Let Me Explain

As a child of the 80's, there are certain givens about my younger years. There's regrettable fashion choices, like jelly shoes, color-blocked windbreakers, and teased bangs. There's synthesized music, like Wham! and A-Ha. And then there are iconic movies, like The Karate Kid and The Princess Bride.

I must have watched The Princess Bride over a dozen times growing up. After my first viewing, I went to the library to check out the novel on which it was based. I spent hours learning how to hunt and peck the melody of its theme song ("Storybook Love") on my Casio keyboard.

Yesterday I unexpectedly found myself quoting it while attempting to avoid telling my friend a long-winded story. It's not Inigo Montoya's most famous line, but it's a fantastic line, nonetheless. When attempting to tell Wesley what he missed while he was "mostly dead," Inigo simply says, "Let me explain. No, there is no time. Let me sum up."

This sentiment resonates with me. This is how I feel when I write here after a longer absence. I could sum up whatever life events I recall from the past month. I could sum up the semester, which only has two more weeks of classes. I could I could sum up football games and house rentals, or the family schedule and preparing our yard for winter. I could sum up the Thanksgiving holiday. I could sum up a particularly odd stretch of family health adventures: mono and pneumonia, the stomach bug and potential Lyme's disease, and standard adolescent wisdom teeth surgery.

But sometimes you don't feel like summing up. Sometimes you feel like explaining.

So, let me take a moment to explain a simple moment when our family chose our Christmas tree this weekend. We loaded into our minivan and drove to Tuckaway Tree Farm, which sounds straight out of a Hallmark movie. As we came to a quick, amiable family consensus on which tree to cut, snow started to fall.

Snow! Snow falling while your family is cutting down a Christmas tree! 

Snow falling while your teenaged kids are laughing. Snow falling as you breathe the scent of Douglas fir. Snow falling as you watch a younger family with a small child in a snowsuit who sits in the sled designed to drag the trees back to the checkout station. Snow falling as you realize that you're well past that stage of dragging little ones on sleds. Snow falling as you look over the Christmas trees and your family, and all the years coalesce into small moments like this.

Weeks and months and years keep moving quickly. Time is like the tide; it's a force you can't stop. But when I feel like there's no time and I'm tempted to just "sum up" events of my life, perhaps — just perhaps — I instead need to slow down and quiet my head and heart. I need to explain to myself all the thoughts and feelings that are welling up inside me.

Let me sum up? No, there is no time. Let me explain.

0

Happy Little Rituals

Every evening in fall and winter, I brew a cup of tea. I'm a simple creature — and one of habit, I suppose, so even the flavor remains consistent. It's mint. Always mint. If I'm tired, mint refreshes. If stress lingers after a long day, mint soothes and settles. 

I've never felt worse after drinking a cup of tea.

I'm not sure when I started this ritual. The practice drops off each spring and isn't even a blip on my radar during summer, but once the sun begins to set earlier, once leaves are tinged orange, and once the edges of each day carry briskness in the air, it's time.

Dishes from dinner are put away and the kitchen is cleaned. I change from my work clothes into comfortable sweats. The shades are drawn, lamps turned on, and perhaps a good book is in hand. Beside me, simple and stable, is a cup of mint tea.

Tonight, in fact, as I contemplated whether I'd grade a few more assignments or call it a night (I called it a night), I wrapped my hands around the mug, warm from the seaming liquid inside, and felt at ease. It might merely be a cup of tea, but it feels like something more. It's a happy little ritual, one that closes a day with a small familiar gift.

0

Let August Be August

August: a month that starts with humidity and ends with college football. In between, it's filled with everything and nothing, a month that languishes and races, a month that looms large in import and recedes in any semblance of daily structure until the very end, which is when you're practically smacked upside the head with daily structure.

If August were a specific time and day, it would be Sunday evening. Technically, it's still summer, but in your bones you know you're staring down the end of things. You know the other shoe will drop, that hazy days won't linger forever, that school busses and football games and parent-teacher conferences and increasingly early sunsets are near.

But now that I'm at the end of it, I'm not entirely certain where August went. Oh, I did stuff, alright. I finally cleaned my garage of remnants from a garage sale that took place in July. I touched up the dings on the exterior doors with fresh paint. I made a dozen zucchini bread one afternoon from one giant zucchini — mammoth, really – that resembled one of those fat, oversized plastic wiffle ball bats that, if you connect just right, it would carry the ball deep into your neighbor's yard, if not your neighbor's neighbor's yard.

I drove kids back and forth to various places, and back and forth again. I read books, and went to garage sales on Friday mornings, and watched reruns of Brooklyn 99, and cut the grass, and talked with neighbors, and gathered with friends, and moved our oldest daughter into her first college apartment, where I sat on the floor with a screwdriver assembling the legs back onto the old wooden kitchen table we bequeathed to her. I received — and largely ignored — no fewer than 172 emails from my younger two children's school. I took regular evening walks and listened to crickets get louder as the month plodded along.

Like a responsible adult, I also squeezed in a few doctor's appointments. As the semester encroached in earnest, I met with colleagues, visited my classrooms, attended all my department's orientation meetings, formatted my syllabi, and published my Canvas classes. The semester officially started yesterday, so I've tenuously memorized all my students' names through a repetitive, yet highly effective, ice breaker that I've been doing on the first day of semesters for eons. Hopefully I'll remember most of those names tomorrow.

August isn't as quite as tricky as it once was when our kids were little. They've now experienced many starts of many school years themselves. Even though it's a draining process regardless of age, their ages allow them to take it in stride. Everyone, it would seem, is growing up.

Even so, August, somehow, remains a month fit for childhood nostalgia, if you let yourself lean into such things. It feels like a month where you'd sit on a porch swing, sipping sweet tea and watching the lightning bugs blink their Morse code into the dark, and you'd soak it all in because soon enough, you know, summer will be over.

0

Hiking in Utah, Knowing Nothing, and Packing the Perfect Book

My family just returned from a trip out west to hike Utah's "Big Five" national parks and visit the Grand Canyon. To be transparent, even though my husband had researched this trip for months, leaving dozens of internet tabs open to articles titled "Seven Sights You Must See in Arches National Park," I didn't know anything about any of these locations until we arrived. I just showed up.

He, a competent adult, planned our itinerary, booked our plane tickets, secured our rental car, improvised a revised plan when our flight from Philly to Vegas was abruptly cancelled minutes after we arrived at airport, and guided our family through the City of Brotherly Love for an afternoon of impromptu sightseeing, even though it was an obscenely humid 90+ degree day and I not only witnessed a man with his pants down, but also a woman yelling and washing her feet in the sink of a public restroom at Reading Station, which also is where we ate an obligatory Philly cheesesteak for lunch before returning to the airport later that evening for our hastily re-booked flight.

