We arrive at the end of the school year in a bit of a fog of illness and sadness and overwhelm.

Yesterday I accompanied the small kid’s class on a walking field trip to the birch grove. Sitting on the ground with my golden child on my lap, dozens of small kids joyfully running and playing around us, I was viscerally struck with the truth of this statement: there’s no such thing as “other people’s children.”

Every child deserves to be abundantly loved. Every child deserves to run freely with their friends Every child deserves to have a teacher who seeks to understand them and to unlock in them their boundless potential. That every child doesn’t have ready access to these things is criminal.

Since the beginning of the year, I have been waking between 4-5, sometimes earlier. Recently I started running in the early mornings. I have yet to make it to the lake before the sun rises – instead, I have experienced the incremental expansion of the mornings as we creep toward the solstice. What a joy to notice this change, to catalog it along with the bloom and fade of the lilacs and the budding of the mulberry trees.

I have felt too flooded to engage with much of the rest of the world for the last few months. News happens, it’s horrifying, I hold my child’s small hand and look for ants making a path across the sidewalk. I feel constantly torn between my obligations to the world, and to my community, and to my family, and to myself. I am very tired. I am doing my best.