my new year's resolution was to spend more time alone with my kid. i meant the coffee shop on sundays before his swimming lesson, i meant the b45 back from trader joe's. instead we've been spending long weekends together, broken up only by arguments about whether it's naptime or not and calls from lauren on the other side of the country. on saturday i lost the debate about naptime -- his argument was, frankly, stronger and more well-reasoned -- and we trekked out to the playground, where i thought he might do laps of his favorite equipment, but instead he climbed onto the bench beside me, and we shared a bottle of cold water in the hot sun, quiet except for when he'd tell me it was my turn and hold it up to my lips, his soft arms high above his head. most of talking to a toddler is performance for his benefit: i, after all, already know what most of the things i see are called and why that person might not have waited for the light to change before crossing the street and whether the moon is still up in the sky even if we can't see it. but this shared, comfortable silence was something else, something shocking and lovely and new and terrifying. i didn't ruin it by asking what he was thinking, but i wanted to more than anything.

i have spent four months talking to my mortgage broker every single week. hello norman, i say on mondays, let's talk about my loan again. i understand it but i am afraid of it. it is the single biggest promise i have made to anyone who i do not also kiss. this morning, less than one week after closing, i got a call from the bank. well, i thought to myself, this is it. i did not understand the loan. they are going to take back my home. i deserve this for making such a comically large promise.

turns out it was just an automated call to say "hi :') we're your bank :') we love you :') welcome to your loan :')"

we saw suffs on broadway last night and i wept in the dark with my hands covering my face, as suddenly as if i'd been punctured. it rained all day, leaving times square slick white bright, its own reflection running down seventh avenue under my boots, and i walked back to the train feeling displaced in time. i always feel a little bit like that in april, when the sky gets closer and laundry-scented steam leaks from the bottom of heavy apartment buildings in brooklyn, the way it did when i moved here nine springs ago, when i walked the blooming streets for the first time and then walked right into the rest of my life, faster than anyone could have expected. what have i done with all of this time? lately therapy has been less like progress and more like unfurling my ribcage and walking around like that for the rest of the week. so it felt good to weep in the theatre. it felt more acceptable than saying that things are hard, that there is so much out of my control, that i want to be alone in iowa city in the summer of 2014 for just a few hours but can't because that's impossible and also because i have to move my winter coat into the storage unit and review some fundraising emails and buy orzo for dinner. because i no longer travel light. because these are the duties i've taken on in exchange for kneeling down and accepting my son's hug each morning at drop off before he steps through the gate, his small mittens still tucked into my pocket.

i have to admit something to you guys: i believe every compliment i hear about myself. i take it absolutely at face value. i can't tell you how much better it makes my life to just assume that people in my life aren't crafting elaborate lies about enjoying my company, my outfit, a joke i made for their benefit.

i mean this more than anything i have ever said: i do not know how people parented before they could google a problem and scroll through the results until they got to the right combination of situation + parenting style. "oh they asked their friends" no, that's not a wide enough sample size. i'm looking for an exact match. "i've been down here before and i know the way out and i wrote each individual step down in an internet forum out of the generosity of the human spirit." -- aaron sorkin's characters, if he had done any actual parenting instead of just making movies about women with daddy issues.

lauren took our toddler in for bedtime last night while i started dinner, and when he ran out for one last hug -- or because he'll do anything not to get in his crib, potato potato -- he climbed up onto his step stool to look more closely at the instant pot, which was softly releasing steam. the year before last, when he first started trying to imitate language, i came running out of the nursery to tell lauren that he'd started to make actual sounds, little syllables and nothings. what did it sound like? she asked, and i laughed, it sounded like a little tiny baby voice trying to say hi. now he uses that little tiny baby voice to say the steam is hot and what are you cooking? and i just need to look for one more minute and i think: have you been in there the whole time?

