Who knew, on Friday March 13, it would be the last day of school? We weren’t waiting at the bus stops with silly string and water balloons; we didn’t chalk our driveways; we didn’t open the backpacks to year-end folders of artwork and we didn’t send in goodies for the last day party, the teacher appreciation lunch, the bus drivers. We didn’t know. Harder still: our kids didn’t know. What’s in their lockers, waiting for their attention? What is in their pencil case on their desk? Whose lunchbox got left behind in the classroom - now like Pompeii, frozen in place? Which art projects were almost ready for the kiln? Which friends and which teachers would they have hugged goodbye? Some will retur
Week 6. S i x. And we wait, with too many opinions and not enough facts making it impossible to know what the right thing to do is. Go to the store, wrapped in a mask and gloves - or stay home entirely? Storm the capitol wrapped in assault-style rifles and confederate flags - or don’t? There’s too much news and not enough news all at the same time, like the long mornings we’ve spent watching the snow pile up and knowing that what lies ahead is going to overwhelm us, but not sure for how long and in what capacity. And so we wait, all of us weathering the same giant storm but squarely in our own boats, six feet from each other, waves crashing all around. For some of us, this is a peaceful time
You know all that research we always heard about that said that kids were less likely to end up pregnant as teenagers or do drugs in high school if families had dinner together? And how you’d be like “well, we have dinner together in the car on the way to sportsball” and you’d pretend that was what the research meant, and you’d tell yourself that you have dinner together as often as you can and then you’d rationalize it and who had time to deal with it anyway? Listen. These kids better stay off the drugs and the high school pregnancies after 28 consecutive days of family dinners. CONSECUTIVE. It’s like a 28 day program and we are all in. Haven’t missed a day. It’s been takeout a few times an
Many years ago, we bought a four bedroom house planning on two kids and then twins happened and so we do not have a guest bedroom or a home office or an unused closet because the guest bedroom that was also a home office became the bedroom for the neat and tidy twin when he could no longer handle sharing a room with his Messy Marvin brother. When the bottom fell out a few weeks ago, we brought a table into our bedroom and my husband set up a computer station and he works full-time from our bedroom now, which means he spends 7-8 hours sleeping in there, 8-9-10 hours working in there. He’s become like my 4th teen/tween, just emerges for food and laying on the couch and then goes back in. I wor
