Life Lately

I have a document on my computer titled “Coronavirus”. I’ve all but abandoned it right now though it was cathartic at the beginning. It sits, running to something like 24 pages and some 9000 words. I published some of those thoughts here, early on. Mostly it sits for me to go back to at some point, eventually, to remind me of this time.

Though now it seems like I could begin another, similar document. Titled—what? George Floyd? Racial Tension 2020? Civil Rights…Again?

Maybe I just need to begin a daily journal.

Because life lately is heavy. Filled with tension. Multiple tensions. Tensions that pile on top of one another, like the amount of laundry piles up in my house. We’re living through unprecedented events nestled within unprecedented events. A global pandemic, the murder of a black man in broad daylight not once, but twice, and more. Protests and marches and police in riot gear. A historic election. He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named tweeting out conspiracy theories.

I was texting with a friend recently and we struggled with feeling the tension. How to feel it without burning out on the things we need to do in life (work, childcare, cleaning, all that food we make, etc.). There’s a line to be drawn somewhere, and right now I’m not sure where it lies. I’m not sure exactly where it is that we cross over from an appropriate amount of rage and discomfort to an unhealthy amount.

We re-watched Nanette recently, kicking off a Friday evening Hannah Gadsby double-feature to celebrate the release of Douglas. (Give her all the stars and awards and medals and money, please.) In Nanette, she talks about tension, how jokes are effective because they relieve the tension the comedian has set up in the room.

She leaves us toward the end, a face full of emotion as she re-frames her story of being a young, queer person in conservative Tasmania. She tells us we have to sit with the tension. She’s not going to relieve us with a joke anymore.

Just like in Nanette, I don’t think there’s anyone or anything here who’s going to break the tension for us. I think we need to feel it, sit in it, live with it for a while.

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Cooking, lately. (Maybe my own small attempt to break the tension.)

• I’ve been making these quesadillas at least twice a month. (I sub the jalapeno with a small can of mild green chilies.)

• This chopped salad. I put the components of the salad out for the kids on a plate (cheese, salami, some fruit— their own version of a charcuterie) and Tyson and I eat the salad as-is. Note: it makes a LOT. I mix it all up and keep the dressing separate and it does fine in the fridge for a couple of days.

• Blackberry ice cream and homemade freezies. For the freezies: some combination of fruit (strawberries, mixed berries, watermelon) whizzed up in the blender with enough lemonade to make it liquid-y. Add a touch of sugar if it’s too tart. Make a “smoothie” version by replacing the lemonade with a banana and some yogurt. Pour in freeze pop bags. Freeze. Announce “It’s freezie time!” and make everyone’s day when the tension (See? There it is again.) starts to rise at about four in the afternoon.

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Brooklyn grabbed a stack of books from the bookshelf the other day, lay down on her bed, and started reading. I did a double-take as I looked at what she grabbed, then stalked her until she was done so I could nab all the books to take a picture.

If anyone is looking for recommendations of children’s’ books that feature people of color, well, this is straight from a six-year-old.

Speaking of books, there was a movement last week to blackout the bestsellers lists by purchasing any two books by black authors. I personally ordered from the Lit. Bar, a black-owned bookstore based in Brooklyn. And then I ordered more from Target and Amazon because they offered buy two get one free on books. So basically I have piles of books on their way to my house and am living my best life right now. Can I just say that this is exactly my kind of movement? “Go and order books”? I’m all in on that, every. single. time.

I know there are all sorts of lists flying around the internet, so FWIW, besides the children’s books above, here are some of my personal favorites:

Becoming by Michelle Obama
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After by Clemantine Wamariya
The Mothers by Brit Bennett (Haven’t read it yet but I’m excited for her new one: The Vanishing Half)
Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo
Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
Thick: and Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

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The other day (with permission), Brookyn changed into her swimsuit, hopped on her bike, threw her beach towel around her neck, and rode off to her friend’s house down the street to swim in their inflatable pool without a single look back.

This child was an actual baby yesterday. What in the world.

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I wrote most of this a week ago. I thought I was going to publish it several days ago. That seems to be the best summation of life lately. With the kids home 24/7 it feels a little like when they were younger and were also around 24/7 and needed so much constant attention. Sure, I don’t have to change diapers anymore and they can often occupy themselves, but they also used to take these things called naps, so: trade-offs.

