Ways to feel better: the soccer fields at the middle school

One of the (many, which I hope to explore in coming posts) unpopular opinions I have - at least I suppose that is what you’d call this, in that I think a good number of people feel the opposite way - is that I don’t like working at home. Taken a step further, I’d even say that (during the active hours of a regular weekday, anyway) I don’t really like being at home. Maybe it’s helpful to explain it slightly differently: I don’t thrive there. When there is too much solitude, with only my own mind’s hot takes on how everything is going in my life, and in the country, I forget that there’s a whole universe of living going on out there, beyond my front door. Maybe that’s ok. I stick to a to do list and am productive on both the work and home fronts, making my way through tasks and getting a load of laundry done, too. But sometimes I let a frustrating day cascade into a grumpy, or even sad, mood, when talking it out with someone, or just being in some other soul’s presence, would have helped me get some perspective; remember that everything is fine.

I’m an extrovert in the sense that I get my energy from others. That recharging is being around people, whether it’s simply being among them, in a bustling coffee shop for instance, or interacting with them: meeting a good friend and having a deep conversation, or socializing with a whole bunch of people at once.

It’s not that I don’t need time to myself, or that I’m not grateful for the opportunity to work at home a few times a week, which makes our busy family life possible. And it’s not that I don’t get that this at-home situation works well for others. It’s that (over the past few years especially) it has come to my attention that, in order to feel well and inspired and right, it is not ideal for me to spend my days alone in my house. Despite this - for convenience, when I have a lot of meetings, when I just don’t want to pack up my computer and charger and decide where to go - I find myself alone in my house fairly often.

When I emerge to pick up the kids or head to an after-school activity, I’m like: THERE EVERYBODY IS! And no place delivers this powerful antidote, this dose of positivity, like the soccer fields at our middle school, where Aidy’s team is practicing this fall. The parking edges up to a steep hill that leads to the fields beyond, and when you emerge from your car there’s this wide view of all the kids kicking their balls this way and that as they make their way to designated sections of the grass where their coaches and teammates are waiting. There are parents who stand or sit walk nearby, because a few times around the perimeter is a nice way to get some exercise in - and if you’ve got company, a good chat.

What I think when I arrive there is not only, “phew, we made it on time,” although - yes, that - but, “this world is organized and functioning and busy.” I remind myself, once again, to not work at home all day long. And when Aidy is done, all tired and happy, and she decides to kick her ball up the steep hill to our car, which is not a good idea because it inevitably falls back down to the field a million times over, prompting her to run after it and start all over again, I look out at the sky, working its way towards night, and I let her do it anyway.

Back to school announcements

About once a year I go to see a therapist. I began after my father died, and it evolved into this annual “tune up” - that’s how I think of it. Of course, I’d go more if I needed to, but this is what works for me currently. I book the appointment and by the time I get there I’ve usually worked out whatever is ailing me. Still, it’s helpful to talk through the activities that help me feel my best (exercise, writing, good sleep) and whatever the variables are making me feel less so.

The need seems to arise every year around this time: back to school. Getting back into a rhythm after summer’s hazy days, with schedules that are mere suggestion.

It is, about this time, that I get most indignant about all I’m called to do, especially working a hybrid job that is, thankfully, flexible, but also makes it easy for me to be the go-to parent and home coordinator. Take the dog to the vet between meetings. Make yearly pediatrician’s appointments and then do all the follow-up rearranging that allows me to take my children to them on the appointed day months later, when who knows what activities will have been added to the mix. RSVP to birthday invitations. Decide on a dinner plan, oh my god, are we seriously supposed to provide dinner every single day? Surprisingly, managing it has become harder as the kids have gotten older. There are more places all three of them need to be, often at overlapping times, and activities aren’t as easy to outsource. I don’t want to outsource them. We want to be there for all of it.

I think to myself: the opposite of no flexibility shouldn’t mean that one is endlessly flexible. That anything that happens to fall upon any given day should be achievable. I think to myself: women are amazing, they shouldn’t have to be so amazing all the time.