Our family has traveled before. We visit my parents in Florida on alternating spring breaks. Each June we spend a week with my husband's family at the shore — a tradition that started when our three kids and their cousins were still kids, whereas now almost all of the "kids" have their drivers licenses, apply their own sunscreen, and stay up later than the adults.

During these trips, every one of them, we've driven to our destinations. We've never flown, even on the nearly 1,300 mile trip from central Pennsylvania to the Gulf Coast, even the time we had to stop at seven different restrooms in the state of Florida alone because our youngest had chugged a 24 ounce Gatorade at the start of the trip. We pack our minivan until it sags with Joel's golf clubs, beach chairs, an umbrella, suitcases and duffel bags with more clothes than we need to pack (just in case), and an assortment of snacks — canisters of Pringles, Snickers minis that inevitably melt in the heat, and a sharable size bag of Twizzlers cherry nibs. It's food we otherwise try to limit, but it somehow seems perfectly acceptable to eat at 10 AM while on vacation. 

I also bring a tote bag of books. Five, six, seven books, at least. If I'm on vacation, I'm going to read. Our minivan operates like Hermione Granger used an undetectable extension charm on it; somehow everything fits. I'm never concerned that I'm taking too many books. It isn't a problem if I don't like a book or if I don't feel like reading a particular book at that particular time on that particular trip. I always have loads of other books to choose from my tote bag.

But you can't bring a tote bag of books when you're traveling by plane and rationing three suitcases for five people. You need to strategize.

This is why I'm happy to inform you that I made the exactly right choices with my reading selection for our trip west. It comprised of only three books. One was a devotional. The next was a romp-of-a-romance novel titled Read Bottom Up, which is entirely told through email exchanges between the new couple and the emails each of them send to their best friends about the relationship. (As someone who's closing in on 23 years of marriage, which is the same amount of time I was single, it's been a small eternity since I experienced the dating scene. Scratch that. I never really experienced the dating scene like this novel's protagonists experienced it, yet I still happily idled an hour and a half, poolside, following their emerging romance from cover to cover.)

The final book I brought — It Was An Ugly Couch Anyway by Elizabeth Passarella — is the type of book I want to have written. While packing, I bent its front cover and marred its new-book perfection, but the crease now seems fitting. When I love a book, I dog ear pages to mark especially delicious sentences or paragraphs. This book is now riddled with dog ears, inviting me to revisit sections that resonated so deeply as if her very thoughts had been lodged inside my own head surrounded by marble, and she somehow carved away the surrounding stone to bring the ideas to life, much like Michelangelo is known to have stared at the slab that eventually would become David and chip away at everything "not David" until his shape took form.

Elizabeth — perhaps I'm being bold to use her first name, but in my mind she and I are now friends — wrote about daily life past and present, about writing, about living and moving with three kids in New York City, about starting to run as a 43-year-old, about marriage, about chin hair, about her mother-in-law, about parenting fails, about faith, and about her dad accidentally running her over with their station wagon while on a family vacation to a lake in Arkansas.

You might ask, "Robin, does that content warrant a Michelangelo reference?"

I'd argue that, yes, I think it does. Her words and phrasings carve out and elevate ordinary experiences in ways that perfectly capture human likeness.

I haven't yet finished the book because I'm torn between bingeing and savoring the remaining two chapters. Her writing not only has delighted me, but it's also inexplicably helped me. I'm a person who has words inside of me, but when I have too much to say or when life circumstances create heavier thoughts I reckon I can't say — which on-again/off-again is the case — those words get dammed up. Then I say nothing, at least not publicly.

The words within me might get released in different ways. Steam has to vent somehow. I'll have a three-hour phone call with my closest friend. I'll inconveniently wait until my husband has said goodnight and there's been a perfect beat of silence where his breathing has stabilized into an optimal pre-sleep rhythm, at which point I'll feel an urge to launch into a spoken dissertation. Or I'll write sprawling, unedited journal entries just for myself.

But words for real audiences? When life itself heats up, those words get relegated to a back burner, and eventually the pilot light gets snuffed out. I figure I have nothing to say.

As I read Elizabeth's essays, though, fresh ideas surfaced. Words clanged against each other into thoughts and images and concepts. I stood in the hotel shower washing my hair (the hotel conditioning shampoo, surprisingly, offered an acceptable level of conditioning, unlike any other combined shampoo-and-conditioner I've ever used), and ideas poured through my mind like rivulets of water down the drain. In the process, pieces of me felt like they were thawing, pieces that have been stuck for a while.

Perhaps hiking in the Utah heat also helped. Every day neared, if not exceeded, 100 degrees. People will be quick to note that it's a dry heat, and they're not wrong. The humidity was nonexistent. If I hadn't hiked miles each day, I would have had amazing hair days, even using the two-in-one hotel shampoo and conditioner. But we did hike miles each day — beautiful hikes over beautiful spaces that looked so foreign from my familiar central Pennsylvania landscapes that I questioned whether I was in the same country. Even on the same planet.

As we hiked, we alternated who carried the backpack Joel had purchased on Amazon the week before our trip. I felt like an imposter, much like when I stroll through a city and suspect everyone I pass instantly can discern that I'm not from there, that I don't fit in LA, or DC, or Atlanta, or Philly, or anywhere urban at all. In Utah, it felt the same, just opposite, as I passed people who looked like they were born hiking, while I haven't eaten enough granola in my entire life to belong. I don't even own a pair of Chacos.

Weeks before we arrived, Joel researched the hikes we'd take because, as I mentioned before, he is an adult. During our first hike in Zion, I marveled at the switch-backed roads and the one-hundred-year-old tunnel stretching over a mile through the imposing mountainside, a tunnel that had been planned and excavated with limited technology, while, in contrast, I had struggled to squeeze the hardened toothpaste from my travel-sized tube that morning.

Don't even get me started on the embarrassing admittance that if you had pulled me aside at gunpoint before this trip and demanded, "Grand Canyon, Utah or Arizona?" I might have died. It really would have been up to a coin toss. This trip highlighted my recurring insecurity that while I'm smart in a few select areas, secretly, I remember nothing and don't know how to do anything.

(For the record, if you personally can relate to this, the Grand Canyon is in Arizona.)

So, in this spirit of not feeling especially competent with basic geographic knowledge, trip-planning aptitude, civil engineering skills, or even toothpaste excavation, I hiked. Each day, the five members of our family hiked up and down hills, around cliffs, through craggy holes, and over boulders. Our steps were punctuated by Joel's frequent and fatherly admonishment to stay "six feet plus one good stumble" away from the edge at all times. The phrase became a mantra of sorts.

