Well hello again. I breezed right by the midpoint of 2025. This year has held a few distracting circumstances! We are just shy of three months from the anniversary of the 2024 election, which is the day that I count from. That also means that we may elect a new Virginia governor in just three months, which is far more relevant to my life now than I might have expected last November. The time is flying by but I never quite get accustomed to are by the seat of my pants.
I began my position at UVA. There have been a few bumps and I have navigated them with uncharacteristic boldness. Hello, 40! I enjoy the research and writing tremendously. There is no better antidote, for me, to the uncontrolled chaos in the world than the opportunity to sit in quiet and try to at least make sense of one small piece. I enjoy the opportunity to think outside the bounds of federal red tape about how to improve access to education. I even enjoy the new muscles this position has required me to grow., outside my comfort zone, where all the most important ground is broken. I’m grateful. To land somewhere that I can do meaningful work, grow professionally, and continue to center my family in my life. Also grateful for Nitin’s support and the freedom to take the large paycut that this position required. I know so many people who are not in that boat.
As for Nitin—I am scrambling the order of updates this quarter—he has entered uncharted territory by remaining at Shopify for longer than he has worked anywhere else. I hear his business voice wafting to my second floor office during meetings. It seems from my vantage point that he is excellent at his job and that he generally enjoys the work, demanding though it is. He spends weekends shuttling the kids from hockey to swimming to soccer to ice skating, etcetera, and will coach Myles’s Blue Dragons soccer team again in the fall. He will try to run the Chicago marathon again in October, with fingers crossed for no injuries this year. He was chagrined not to travel to Europe this summer—give a mouse a cookie… But is already planning a trip to Italy and France next summer, details to be determined.
Travels this summer included, most significantly, a visit to Chicago, where we saw Brendan for the first time in a couple of years. That visit really filled my heart. Shoulder rides for Myles, Ellie’s first American Girl doll, fireworks on the parking garage, flaming cheese, pastries, bagels, the Willis tower, an architecture boat tour, mini golf, Dave’s rock shop, and tromping around downtown Chicago. Nitin and Myles embarked on a “mystery trip” to Colorado last weekend, which was, by all accounts, a huge hit! We are driving now to Princeton for a quick 36 hour visit with Shefali and Emma—hence the long stretch in the car and my journal entry.
I have come to relish these long stretches of time, as sure a sign of aging as the frown lines I reluctantly Botox. Which is a tangent, I recognize, and raises the opportunity for me catalog my justifications, which are as follows. I do not really have incredibly compelling reasons for shooting a neurotoxin into my face. I was satisfied that the treatment is safe and effective. Certainly I will still age and no more slowly, but not having to watch in real time seemed worthwhile. I am vain but also a pragmatist. The needles work better than the fancy creams.
But I was explaining my love of long drives. To clarify, I enjoy being the passenger. The commute to Charlottesville has clarified that driving tweaks my sciatic nerve. The kids do not share my enthusiasm. Ominously, Ellie began inquiring about the length of the drive 8 minutes into our 4+ hour drive. Two hours and 58 minutes remained when Myles moaned that we were still two hours away. Wisely, I think, no one corrected him.
I vaguely remember the long drives of my childhood—guessing games, counted cars, Raffi singalongs, sweaty backseat naps, reading until we were nauseous and then giving up. Time passes differently, painfully slowly, for children. The stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas is unbearable to a seven year old marking up the Toys R Us catalog with black pen. Not so for her harried mother, scrounging minutes to shop, wrap, bake, and otherwise laboriously manufacture the magic of childhood.
Christmas for me is four hours to catch up on emails, texts, and the many articles that fill browser tabs on my phone. The holiday of creating a comprehensive list of everything I absolutely must do and a few things that I’d really like to. I relish the slowness of roadtrip hours at 40. Also the closeness of hurtling together in this metal pod. I secretly suspect that our dogs love roadtrips for the same reason. The may not relish being packed like sardines into the back with the suitcases but they are delighted by that feeling of belonging that is born of traveling with the pack.