I feel like I’m trying to cram more into the margins than ever. Writing, reading, household management, work, errands, etc. I can’t even (or at least choose not to) bring the kids along with me to the store anymore. Just fitting in the most basic tasks feels like a lot. Like most parents—most moms, period—juggling everything on our plates (just let me mix the metaphors here it seems accurate) is enough.

This is running too long for it to become too much of a feminist screed (another time, people), so I’ll leave it here by saying I took yesterday off. And most of Saturday. We had friends over and ate Indian food, we had a bonfire and roasted marshmallows, we biked four miles to get ice cream and grilled hot dogs. The kids went to bed last night needing baths in the absolute worst way. Their faces were sticky with ice cream, their fingers were smeared with Dorito dust, their shirts had smudges of ketchup. Their legs are covered with either bruises or dirt (answer: both) and their hair is somewhat wild. Also: they smell.

But there just wasn’t time for baths. (Because sleep > cleanliness.) So we, as we so often do, pushed it off to tomorrow. Or maybe they’ll just play in the pool and we can call it good. Either way, it sums up a lifestyle that’s as good as any in the summertime, during a pandemic, through the tension, because of all of the above: there’s always tomorrow.

Summer Isn't Canceled

“What are you doing this summer?” has always been a question among the parents in my sphere. This year the answers have less to do with family vacations, camps, sports, and childcare. This year the questions really come down to: “Are you going to continue schoolwork?”... “Is your camp/daycare/class open and if so, will you send your kid(s)?”... “Should I send my kid(s)?”... “Are you traveling?”... “What activities are you doing at home?”... 

The transition to summer is so awkward this year. As I write this in early June, on our last official day of school and distance learning, it feels as though it should be August 31st. We’ve been home for three months. That’s like an entire summer. Already. The kids are fighting more, crying more, and bored with their toys. We go from being perfectly fine to totally and completely sick of each other in 2.3 seconds flat. I’m more prone to either snapping or adopting an attitude of, “Sure. If you want to wear your swimsuit to bed or eat candy for lunch and do those things without my assistance? Cool. Go ahead.” Seriously, how is it not the end of summer?

My sense of time may be skewed, but the calendar doesn’t lie. We’ve got a long way to go.

It’s particularly long when we don’t have our normal summer things to look forward to. Our baseball league held out hope for months only to officially cancel this past week. The two-morning-a-week camp my children have attended for the past two years? Also canceled. We’re signed up for a zoo camp in August I can only assume will go the same way. We canceled our family vacation, a vacation my mom’s family has been taking for over 40 straight years. And let’s not forget The Great Minnesota Get-Together: canceled. Summer 2020 is really bringing an entirely new meaning to the term “cancel culture.”

Still. Regularly-scheduled plans or not, summer is here.

Read the rest about the state of summer over on the Twin Cities Mom Collective.

Here

It hits me sometimes, randomly. 

You should be at school right now.
Or
I should be picking Nolan up from preschool.
Or
We should be at dance/gymnastics/swimming/t-ball.

Whatever the moment, the refrain in the back of my head is always the same:

You shouldn’t be here.
I shouldn’t be here.
We shouldn’t be here.

Though there are days I can hardly remember our “before”. There used to be times, numbers on the clock, that were burned into my brain: 

8:25: leave for preschool drop-off
8:46 (I think?): Caden and Brooklyn catch the bus
11:10 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays: leave to pick Nolan up from preschool
11:10 on Thursdays: leave to meet Caden and Brooklyn for lunch
6:00 on Tuesdays: dance
5:30 or 5:45 or 6:00 (I can’t remember) on Thursdays: gymnastics for the boys

I don’t know what they’ll remember about this time, at six years old, at four years old. Will they remember not being able to go to school? Will they remember all these days strung together at home? Will they remember watching videos of their teacher, of worksheets, of submitting activities on their tablets? Will they remember getting more screen time? 

