The Best Days of My Life

The best days of my life are behind me.

At least that’s how I understand it. That’s what those gray-haired women told me time and again over the past eight years. They would see me pushing a cart loaded down with three small children and a week’s worth of food as our paths collided in the dairy aisle, and they would smile before they spoke. 

“Oh,” they would say. And I might be hyperbolic here but I picture them with their hands on their hearts and misty expressions in their eyes. “These are the best days. Enjoy them.”

The conclusion I drew from this was simple: It’s all downhill from here. This is as good as it gets.

But I’m beyond those days now. This past September, on an unseasonably warm Friday morning, all three of my kids stepped on bus number 537. My youngest, the Kindergartener, ran onto the bus without any signs of hesitation. I waved as they went off to elementary school together for the first time.

I watched the bus as it pulled away and walked back to my house to reheat my coffee. Aside from the dull sound of the microwave running it was very, very quiet. Quiet enough that I could hear myself think, which had been a novelty for the better part of a decade. And after all those years of being home with small children, it was terrible, but mostly wonderful.

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It sometimes seems like we have a hard time moving on from things. Society tends to look back on everything with nostalgia. Even things that at the time may have been more “meh” than “time of your life.” Because I remember hearing those “these are the best days of your life” words in high school, too. Family members told me this. Mid-’90s and early-‘00s teen movies tried to sell me this, though my high school broke out into far less spontaneous singing and my wardrobe looked nothing like what Cher Horowitz or Regina George wore. 

As if high school is as good as it gets.

Because then there was college. Another time that might as well have “ENJOY IT WHILE YOU CAN” flashing around campus in neon lights. And yes, college was fun. I went to my share of parties, spent a memorable night building the biggest snowman you’ve ever seen on central campus, and frequently sat up until morning with friends. (Before getting up for an 8 a.m. class, as only a 19-year-old can.) But I spent just as many nights working on projects at midnight as I did having fun. And hanging out with friends often meant walking up sticky apartment staircases smelling of cheap beer at questionable hours of the night.

My husband and I got married fresh out of college. (We were babies. Somehow no one stopped us.) Once we returned from the bubble of our Jamaican honeymoon, it was back to the reality of an apartment so small that if you stood at the edge of the living room, you could see every inch of the place. He was in grad school, and I was trying to make enough money to support us and pay off our student loans. My futon from college and the folding table and chairs that functioned as our dining table were our crowning pieces of furniture. Bless our newlywed hearts.

All the Disney movies and frou-frou wedding cards gushed that this here, this time for real, was as good as it gets. And maybe all you need is love but surely furniture not made for the express purpose of collapsing wasn’t too much to ask?

Soon enough, I made it to those days the gray-haired women were misty-eyed about. Three years into married life, I held twin babes, one in each arm. And just two years later, we added a third to the mix. (No one stopped us. Again.)

Read the rest over at Coffee + Crumbs.

Life Lately

Yesterday, I sat at the beach while Caden played in the sand at the edge of the water. It was 80+ degrees out, warmer than they’d predicted, and my hair stuck to the back of my neck until I fished a hair tie out of my bag and pulled it into a ponytail. It’s still August, which signals summer to my brain, but also it’s September tomorrow, which screams nothing but fall. Time to transition. Again.

The kids start school next week and I feel all the normal excitement that goes along with a fresh school year—what always feels like more of a new year than January ever does. And also there’s the anxiety that’s become the norm around masking and local case counts and how long before one of my kids is in quarantine?

I’ve been in a flurry of ordering things because it seems like I’ve either been running out or needing all the things all at once. Clothes for kids who have outgrown everything from pants to socks to shoes. Refill tablets of hand soap and house cleaner. Boy brow and yes that is an affiliate link in case you’d like to help feed my addiction to the product that I would bring with me even to a deserted island. Three whole sets of school supplies. A fresh box of contacts. Laundry detergent. Parchment paper and tin foil and plastic wrap. A fresh bottle of elderberry gummies because besides masking, it’s the thing that feels like I’m doing something to help my kids stay healthy. Name labels for the aforementioned school supplies which have somehow been held up in customs for weeks and I am crossing my fingers they arrive before the first day of school. Tea and a new sweater because despite that 80-degree temperature, fall is coming, dammit, and I intend to be prepared.

