idontbelieveingrammar

Usually, this annual “real” Christmas letter starts with the premise of sharing the good and the bad rather than just the traditional picture-perfect Christmas letters we used to get in the mail. That is probably unnecessary this year. Frankly, I can’t remember a single thing before March. We went on a trip at the beginning of Spring Break and I feel like I fell down some kind of rabbit hole and returned to a whole new world. One that has been hard to escape.  We skied. It was perfect. And then we came home. There was no toilet paper. I waited for my phone to ring.  For schools to close for two weeks. I worked in pajama pants. I checked the numbers daily. I was not worried.  And then I was.  Two weeks turned into the rest of the school year. The cities literally burned. The death counts climbed. But in some weird numbness, we watched it all happen from the comfort of our living room. With food that was delivered and left by the door. I spent more time in online meeti...

No one I know that works in education right now is sleeping. Like most people, I have tackled some hard things in the last several years. I have had brain surgery. I have a chronic pain condition that is better now, but likely to return. My father had cancer. I finished my doctorate. It’s been a while, but I have run several half marathons.  My track record says that I can do hard things and I just keep telling myself that. Our hard things are different, but they often make us cry, question ourselves, and want to quit.  Right now, on the cusp of a new school year….it feels the exact same.  It is August, usually, a time mixed with exhaustion and eagerness, now feels as hard as a hole in my head, defending my dissertation and running 13 miles. Only this time no one is showing up with a casserole, a high five, or a cup of coffee. I look around and my peers all seem to be feeling the same. That is somehow encouraging -- because the only way I know how to get through this is t...

My family usually sat in the same place. A hard wooden pew near the back on the left-hand side. My mom made me wear a dress, wrangle myself into pantyhose and wear nice shoes (not Keds). We would go to Sunday school. The kids would wait in hallways for our parents' class to end. Hoping that there would be donuts leftover. More often than not, we skipped “big church” visited family and picked up Church’s fried chicken on our way home. Church was pews, pipe organs, air hockey in the youth building, polite conversations and boxes of chicken. At summer camp. Church was at the top of what felt like the highest hill in Hill country. We sat on dusty stone benches in our sweaty Sunday whites. Someone strummed a guitar and we all sang along. Church was aching legs, BBQ down by the river and clumsy chords. In college I made it to church on Sundays about half of time. Occasionally hungover. Always tired. I would still find a dress but had long ditched the hose. We shopped around but my fa...

One of my favorite traditions for over a  decade has been to sit down and try to write a REAL Christmas letter.  Not just the highlights, but a few honest moments as well. It started as a joke with one of my friends, thinking how refreshing it be for people to share more than just their perfect lives that we are used to seeing on Facebook and Instagram. It would be way more truthful and a whole lot more entertaining. Last year was full of big and new things. This year has been mostly settling into them. Boring, but only in the best ways. It has been hard to write and wrap up my year because in some ways I feel like I don’t have much to say. Over the last year I have read, literally, hundreds of books but struggled to find my own words. Owen has started high school. High school. I feel like I have blinked and this tiny blond toddler has turned teen with a deep voice and shaggy greasy hair. Something magical happened between 8th grade and 9th grade because he turns in his...

One of my favorite traditions for a decade has been to sit down and try to write a REAL Christmas letter.  Not just the highlights, but a few honest moments as well. It started as a joke with one of my friends, thinking how refreshing it be for people to share more than just their perfect lives that we are used to seeing on Facebook and Instagram. It would be way more truthful and a whole lot more entertaining. Last new year, I had a friend ask me to come up with a word for 2018. I joked that my word was just going to be “done”. I was partly kidding, partly serious. The year ahead seemed daunting rather than full of promise and resolutions.  I had so many things to finish in the upcoming year that I needed to be “done” with: my degree, my job and my thirties. A few weeks later, my friend showed up with one of those string bracelets with the metal word “done” hammered in the middle. I wore it often, especially in those home stretches. Not taking it off until I had my last...