1. A family has lived across the courtyard from us for the entire pandemic. We introduced ourselves at one point, and then I promptly forgot the names of everyone except the oldest child. Yesterday, through some internet sleuthing, I figured out one of the parents’ names. When I came home, said parent was loading a moving van. Dangit.
2. The Field Trip podcast from the Washington Post. I listened to the White Sands episode while doing some mindless clickety work this morning and it took my breath away.
3. Between heat, rain, and general overwhelm, I have neglected our garden to the point that our lettuces are being choked out by weeds.
   
   This week’s practice: set a timer for 10 minutes. Pull weeds until it goes off. Leave with something lovely in hand.

I don’t know how to describe it, really.

This week marks 9 years in my job, and last week 9 years in this city. But also it feels like it hasn’t been that long, like the years I spent in previous places stretched longer, despite the fact that this year has lasted approximately 4000 days. Maybe it’s that places that aren’t the four walls of my apartment feel shiny and new with the prospect of After coming into view?

I read Hilary Mantel’s memoir this week. She talks about having almost synesthesic memories of her childhood. Is that it? I put on an album from college and I can almost feel places I haven’t seen in decades. I sleep and people from my past visit, not to play a main role, but ambiently there. I wake up, drift off again, and they’re still there, as if on the other side of a room in a crowded party. (Remember parties?)

There has to be a reason why I’m drawn to Mantel, to Olivia Laing, to Virginia Woolf. Looping and returning. Is it anxiety brain?

There’s also electronic music. And running. And my bike. The same thing, over and over, building, falling back, uncovering, visiting and revisiting.

Looping and returning, spuriously anchored. Who am I, really, these days? And what comes after the After, assuming the After actually comes?

This month. This month! It was all too much, but much of the too much isn’t really for this space. Some illustrative vignettes:

Inspired by a friend’s dramatic debt reduction, I spend time poring over our spending to cut literally a few dollars here or there. That afternoon, I rearrange my schedule so that I can use a free pass for a fitness class. I arrive at the gym but have have forgotten the pass on my desk. I’m already there, so I pay $5 for a pass, waiting a long time for an entire sports team to enter the gym before they can process my payment. I rush to the class. The instructor doesn’t show up.

We documented a number of issues when we moved into our apartment. A contractor came by in July to measure windows for replacement – while seven need to be replaced, four must be replaced because they can’t be safely operated. The new windows are installed on a Tuesday. The contractor points out significant structural damage likely caused by roof issues and lousy tuckpointing. Four days later, we come home to find rain pouring through one of the windows that wasn’t replaced – not through the window itself, but between the frame and the wall. We report the problem to our landlord, who is predictably upset, having poured buckets of money into his previously low-maintenance rental property over the last few months. On Halloween, less than a week later, we have our first snow, which melts and drips through the frame of one of the new windows.

And so it goes all month, one thing after another, with us doing our best to keep our heads above the waves as we frantically tread water. Appliances stop working. Diapers leak. Everyone gets sick. I get mastitis again.

But despite all of this, projects and events I’ve been planning for months happen at work with minor issues. We almost completely avoid eating out, and so come in way under our food budget for the first time maybe ever. We wear #RedforEd and cheer on our city’s teachers as they strike for a better future. I run to the marathon course and tear up as the new world record holder blazes by. We paint pumpkins and soak up the last spectacular fall weather. The balls roll in the right direction, and time marches on.

October Reads

• Warren Invites Us In: On the Selfie Line — Los Angeles Review of Books — this is fantastic, regardless of your politics
• It’s so much more than cooking — The Week
• How America Lost Dinner — The Atlantic

October Eats

• Definitely not the matpakke, the world’s most boring lunch (Watch the video. It’s delightful.)
• Miso sweet potato and broccoli bowl from Smitten Kitchen on repeat forever and ever, amen.
• White bean and escarole soup from Reading My Tea Leaves on a gloomy Monday
• Dairy-free cornbread — Whole Foods
• Sticky, spicy stir fry with tempeh and brussels sprouts — Hello Veggie
• Crunchy, spicy almond-and seed salad topping — Real Simple
• Spaghetti squash lasagna from Minimalist Baker
• From NYT Cooking:
  • Pressure cooker black bean soup — put this in the InstantPot before work which I think threw off the amount of water needed since the beans got a good 6-7 hours of soaking before the pressure cooking starts. Will continue tweaking.
  • Spicy stir-fried tofu with kale and red pepper — tofu didn’t hold together, so it was more of a tofu scramble, which was just fine!
  • Pan-roated eggplant with peanut-chile sauce — the technique is fantastic, but the sauce part of the recipe doesn’t make quite enough. Added homemade peanut butter, thinned with olive oil and water, and tossed with noodles to round out a meal.

The month is a blur.

I’ve been trying to journal. About every 4 days I remember and then have to go back and cover the days I’ve missed. This is probably good for remembering the big things, but terrible for the small moments, so:

– Taking the car to the shop and the baby to meet a friend for coffee. She thanks me for the baby snuggles; he has a dramatic blowout.

– I wake up on a weekend morning wanting to connect with the big kid because we get no time together anymore. I suggest that we make popcorn and watch our favorite show. He watches excitedly as I pop the corn on the stove, then we pick through a bowl of mostly duds together. The moment is perfect, even if the popcorn is not.

– The big kid declared that my 14 hole Doc Martens are my “fall shoes”. I like it.

– Waiting for election results, not quite able to breathe. Remembering so much hope 2 years ago, 10 years ago.

