From Barnacles to Raccoons

Summer “vacation” begins with a down day at home. Anyone who has ever tried to chill while two wild raccoons ransack the house has a pretty good idea of what that was like.

After I finished cleaning up the disaster on the laundry room floor that occured when Phoebe tried to harass the cat while it was eating — soggy dry cat food, nasty wet cat food, ceramic shards, clumps of cat fur — I moved on to the tiny bits of paper left over from a craft project, scattered willy nilly about the living room and mashed into the rug; a half-built fort that got dragged into the dining room and trampled; the remnants of the second morning snack.

The girls were already out in the yard, playing “camping” in a tree — a game which entails bringing each item they own outside, one at a time, and hanging it from the branches, then prostrating themselves at the foot of the tree to let the ticks just have their way. 

There’s so much I will miss about school, and not just the time spent not here.

For one, I am going to miss our morning drives, despite how much I have always despised the actual process of getting out of the house. Once past the drama and mayhem of leaving with clothes on, we had some pretty intellectual conversations in the car.

Earlier this week, for instance, Phoebe asked me where rubies come from. I didn’t want to get too far into the exploitative processes of gem mining, seeing as she doesn’t have the cash to really buy into it anyway, so I kept it pretty surface-level. I explained how precious gems come from rocks and have to be mined with very big, expensive machines.

I am keenly aware of how much I am teaching my daughters and how much they absorb my words. I have to be careful not to use too much sarcasm, which they really don’t get, and not to call the superintendent of our public school system a wussbag, which I may have accidentally done under my breath last Monday after he cancelled a half day of school because of hot.

The conversations were sometimes lively in the mornings, but even more importantly, I am sad that school is over for the year because it marks the end of our time at Hilltop Montessori, the beautiful place my daughters have attended for the last 3 ½ years. For that entire time in Children’s House, Eliza has had the same two teachers, and with the pandemic, Phoebe joined her class for their final year as “olders.” Saying goodbye to these teachers was heartbreaking.

When we started at Hilltop, the girls were just turning three. The first day week month year of drop-off was rough. They clung to me like sentient barnacles every morning. Phoebe did not talk for pretty much her first year. Now, they try to crawl out of the car window before I’ve come to a complete stop. They come home with animated stories and girl drama and abundant glee. 

Particularly when the pandemic made everything so strange and so stressful, the consistency at Hilltop has been priceless — and nothing has meant or mattered more than the faces and hearts of our two core teachers, Cheryl and Mariam. I owe these women a debt of extreme gratitude. Their steady, kind presence has probably counterbalanced a lot of the Mama drama.

But now it’s summer. Let the crazy come out, but hopefully not all at once.

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What I’m reading:

The Mercies, a very dark, brutal novel about a village of Norwegian women whose men all die at sea during a winter storm.

What I’m eating:

It’s homemade strawberry ice cream season!

Grilled ramps, zucchini, and asparagus and a T-bone I found in the freezer — every single thing from local farms

What I’m working on:

• For Poised, a startup I just started working with: What a Pandemic Taught Us About How We Communicate — and How We Can Improve

• For Box, the blog post MassMutual: The 4 pillars of secure content for heavily regulated companies