Speaking of the pack, I certainly have inverted the order of updates in this missive. Apologies. Ellie finished second grade in June, marking her halfway point at Glebe. I am astonished to have a third grader in our midst and grateful that Glebe does not heap on academic pressure in elementary school. There is already a rich tapestry of social complexities to navigate, which will be no less true in middle school, of course. She knows her own mind. She loves to skate and recently asked to take ballet again, to improve her skating. She is not interested in soccer or theater, as some of her friends are. She told me recently, arriving for stroke school one Saturday morning, that she was glad that we insisted that she learned to swim and enjoys it now. She quit piano, not unpredictably. But she loves learning French with her new French tutor. She seems more comfortable in her skin than even a year ago. She still sleeps by my side of the bed and I plan to let that sleeping dog lie. She still prefers graphic novels to books. I press on chapter books occasionally, but mostly I procure a broad senecio’s of graphic novels from the library and see which ones she digs into. She has been mastering her multiplication tables for the last few weeks. She also began learning to type and has penned numerous of her own graphic novels. I haven’t shared yet the unlikelihood that she will strike it rich as an author. I like her moxy. She is wonderful company, still an old soul, loving, with a wry sense of humor. What a gift, honestly. She’s a lovely human.
It has been a joy to watch our little guy unfold. Kindergarten was a great year for him. His kindergarten teacher has been teaching for nearly forty years. She is gentle but firm, organized, insightful, kind, and steady. Myles befriended dozens of children in the classroom, on the playground and soccer field, at extended day and the bus stop. Wherever he goes, Myles finds friends that he hasn’t met yet. He is curious, enthusiastic, and generally game for whatever is next. He has blossomed into the type of reader who has to be pried from whatever he is reading at bedtime. Like Ellie, he is inquisitive, intelligent, and bright. Myles also possesses almost unbounded confidence, likely to his benefit. He is also, of course, a sweet and silly boy whose alter ego is a puppy named Mylesy roof roof and who founded a “roofy” club that he allows his sister to join when she is in his good graces. He jumps from swimming to hockey to skating to birthday parties on the weekends with nary a complaint. He likes to be in motion.
Myles recently swallowed a penny. I didn’t believe that he had done it for several minutes, reasoning that even as an adult, I was unsure that I could swallow a penny. And yet he did. Ellie saw the penny. Myles initially claimed that she had compelled him to swallow the penny, which was obviously untrue. Ellie was ashen and panicked when she came to realize that he had swallowed the penny. As was I. Nitin remained calm and consulted AI. I confirmed with the after hours pediatrician that there was nothing to be done. Kids do this, I asked incredulously, and she confirmed that they did. 6 year olds? Apparently. How can a child who knows that Aegean Sea borders Greece, which I did not know, consume a penny? He went through a metal detector at the airport without incident three days later, so we assume that both the penny and the danger have passed. Anyways. We sure love that sweet little stinker.
The dogs are themselves. Zoe is nine years old and still vigorously protects the family from mail delivery, pedestrians, and neighbor cats that dare step into our yard. Ziggy, bless him, remains large and confused. He seldom barks his startling baritone bark and usually does so only with Zoe’s persistent encouragement.
I couldn’t possibly comment on what is swirling in the larger world. Children starving in Gaza, ICE deporting people to places they’ve never been, the president demolishing Medicaid and other safety nets for our most vulnerable Americans. Or even in my own world beyond the metal pod still hurtling towards Princeton. I keep my eye more on what is right in front of me than I used to. I rankle when someone asks about next year. I am historically late in bothering my family about holiday plans.
I just finished reading Lori Gottlieb’s book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone—which was beautiful, by the way. She voiced a thought that has increasingly popped into my head in recent years. We spend our time waiting—to graduate, for a child to sleep through the night or outgrow diapers, for a promotion, for an election. And we do not meaningfully consider what will be absent in that future. The diploma but our friends have moved to other cities. The kid who is potty trained but asks you not to use his nickname in public. Cannot help but wonder what I will be missing if I spend my current season waiting.
On that ominous note, I am signing off, but only because my phone is dying!
Quotes:
Potatoes for Jesus
M: Hi, dad. Happy Easter. I hope you’re honoring Jesus.
N: Oh, ok. How are you honoring Jesus?
M: By eating potatoes.
Puberty
E: Did you go through puberty? Like you get hair all over you?
N: Yes.
M: He is in puberty right now in fact.
Sleepover
Ellie went to a preschool friend's house for her first ever sleepover. She packed a bag of books.
B: Are you sure you have everything you need?
E: Yep!
B: Great! Did you pack a toothbrush?
E: No...
B: Did you pack pajamas?
E: I'll go back upstairs.
Penny Wise
After Myles ate a penny, I panicked and packed for the ER. Nitin consulted AI and sang the song about the lady who swallowed a fly. I called the after hours pediatrician. Myles thought everyone would be angry at him and blamed Ellie. Ellie was furious that Myles was allowed to sleep in our bed and threatened to eat a penny too. This is a perfect illustration of everyone's role in our family in this season.
