Woke up to snow again this morning. Even though an April snowstorm in Maine is a routine occurrence, with everything else going on right now it feels like a big kick in the pants. It will be gone soon enough, but my bones are ready for sunshine.

I’ve had tons of stuff on my mind this week. First, a former classmate of mine, Son, wrote a memoir. Aside from being bothered by the fact that I know people old enough to write memoirs, it gave me SO much food for thought. He came to the US from Vietnam as a small child, narrowly missing the fall of Saigon. My dad did two tours of duty in Vietnam, so that is a topic that will always interest me. Son wound up in the foster care system here in Maine, which also is a topic that will always interest me. Hearing (because I listened to the audio version on Audible, because that’s about the only way I can find time to “read” these days) his stories about our elementary school days made me laugh until I cried. I recently had lunch with two other childhood friends, one of whom I had not seen in 30+ years and the other I had not seen in 20. Whether it is getting older or having young kids, I find there is a certain poignancy to spending time with these people who knew me when I was a little kid. They have changed, and I’m sure I have too despite usually feeling much, much younger in my head. Finally, Son is a musician and I’m itching to get my guitar again, even though I have zero time and a million other more pressing things. (Laundry. Always the g-d laundry.)

Yesterday I went to a foster care / adoptive families conference and even though I missed the opening speaker, the breakout sessions I attended gave me a lot to think about. Mostly my thoughts are (obviously) from the perspective of being an adoptive and foster parent, but the sessions also made me think about some of the kiddos I’ve met over the past few weeks at my girls’ school, where I have been substitute teaching a little bit. “Teaching” is a stretch, as I’ve mostly been in PreK and Kindergarten classes and it’s more about making sure they don’t hurt each other during recess and stay on their mat during rest time…but being in a formal school setting after all these years has made me think a lot about our education system. Thoughts are still swirling, but I’m looking forward to learning more about Trust Based Relational Intervention (TBRI). I only got an introductory overview yesterday, but it feels like it might be a good tool at home (and maybe at school too).

Finally, after finishing Son’s audio book I moved on to Maggie Smith’s book Dear Writer. A couple of years ago I had a friend who was going through a divorce and she raved about Smith’s book “You Could Make This Place Beautiful”, which I loved in the way I loved Molly Wizenberg’s book “The Fixed Stars” — I’m neither divorcing or gay, but the writing is beautiful and I find I learn so much about myself through reading about other women’s struggles with life in general, not to mention being a parent and trying to work. Maggie Smith is first a poet, and I think Molly Wizenberg may have started out writing poetry in school? Maybe that’s why their prose is so poetic at times.

“Dear Writer” is a book to creatives, mostly writers but others would probably relate to it as well. I’m only a couple of chapters in, but I love anything that starts out with acknowledging that most creative advice out there is completely impossible for working mothers to adhere to. A few nights ago I had a raging case of insomnia and found myself reading through old posts on here, well before marriage and children, and I marveled at who that writer was. THIS writer is currently sitting at a desk with sewing tools and a half-cut out quilt on top of it, while the husband is downstairs trying to get the baby to nap. One daughter is on her tablet and the other one, who managed to lose her own tablet somewhere in the house, is demanding use of my laptop to watch Bluey. And my stomach is rumbling, making me realize I’ve had nothing but coffee this morning. Time for lunch, I think…