The always-caveats, not-exactly-excuses apply, like how this gender imbalance isn’t news to anyone with similar life circumstances, like how I am married to a person with a demanding onsite job and decidedly less flexibility, who made our son a “kanban board” to help him keep track of school assignments and who turned out garage into a bar and then told me I’d be able to watch the evening news in there with a glass of wine and I was like, “Ok then, nobody knows me better than this.”

And how, because this is a broader cultural issue with a whole set of questions I’m not able to tackle on my own (like, who the hell created this system?) what I do instead is talk it though with my J, and with my friends and once a year with my therapist. I do less big-picture more productivity-focused things too like try to schedule uninterrupted times for work, writing and the minutia of daily life. It’s easier, for instance, to fill out the medical forms for the 800th year in the row (with the same information on all three of them, you guys, let’s make this electronic or something?) in one designated time block, rather than letting the nagging feeling of having to do them drag down an entire day.

I bought myself a really nice paper planner for this academic year because while we keep an digital one, I remember things better when I physically write them down.

In this paper planner I am trying to manifest what I think is one of the most meaningful practices, overriding all the hand-wringing about the rest of it, which is to do the most important things first. And if you cannot fit in the most important things along with the rest then you have to make decisions about how much you actually can fit in your life and ask the most crucial question - what is most important to you? This is something I’m trying to grapple with as we begin the 2025-2026 academic year. I am working to weave it in to the other maxims I live by, including (family, take note, I’m going to say it again) I cannot be asked to make any decisions after 8 pm.

This is why I made time for writing this morning.

And the kids, that’s an easy one. They come first. I don’t mean this in a morally superior way, and believe me when I say I’ve hightailed it out to dinner with friends more than once on frenzied nights, overjoyed to separate myself from the chaos. You know what I mean, though. The kids! It’s a way to prioritize, the only way that makes sense to me. Them over the rest.

Today, Nora started her senior year, Gabe had his first day of high school, and Aidy began sixth, marking her last year at our elementary school. What a doozy. We are looking at colleges, Gabe’s trying cross country, Aidy’s worried about how hard math will be and I’m going to keep it together emotionally, ok? (positive thinking!)

My father used to say to me and my brother - when he was trying to explain financial preparedness or how to make the most of our lives, or whatever - “Let’s say I get hit by a bus tomorrow,” and then he’d outline the principles or plans he had in mind, all casual about it. I’d be like “OH MY GOD DAD, can you not be so dramatic?” I couldn’t believe he could be that settled with his own demise as long as we, his children, had the chance to thrive. I couldn’t see past my own youthful sense of self-interest

To be clear, my dad would relay these little speeches while taking a pause from re-reading some Ralph Waldo Emerson essays, the news on mute, from his chair in the den. He’d bring it up while cutting himself a wedge of good parmesan after an afternoon nap. He was a lover of life, an avid fan of all its glories. He was simply trying to make a point and that point worked best with a “getting hit by a bus” storyline.

I didn’t get that, but I get it now. Now, following my fair-haired mermaid child to some lounge chairs by the pool on her last day of being ten-years-old this August, as she demanded that I “watch her” do the best jump ever, I totally get it. Listening from my bed, half awake, as my oldest and her friends make their way out of her bedroom, laughing, for “senior sunrise,” on the high school football field the Saturday before school began. Telling Gabe that, considering the way his musical tastes are leaning lately - exploding really, the same way I remember discovering music when I was exactly that age - he might enjoy De La Soul.

I get it, though I might not say it the way my dad did, mostly because Aidy would devolve into Shakespeare-tragedy-level histrionics if I ever said anything about getting hit by a bus, I totally get it. And if I stay focused on the feeling, it provides immediate perspective on all those other concerns, you know? Puts it all in place.

Observing them head out on new (last! first! epic!) adventures this school year, I’m oh so content to simply bask in their brightness.

Happy first days, everybody.

I’m crying, too.