It’s been a long month. Not in the “Oh, dear Lord, why can’t school be year-round?!!” way, but more in the “There is so much to be done and it feels like once school starts, we lose a lot of the control of our time and hand it over to school and to activities and to work” way.  All these other parts of our lives are lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce and reintroduce a constant state of immediacy and urgency that we have sloughed off over the summer.

I wanted more tender moments and long days at the pool. We had some small moments, which matter just as much, and the weather just didn’t seem to get hot enough for the pool to seem a relief. We vacationed and played, we said yes to the kids’ requests as much as we could (certainly much more than we do…