Each hike felt similar to life — detours and twisted ankles, different paces and preferences, occasional bad attitudes and complaints, spectacular views with appreciative silences, mild vocalized irritations that someone could hear "everyone breathing" as we climbed, lengthy flat stretches and boring stretches and hot stretches, hard passages where steep uphill slants caused your quads to burn and your heart to question if you should continue or if the journey was stupid and you didn't have what it takes to finish. At one point, I swapped out my size 7.5 sneakers for my 14-year-old's size 6.5 sneakers because her toes were "rubbing funny." For a particularly unpleasant half-mile stretch, the younger two bickered about who should explain the plot of a movie to the family. (Mind you, neither of them had fully watched the movie, but both apparently felt strongly about summarizing it.)

Yes, hiking was parallel to life, to this cumbersome journey of parenting three teenagers, which is its own version of steady plodding, hard trails, questioned sanity, pinched toes, ordinary irritations, headaches, heartaches, and the occasional breathtakingly spectacular view that makes you feel like the hard parts are worth it.

As I sweat under the relentless Moab sun, I breathed in the dry desert air and the sandalwood fragrance of Old Spice Swagger because I was sharing bodywash with my husband (see: limited suitcase space). Thoughts that had been lodged in my head started to dislodge, shaken loose with each breath, each step, and each chapter that I read by the hotel bedside lamplight at night, reveling in Passarella's perfectly rendered, keenly detailed, ordinary life observations.

We've been home for a few days now. My eyes have grown accustomed Pennsylvania's greenness, which I had missed after ten days of western reds and browns. I've viewed with fresh eyes the remnants of my pre-life trip — familiar objects and rooms and streets that become so familiar when you're living in them they're nearly invisible.

Sometimes, I suppose, you momentarily have to step away to see what typically surrounds you with greater accuracy. And sometimes you have to read someone else's stories and thoughts to help jumpstart your own.

0

Mid-Stride Moments

Apparently, when a person is actively running, there comes a point when they're suspended in air. Neither foot is touching the ground. They're temporarily untethered to the earth in this mid-stride moment.

My incredible friend told me this fact when I went to visit her in West Virginia a couple of weeks ago. She was making a point. I imagined that she was referencing a hypothetical runner who might look like this: strong and fit, toned and capable, disciplined and determined.

However, given my current stage of life and fitness, I temporarily ruined her moment (and the valid point she was making) because I instead envisioned a runner like this: someone who tries hard, but drags their feet and probably trips a fair amount.

While I was mentally pondering the mechanics of a human stride, wondering if all people experience both feet momentarily lifted off the ground while running, or if some people awkwardly shuffle without achieving actual liftoff, my friend continued. 

She was in the process of moving across country. (That's why we had gathered one last time for a rapid-fire visit that spanned from 1 PM to 1 AM one Saturday where we talked and laughed incessantly, prayed together, ate takeout, went shopping, and took a hike where she sprained her ankle in the West Virgina wilderness. I digress, but we covered a lot in 12 hours.)

Back to the cross-country move. As she sat on her couch, ice bag on her swelling ankle, she told me that she felt like that suspended runner. Neither of her feet felt grounded in place. Metaphorically, she was mid-stride, hovering in the air, wrapping up one era in one location, headed 800 miles away to another place, no longer fully in one place and not yet fully in the other. She was just waiting, just hovering.

How exhilarating! Also, how terrifying. She and her husband had built a life, a great life. Successful careers, great friends, an amazing church family, neighbors, connections. They knew all the back routes while driving. They had a favorite grocery store and hiking routes and paths to walk. So familiar! So many great memories!

Yet that foot of the familiar was lifted from the ground, and the next foot was about to land in a new location. There would be a new career with new challenges, new colleagues, new neighbors, new friends, and a new house. Everything ahead was still unknown. They'd need to discover all new routines, routes, and rhythms.

In that moment, even as she sat on the couch with her leg propped out in front of her, I knew what she was saying was true: my friend was mid-stride. Was it going to be a perfect run? Probably not. After all, when you come to think of it, most running feels messy and hard, even if you're doing it really well.  

This week, she officially moved, all of her earthly possessions in tow. I write this now with tears stinging my eyes. My friend is even farther away, far enough that I no longer can drive there and back for a weekend visit. But mostly, my tears come because her foot has finally landed. She's running a new path, blazing a new trail.

I am deeply, profoundly proud of her. This new journey might be messy and hard, but I have no doubt she's going to do it really well.

2

You Always Feel This Way

I have pressing news: there are less than two weeks of classes remaining. Students and professors alike feel the heat. I check my inbox cautiously, opening it with a quick glace, narrowing my eyes as I scan for troubling subject lines. The process reminds me of when I work in my yard and need to dig up a rock. I always flip that thing over gingerly and spring back a foot or two, hoping there's nothing creepy-crawly underneath.

That's me with emails right now. I poke at them with a stick before engaging.

I've been ending semesters forever, though. Shouldn't I be better at this? Shouldn't I be impervious to the mental and emotional toll by now?

I asked myself these exact questions this week because I've been frustrated for not feeling "more together" (whatever that means). Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that not only do I always feel this way at the end of a semester, but also that it's okay.

It's okay to feel this way. A handful of students are clamoring for extra credit even though they haven't done the regular credit. Other students are hitting the panic button for reasons that have nothing to do with me or my class. Some are enduring legitimately extenuating circumstances. I hear about it all. It's all right there: messages in my email inbox, clusters of students waiting to talk with me after class.

Sometimes my head spins. It's impossible to manage all their things on top of all my things.

This is why I need to step back and remind myself that this is the norm. The last two weeks of the semester always feel this way. I repeat to myself this phrase: You're not doing anything wrong: you're just in the tunnel. This will pass.

And it always does. The semester always ends. The scrambles always unscramble. So right now, I simply take some deep breaths and ride it out.

0

Celebrating Cat Adoption Days

On our refrigerator calendar, today's square is flanked by two special days: yesterday marks the one-year anniversary of adopting our cat, Chip, and tomorrow marks the three-year anniversary of adopting Peanut. As someone who never owned a pet until adulthood, I'm still surprised by how much joy they add to life.

Peanut, a diminutive cat who fits her namesake, continues to be sweet and shy and (in my humble opinion) the most adorable thing ever. Chip continues to behave like a dog. They're a good mix. 

Of course, Peanut often guards my laptop when I need to work. 

And, on occasion, she tries to fit into a lunch box.

