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Archives from 2002-2006

There is always a reason not to write here, in this beloved, familiar place.

I’ve had a lot of freelance work lately and I worry sometimes that I have a finite amount of words in me each day, that if I spend some of that currency here I won’t have any to spend elsewhere, in the place where I have requirements and deadlines.

(As if my ability to pull words from my head is a drying puddle, when somewhere deep in the most secret part of my heart, muffled by all the negative voices that believe they are keeping me safe from failure, I know it is a burbling well.)

My children are now old enough to that I have to take the same consideration when I write about them as I would anyone else in my life: the world of blogging was never anonymous to begin with, but it would be particularly foolish these days to assume I have the ability to speak candidly with a select audience of my choosing. There are many aspects of parenting these amazing, challenging boys that I would love to talk about in the hopes of advice or support, but I haven’t quite been able to figure out the trick of balancing my own experiences and truth with their privacy.

They’re figuring themselves out, they’re 10 and 13 and and they’re struggling to find their own areas of control. They’re often a roiling embarrassed mass of fear about being different or uncool or attracting undue attention.

I get it. Boy, do I get it.

I would love to write about marriage, about getting older together and having all these years built up in what we have and how so many things have changed or shifted shape. I would love to talk about how we have made it this far through the Trump years despite our political differences, differences which have only widened and become more painful, just like the dark and terrible crack that seems to be running down the center of our country’s heart.

I can’t talk about the marriage thorns and mirror-shards and piles of suffocating baggage because it’s not just about me, so the easy writing — the cathartic angry writing — is off the table. What’s left is the hardest part: the part about love, that part that takes the most skill to illuminate and breathe life into.

But if I can find that love, I can write about that love. If I can love my children, I can write lovingly about our life in a way that honors where they’re at.
If I love writing — and I do, my god, I do — I can believe in my ability to tell the stories I want to tell.

I love this space, this dusty old website that sometimes breaks and gets bazillions of spam comments and hasn’t had a design update in 15 years and feels like a relic amongst all the shiny white-space professional-photo sponsored-influencer platforms that are, like, optimized for devices built in the last decade.

I’ve missed writing here, and there’s really no good reason not to be here more often.

I’ve missed you, too. Hi. Hi, you.

It seems like the entire vibe for our upcoming final year in elementary school comes down to a piece of paper that will be taped to the front office doors next Friday: the dreaded/highly anticipated CLASS LIST.

I mean, okay, maybe not the entire school year vibe. But a lot of it, right? The class list tells you what teacher they will have, which influences everything. Dylan absolutely loved his third grade teacher, who was in turn incredibly perceptive and involved and in constant communication with us with regards to how Dylan was doing and what he needed to work on. His fourth grade teacher was … well, he had a really different style. He was fine! He just wasn’t, you know, Mr. Third Grade.

All the options for fifth grade (FIFTH GRADE, what even, and would you believe the other kid will be in SEVENTH grade) seem good to me, as far as I can tell, so I’m not terribly worried that he’ll get Mrs. So-and-So and everything will be awful. But I do have my secret preferences, and so does Dylan, and we’ll just have to see how things shake out.

So the teacher is kind of a huge X factor but there’s also the matter of what kids will be in his classroom. Friendships wax and wane at these ages and the class assignments are such a big part of that process. Kids who are BFFs when they’re in the same class often drift apart when they’re separated, and kids who you as a parent might feel a little hmmmm about, influence-wise, can suddenly become a THING when last year they weren’t, and so on.

With the caveat that I really like our school and everything in general has been great, I feel like Dylan drew the short straw last year a little bit when it came to his class environment, and I hope this year — especially being as how it’s his last before moving on to middle school (WHAT. EVEN) — he gets a teacher who really gets him, along with some fun and friendly classmates.

I hope all this for Riley, too, of course. Middle school is so different, though — different teachers throughout the day, different kids in each class.

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