fucking gun control.

So that's where I was, and that's where I am. I wish I lived in a country that cared about its children -- all of them. I expect better. Or maybe I just want better, long for better, dream for better, because to expect implies hope, and frankly, tonight, I'm fresh out of that. The place in my heart that holds hope has been taken over by Despair. And Rage. And Fatigue.

I still believe in practicing intentional gratitude, despite the grief and rage and despair. And maybe that's why I write anything here, too -- because words connect us in our grief and rage and despair, and maybe that's what hope is, the impossibility of holding hands in the darkness, swimming for the light.

The cherry blossoms, the air, the music

Less than two months ago, by this time on a Sunday afternoon, the sky would be well on its way to dark. Less than two months ago, I sat at the table where I write now, waiting for snow to fall. Since then, we've had the most snowfall I've seen in western Washington in my entire adult life. We missed five days of school. My daughter sprained her ankle during her first soccer practice of the spring season, which happened on a rather lovely afternoon during the first week of March; the next day the sky began to spit snow again while we waited for X-rays, and she learned how to navigate crutches through freezing slush. Ten days later, the temperatures soared into the seventies, hitting record highs. I love the feel of spring air on bare arms, and the sharp scent of freshly-mown grass, and everyone knows how much I love the first sign of cherry blossoms. But the sudden heat in the wrong season is so unsettling to me, as are the predictions that we're in for a hot and dry summer. That might sound appealing after so much snow, but I know we'll spend August breathing nothing but smoke. Again. And I can't believe there are actual people who continue to deny the effects of climate change.

But still, now, at the end of the slog that is the month of March, I believe in gratitude, in experiencing as much as I can with great joy.

This was my Friday evening: Suzannah ensconced in her room with a book, Matt and Isaac outside playing basketball. I sipped wine and read my own book as a pot of buffalo cauliflower soup simmered on the stove. Everything about that soup was wonderful, especially the fact that Matt prepped all the fresh cauliflower, carrots, onion, and garlic I put in it so it was really easy for me to throw together, and also my son happens to love it. Suzannah tolerates it, barely, and that's fine too. Matt brought home nice bread from Trader Joe's, and Friday is our Family Movie Night, so no one could be too grouchy.

I've felt like garbage for a couple of weeks now, battling the same cold as everyone else in Washington state. So many of my students have been out sick, and let me tell you how thrilled I was when one of them sneezed all over the keyboard of my laptop when they were using it to access a PowerPoint for a presentation. It reminded me of having toddlers and the times when they would sneeze directly into my eyeballs, and then we all had colds for four years with only brief breaks, like maybe a week in May and a week in July? Those weeks when nobody had runny noses were nice. Or maybe we'd just given up and resigned ourselves to enjoying spring afternoons and summer mornings despite the snot. Whatever. I'm recovering.