today, leaning over a long table at a brewery in a strange city, a man told me that he recently moved across the country by himself for no reason other than he wasn't ready to spend the rest of his life in missouri. that's incredible, i kept saying, so much so that when i finally remembered that i, too, have packed up my entire life and moved to a city where my mother didn't live, we both laughed. at twenty one i brought two suitcases and my college sort-of-girlfriend on a plane to dc. the suitcases stayed with me; the girl did not. i was sharper around the edges in every way. i wore smaller dresses and had more teeth. now i weep when the flower girl at my college roommate's wedding kneels down in the middle of the worn-rug aisle, petals crushed beneath her small knees, and demands to be retrieved by her mother. i kiss the father of the bride's ruddy cheek even when he asks where my husband is. dad, his daughter says, mortified, she has a wife. i don't mind, just like i don't begrudge my younger self her thinner body, her faster jokes, her leisure time. and i don't feel an ounce of jealousy when i watch my college roommate, sparkling and beautiful, spin under the lights with her brand-new husband. life is not always as long as it should be. it is a gift to have old friends. it is a blessing to have even the hard times.

in the spirit of lily cleaning her bathroom for the first time i must tell you that for the first time in my entire adult life i am cooking and managing the contents of our pantry and fridge. in my defense i got snapped up by a beautiful cradle robber who could cook when i was a 22 year old infant and so for nearly a decade now i have relied on her to do things like “know whether an onion goes in the fridge” and “make breakfast” like the kitchen equivalent of a pillow princess. but as with most of the things in my life — new york, running, talking to a toddler every single day — it continues to be true that there is no zealot like a convert. i can’t wait to use the rest of this cabbage before it goes bad. i feel immense pleasure having put every night’s dinner plan on our shared google calendar. and yes, i like knowing that this is something i do to make her life easier when life is so very hard. it’s love in a new form. we grow and grow and grow.

i am having a genuinely wonderful time but i do occasionally get overwhelmed when we spend a week at lauren's parents' place because between no daycare + cobbling together a work day + family time + holiday celebrations, it's hard to do anything alone. not that it wouldn't be permitted! but it slides down the priority pyramid when there are people who love us and want to sit with sock feet up on the ottoman watching movies and eating popcorn and exchanging wrapped books. this used to drive me crazy, by which i mean make me rather prickly and noxious to be around. luckily we get older & we see our therapists & we develop a stamina for togetherness that other people seem to come by naturally. but it crops up for a few minutes here and there, mostly after baby bedtime when the performance of dinnerbathbookssongs has come to a frantic finish, and i sneak away to read a book on my phone or more realistically look at tweets. anyway lauren just came by to gift me, unasked, some extra alone time while she went to pick up dinner, and then her mom came by to reveal that the entire gang had colluded to get me to a boutique exercise class tomorrow morning before another day of merriment & excel spreadsheets & wrangling a toddler whose schedule becomes more precarious each day he's not in daycare. even mr potter gets wished a merry christmas at the end of the movie.

a little story

it is a tuesday morning. my work phone rings; when i pick up, a man with a thick brooklyn accent says "it's sal. can you tell the girl scouts that i don't have a robot?" "yes," i say, because this is a relevant piece of information for me. "thanks, sal."

last night, walking home, i stood waiting in the cold for the light to change. across the street was the coffee shop where the girl with sleeping beauty hair gives our toddler two (2) macarons unprompted every single time we come in. she was sweeping up and her manager was wiping down tables and they were both dancing, not looking at each other even, but dancing nonetheless in a way that made me feel sure they were each aware of everything the other was doing. it was dark outside and bright in there, the kind of warm honeyed light that you usually only see in your own front window at the end of a long day. a wreath on the heavy glass front doors, ribbon along the windowsills. my own family waited for me down the block. the walk signal came on, and i went home.

in july, my therapist had me put a note in my phone that reads "just because i feel something doesn’t mean it’s true. historically, i get these moments wrong." i am my own favorite person. more than anything as a parent of a little kid, i miss spending time by myself that doesn't feel clawed from a too-packed schedule. i miss wandering down the block wondering what i think about this or that. but i digress: i forget, sometimes, that i can't trust myself. where other people have instinct, i have only panic. my gut is almost always comically off-base. historically, as in a frantic voicemail i left lauren when she was on book tour many years ago, demanding her attention. historically, as in the first week of the baby's life, when i paced up and down the hospital halls in fear that his biological father would come and take him from me. what am i trying to say? that things are hard, but i've been wrong about how hard before, and i suppose i could be now, too.

