One of my mantras over the past sixteen years of motherhood has been “This is the season of life I am in right now.” It’s a simple mantra—a recognition that what I’m experiencing is not permanent. (As an aside: sixteen years? How did that happen?) When things started to reopen this spring, I felt suffocated…
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Why, Hello, Summer.
It seems that lately, most of the people I talk to about summer plans say, “We have no plans. We go to the pool every day!” Speaking for myself, I might not mind going to the pool every day under two conditions: 1) the water is warm; 2) there’s plenty of shade. But since those…
Read MoreYou say Self”ish”, I Say Self”less”
I’ll admit it: I totally blew it last summer. I tried to extend my “work-year” to ten months by putting kids in summer school, promising myself that it would be enough to do weekly field trips during July and August. But the first ten days of July were taken up with our triple-duty trip to…
Read MoreLove Is A Tug of War
There are days when I look at the words (or the notes) I’ve put put on the page and I’m in awe, where I literally think, “Where did this come from?” And yet it’s just as likely that by the end of the day I’ll thoroughly convinced no publisher will ever accept such drivel, and…
Read MoreSearching For A New Balance On The Cusp of A New School Year
The summer of 2015, in our family, breaks down like this: Phase 1 (up to July 4): Baseball and summer school. Phase 2 (July 4-Aug. 17): Major travel and recovery. The past several years I’ve structured the summer around weekly field trips, but this year we didn’t do a single one. Even now I’m not…
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