Most recently, Peanut has taken to extending her paw and gently placing it on my bad shoulder, as if she senses I'm hurting. How she knows this, I can't fathom, but it's comforting.

In contrast, Chip has no such internal sensor, but he's delightful, too. He's relentlessly friendly. He runs crookedly, like he can't entirely figure out how to propel himself forward in a straight trajectory. We occasionally ask him, "What are you thinking about Chip?" and then playfully answer that he doesn't think. This seems to fit who he is. If he spoke, he very well might sound like a middle school boy. Bruh. 

Happy adoption days, Chip and Peanut. I'm grateful you're in our lives.

0

The Second College Drop-Off

This past weekend, my oldest daughter moved back into her dorm for her second semester of college. I wrote about the first college drop-off: a process filled with rolling carts and stacks of clothes, desk lamps and extra-long fitted sheets, Command-hooked twinkle lights and posters for the cinderblock walls, school supplies and four-by-six area rugs between the beds.

I wasn't prepared for it, but this second drop-off hit harder. I hugged her goodbye in the parking lot, then watched as she wheeled her suitcase and hoisted her backpacks, one on her back and one on her front, as she followed my husband, who carried her laundry basket of winter clothes.

You see, the winter break had felt so incredibly normal. All five of us had been under one roof. We resumed the familiar rhythms: I bought snacks that she liked, and she immediately reverted to her habit of leaving her dirty clothes on the bathroom floor after she showered. On evenings when she hung out with friends, we waited until she returned home to turn off the outside lights and lock the front door. It was just like old times.

But as I watched her recede from view down the sidewalk, I realized that her default absence, not her daily presence, is the new normal for our family now. The winter break was a break from the routine, but this? This is the reality; this is the routine. 

That's why the second college drop-off hit harder than the first. I know how quickly semesters pass, which is why I know how the breaks between those semesters pass even more quickly. Even though I've always known it, this second drop-off reinforced that our time with our kids is finite. We raise them so they can leave and live their lives, as it should be. Circle of life stuff.

Still, I'd like to add that before she turned the corner and disappeared from view entirely, she looked back over her shoulder and smiled. I'll take it and treasure it in my heart.

0

I Almost Canned Stuff (and other reports from September)

Today I flipped the calendar to October, which is a particularly satisfying calendar flip. September hints at the promise of fall, but October delivers on the promise.

Right now, in fact, I'm sitting on my front porch, still reflecting on the message from church this morning. The faint breeze makes me grateful for my cardigan, and the orange-tinged tips of trees make everything feel cozy and right. I agree with Anne of Green Gables: "I'm so glad that I live in a world where there are Octobers."

We've been on a roll the past few weeks. I've taught my classes, which are going well. We've rented our house for home football weekends, which has required extensive cleaning (satisfying) and extensive laundry (necessary). In waves and spurts, I've embarked on organizing kicks: going through our closet, cleaning out a pantry, and sorting a medicine cabinet. I've capitalized on the beautiful days tucked between rainy stretches to cut the grass, start the process of putting the gardens to sleep, and spray paint DIY projects in the driveway before it gets too cold.

I've also picked pears. A few years ago, Joel planted a pear tree in our back yard. This is the first year that it's produced an actual harvest. Somehow, I'm always shocked when things grow, when this process of fruit and vegetable "production" actually works. I don't know why I'd expect differently, but when I pick apples from my apple trees and pears from my pear tree, it's always with a sense of wonder tinged with disbelief. 

We grew stuff. How did this even happen?

This leads me to two weeks ago when I gathered all the large bowls and baskets from my house and carried them, along with a picker resembling a lacrosse stick that I borrowed from my neighbor, to the far side of my yard. This same neighbor also had loaned me a few dozen Ball mason jars and lids, along with verbal instructions on the sugar-to-water ratio for simple syrup that sounded easy enough even though I knew I'd never remember it. As she sent me on my way, I could tell she had great hopes I'd become a person who cans fruit.

And I tried. Well, I sort of tried.

I picked lots of pears. I filled bowls and baskets with them. I carried them into our kitchen, rinsed and patted them dry, then inspected for soft spots. This was on a Thursday. We were renting our house the next day, so it didn't seem like an opportune time for a first venture into the canning process. I relocated everything to the garage, trusting I'd pick up where I left off once we returned to the house on Sunday.

Sunday came and went, filled with church, post-rental cleaning and laundry, a trip to the grocery store, and who-knows-what-else. Monday came and went, too. As did several other days. 

When I finally went to check on my pears, thinking that I'd bring the bowls, baskets, and mason jars back into the kitchen, that I'd finally commit the recipe for simple syrup to my memory, that I'd boil and seal jars to my heart's content, I had one thought:

I don't even buy canned pears from the grocery store.

I mean, I like pears well enough, I guess. But I've never actually sought them out in canned form. Not once have I entertained a hankering for canned pears so deeply that I've needed to get to the store right away to satisfy that craving. 

As I stood there with my illusions of homesteading crashing to the ground around me, I thought, "Yeah, no. I'm good."

I've eaten the pears with my lunches, shared them with neighbors, and made a pear tart. These assorted uses seem even nicer than canning them.

Who knows? Maybe I'll eventually be a person who cans. Maybe October is my month. Or maybe I'll return the fruit picker and the clinking, empty mason jars back to my neighbor with a shrug of my shoulders. I'll hand over a few ripe, uncanned pears as an offering of apology.

So, yeah. I almost canned stuff. Somehow that feels enough.

0

"Did you pack an umbrella?" And Other Things Parents Say When Dropping Off a Child at Their Dorm

When I count all my years of education, including both my years as a student and my years teaching, I've completed 40 first days of school. I've endured this rigamarole 40 times. FORTY TIMES. Four-zero.

Forty is a lot of first days of school. Back in the day, I was just a kid learning my teachers' names, figuring out my class schedule, and hoping I had friends during my lunch period. Now, I'm just a middle-aged Associate Teaching Professor who learns my students' names, figures out my class schedule, and is happy to eat my lunch by myself, quietly, in between classes, perhaps while sitting on a bench under a nice tree on campus. I come home to hear about how my own kids navigated their own first days.

This year's back-to-school routine feels more poignant than ever before. You see, last week we moved our oldest daughter into her dorm. I've been teaching college students for 18 years. Now it's finally happened: I'm the parent of a college student. As I write, she's nearly one full week into her college experience.

She's grown up in this university town of ours, and the fact that she's now attending college here is fraught with its own complexities. Not everything is new to her, which is good and bad. While there's comfort in familiarity, there's also concern that college will merely feel like 13th grade, that it will be too familiar, too close, too been there, even if she hasn't done that.