Everything around me feels in or about in transition. Though thinking back to a year ago, things were largely the same. The start of school was pushed back a week but I was still buying up masks and elderberry and school supplies and Costco orders made up entirely of snacks. (Mental note: place Costco order.) We didn’t know exactly what the school year would bring and we largely still don’t have the answer to that question this year.

I don’t know what else to do except to continue keeping under control what I can, even if it’s just stocking the snack shelf in the pantry and baking first day of school treats and emailing the teachers to see who in their class needs school supplies. Remembering that this, too, is important work, even if it doesn’t always (ever?) feel like quite enough.

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Action Item

I’m not sure how you can feel anything but sick to your stomach after the way things unfolded in Afghanistan this month. TIME magazine has an excellent round-up of ways to support refugees and people still in Afghanistan: from organizations taking donations to contacting your representatives.

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Around the Internet

• Tom Daly knitting is one of my favorite things this summer and R. Eric Thomas is one of my favorite things on the internet, so put them together and it brings me an enormous amount of joy.

• “But I think the real problem is that life is still exhausting because the pandemic was and remains exhausting in so many invisible ways — and we still haven’t given ourselves space to even begin to recover. Instead, we’re just softly boiling over, emptying and evaporating whatever stores of energy and patience and grace remain.”

• We Could Have Changed the World (really the title says it all)

• For those of us who have or are about to send our kids back to school.

• “This is parenting these days, for us and too many people we know. Peak inconsistency. Complete incoherence. Just decision after decision based on a little bit of science, a little bit of outdated guidance, and a little bit of how much time or energy we have to think it through.”

• Did I go down the rabbit hole of ‘Bama Rush in an attempt to understand why all of America was suddenly invested? Yes I did. And then this deep-dive on Greek fashion.

• This feels like it sums up 2021.

• So does this.

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Eating

• Have I told you to make falafel before? Because you should definitely make falafel. And then serve it with pita bread and roasted veggie (team bell peppers over here) and kalamata olives and a healthy scoop of caramelized onion hummus.

• This mushroom pasta stir-fry is delicious. Unfortunately, I can almost never seem to find broccolini around here so I subbed regular broccoli and it was fine (but if you can get your hands on it actual broccolini would be better!).

• I will now evangelize you to the ways of dark chocolate hummus. I will continue to pretend it is the healthiest of healthy snacks because the first ingredient is chickpeas and continue to ignore that the second ingredient is sugar. Mostly because I don’t care. It’s delicious.

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Fun Things

• Currently wearing a late summer/early fall pink and gray ombre mani of my own creation using AW, RP, MG, Wild & Free, and BI from Olive and June and the Gen Z barista told me she loved my nails this morning so #winning.

• This button-up shirt was an impulse buy earlier this summer which will go down as one of my favorite purchases of 2021.

• This tee. The color is more of a gray-washed lavender in person. Love the fit, love the rolled sleeves, love that I foresee wearing it under lots of cardigans come cooler temperatures.

We Have A Lot of Stuff Going On Here

“Mommy, I have a lot of stuff going on here,” my daughter complains, staring at the screen of her iPad during distance learning, a scene that’s become all too familiar in our house. Remnants from a full morning of schooling—papers, crayons, snack wrappers, a whiteboard—are scattered across her desk: a very literal visual of a lot of stuff going on over here. I wander over and watch as she stumbles over some of the longer words in an assignment’s written instructions.

I look at her screen, at the bevy of assignments related to sight words and skip counting and something called fact families. I swipe down on the screen to view the directions.

“You can listen to the instructions,” I tell her. The first-grade teachers have prepared for the exact situation, of their still-young readers being overwhelmed by large blocks of text, “Remember? Press play right here. It will tell you exactly what to do next.”

I tiptoe away so I don’t interrupt her brother’s voice recording. I sit down at my own computer screen in the kitchen, far enough away I can’t see them, but close enough to be interrupted if they need me, which is approximately every 2.65 minutes. I look at my own screen with six tabs too many open and find similar words bouncing around my own brain.

What was I doing?
Where was I?
I’ve got a lot of stuff going on here.

Unlike my daughter, I don’t have an older, wiser person nearby to help me figure it all out. There’s no one around to check that I’ve done my work, for me to interrupt every couple of minutes to ask what I need to do next. Also, I’m 33 years old. In the language of the millennial memes I see around me, it’s my job to get this adulting done on my own.

