The Blessing in Chance Encounters
how the college visits are going plus a bunch of other things
How does October find everyone?
It’s still mid-80s here this week so I’m not quite feeling the sweater-weather vibe yet. BUT! I have settled into the kids being back at school quite nicely. Our September was unusually full (Cape Cod! Chicago! Moulin Rouge! Nate Bargetze! College visits!) which means I’ll be doing literally nothing more than making nachos and watching football/the TSwift-Kelce relationship unfold every weekend for the rest of the year.
So about those college visits…
Here’s the deal. I have a daughter who was born and learned to smile and then turned 4 just a few years ago and then lost her first tooth and learned to swim and started to ride a bike and had buck teeth and then a hampster and soon got braces and started middle school and now, suddenly, here we are, driving hundreds of miles from college to college, listening to Taylor Swift, talking about her future and God’s plan for her life and deciding where to eat for lunch.
My mind cannot actually hold onto all of that at once.
For those who have actual four-year-olds at home, I do remember how long and tiresome those days were. But may I be honest? From this vantage point? It feels painfully fast. (I’m sorry! I’m sorry! But it’s weird and it’s true!)
Also, it’s hard to do a number of back-to-back college visits and not get sucked into the “I didn’t do enough” vortex. From facilitating extra-curricular/volunteer opportunities, to traveling/getting life experience, to saving enough money to pay for the dang thing. There’s just a lot of inherent pressure built into this process, even for someone like me who is, by nature, relatively laid back about such things.
A few days before we left on this college visit trip, a neighbor who happens to have a college freshman was standing in front of my house while her dogs sniffed our grass at the very moment I was leaving to pick a kid up from soccer practice.
“How is she?” I asked about her daughter. (Living her best life, she’d said.)
“How are YOU?” I asked next. She was good.
I then told her we were leaving to do our own little college tour that weekend. And she nodded, the way another mother knows how much is carried in a heart when it comes to these things … all the spoken and unspoken emotions and hopes and fears.
What she said next will stay with me forever.
“I wish I could go back and have the me of today tell the me of last year—which is you right now—one thing,” she said. “I’d tell her: it will all work out.”
I wish I was the me of next year already.
But I’m not.
I’m the me now. The one who cried in the shower last night, just a tad overcome by all that sending a child off to college a year from now entails.
So whether you have an adorable four-year-old or four-month-old or a fourteen-year-old and you’re holding onto some big feelings about this stage or phase or issue you have going on—the one you aren’t sure how to get to the other side of—I’d love to time warp the you of next year to yourself right now for some clarity and reassurance.
But instead, we have the women who’ve gone before. And the voice of my neighbor, encouraging us that somehow, in some way, it will all work out.
Just Some Things:
Writing With Purpose: My next writing workshop starts this coming Tuesday, October 10th. There’s only one spot left! Would LOVE for you to join us!
Micro-Essay Workshop: a 4-week low-time high-impact writing course will start Nov. 6th. Ask me any questions about it. It’s a fun low-pressure course.
I own two of her books but finally consumed Save Me The Plums last month. Ruth Reichel truly satisfies everything I love about food and memoir.
SPEAKING OF THE RIGHT PEOPLE: Exhale Creativity is open for enrollment through Friday, October 6th. A community for creative moms.
YOU WANT TO SUPPORT THE RIGHT PERSON?
Made this easy noodle dinner the kids devoured, this crazy-easy chili for a crowd (or just your own family), and—I’m sorry—did you say coconut rice?
Whoever is doing social media for the National Park Service, I commend you.
To Round Us Out:
Until next time!
Bless your ministry of GIFs 🤍 also, Nadia is amazing and that doesn’t happen all by itself: it’s God and mom and dad and the life you’ve given her and the ways God has created her and how that all miraculously works together. You know this, just reminding you. You’ve done a great job, mama. Love you.
1. As someone with an actual four year old. THANK YOU. I actually really appreciate the reminder that she will be going to college practically next week and gosh darn it I kind of want her to stay four forever. Long live magical girlhood!
2. The memes. God bless you and the memes. The one about the battles especially. I cackled over my lunch. Oh and the emotional support books. Too good.