They were only in school for all of six months, after all. Maybe all this being home again simply seems like a return to normal. There’s a sense in which they don’t know what they’ve lost. The Kindergarteners were supposed to have an end-of-year zoo field trip, but Caden and Brooklyn didn’t know about it yet and I’m sure not about to tell them. They should be experiencing their first track-and-field day at school, instead we’re doing it virtually. (See also: explaining what track and field is.) Nolan should have an end-of-year party, complete with cookies and songs for us parents. He should be playing his very first year of t-ball.

There are some things they know they’re missing, kind of, but still, they’re intangible. I’m not sure they would have remembered if we hadn’t told them about missing their dance recital or that baseball probably isn’t happening this summer. They understand a little bit more that they’re missing out on museums and parks and playgrounds and playdates and beaches. Normal (what should be normal) kid stuff.

There’s a sense in which I’m carrying all of these losses for them. I’m the mom. I feel them more keenly. I know what they’re missing.

You shouldn’t be here.
We shouldn’t be here.
I shouldn’t be here.

Kids are resilient, these three are resilient, I know they are, they’ll be fine, we’ll all be fine. (I’m fine, this is fine, everything is fine.) They’ve been troopers. They had more questions than tears (in fact, there were none) when we told them they couldn’t play with their friends, go to school, do their regular activities. Still, I worry about their lost childhood. (Too much? Too dramatic?) Because they’re only little for so long, we only have them for 18 years, they’re only little little for much less than that. Even the loss of one summer (three months of school, one dance recital, one session of swim lessons, one season of baseball, countless birthday parties, one family vacation, all the things) feels like a lot.

And they’ve been great but it’s still hard. It’s hard because we’re all home together and even on the days when things are pretty good, it’s hard. It’s hard because just a few days ago I realized that Caden and Brooklyn have actual real-live email accounts for school to check and let’s all please remember that they’re SIX right now so that falls on me. (Hi, I basically ignore them.) It’s hard because we can’t go anywhere we usually go for fun. It’s hard because I recognize the privilege in my complaints and how can I even be talking when we have a backyard and the time and ability to homeschool and enough money for food and toys and ice cream just because. It’s hard because we’re all here together and have been here all together for so long and I saw a post on Facebook the other day that said the way our kids talk to each other is a reflection of how we speak to them and if that’s true then we’re doomed, all doomed, because there are days where I don’t think we can all speak any words around here without crying and/or yelling and so apparently they’re all going to grow up to be serial killers instead of kind human beings and I’m sorry, society, but I tried.

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We usually go on a bike ride in the afternoon. Usually the boys take their scooters and Brooklyn takes her hand-me-down bike from a neighbor and sometimes it hard for me to keep up. Sometimes it’s like pulling teeth to get everyone to go but they all enjoy it in the end.

They’re (mostly) diligent with their schoolwork in the morning. I make sure we’re done by lunchtime. Nolan is basically another Kindergartener right now and sits right along with Caden and Brooklyn, counting by 10s and segmenting words and yelling out answers to their teacher’s questions. It will be interesting to see him go to Kindergarten in two years when he has a third of the curriculum under his belt. Heck, it will be interesting to see him go back to preschool in the fall (back, back, please go back) after sitting through Kindergarten material for the last few months,

“Mommy,” Brooklyn said the other day, “In the fall, when we’re first graders, the sickness could still be here.”

“Yes,” I said. “We might still be doing school kind of like this in the fall.”

(You shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be here.)

She scampered off after that revelation. I didn’t tell her yet, I won’t until there’s certainty, but I’ve been mentally preparing for school in the fall to look different than usual, different even than what we’re doing now, though I don’t know what that looks like yet. Every other day? Every other week? Half days? Still distance learning some days, some weeks, every day? I’ve been researching iPads to replace their too-slow tablets as a precaution, been mentally preparing for the rest of 2020 to look nothing like what we ever would have thought.

Little did I know when I mourned Caden and Brooklyn’s start of Kindergarten (But like a HAPPY mourning. Oh what I would give to have an ordinary sadness right now.) that I would get a mere six months of reprieve before they’d all be home again, 24/7, full time, more work right now than they have been for the past couple of years.