But adulting is frequently the actual last thing I want to do. At my worst, when I’m feeling anxious and lazy and anything but capable, this devolves into a social media doomscroll on my phone. Or I wander around, half-completing tasks, as I wait out the minute or two or five I have before the inevitable interruption that is distance learning with three kids.

Read more about “all the stuff we have going on here” over on Twin Cities Mom Collective.

Life Lately

Did you remember that we had an election earlier this month? Because we had an election earlier THIS actual calendar month. Even though it still feels as though we’re in year 4 of the 2016 election AND also in day 485 of March 2020 AND simultaneously like the 2020 election was several months ago. But, * checks calendar *, nope. We actually had an election a mere four weeks ago.

This month’s chaos was, in a way, reminiscent of March. The kids, as stipulated by the district, are moving to full-time distance learning. So are their dance classes. They had a week off for Thanksgiving to give the teachers time to prepare. I found myself taking deep breaths during the last Friday morning the kids were all in school, which I think was my body’s reaction to the last time my kids went on a week-long break (and didn’t return to their school buildings for six whole months).

Schedule number 43 of the year but also make it Christmas.

Continuing with those deep breaths.

I won’t pretend that everything is fine because it’s not. As I look down the barrel of this week I see a schedule littered with Google Meets to manage. Tyson and I sat down this weekend to map out and overhaul our schedule which will probably happen at least once more before the year ends.

I don’t want to sugarcoat anything or tie this up with a bow. And yet. We decorated for Christmas this weekend and there’s something about those Christmas tree lights in the background. We might (read: will for sure, totally, definitely) have fights with three kids on three Google meets at the same time, or when two have Google Meets and the third doesn’t, or over using our tablets in the bathroom, or over staying on task during a 2:00 pm call when usually when they’re at home 2:00 = TV time. This is true. But the twinkle lights help. They’re the definition of hopeful. A tradition, a constant, in the midst of so much that’s not. And a reminder that 2021 is on the horizon which should be (read: better be, must be, has to be) so much better than the year we’ve all just lived through.

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Take Action

With Christmas coming, I’d love to urge you to shop local this year. Fellow Minnesotans, here is the ultimate guide to Twin Cities businesses. I’ll urge everyone to give up Amazon and replace it with Bookshop.org (heads up: affiliate link!). And wherever you are, I recommend gifting gift cards to local restaurants and buying beer and spirits made by local breweries and distilleries—these beloved businesses need all the help we can give them right now.

Also: Stay home. Please. As much as you possibly can. We’ve been urged by our Governor here in MN to stay home, to not have gatherings, to order take-out to support bars and restaurants who are banned from serving dine-in customers. It’s not quite as expansive as the shutdown we had in the spring, but it’s up there.

A vaccine (or several) seem to be so close; that light at the end of the tunnel feels like it’s just almost within our grasp. If we can buckle down these next few months, in the snow and the cold and the distance learning, there’s a chance life will return to ”normal” sooner rather than later. Stay safe.

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Around the Internet

• “Because schools are not the major cause of the problem, shutting them down won’t do enough on its own to slow the spread of the disease. When — not if — businesses are forced to shutter temporarily in the near future, we can tide them over with money, and we absolutely should. When schools are closed, however, handing students a check will not replace what they’ve lost.”

• I learned to knit right before the pandemic began and didn’t know how much I would need it this year.

• “My husband and I bought our first home when we were twenty-four. I think it’s important to be honest here. This wasn’t some triumph of good sense and hard work. It wasn’t accomplished by making our avocado toast at home instead of ordering it in a coffee shop. We didn’t work five jobs each to do it. When we got married at 21, we had good credit. Neither of us had ever had to charge rent to a credit card and then fallen behind on payments. We’d never been uninsured and then had a medical emergency that left us swamped with medical bills.”

• Scotland is the first nation to make sanitary products free

• For all my pandemic shoppers out there.

• Well this made me lol.

• “Yet some groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions — as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom! Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good for individuals. It means having a regard for all citizens and seeking to respond effectively to the needs of the least fortunate.”

