heightened intensity

There's a hawk in the backyard, hoping for breakfast. Windows all around the kitchen allow us to observe his efforts. He tries and fails, tries and fails, a single squirrel provoking him from high up a tree trunk.

The boys talk about safety day over cereal, explaining to Hank that the classroom garage door walls are bulletproof, explaining that the active shooter drills will have heightened intensity, hearing those words from a district adult but not quite sure what they mean. Me neither.

The flood of "last first day" back to school photos hit a tender spot. Celia would have been a senior this year. No one has acknowledged that, but I think incessantly about the way life might've unspooled in other directions. 

I feel almost as struck by lack of language as I do when it is used carelessly. It may be a symptom of loving words so much, too much. In a documentary we've been watching, an innocent man on death row said "What really distraughted me..." I don't know how to explain the experiences that live wordlessly inside my body. I cannot describe to the world that bittersweet flavor of healthy, growing kids. But I think I could use what really distraughted me...

Hank walks himself home from school now, and I feel less necessary. I fill the extra daytime hours power washing the patio and preparing meals, hiking with friends and rewriting booster bylaws, looking for harmony in the universe, trying to make sense of the yearning. A friend reminded me that weird sad feelings are a legit end-of-summer vibe.

So much of my energy used to be spent trying to hold together the center of everything. I love that I could do that, could try. I'm still here, working very hard to keep the boys happy and alive. I feed them constantly, but I don't always know how else to try. Try and fail and try again, hawkish and unrelenting. The very best projects may be the ones both challenging and hopeful.

Trailing me up the garage stairs Hank asked how a person could tell the difference between legs with muscles, and legs that are just fat, like they jiggle more? I should not have asked him why.

I know the stress I create by ruminating is not benign. Even without imaginary futures there remains a half-resolved mess of very normal emotions. I can look at myself with both grace and thoughtful critique. I can hold two things at once, I remember, devastated and grateful, jiggly and strong.

begin again

Dear boys,

I love the way you're more mine in the summer. Despite wet swimming trunks on the floor and stinky socks in literally every room of the house, each of you is a joy and a delight to have around. Truly. I am so, so lucky to enjoy this time with you, and I know it in my bones. I love being able to witness your passion for the possible, to be so close to the calculus of your big futures and privy to your quiet dreams. I'm going to miss having you here at home.

After months of watermelon and popsicles and past bedtimes, after amazing travel and fresh haircuts and new gym shoes, it's time for your taller, tanner shoulders to head back to school. I've been thinking about this season for four decades now, from what to wear to how to decorate my locker to my own classroom routines. You offer me a new lens on learning and how school experiences can affect our identity. 

My love-filled advice for you on the path of acquiring knowledge:

Do not brand yourself as good or bad at anything - the truth is, very few things are out of your grasp. 

Push yourself when you can. Some things take longer to learn than others, and it's okay to advocate for what you need along the way.

Take breaks - half of education may be reflection, so a big part of learning is thinking about what you've encountered. Rest is certainly related to assimilation.

Honor your preferred learning styles - listen to music, draw diagrams and sketches, move your body.

Stay curious - almost nothing in the world is boring (the trick may be to connect new things in ways that resonate).

This list is not exhaustive! Fortunately there are plenty of people in your lives who can share good advice. Your dad and I are obviously not the only people who shape your mind, though we will always be fascinated by what lodges in and what passes through. Please keep talking to us! We are so impressed by your awareness and integrity, by your empathy and drive. We hope you will remain focused, confident and a little kinder than necessary.

We live in a small, remarkable place with some of the very best teachers in the world. But it's a district attached to a state agenda and school is not the only place to learn. You learn at the park and at museums, by people watching and reading books, at summer camp and in the garage. You learn so much in the classroom though - content and independence and how to be in community. May your school buildings be bright habitats of belonging. 

I can't help you much with chemistry or Spanish or how to read a map, but I will always support your effort and interests.

No one loves you more than I do.

Mom

peak summer

The summer schedule feels somehow both free and frenetic. Time is slippery, the days are textured and full in ways that don't make much room for traditional ambition. The weeks come and go in a flurry of cookouts and baseball games and trips to the pool.

The boys watched the state fair's six horse hitch class contest, enjoyed urban farm camp and rowing club, visited arcades and wetlands and special fishing spots. They've recently been conducting kitchen counter science experiments and collecting pet snakes. August now, and I acknowledge some of my summer regret and nostalgia and dread are definite holdovers from my teaching days. I remind myself that the boys will one hundred percent pull more National Geographics in the backyard, that just because summer days are winding down doesn't mean the wonder will cease.

attentive, curious, congenial...

I've noticed the stripes on your skin make a heart shape, Hank said as I helped wash a summer's day dirt from his feet.
Has anyone in the history of ever said something so nice about wrinkles?

Where do our eyelids actually go when our eyes are open?

That was a really good book, but there were a lottttt of F words in it.

We're boutta cook crowed Tolliver, as all five of us tried to set a rally record for badminton in the front yard.

It is so fun to become a family of Olympic fanatics for a fortnight.

So do the summer Olympics always overlap with the presidential election?

I forget what you call that plant with the orange horn flowers on it? The hummingbirds really like it!

{trumpet vine}

“Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth…. Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words and they backhand them across the net.” 

E.B. White