On Friday afternoon, I decided to go for a jog instead of heading straight to the couch, because the cherry trees are blossoming and the air is pleasantly warm and the streets of my neighborhood are so lovely, even on a slightly overcast spring afternoon. And on Friday night I went to bed early and slept deeply -- for the first time in weeks -- without a cough drop gluing my tongue to the roof of my mouth. On Saturday morning the kids let us stay in bed longer than they usually do, and then we all headed out for Suzannah's first soccer game. I do love the first soccer game of spring, that feeling of being back, of moving and playing (even if it's not me on the field; maybe I just mean the feeling of all of us waking up and wanting to be outside). Suzannah's doctor wanted her to wait until next week to return fully to normal activities, so she couldn't play yesterday, but she was there for her team, and the rest of us cheered for these girls we've been cheering for the past three years. The game happened to be at the muddiest field in King County; our first game was there last year, too, in the pouring rain, and Matt and I laughed at the memory of Isaac and the coach's son playing hard anyway until Isaac slipped and fell in the mud and there went our plans to head directly to IKEA afterwards, since he was drenched and angry and covered in wet, sloppy mud from his cheekbones to his toes. But yesterday we sat in the sunshine, in sunglasses and T-shirts. After the game we went out for lunch at 7 Seas, and I ate half of one of my very favorite sandwiches in the entire universe and drank a cold beer with it. We went shopping for my nephew's first birthday. We stopped at a coffee shop we love, and I ordered mine iced. The kids each took a sip and gagged dramatically. Back home, I had just enough time to go for another little jog in the sunshine that just calls me to move and be outside and take a bubble bath before eating a quick dinner (the other half of that fabulous sandwich) before heading to the high school for a Big Band showcase. Suzannah joined jazz band this year, and her band director is really, really good and I am constantly in awe of what he is able to draw from middle schoolers who have only been playing for a year or two. They joined the jazz bands at the high school for this showcase, which mostly featured Jazz I, but absolutely all of it was phenomenal. Full disclosure: I was not really looking forward to spending several hours of my Saturday night at the high school, but when I drove my happy daughter home afterwards, I had absolutely zero regrets. The musicianship was phenomenal, and as someone who had an excellent musical experience throughout high school and college, I have obnoxiously high standards. And I also just really loved watching my daughter enjoy the night with her friends, even if it meant she did not want to sit with me. Also, there was cake and an auction. Look, I don't even go to the auction for my own school, because those kinds of social events are seriously the absolute worst for an introvert like me, like who would I even be cool enough to sit with? But at this auction, all I had to do was sit at a table with my family, eat cake, and enjoy the music. I loved every moment of the performances. Music like that is my thing.

Matt and I figured our little guy would be tired and totally done before the night was actually done, and we weren't wrong, but he actually lasted much longer than we predicted. We kept glancing over to see him grooving. The and took a break near the end to auction off a bunch of things, and at that point, Matt and I looked at each other and said, yeah, our son needs to go to bed. What was funny is that neither one of us really wanted to leave, when I'd assumed that both of us would want to be the parent to head out early and tuck him into bed. In the end, Matt took Isaac home, and I sat alone at our table, just really loving it all -- these high school kids who've worked incredibly hard, their teachers who bring out the best they have to give. Watching my daughter with her friends. Cheering for her after their final combined number and catching a glimpse in that moment of the wonderful person she will become. Is becoming.

I write all this to remember, simply because it's a snapshot, a moment in time in an ordinary month, a long month, and it reminds me of everything I love. It reminds me to stay grateful in these long months. To notice the small things. The cherry blossoms and the really good sandwiches and the sweet moments with our children, who are growing and growing and growing. Spending these gorgeous spring days and these music-filled nights with my family is my thing. I suppose I lead a simple life, but it's mine. It's ours. I never want a single moment to pass without my noticing, because to live in these moments is everything, everything I ever wanted, even before I knew I wanted it.

On Turning 40

I understand why people hate February, deep into the slog of winter. I especially understand the weariness my friends and family in Montana and across the Midwest are feeling after so many (So. Many.) snow days. Admittedly, we were going a little crazy after five, plus a few late starts and early releases. I had to remind myself more than once that this wasn't a thing happening to my precious little self.

Anyway, I don't happen to hate February. First of all, it's my birthday month, and my birthday is at the end of February so I have all month to look forward to it -- and I was lucky enough to be born into a family who has always made me feel loved and celebrated on my birthday. And because I live in the Pacific Northwest, February is the month where spring starts to break through the surface of the mud. I'm also one of those people who enjoys Valentine's Day for purely silly reasons. I like chocolate. I love being a mom of children on Valentine's Day. I love buying cheap, fun Valentine's Day socks. I do not see it as a day for romance or expectation, necessarily, and neither Matt nor I spend much time worrying about what to give each other. Usually we pick up chocolate and share, and I think Matt has brought me flowers every year of our marriage. We exchange cards. Our first year of marriage, we went out to dinner -- along with every other couple declaring their public love for each other, which meant we waited way too long for a table at a mediocre restaurant. The following year, we stayed home and I wore fuzzy gray sweats and we cooked some pasta thing together in the kitchen of our still newish house, and it was so much better. Since then, I've never wanted anything else.

