Two nights ago, after the last game of the middle school volleyball season - a sport we knew virtually nothing about until the beginning of this academic year - Aidy sat down on our bedroom floor and lamented that it was over, and went on to list what’s now become a growing list of lamentations: that the summer was long gone, that Nora lives in Ohio, that she’s done with elementary school and, now, volleyball.

She is emotional in ways that make sense to me for a child who so happens to be so in tune with her own and everyone else’s emotions (which she is) and in ways that I that surprise me; ways that surpass her age and expected maturity level. Like she’s seeing the world how an old woman might, with all the joy and melancholy that comes with truly knowing how brief and beautiful it is. This one life.

And not to gloss over Aidy’s particular magic but the truth is she is magical, you know, often. How we are all the way we are on a regular basis. And on this particular night I had just gotten into bed after a very long, difficult day of work. I was settled with the latest in the series of fairy books I have unexpectedly become obsessed with (thank you, Shanna!) and thinking that my parenting was over for the day. Not that I, instead, was going to have to coach my youngest through an adolescent crisis.

Which brings me to the point I want to try to make this morning - succinctly if I can, and I never really can - sitting here with my coffee in a quiet house and feeling this particular point so deeply, especially now, as the days turn colder and our lives turn more inward.

It’s something I’ve written about more than once (but with over 20 years of these posts, can’t remember quite when) and that’s the choice between what is easier, and what is more difficult. How we get this wrong a lot.

I was talking to Nora about this very issue the other day on the phone, as we chatted about habits, how a bad one (scrolling our phones incessantly) can lead to another (my mindlessly eating really a lot of cookies leftover from the PTSA bake sale, which happened to be conveniently stored in my car, instead of doing what I should have done, which is finding myself a snack when I needed one; to be abundantly clear - you should eat as many cookies as you want, but I think we all can agree there is a point where the pleasure becomes pain…with social media and with the treats, too).

How those less ideal choices - skipping the workout; staying in our sweatpants that aren’t even the super comfortable ones because you also are very behind on the laundry; using AI instead of writing it yourself; missing the night out with friends when you could have talked through these very stresses - feels easier.

Less energy, more “comfortable,” but not really. Verses more energy…and feeling more energetic.

And how this pertains to bigger things too: not having the hard personal conversation; not having the hard professional one; stalling on buckling down and making the potentially life-changing decision. Not to get all high and mighty, but failing to put down the distractions and look around and feel it all.

Seems easier. But, in fact, is not. That’s the harder, lesser life. The smaller, cursory choice.

Which brings me back to Aidy, sitting on my bedroom floor, and me, wanting so badly to be done with thinking and talking, fading fast into that part of the night where I am only capable of reading a few pages, then watching five minutes of the “Slow Horses” episode I’ve been trying to finish for the past week (sorry, J) before I can’t fight it anymore and fall asleep.

But trying to ward off this 12-year-old, all glassy-eyed and big hearted, that was the more difficult choice. So I opened up, asked her to say more, and, dear god, she got into the bed. Her father told her it was going to be ok, then her near tears became summersaults. We eventually, gently, told her to please “get out” and go to sleep. Dealing with the situation was obviously the right choice. But also, it was easier than evading it.

Just one more example. Maisie, poor thing, has been wondering what the everliving hell is up. With one child - gone! And the youngest one now taking a bus to some middle school she can’t even see, when she and I walked her to the school down the road nearly every day for seven years. She stands at the front door in the mornings waiting for everything to go back to the way it was, which is undoubtedly tragic. So I decided that Aidy and I could start walking to her at the bus stop. At 7 am.

7 am! When, otherwise I could be pouring myself a little more coffee, both kids out the door, embracing the quiet. Easier, that’s what I think to myself.

This morning, though, walking back from the bus stop, Maisie’s happy’s trot by my side proof that routine is crucial to a joyful life (is what she would say, if she could speak), I looked at the rainbow of fall-colored trees along the street perpendicular to our own, and how the moon was still up, challenging the early morning slant of sun. I asked myself: could there be a better start to the day than this? How could anything be simpler?