That's why we felt it was important for her to live in a dorm. Of course, the dorm is a mere 3.1 miles from our house and her room is the size of a Wheat Thin, but it's her own Wheat Thin and it's away from us.

 
What an experience for her — and for all 8,000 new first-year students at our university. They're paired with a stranger who becomes a roommate, and they're now working through the nuances that happen when two people with different personalities, schedules, preferences, and idiosyncrasies suddenly share a tight living space.

As I carried plastic bins of my daughter's earthly possessions into her dorm, I considered how this exact process was unfolding with thousands of others: rolling carts and stacks of clothes, desk lamps and extra long fitted sheets, Command-hooked twinkle lights and posters for the cinderblock walls, school supplies and four-by-six area rugs to make the room a little more soft and homey, a little less sterile and impersonal.

I overheard snippets of conversation, snippets that likely have been and will be repeated again and again through the millennia of parents dropping off their kids at college: "I told you that you should have taken an upright laundry basket, not that big one," and "At least your dorm is close to the dining hall," and "Your roommate seems nice," and "Did you pack an umbrella? I don't think we remembered to pack an umbrella."

Underneath these obvious remarks about the new surroundings, and the inconsequential commentary on what items were forgotten at home, lies the deeper sentiments:

Please make good choices.

I love you.

I'm excited for you, and I'm a bit nervous, too.

I already miss you. This is one of those important markers signifying that life will never quite be the same again.

Even though my daughter is still so close, I know how this story goes — or, at least, how we've been planning and preparing for this story to go for the past 18 years. We raise our kids so they can leave us. We raise them so they step foot into this vast world on their own, even if they might call to ask questions about laundry. We raise them so they will venture out with confidence and competence and a good head on their shoulders.

This process somehow feels unequivocally set into motion when you first drop them off in their dorm room while pestering them with inane comments about umbrellas.

Thirteen years ago when she started kindergarten, we had a newborn and a two year old at home. Those were wonderful, harried, glorious, exhausting days. My husband and I both worked full time, so we alternated our hours on campus and our hours at home. It was an era of constant juggling, a season of swapping cars and car seats. We somehow made it work, though I'm not quite sure how.

One particularly tiring afternoon, I made a chart in the back of a notebook. In each row, I listed a year and what age the kids would be during that year. Three rows down, it signified three years later when our middle child would start kindergarten. Five rows down, the chart signaled that the youngest would join the ranks of school-attenders.

That afternoon, when I was nursing a baby, and playing with a toddler, and grading assignments, and trying to figure how I was going to mobilize everyone to the bus stop to pick up the kindergartener while maintaining nap times, I believed that the next five years would span eons. It would be an eternity until my kids were all in school, until I had a moment of breathing room, until my days opened up again.

And it was. And it wasn't. Those five years somehow were both fast and slow, rushed and drawn out, blink-and-you'll-miss-it quick and painstaking long all at once. 

That's why I know something now that I didn't know then: when our oldest hits a new milestone, it's both feels both forever and immediate until our youngest hits that milestone. Then, it was entering kindergarten. Now, it's entering college.

We're dipping our toes into an entirely new stage of parenting.

So, as we made trips from our van, up the elevator, and into our daughter's dorm with our arms full of her shower caddy for toiletries and granola bars for snacks, it felt familiar and different all at once. She might still be close, but this is a significant step. And since I didn't quite know what else to say when I hugged her goodbye and drove the short distance home, I said what I could:

I love you with my whole heart.

I'm so proud of you.

Did you pack an umbrella? 

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On Having a Favorite Tree

I'm going to go ahead and state the obvious: I used to be young, and now I have a favorite tree. I get weirdly excited about this particular tree, you see. It's along a road leading to the elementary school my children used to attend. You can pass this tree all winter long and not notice it. You can drive by it all summer without a glace.

But in spring, you notice this tree. You gawk at this tree. You want to let out a low whistle of appreciation for this tree. You annoy your pre-teen (who, for the record, is too pre-teen-y to find it cool to have a favorite tree, although she'll concede that this one is nice) by making her open her window and use your phone to take a picture while you drive by at a snail's pace. 

This tree deserves being noticed. This tree deserves being captured when its in full bloom.

* * *
 

On Tuesdays I don't go onto campus. Instead, like a throwback to Covid days, I work from home. I grade assignments from my kitchen table, still wearing the exercise clothes from my morning visit to the gym. To break up working, I do other types of work: starting and folding a load of laundry, collecting trash from all the bins and rolling the trash cans to the curb, making sure we have all the groceries needed for the remaining meals this week. These household tasks serve as a buffer, a needed break of doing something productive with my hands instead of my mind. Then it's back to actual work at the kitchen table.

Today, however, I wanted to take a little detour outside of the house. I drove to visit the tree like I'd visit an old friend. It's a mere 10-minute round trip loop from home to the tree and back again, but I took a few extra moments to park my car on an adjacent road, walk toward the tree, and savor the view.

These blossoms don't last long, you know. My eyes wandered from the trunk to the knobby, strong, sprawling limbs. I noticed how the breeze caused the faintest rise and fall of branches, like the tree was shyly waving in greeting. I wondered if this tree is one of the homeowner's most prized possessions, a treasure akin to Jim's watch or Della's hair in O. Henry's Gift of the Magi, something they'd never brag about, but take great pride in owning. We're the people with the tree, I imagine them saying.

Of course, I have to move on. My work from the kitchen table calls, but this detour was just what I needed today.

 

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Re-Entry into Real Life

Two weeks ago I wrote about our spring break travels. It was a lovely trip: sunshine and sand, leisure time to read books and take walks, and evenings whiled away with card games.

Then we came home. If I'm honest, I get foggy on the details of how the trip ended. In the span of two days, there was a terrifically long drive home. (Hours 12-14 of a family road trip in a minivan are obviously everyone's favorite.)

Upon arrival home, we unpacked, did a dozen-or-so loads of laundry, and took a trip to the grocery store to restock. As a bonus, we added in Daylight Savings and lost an hour of sleep.

When I returned to work Monday morning, with just a hint of a tan on my cheeks as visible evidence of my travels, it was a shock. In fact, that whole week felt like a shock, as if had pulled out of my driveway and suddenly was moving 70 miles per hour.

Looking back, I'm not sure where the week went. I must have gone to work and the kids must have gone to school. I must have taught and graded, and I must have cooked meals and cleaned up. I'm guessing that things moved along normally; at least, I don't recall otherwise.

There's always a re-entry period back into real life. Days that pass without much aplomb, without much to show for them, except for a crossed off block on a calendar. And that's okay. Buffer days and buffer weeks sometimes happen.