It doesn't hurt that our first Valentine's Day together was spectacular in its own way, though. Matt and I were a long-distance couple that first year; I was a senior in college and he was living in the Twin Cities, working in downtown Minneapolis. The band tour that year took us to places like Nashville and Memphis but we also played a concert in a suburb north of the Cities, and Matt drove an hour to meet the bus that night. He was waiting in front of the school (a high school, maybe? Or was it a church? I don't remember) when the bus pulled up, and our tour manager grudgingly let me vault off the bus and into his arms, and with everyone watching he handed me my Valentine's Day gift: a little bag full of things he knew I liked. A nice pen. A half-pound of good coffee beans. Bubble bath. A book of poetry. Writing all of that out, I would marry that man all over again in a heartbeat -- that and his pecan pie at Thanksgiving. (I also remember our friend Katie, who was his friend first, calling over my shoulder, "Wow. I used to get drunk with that dork.") (Also, Matt just now yelled at me, "You can't use that quote on your blog! My parents read your blog!" Sorry, honey. I love you. It's too cute and it still makes me smile.)

That was eighteen years ago.

I'm still happy to stay home and cook and curl up in sweats with him. And he still knows the little things I love.

I turned forty this week, and last night, curled up with my husband, I said, "I've officially known you for half my life." From now on, every year we're together I'll be able to say, "I've known you for longer than I haven't." And that is one of the great blessings of this life I was lucky enough to land in.

I turned forty this week, and I am nothing but grateful. Growing older, as I posted on Facebook this week, is privilege not all of us get. And I don't feel old, because what does that even mean? I feel like me, which is to say, to echo Madeleine L'Engle, that I am every age I have ever been. I remember reading this when I was fourteen, late at night in my bedroom long after the rest of my house was asleep -- from The Crosswicks Journals, I think? I did a quick Google search:

“I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages...the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide... Far too many people misunderstand what *putting away childish things* means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and *be* fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup.”

I don't mourn the passing of my childhood, or my twenties, or my thirties. I've learned a lot -- who I am and what I want. And I woke up on my birthday in the very life I realized I'd always wanted for myself. I have so much more work to do, so much more, and there are still things I want. Deeply. There are things I want that I won't ever have, and that's okay; part of the blessing of living forty years is the realization that we won't ever have everything we want, and that it is possible, still, to be happy. Part of the blessing of living forty years is that the pursuit of individual happiness isn't, perhaps, even the point. I am working towards the things I still want, but I'm not sure that my individual happiness is the point there, either. This is the work of a human life.

*

Last weekend I went out to celebrate with Jessica; of all the friends with whom I still keep in touch, I've probably known her the longest. (I still remember the time someone threw up on the back of her dress at our church Christmas program. I'm pretty sure her parents took her home to change and she was back for cookies afterwards.) We've known each other since we were seven. My family moved from Great Falls to Bozeman when I was in the eighth grade, but we still attended each other's confirmations. We went to the same college, had separate friend groups there, but went on the same trip to Europe. We roomed together for the entire month as we traveled through Ireland, England, Wales and France, and she was the one to witness my falling for a boy on that trip, the same one I married a couple of years later. She read at my wedding. I stood on the side of a mountain in Glacier National Park for hers. I had the tremendous privilege of holding her newborn son in the middle of the night while she napped. She had the fucking awful luck of being on the surviving end of "till death do us part" when her husband died of brain cancer last spring.

Let none of us complain about growing older.

She was determined to celebrate. Last week she reminded her friends of the importance of celebrating birthdays, "not with more fanfare, but just with more emphasis, more care. We each have one day a year to celebrate our existence." And it reminded me of the time I said to Matt, years ago, that maybe he should throw me a big party. For my thirtieth. Or my thirty-fifth. Or something.

"Do you...actually want that?" he asked.