the toddler has discovered the moon. "the moon is high up," he says on the walk home from a birthday party, a yellow woolen mitten on each hand. "the moon is bright," he says in the back seat of an uber, the light casting a little shadow on his perfect cheeks. a few days ago, eating the dinner i had rushed home to arrange for him into charmingly mismatched bowls, he tilted his head and looked out the window before saying "the moon is outside my house!" as if it was a miracle, which it is. lauren put on moon river--a song he was hearing for the first time, another miracle--and we all sat quietly while it played. when i tell people that parenthood is good, this is what i am mostly talking about. the moon is outside my house, and inside my house, sitting on my lap with his hand tucked into the collar of my sweater to fidget with my necklace, is a little someone with my wife's smile who wants me to remember that.

last year, twenty three miles into the new york city marathon, lauren gently took my hand and asked "do you think you can dig deep and see how beautiful new york looks right now?" "no," i wept, as i had been weeping for hours. i had wanted to feel strong, and instead i felt weak. i was in so much pain, and i was so disappointed, and if she hadn't stopped her own race and waited for me on the pulaski bridge, i'm not sure i would have gotten that far, even. "okay," she said, because she is the most generous woman in the world, and on we went. she didn't leave my side until the finish line was in sight. when i told this story to my therapist, we both cried.

and then: last night, coming down that exact stretch of fifth avenue, i looked up to see the clear yellow light of fall catching in the trees, leaves floating down to the darkening street where thousands of strangers lined up to shout my name & hold out careful cups of water or mandarin slices & play the songs they love the most aloud. lauren was out there again, just about to cross the finish line. lily and claire and my mom and my beautiful son were waiting to see me just up ahead. miriam, who had finished hours earlier, was still there with taylor, wrapped in her poncho. the marathon is, frankly, stupid; it's hard and grueling and has no purpose outside of the human heart. but it's also true that there is no more beautiful city than new york city on marathon day. the trains running over the bridges and the birds sweeping back and forth above you and the whole city out there with their hearts beating, i'm here i'm here i'm here you're not alone. and the thing i am most proud of is that i didn't fail to see that this year. i dug deep, and i let the sentimental part of me float to the surface, and -- look, i know this sounds crazy, but i kind of feel like i won.

look. i would love to be wrong here. but taylor swift is the straightest woman who has ever lived. the ur-heterosexual.

(29, 28, 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21)

it was my birthday over the weekend. usually i would have taken the opportunity to add another record to this little time capsule of a blog, but it felt gruesome to do so, frankly, in light of everything.

but i am not an influencer, and you are smart enough to know that just because i am writing a little birthday post does not mean that i do not care about a hospital being bombed. so:

at 30, i ran a marathon, and i started to shake the cobwebs of new parenthood from my mind, and i loved our sweet heartstrong toddler as well and as thoroughly as i could. i kissed my wife in the most beautiful park in paris, and i held her hand on a sad day in brooklyn. i did my best to call my friends. i sat confidently in the office of the president of my organization and shared my opinion even though i had not been asked for it. i subscribed to a streaming service that exclusively hosts formula one races. i continued to feel complicated about being a non-biological parent. i went back to the white house. i daydreamed about buying a bungalow in the rockaways, about finishing my romance novel, about having a second child or not. i assumed, as i always do, that the rest of my life stretches long ahead of me, the last room not visible from this one. i hope that i am right.

it is marathon season again and the girls are all getting tired. lily has a cold, claire is grumpy, i hurt my back at toddler soccer. lauren keeps insisting that she will be on the sidelines next year, and spenser -- who is one of the girls in spirit -- tells me that his beautiful curly-haired son lost it when he realized he would not be invited on his dad's sixteen-mile run. the weather has turned but not in the way that we wanted it to, not quite yet. but by some miracle we have all entered into this contract with each other: i will be confident when you are doubtful, and you will do the same. on sunday mornings, i push the stroller half a mile to the parent-and-me swim lesson, feeling my sore legs stretch, and i count the-girls-and-spenser in my mind. they are headed across the bridge, or through the park, or down to the beach to put their tired feet in the atlantic. they are some of them together, meeting on front stoops and cataloging small hurts and long miles. while i catch a small, confident swimmer in my arms over and over, they will all wind their ways home, and we will start anew tomorrow.