Now I'm back to real life, pleased for the extra hour of sunlight each day, and used to the rhythms of work and schedules again. Even so, I'm grateful for times of vacation — those days where we quite literally vacate our regular roles and typical routines  — even if the re-entry into real life takes some time.

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The Kindness of a Chainsaw

A few weeks ago, my husband and I were at an event where we spoke with a friendly married couple that we only nominally knew. They live on a large property, and they recently had been taking down some trees with a chainsaw. I perked up at this and said, "I need one of those!" I elaborated that I had cut down a sprawling bush in our backyard during the fall, but I didn't have a way to get rid of the stump. (I had tried, unsuccessfully, with a hand saw. Twenty minutes into that endeavor, I realized I was getting nowhere.)

The man said, "I could come by sometime with my chainsaw and take care of that for you." 

It was a kind sentiment, but we really didn't know these people especially well. I never thought of his offer again. I assumed that he never thought of his offer again, either. 

But last night, he reached out to my husband to get our address. This morning, he showed up with his chainsaw to cut down the stump. 

I'm so impressed. Touched, really. I know it only took him a few minutes to complete, but this gesture spoke volumes. It reminded me of the proverb, "Do not withhold good when it is in your power to act."

I'll never forget this kindness, all in the form of a helpful heart and a chainsaw.

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Ordinary Day? Add Baby Ducks.

Each day, after teaching my classes on campus, unless I have meetings or office hours, I automatically drive home and resume grading and preparing class content from my house. Although predictable, it's a comfortable rhythm.

Today I didn't immediately feel like going home, though. For no premeditated reason, I visited a local farm supply store. Given that I'm not a farmer, this makes no sense. I don't own acreage or tend chickens. I don't habitually listen to country music or get excited about machinery. But the store serves free popcorn, and that seemed like a good enough reason to stroll the aisles until I reached my favorite part of the store. Say hello to the baby ducks:

Sometimes it's baby chickens. Today, there were baby ducks. As they nuzzle together under glowing heat lamps in a pile of fluffy adorableness, I stand there enjoying my popcorn, feeling like maybe deep down inside, I secretly am a country girl.

Then I drive home and start working again. It's still an ordinary day, but one made just a bit better because of five minutes admiring some baby ducks.

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When the Window is Open

In the middle of the week, we had a perfect February day. While the month overall feels like a roller coaster of blah, we always seem to get one rogue amazing February day. It's rarely repeated. The day preceding it never is great, and the day following isn't great either, but that one day? It's wonderful.

That was Wednesday. The temperature reached into the 60's. The warmth and sunshine is such a surprise gift that people in central Pennsylvania totally lose their minds. We wear shorts prematurely. We wash cars. We see neighbors who we hadn't seen in weeks, maybe months.

As for me? I also spray paint. It has to be above 50 degrees (and low humidity) in order to spray paint, so I've been waiting for months for this moment. Wednesday was perfect. As soon as I got home from campus, I changed out of my "professional work" clothes and into my "painting work" clothes, dragged out my cardboard base, lined up my projects, and got to work.

What simple things to get ridiculously excited about. Sunshine! Blue skies! Spray paint!

Turns out, since then we've already dipped back down in temperature, and it's been raining off and on. Wednesday really was a unicorn of a day, as elusive at it was magical.

I'm so glad I seized the opportunity when the window of opportunity was open.

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When an Easy Project Continues to Go Wrong

Last week I told you about a little mishap surrounding what should have been an easy project. I drilled a hole in my bedroom wall to hang a mirror and accidentally hit a return air vent pipe that, belying all logic, had been filled with water. That water gushed out of the hole, down through the drywall, and into the family room ceiling below.

Good times, good times.

I'm here to report that this story gets better. And when I say "better," I actually mean the opposite of better. This story gets worse. 

Let me take you back to last Friday when our contractor friend arrives, inspects the hole in the drywall, confirms that no return air vent pipe (theoretically) should have any standing water in it, and then climbs to the attic so he can run a snake down the pipe and dislodge any clog that's causing this water backup.

Curious, I climb the ladder into the attic, too, so I can hear his take on the matter. "I've never seen this problem before," he says. "I shared the photos you sent to a buddy of mine who's been a plumber for 40 years. He's never seen anything like it, either."

I don't take this uniqueness as good news. 

He runs the snake down 30 feet. "If there was any clog, that should have cleared it." When I ask how we'd know, he shrugs and admits, "We really don't know."

I fill in what he's left unspoken, "You mean, we don't know whether this worked unless we drill another hole at a lower spot in the pipe to see if more water drains out? If a clog was cleared, there'd be no more water in the pipe, right?"

He nods. I nod. Then he drills another hole. 

Let's just say that more water drains out. Unlike the original water, which ran clear like a weirdly placed water fountain streaming from my bedroom wall, this water is brown and sludgy. We caught as much of it as we could with a bucket. I mop up the rest with towels. He plugs the newly drilled hole and says, "We're gonna need a bigger snake," to which I made a terrible "We're gonna need a bigger boat" joke.

Then we laugh and laugh, ha ha ha, because this all is terrifically funny.

You'd think this would be the lowest point of the story. But no. It's not. It continued because I did a load of laundry to wash the towels I had used to mop up the sludge-water. I tossed my sweatshirt into the load since it was covered with crud. Then I noticed that our weighted door draft stopper, which had been on the floor, was splattered with sludge-water, too. I tossed it into the washing machine as well.

About an hour later when I transferred the laundry from the washer to the dryer, it dawned on me that weighted door stoppers are "weighted" because they're filled with small rocks. Those small rocks had escaped through a tiny hole in the door stopper's fabric. There were now hundreds of them at the bottom of the washing machine agitator.

I assured myself that I'd remember to clean this up before I did my next load of laundry. 

Hours passed, during which I ran an absurd amount of errands, driving back and forth between my house and the school three times to drop-off, and pick-up, and drop-off, and pick-up children at various activities. In those hours, I did not think about laundry. Or rocks. Or weighted door draft stoppers. Nor did I think to tell the one child who was still at home about this whole scenario.

She did a load of laundry.

Those hundreds of rocks, which had been resting benignly at the base of the washing machine, swished and swirled their way through the wash cycle, embedding themselves in the agitator's holes, clogging the pipe, then burning out the drain pump and killing the motor.

Suffice to say, the coolest part about this story — besides how I drained the full washing machine by hand with a bucket, or how my husband came home from his travels an hour later with a suitcase full of dirty laundry — is the relative cost comparison of a weighted door draft stopper (say $20), which I tried to save by washing it, and a washing machine (say $700), which I broke by washing the draft stopper.