He knew I didn't. Instead, five years ago, I started taking my birthday off without apology. I gave myself the gift of a day to do exactly what I would ever do with the gift of a day, an afternoon, free of obligation or responsibility. I took myself out for a really good birthday latte. I sat at a wide wooden table in a coffee shop and wrote. I read a book, and not one I was teaching or going to teach. I took myself out for lunch, where I read some more and sipped a glass of wine. I walked around the streets of a neighborhood I love with a gorgeous view of Puget Sound. I went for a run in the almost-spring air. I soaked in a bubble bath before picking up my kids and heading to Seattle to meet Matt, who entertained them while I shopped for new books, and then we all went to dinner together. It was my perfect day. It still is.

In warmer years, I might see the first buds of cherry blossoms as early as February 26th. Not this year. That's okay. They'll be bursting into bloom soon enough.

*

I was raised to celebrate birthdays. It wasn't that we always needed huge parties, but attention was paid. I remember birthday parties at my grandmother's house -- coffee and cookies for her, or her friends, and probably cake. It's where I learned to sneak sips of watery black coffee. For the first fifteen years of my life I shared a birthday with my great-grandmother. I remember her 100th birthday at her church, shared with my 15th. It's the last picture of us together.

I remember waking up on my 10th birthday to find a pink clock and a note from my mother -- she had received it as a birthday gift when she was a girl, and she was passing it on to me. I woke up early, as I always did. My room was still dark, and everything was in the wrong place. The door was to my left. The window was on the wall opposite my bed, instead of directly above my head. I sat up and remembered that yesterday my mother helped me rearrange my bedroom, something I was allowed to do a few times a year. My room was just large enough to accommodate a few different set-ups, and simply moving my bed to a different wall made me feel like I had an entirely new room. I am orderly by nature, but the momentary disorientation always made me smile. I had chosen this.

A line of light shone beneath my door. My mother was already up, moving around in the kitchen. And then I saw it -- the clock.

I recognized it right away -- the pink plastic rectangular clock with the dancing ballerina. For years it perched atop the headboard in my mother’s old bedroom at the farm, the room I slept in when we visited my grandmother. My parents slept in the bed, and I slept in my Strawberry Shortcake sleeping bag on the floor along the wall. Sometimes I took the clock down and wound it, fascinated by the delicate sound of the wheels inside, the mechanisms turning. When I released the little key, the ballerina turned to the sound of “Oh, what a beautiful morning.” The clock was decades old, but it kept perfect time.

And on the morning of my tenth birthday, I found it on my nightstand. My mother left a note: Dear Shari, this clock was given to me by my grandmother on my eighth birthday, and now I am giving it to you. Happy Birthday to my beautiful girl.

My mother would have turned eight in 1960. Even at ten I possessed an uncanny memory for dates and a deep yearning to know my family’s stories. I remembered that my great-grandfather died the day after my mother’s eighth birthday. His wife -- her grandmother, my great-grandmother -- would have given this clock to her only the day before. I was born on my great-grandmother’s eighty-fifth birthday. She turned ninety-five on my tenth birthday, and two days later I joined her for our family birthday dinner. I’m not sure if this was the reason I felt the clock was weighted with more than my mother’s love for me, but I picked it up with nothing short of reverence.

*

I am every age I've ever been.

The following winter, I could have had a new clock radio. My church youth group was selling meat and cheese trays that year—maybe mixed nuts, too. Christmas-themed snacks. And I was tempted, because my best friend had a clock radio that played top-40 songs when it went off in the mornings. What I really wanted from that fundraiser, though, was the phone—it was just a simple white plastic touch-tone, but it would go in my bedroom. I wouldn’t get my own line—ever, my parents emphasized—but if I sold enough beef sticks and cheese balls, I would be allowed to keep it in my room. There would be limits, but I would be allowed to call Julia and speak in relative privacy, rather than in the middle of the kitchen. And anyway, I loved my little pink ballerina clock. It only played one song, but I loved the physical motion of winding it each day, loved the sound of those intricate little gears and the way I could set the time so the ballerina would begin to dance each morning. I loved the click, the momentary grinding before the plinking music began.

