Some summers are lazy (I’ve heard). This wasn’t one of them, but we did sneak in a week at the beach right when it started at the end of June. I can’t even remember everything we did, but I do remember getting up a 4 a.m. two days in a row for Willow’s softball tournament and driving around Lake Tahoe to the fields as the sun came up. Ace went on the boat with us in Monterey Bay and swam around a little, kept an eye on the birds and sea lions, slept on my feet while we waited for Scuba to come back from his dive. Lex graduated from high school. Sophie quit soccer. My brother and his family came to visit. I went to New York for work, started going to yoga at 6 a.m. again, quit drinking booze. Read The Goldfinch and Happiness for Beginners and All the Light We Cannot See.
We took the girls camping, rarely saw the boys, didn’t eat dinner outside as much as we did the last two summers because we kept running out of daylight. Discovered pickle-flavored popcorn and talked about moving to the coast. I worked a lot, Scuba worked more. Ace finally lost a few pounds, so when I take him to the vet later this month I won’t be in trouble. I guess that means we walked him more often?
It’s still summer for a few more days, but we’re mostly into our fall routines now. Alex starts school next week, the rest went back a month ago. It’s dark when I wake up, and I had to grab a sweater and put on socks to go to the kitchen and make my coffee this morning. I have two boxes hidden away and partway filled with Christmas gifts and I bought an ornament on Saturday. I love this transition. My favorite time of year. I haven’t written much about the hard stuff that’s been going on around here (or anything at all, obviously), but I feel like I’m starting to get my footing back, maybe. Just in time.
Parenting requires much more of me than I ever anticipated, and parenting teenagers is amazingly complex. Sophie isn’t shy about discussing her particular challenges, but I’m choosing not to go into much detail publicly. It’s not for me to tell. But I can say that today she started at a new high school after being out of school for over two weeks, and that I’m hopeful this fresh start will give her what she needs to do the work she needs to do to find her footing, too.