Joel and I spent a few hours the next afternoon at a laundromat. It was the same laundromat we had frequented over 20 years ago when we were newlyweds renting our first apartment. I reminded him of this while we waited for our clothes to dry, noting that we were pretty much having a throwback date.

That, my friends, is how you keep a marriage spicy after two decades. You have a date in the laundromat because you've spectacularly killed your washing machine, because you unfortunately washed a weighted door stopper, because you accidentally drilled into a return air vent pipe that's unexplainably filled with water, because you originally tried to hang a mirror to surprise your husband while he was traveling.

Indeed, the surprises just keep coming.

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When An Easy Project Goes Wrong

I'm no stranger to using a drill. I don't inflate myself and suggest that I'm a skilled craftsman, but I'm competent enough to hang a heavy mirror on a wall using drywall screws. That's such an easy project that I'm not sure if you even can consider it a project at all.

That being said, it's also the exact project that got me in over my head yesterday. Let me explain.

I received a beautiful mirror for Christmas. I've been actively thinking about hanging it for the last month and a half. I picked the perfect spot for it our bedroom wall. For the last two or three weeks, I've been actively talking about hanging it. For one reason or another, I just haven't gotten around to it.

Yesterday, however, I decided it was time. My husband is out of town, but I knew I could manage on my own. I even envisioned him returning on Saturday evening from his travels, walking into our bedroom, being surprised by my skill and initiative, and saying, "Oh, you hung the mirror! It looks great!"

With this confidence and gumption, I gathered my materials, marked precisely where to drill, double-checked to ensure the holes would be level, and used my 3/16 drill bit on the first hole. Perfect.

Then I drilled the second hole, which also seemed perfect until I removed the drill from the wall and was immediately hit in the face with a spray of water. Water? Water! Wait, water? Did I drill into a pipe? How did I drill into a PIPE? I was nowhere near plumbing!

But none of that logic matters when a stream of water is gushing from the hole you just drilled in your bedroom wall. I immediately plugged the hole with my finger to get my bearings. There was no way I had drilled into a pipe. I called my daughter, who wasn't feeling well and was resting in bed, to come help.

Daughter (cough): "But I'm dying."

Me: "Irrelevant. Come here and press your finger on this hole for me while I get a bucket and a towel. Then you can die."

Turns out, I hadn't drilled into a water pipe after all. But I had drilled into a return air vent pipe which, due to a missing vent cap on our roof, had been filled with water. When I nicked it with my drill, all the accumulated rain water stagnating in that pipe -- from the top of our roof to the exact spot where I drilled into my upstairs bedroom wall -- poured onto my floor and leaked through the ceiling of our family room below.

I'll spare you the extraneous details, but later in the evening, I cut out a section of soaked, crumbling drywall from our bedroom wall so I could block the hole with a quick-seal adhesive patch. Our contractor friend is coming tomorrow to discern how to best flush out the remaining water below my drill hole in the pipe, remove any blockage, and install the missing vent cap that caused this mess in the first place. Of course, at some point, I'll need to prime and repaint the family room ceiling.

On the positive side, I should be glad that I hit the pipe. If I had drilled even one inch to the left or right, I never would have discovered we had a problem in the first place. This is a good thing. At least, that's what I'll tell myself when I think about my beautiful mirror, which I've now slid underneath the bed, or look at the hole in my bedroom wall, or glance up at the water stains marring my family room ceiling.

One thing hasn't changed, though. I had imagined that my husband would be surprised when he returned home from his trip and saw what I had done to our bedroom. I think that's still valid.

Surprise, honey!

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The Uncalled For, Yet Entirely Necessary, Snow Day

I haven't been the most disciplined human recently. And when I say recently, I refer to the past three years. Take this exact moment, for example. I'm lying on my kitchen floor, angling my body so I'm lined up in the slant of sunshine that's streaming through my sliding glass door. I'm like a cat. I've claimed the warmest, brightest spot, even if the kitchen floor itself is hard.

Sunshine in Pennsylvania during the month of January is worth lying on a floor for. Even a somewhat dirty, gritty floor.

Now, about not being the most disciplined person: I'd explain the past three years as a whole, but it would be easier to explain this past Tuesday specifically. The 72 students in my 3 college classes turned in assignments on Monday evening. I earmarked Tuesday for grading: two hours for each class, six hours total.

As I settled into bed Monday night, I told myself, "You can do this. You can get all the grading done tomorrow."

Narrator: But she could not do this.

Because something happened on Tuesday. I went to the gym in the morning, which was a nod to productivity and health, even if I immediately undid those benefits by going to the McDonald's drive-through on the way home and ordering a large Dr Pepper. (Light ice. Always light ice.)

When I got home, I collected trash from all the trash cans and rolled the bins to the curb. Then, after folding the wrinkled load of laundry that had been forgotten in the dryer, and transferring the wet load of laundry that had been forgotten in the washer (giving each piece of clothing a healthy shake to unclump it from the hardened mass of damp clothes), I started a new load of laundry.

I remembered that I wanted to make a crock pot meal for dinner. I seasoned and prepared chicken thighs, storing the remaining pieces from the grocery bulk pack into freezer bags and labeling them for another meal. (I knew Future Robin would thank me for this foresight.) With chicken now cooking in the crock pot, I double-checked the refrigerator and pantry to make sure I had all the necessary remaining groceries for the week's remaining meals. While I was there, I organized the pantry. I changed the laundry when I heard the dryer stop. I cleaned the litter box and carried the bag to the trash bins outside before the garbage truck arrived.

I responded to student emails as I ate an early lunch, with the niggle forming in my mind: Robin, you have actual work to do. You know, like, your job. Those 72 assignments waiting for your detailed, articulate feedback, remember?

I suppressed that voice and vacuumed the whole house instead, upstairs and downstairs. Then I finished the novel I had started that weekend. (Just to clarify: reading it, not writing one.)

Somehow, it was two o'clock. The house was vacuumed. Four loads of laundry had been folded. The pantry was ordered and the chicken already smelled terrific. Apparently, there are no limits to what I can accomplish when I'm supposed to be accomplishing something else.

It was time to bite the bullet, so (obviously) I solved the day's Wordle and then finally hunkered down to grade. The afternoon hours unfurled. At some point, one kid came home from school. I greeted her, kept grading, then picked up another kid up from basketball practice an hour later. I made a quick salad and rice to serve with the chicken. We cleaned up the dishes. I returned to my grading, now plowing through the second class' work.

At that point, I remembered I had a hair cut schedule for that evening, which had seemed odd -- yet otherwise benign -- at the moment of scheduling the prior week.