Here we are. Usually on top of one another. (I don’t know why we have all this square footage, both outside and in, when all they ever do is share the same few square feet of space.) And sometimes that looks wonderful and idyllic and other times it involves screaming and crying. But we’re here. It’s here that we’re learning and working and cooking and baking and laughing and shouting and playing and reading and connecting. Right here. Which is, unexpectedly, unusually, unbelievably, exactly where we should be.

On Eating Less Meat

Over the past few years, my family has transitioned to eating less meat. For various reasons: we know a diet filled with plants offers many health benefits compared to one that is heavy in (especially processed) meat. We know animals are often abused in a broken and unrelenting food system. We know animal farming and production, particularly of beef, is a big contributor to climate change. And as far as environmental impact goes, eating less meat is one of the easier ways to make a change as an individual.

This isn’t about going vegan or eating vegetarian. At least not for me. I have friends who fall into both of those categories and I applaud them. For me personally, the thought of never eating carnitas tacos or a bowl of slow-cooked beef bourguignon ever again sounds devastating. I think about this as making intentional choices on when and where I’m cooking and consuming meat. 

As a part of our health and wellness series, I thought I’d write up what this looks like for me. Please know: I am no expert. I’m just a concerned mom/woman/citizen/consumer doing what she can for herself and her household. I’ve included some resources at the bottom of this post to people who know far more than I do. You’ll also find links to a few of my favorite meatless recipes.

Read more about how we’ve been eating less meat over on the Twin Cities Mom Collective.

The President of Breakfast

Note: I wrote this post and submitted it a few months ago for the Twin Cities Mom Collective. It’s amazing how much has changed since then. Not only can I assure you that my kids are no longer getting off the bus every day at 4:00 pm (Remember those days? Was it all a dream?), but I am also no longer the President of Breakfast. What had been our normal for many months has, like so many things, been entirely upended in the past three. Also, my kids know what Eggos are now. I don’t know. Here we are. * insert shrug emoji here *

Breakfast used to be my husband’s domain. I don’t like getting up any earlier than I absolutely have to and he enjoys spending time in the morning with the kids, so we settled on this arrangement years ago. But then last fall the school year started and my twins went off to kindergarten, and everything fell apart.

Well, that’s a bit melodramatic. Really what happened is that the school year started and my twins went off to kindergarten and everything fell apart... at 4:00 p.m. each day.

That’s when my twins step off the bus. My youngest wants to play with his siblings who’ve been gone all day. My daughter wants to find a friend to play with because her social bucket apparently needs to be filled, even though she’s just been at school for the past seven hours. Her twin brother needs to go sit in a room with some LEGOs by himself because he’s just been at school for the past seven hours. I want to go through backpacks full of lunch boxes and paperwork and “Mommy look at this!” - all while I also need to start thinking about dinner. Oh, and I am also simultaneously handling three kids clamoring for five different snacks at the same time.

It’s kind of the worst.

Within two weeks of the start of school, I asked my husband to re-arrange his work schedule.

“Is there any way you can start at 7 so you can end at 4?” I asked him one desperate evening. He works from home as a software developer; I knew it was in the realm of possibility. “I can’t be everything to everyone.”

He could. And he did.

But with him now starting at 7:00 a.m. - a full hour earlier - breakfast is now firmly in my domain. I started rising earlier to tackle this task. Instead of using that time to get ready for the day while my husband controls the breakfast chaos downstairs, I wake up earlier to throw myself together so I can take control of it all myself.

I grew up eating toast and cereal and Pop-Tarts and Eggos for breakfast. It was the 90s and this sufficed. Also, my mom isn’t a morning person. I think anything that took 3.42 seconds to unwrap and pop in the toaster was exactly in her weekday morning wheelhouse.

My kids wouldn’t know a Pop-Tart or an Eggo if one popped up in our toaster - those pantry staples from my youth haven’t made it to my own house. But Honey Nut Cheerios and Life cereal are on a regular rotation. Cooking is not my husband’s forte, so cereal became an easy go-to in the morning.

I followed suit after I became the President of Breakfast. Once upon a time, I thought I would be the kind of mom who flipped pancakes and sausages before school and make egg scrambles to fill their bellies with protein. I didn’t factor in the whole I’m-not-a-morning-person part.

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

Read the rest over on the Twin Cities Mom Collective.