When my grandmother moved into the nursing home a year later, we still slept at the farm and my parents still slept in my mother’s old bedroom. I was the one who slept in my grandmother’s bed, alone on the main floor. I packed the little pink clock into my suitcase each time we visited.

My grandmother died -- too young -- from Scleroderma on a Tuesday morning in November. My mother was younger than I am now. My parents needed to make arrangements so I spent the night at Julia’s house, unrolling my sleeping bag against the wall of her basement bedroom. We went to school together the next morning as if everything was normal, and then my dad drove my brother and me north to the farm where we would stay for the rest of the week.

My friend’s bedroom was almost as familiar as my own, but that night I was as disoriented as I was when I rearranged my own furniture. None of it was my own choosing. She set the alarm on her clock radio a little early so we both had time to shower before school, but before I went to sleep I pulled out the pink ballerina clock and wound that, too.

I am every age I've ever been.

Let none of us complain about growing older.

*

I turned forty this week. My parents flew in for just a few hours, trying to return to their snowy home after a few days in Phoenix. Suzannah had a band concert, and my mother had a gift for me -- a mug I gave her when I was Suzannah's age, when she turned forty. Twenty-seven years ago. 40 is not the end of the world! But you can see it from there.

I laughed hard, and after sipping my morning coffee from that mug all week, I realize I love it at least as much as I love that pink ballerina clock. This is what it means to celebrate a birthday with care. This is a gift my mother gave me, and it transcends any thing on this earth.

I turned forty this week. I woke up in a life I love. I am lucky to love so many people.

It was a perfect day. I sipped coffee from my new twenty-seven-year-old mug. I jogged around my neighborhood in the bitingly cold and beautiful sunshine, the snow barely melted, Puget Sound a brilliant blue just down the hill from my house. I walked down to the edge of the water to catch my breath. I stood in a hot shower. I took myself to lunch. I read a book I'm loving, ate something that made me feel amazing, sipped a cold glass of white wine at noon. I lingered over a latte at a coffee shop I don't get to often. I came home and curled up on the couch for a nap, the sun streaming through the glass doors in the dining room. In the early evening, we all went to the Elliott Bay Book Company, and I picked up just a few things I may have missed at Powell's, and we went out for a cozy dinner. It is everything I could have wanted from this day, from any day. To feel the sun on my skin, to taste good coffee, to hug my children, to curl up in bed with the one who's known me, really known me, for my entire adult life.

I found this in a journal I kept a decade ago, from an entry I wrote late in February. It seems fitting to rediscover now:

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.

We find ourselves so fumblingly human together. My head meets your shoulder, your hand finds mine. We seek out that touch, your lips against my hair, my breath against your neck, my hip bumping yours, our hands across a table, our knees underneath. And all of these accidental collisions of skin, proof of life, proof that we are still alive, proof that we still are breathing and moving. My sigh against your chest, my tear against your hand, my hope against your life. Our eyes meet. We are not meant to go it alone.

We drove to Discovery Park this afternoon. We left it in late October, our feet treading upon the sweet damp mulch of fallen leaves. All that sweet rot. We returned today in the sunshine, cool air knifing my lungs. Wake up. I know this scent. It is buried deeper in the landscapes of my youth, under snowfall and dirt, deep, dark in the earth. It emerges earlier here, washing down the streets in the rain, rising to the surface of the earth in the sunlight, in the breeze.

We hiked to the bluffs overlooking Puget Sound. You are the rock against my wave; we are the rocks against each other's waves; we are the waves together, crashing against grief, against joy, the terrible swelling, the ebb and flow, the rise, the breaking.

I thought about grief, about joy, about all the ways we find and lose each other on ordinary days, on the breath of the first day of spring. About how it comes from the same place, about how the source of joy can be so dark and deep, how grief can be surprisingly light.

30 Days of Thankfulness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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