Salon receptionist: Can you do 7:45 Tuesday?
Me: At night?
Salon receptionist: Yes.
Me (thinking):  I don't leave the house beyond 7 anymore. What kind of tomfoolery is this?
Salon receptionist:
Me: That sounds fine.

Clearly, Past Robin had not factored Present Robin needing Tuesday night to be free for grading purposes when scheduling this appointment.

When I got home -- looking mighty fine with my new haircut, I might add -- I dragged the trashcans from the curb to the side of the house, breathing in the sharp, crisp January air that felt thick with the potential for a snowfall. The kitchen still smelled like chicken and rice when I stepped inside. I approached my computer to open the third batch of assignments, checking the clock and calculating that I could finish by 11 PM, maybe sooner, probably later, depending on how well I could concentrate, knowing that concentration hadn't particularly been my strong suit this day.

That's when I saw the breaking news: the local schools would be canceled the next day for pending inclement weather. My kids cheered. A substantial storm was coming. And -- surprise, surprise -- the university then announced cancellation of on-campus activities, which meant there would be no classes the next morning for me.

Turns out, we got a blanket of snow on Wednesday, but we weren't pummeled as the weather forecasters had predicted. Had the district and university administration not pulled the trigger Tuesday night in precaution, we likely could have (should have) still gone to school and campus.

Did I dwell on this? No.

Nor do I try to dwell on why I seem unable to buckle down and sustain hours of active thinking as well as I used to. Am I overly stressed? Is it just the January blahs? Am I simply older and more tired? Am I clinging to any residual survival-mode bad work habits that I formed during Covid?

I don't know.

But I do know that, upon hearing the news of the cancellation, I emailed my students to outline our changed plans for the week, shut my laptop, and went to bed. As I settled to sleep, I told myself: "You can do this. You can get the remaining two hours of grading done tomorrow morning."

Narrator: Thankfully, this time, she could. And she did. But, on her uncalled for, yet entirely necessary snow day, she also started a new novel. (Reading, not writing one. Remember, she's not the most disciplined human these days.)

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Clean House, Clean Slate

After spending a week in California for my husband's job (which, for the record, is precisely the amount of time it took for me to fully adjust to Pacific Time), we're back home in Pennsylvania. Bags are unpacked, laundry is folded, and the kids returned to school. I'm prepared for the new semester to start on Monday, even if my Eastern-Standard-Time internal clock is taking a few days to properly kick into gear.

We're back to regular life.

I enjoy the first moment when I return to my house after any length of time away. Daily surroundings, which become so familiar that I sometimes don't notice them anymore, appear momentarily foreign. This particular trip we left the morning after Christmas and returned late in the evening on January 3. At some point during that timespan, I mentally had progressed into New Year Mode. I was thinking start-of-the-year thoughts: reduction of clutter! simplification! new habits! But my house, untouched since the morning of December 26, held the frozen, heaping relics of Christmas: boughs of holly, treats in the pantry, a small pile of well-meaning yet badly-executed gifts with their gift receipts waiting to be returned, and one neglected, exceptionally dry Christmas tree. I merely glanced in its direction and a truckload of needles fell off.

I devoted a day to getting back in order. Joel hauled the Christmas tree to the curb while I swept behind him. I put away ornaments, replaced the Chistmas tablecloth with a regular one, and stowed seasonal decorations in seasonal bins. I took down Christmas cards and hung up the 2023 calendar on the fridge. The house feels lighter now. Somehow I feel lighter, too.

I'm grateful that seasons shift. I'm thankful for their bookend processes -- putting up, taking down -- that simultaneously usher in change and keep a familiar life rhythm year after year. While I love being in Christmas mode, it felt especially hopeful to take everything down, as if my heart were correlating a clean house with a clean slate.

Here's to a new year ahead. May we approach it with fresh eyes, full hearts, and great faith.

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That Final Time Cutting the Grass

 

No matter what's happening in my life, I always feel better after I cut the grass. Perhaps it's the hour and a half where I can simultaneously think and not think all at once, the prescribed walking back and forth along a perfectly charted route, the satisfying lines left in my wake, the sense of accomplishment from taming an unkempt and wild space and having just one thing in order.

Grass cutting changes with the seasons. I love it in the spring, when the greenness nearly hurts my eyes and the smell of fresh, earthy life feels so novel after months of dormancy. I love cutting grass in the summer when being outdoors is a natural extension of living. And I love cutting grass in the fall when the trees blaze with color and the lawnmower blades mulch the fallen leaves underneath my feet as I walk.

But that final time cutting the grass each season? That's another level of special.

All through the month of November, I raked leaves, dragging them on tarps from the backyard to the curb for the township leaf-sucker truck. The raking process moved in waves -- faster for the red oak in the front yard than the poplar, slower still for the Bradford pear trees in the back and side yards. And then at one point after an especially windy night, all the leaves that still had been clinging to their branches tenaciously were down.

Everything was perfectly poised: it was time for the final raking, the final blowing, the final time strapping on the cross-body leaf-sucker. Once all of this was complete and the flower beds and gardens had been cleared from the residual crackling-brown fall debris, it was then time for the best moment: the final grass cutting.

I can't tell you how much I savored this. The weather forecast had called for a dusting of snow later that afternoon, and I wore a tossle cap and heavy-duty hoodie to ward off the damp pre-snowfall chill in the air. With each line back and forth, I felt like I was tucking in the yard to sleep. Rogue leaves that had escaped the reach of my rake were chopped up, mulched into the grass, crunched underneath my feet as a perfect nutrient to lie dormant until next year's spring.

As I reached the final section of yard, the snow began to fall, first tentatively and then in earnest. My neighbor walked his dog past my house, his head tucked down to protect his face from the onslaught, perhaps looking at me crookedly for cutting my grass in the snow, and I shouted to him over the drone of the lawnmower and into the swirling snowflakes, "I am having SO MUCH FUN!"

And I was. It was an entirely true statement, one that gushed out of me and made me laugh. At one point (not too long ago in my mind), I was young and (maybe) even a little bit cool, and suddenly I'm 44 and inordinately excited about putting my yard to bed for the winter.

Oh, the simple things that bring joy! I'm probably right on the cusp of getting interested in bird-watching or some other middle-aged hobby. (Stamp-collecting? Pickelball? Who knows.)

I'd like to tell you that I reveled in the symmetrical lawnmower lines as I sipped hot tea after storing the lawnmower in the shed, but those lines quickly became invisible. That forecasted "dusting" resulted in four inches of snow that buried my final freshly-cut grass. But I knew. I knew those lines were there, that the yard was in order, that the leaves had been tamed, that our small parcel of land on this vast earth was perfectly poised to settle into its winter slumber.

And that was exactly what I needed that day.

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