– The baby is so chatty, a whole range of sounds and expressions, most of them happy. I don’t remember this from last time. We take video whenever we can.

– I get to a good stopping point a few minutes early one Wednesday and head to Grounds of Being for a coffee on my way to therapy. N sends photos of the big kid playing in the leaves on the Quad. I pick up a coffee for him (and a tiny cup of almond milk for the big kid) and meet them to nurse, and then later to walk home together.

– An early morning haircut playdate, trying to juggle kids and coffee and adult conversation with a friend I don’t see often enough.

– The baby gets sick, and then enters a new developmental window, and then the four month sleep regression starts. It’s all still somehow easier than with the big kid. Is he really that much easier, or are we more prepared?

– The kids love each other so much. We don’t feel safe leaving them alone together for more than a couple of minutes because the big one is constantly on top of the little one and the little one couldn’t be happier.

– I take the baby to a spontaneous birthday dinner for a dear friend. It feels like every single person working at the restaurant cooed over him – and, for the first time, he doesn’t want to take a break to rest on my chest or my shoulder – he wants to take it all in.

– We opt out of travel on Thanksgiving day, and the big kid and I make dinner at home: portabella mushroom caps stuffed with mashed potatoes, a Brussels sprouts salad, a Swedish apple pie. We spend Black Friday with family, and take a walk in the woods while the baby sleeps.

– The baby outgrows things and we pass them on. A blessing of living in a small space is that we literally don’t have room for sentimental attachment to things. I will be very sad when he outgrows his sleep sacks, but there’s no reason to keep them – or anything else.

– I start going to the gym on the weekends. I try to push away any feelings of guilt for taking time that I need – because I need it. Each workout feels like a gift.

– I meet with a new-to-the-campus AVP in the office of the actual president. I am wearing my “fall shoes”. The meeting goes well, and when I leave, hundreds of starlings are swooping and dancing above the quad.

And then, at the end of the month, a scary health crisis leaves us all deeply rattled, the latest in a year that has already been too much. We’re all fine (apart from bad colds), but take a moment to hold your people close.

November Reading

• Are You My Mother?

November Eating

• From Ottolenghi Simple:
  • Roasted beets with yogurt and preserved lemon
  • Brussels sprouts with garlic
  • Roasted asparagus with almonds, capers, and dill
• From My New Roots:
  • Brussels sprouts slaw with apples and cranberries
  • Tempeh “triangles”, our old stand-by
  • Roasted parsnip soup, except with carrots, so not the recipe at all
  • Broccoli basil broth, thin but satisfying
• Curried tomato gnocchi soup
• Pad prik king with eggplant and tofu
• Long-desired fish and chips from Pleasant House Pub, followed by cocktails and a trifle
• Pumpkin macaroni and cheeze which was SO MUCH BETTER than expected
• Potato leek soup – comforting, but unappetizing thanks to purple potatoes and soy milk
• Chickpea veggie burgers which filled us up and stocked the freezer
• Several curries with a massive amount of veggies leftover from a fancy work event
• Spaghetti squash, lasagna-style
• A passable cafe au lait thanks to my IKEA PRODUKT and milk warmed in a metal measuring cup directly on the burner

Chicago has been under an excessive heat warning since Saturday. We tried to go for a walk for Father’s Day yesterday. After half an hour (and a second iced coffee), we had to call it quits to hide out in apartment for the rest of the day with the blinds drawn.

We have a window AC unit, but even with it running on high all day, it never got below 83F in our bedroom last night. I tucked our son in at 7:45. He tossed and turned from the heat until well after 11.

This morning I’m thinking of the children who will be sleeping in the “temporary tent shelter” in El Paso. It’s 75F there – cooler than Chicago – but the highs this week will be around 100F every day. How will those children sleep? How many of them will toss and cry for their parents – just from the heat?

Our son woke up at 6:30 and snuggled with me on the couch before asking for his breakfast. When I left for work, he was working on math problems on the couch with his papa.

He’ll be 4 in September. This is a hard age. Some days he’s sweet and helpful. Other days he’s a nightmare. Some days he’s both. Some hours he’s both. I’ve been reading a lot about how toxic masculinity starts to infect boys young. I have a lot of thoughts about this, but while making sense of them, I keep returning to a place of deep gratitude that our son is so closely bonded to us. That we can at least try to mitigate some of the societally-constructed bullshit because at least for now, he loves and trusts us and the other grown-ups in his life, and feels comfortable exuberantly demonstrating that love and trust.

So what happens to these children who have been taken from their parents? We know what happens because we’ve been doing it longer than we’ve been a country. We know what happens because we did it to generations of Native children. We know what happens because our country did it to generations of enslaved families. We don’t have to look to Nazi Germany, but we can look there as well.

But we also know because we have children of our own. Imagine the drama of the worst drop off at school or daycare or grandparents’ house – or even just an average level of departure-related drama. Nearly 4 year olds know drama. Now imagine this is happening with no opportunity to prepare your child. No helpful Daniel Tiger songs to mitigate the drama. No way of knowing if your child will be safe or fed or cared for. No idea when you’ll be reunited – if ever.

The harms are real, and they’re immediate, and they’re long-term. These are the sorts of things you never get over, never outgrow. Our country is breaking children. Our country is destroying families. And unless we, every one of us, takes action, we are as culpable as the agents at the border or the bureaucrats in Washington.

Here are some things you can do right now. Go do them. Right now.