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Eating

• Tyson’s company is based in Champaign, IL, a town where there’s astonishingly little to do, besides eat at the equally astonishing amount of really good restaurants. I’ve had actual dreams about this roasted red pepper and gouda soup from a cafe not far from his office. I decided to re-create it by following this recipe and while it was different from the one I remember, it was still SO GOOD. Serve with fresh bread, obviously.

• These fish fingers disappear in my house every time. Serve with a bag of frozen Alexia seasoned waffle fries because #balance.

• Since I won’t be posting another of these round-ups until after the holidays, I feel like it’s my duty to point you to some holiday baking goodness. These cranberry bars, my favorite gingersnap recipe, more gingerbread if you prefer yours in cake form, chocolate sugar cookies to switch things up, and these which you hardly need a recipe for but the kids can practically make on their own and they’re wildly addictive.

• Okay and let’s also include some party food, which you can bet I will make even if we’re only a party of five this year: the only (and easiest) meatball recipe you need, these stuffed mushrooms could basically be my last meal, bacon-wrapped dates and please include the goat cheese, and do yourself a favor and bake up some brie (top with jam, always).

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Fun Things

• This tea is everything. I’m not usually a fan of adding cream to tea but I add a little sugar and the smallest splash of heavy cream and it feels absolutely decadent. Honestly, I like to just hold it in a heavy mug to warm my hands and breathe in the vanilla scent which is divine. At under $6 it’s the best little luxury right now.

• This is a pretty big Fun Thing, but: our 10-year wedding anniversary was in early October. While we thought we’d be celebrating with a trip, that’s been put on hold for obvious reasons. Instead, I discovered that the traditional 10-year anniversary gift = diamonds. While I didn’t actually want new diamonds, I did get my wedding ring re-set. I’ve never had a wedding band, only an engagement ring (raise your hand if you were also a poor college student baby when you got engaged), so I had my original diamond re-set as a solitaire and the smaller diamonds that surrounded it in my original setting used in the wedding band, both in hammered yellow gold. I LOVE it so much. (MN friends: check out Sarah Commers Jewelry. She was so easy to work with and brought my vision to life!)

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Leaving you with those twinkle lights I mentioned earlier. I was skeptical, but they really do make all the difference right now.

On Figuring Things Out Again. We've Got This.

On March 12th, my kids tumbled off the school bus for spring break. I don’t have any photos from that day. I looked, but only found a collection of screenshots on my phone. An article I texted to my parents where I’d underlined the part urging people over the age of 60 to stay away from restaurants, movie theaters, and other public places. A meme I remember texting to a friend that reads “Today I completed a chore I’ve put off for six months. It took 15 minutes. I will learn nothing from this.” (Hi, who can relate?)  Another article announcing that Tom Hanks and his wife had been diagnosed with COVID-19. I don’t have a record of what we wore or what we ate that day, but I do remember the gut-level feeling I had in the pit of my stomach, a feeling that knew already what would be confirmed by our school district in the coming weeks: they wouldn’t return to school to finish out the year.

I have plenty of photos for the rest of March. Most are of the kids around our house, sitting at the kitchen table for schoolwork, playing in the living room, running around the backyard in the unseasonably warm spring weather. 

We figured it out. Spring Break was extended a week and then distance learning kicked in. The kitchen table became our schoolroom. We learned how to use Seesaw and my first quarantine purchase was a new printer so we could print pages of worksheets. We did math problems on the sidewalk using chalk. YouTube yoga videos in the living room became gym class. We journaled about distance learning for literacy and planted seeds and called it science.

March feels like a lifetime ago. At the same time, it feels impossible to find ourselves in September. So much has changed in seven months. It’s time for us to figure things out again. 

I’ve been reading through emails to learn all over what elementary school will look like. We did this just last year, as my twins began Kindergarten. We learned a new school and a new routine, a new teacher and how to eat lunch in the cafeteria, how to ride the bus and how to find their classroom. This year those routines have been upended. This year I’ll be driving and picking them up from a different door, they’ll have a different classroom, they’ll be wearing masks, they’ll be sitting distanced from their friends in the cafeteria. Virtually everything we learned about their school a year ago has changed. Three days a week they’ll be learning from home. As I write this on September 7th, we don’t yet know what distance learning looks like, except that it will be very different from our routine last spring. We have desks and iPads and crayons and pencils at the ready.

Read the rest over on the Twin Cities Mom Collective.