May is a whole thing. School and school year activities start to wrap up. Summer activities and warm weather begin to creep in. We had dance and dress rehearsals and recitals and baseball practices and games and swim lessons and school and gymnastics. Tomorrow is Nolan’s last day of preschool.
May is survival.
I gave myself permission this month to do only what I needed to get us through. We had seven dance recitals in a span of three days, all with various combinations of kids and costumes and routines. We also had a baseball game crammed in the middle of all that for good measure. We literally haven’t had a weeknight this month without at least one kid activity, and at least half of those nights have been double or even triple-booked. I thought we had a free night this past Monday but then realized Nolan’s t-ball coach had called a practice. June 2nd now looks like the first night since April that’s wide open.
Phew.
Part of me loves this. I love mapping out a schedule. I love writing lists. I don’t even mind all the carpooling of children from point A to point B to point C. One of the biggest losses I felt last year was of the kids’ activities. My kids love activities. Glory be to sitting in a high school auditorium for dance recitals or on the sidelines of a t-ball game, yelling at the four and five-year-olds to remind them where first base is.
The other part of me finds it totally and completely draining. It’s draining to constantly be packing up costumes or uniforms and some semblance of dinner. It’s draining to pick up the kids from school and immediately hit the ground running: dinner at 4:30 because they need to be changed into whatever combo of costumes/uniforms and out the door by 5:15 in two separate cars.
So what I gave myself permission to do this month was to just be mom. I took a big step back from writing. I took a big step back from keeping on top of emails. (Did you know you can delete emails without reading them? I mean, not like important ones, but like random newsletters. It’s possible to actually push past the FOMO and hit the delete button. Magic.) I took a big step back from the feeling I have to produce, to create, to volunteer or work or push to prove my own worth.
In some ways, this felt like walking back 40 years of feminism. Let me be the most housewifey housewife to ever have housewifed. (Though not so much, actually. My hair was nowhere near as coiffed and we relied far too much on Lunchables as a viable dinner option.) In other ways, freeing myself up from the societal pressure to be productive all. the. time. felt like the most feminist thing I could do. It felt like the most radical thing I’d done in a long time.
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Action Item
I’m still working to understand the conflict in Israel and Palestine. The roots are deep, the conflict is decades (if not centuries) old, and the politics of this part of the world are so different from what I’m used to here. I found this episode of Pantsuit Politics and this one and this one of The Daily helpful, though I’ll still admit to often being deeply confused. I’d love any recommendations to help better my understanding of this topic!
Education is great, but it doesn’t help Israeli and Palestinian families in the here and now. The reports of the sheet number of people—the sheer number of children—killed and injured in the latest conflict are horrific. These are people, who by sheer accident of birth had the misfortune to be born into a part of the world embroiled in discord. I found this round-up of aid organizations from CNN helpful and encourage you to donate to one if you’re able.
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Around the Internet
On the fraught-ness that is getting back to “normal.”
Related to the above, this TikTok is a whole sermon in and of itself.
I had no idea I was so close to celebrity until this past weekend when I found out my friend/neighbor’s brother runs this Instagram account. Little did I know the connection as I died laughing over gems like this.
The answer to any question that involves the general phrase “do you need more Taylor Swift?” is always YES.
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Eating
Make these lemon poppyseed muffins. Then eat them all and make them again three days later. Repeat indefinitely. (I don’t use the rose water but make a glaze with just the lemon juice and powdered sugar.)
If I can give you another sweet thing to eat, it would be Chez Panisse’s blueberry cobbler, which I’m planning to make for Memorial Day. Top with vanilla ice cream. Die happy.
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Fun Things
Long-live these Cat & Jack quick-dry shorts. The boys love them. They can double as a swimsuit if necessary. I wish they came in about 18 more colors.
I love wearing slippers but even in the winter they often feel too hot. (How do people wear sherpa-lined slippers? Do my feet just run warm? Do sweaty feet not bother other people? So many questions.) Still, I’d worn my old pair of Mahabis slippers into the ground and asked for their “breathe” version for Mother’s Day. They’re lined with cork and made from a sort of woven mesh. My feet are no longer sweaty. #winning
Summer and humidity go hand-in-hand here in the Midwest. This humidity shield helps tame my mane on the most humid of days. I don’t really get frizz—my hair is naturally almost strick-straight, with only the smallest amount of wave—but when it’s humid it gets poofy, loses any style I may have had, and adds waves where there shouldn’t be waves. It’s a whole situation. This spray doesn’t work as well on a day where I’m outside for hours at a time, but when I’m in and out of the house or grabbing dinner on a patio it works miracles.
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Beyond being a labor-intensive month, May is also an emotionally exhaustive month. I’m not much of a crier, but May gets me every time. The kids’ birthdays don’t get to me. The first day of school doesn’t get to me. (Because hallelujah they’re back in school!) But their dance recitals? The end of the school year? Nothing marks the passage of time so much for me as seeing their little dance photos all lined up in a row on our refrigerator or comparing the last day of school pictures with the first-day ones. I can’t even think about the fact that one day they will graduate from high school at this time of year. And Caden and Brooklyn will graduate at the same time. Like, who thought that was a good idea?
I spent the rest of my time this month, when I wasn’t labeling dance costumes or driving somewhere (everywhere), as an emotional wreck. And I lean into it hard. I will play every sad song. I can even turn the not-sad ones into something weepy. It’s like my tear ducts make up for malfunctioning the rest of the year all within this one month.
And that’s the other thing I gave myself permission to do this month: to feel the feelings. To take what little time and space I had to be sad if I needed or read a book if I needed and to take what pauses I could in a month where there were few to take. I gave myself permission to do the things that needed to be done and then to take care of myself, instead of pushing ahead into more, more, more.
I read this from Rachel Cargle yesterday and it’s made me think that maybe…life could be like this all the time? I don’t know. The push to produce, to be productive, to be “on” is ingrained deep within in my bones. But I think it might be possible. It’s something I’m ruminating on.