School is wrapping up for children of all ages in New York. I have a week and a day until my child’s high school graduation. All year long, as I stumble out of my apartment in the morning to walk Rocky, I see streams of families rushing along; I live on a street where there is an elementary as well as a middle school, and across the street, a nursery school, and just a block away, a much larger elementary school. On weekday mornings, I simply can’t avoid the school children and it surprises me how much I enjoy this ritual, crotchety woman that I am. I am, I suppose, also so very sentimental and I see myself, my parenthood, the last fourteen years of school mornings, in so many of these children with their dawdling adults. The older children walk at a lumbering pace, often their heads bent, staring at their phones, maybe playing a game or scrolling through their feeds, alone mostly, their parents no longer needing to walk their middle school aged child to their day long holding pen. The younger children are of course with their parents, some holding hands, some trying to catch up to their distracted mothers and fathers, some chattering away. The expressions on the adults range from bemused to annoyed; all emotions familiar to me, having once been in the younger-child trenches, on occasion considering that half hour of my day an imposition, but always rising to that occasion, of bringing my daughter to school, hand in my mine, until she entered middle school. I look at the families, in awe.  They’re so fortunate to still have these moments together. Of having this morning routine, this half hour of traveling together, of being with each other. As school winds down, I will miss bumping into all these strangers on my morning prelude with Rocky and I will most certainly  miss the sweet sounds of oodles of children’s voices, that soundtrack to my early morning days.

Gayle King: “You can talk about racial inequality in this country and still love the country.”

Channing Dungey: “We have to be what we want to see in our future generations. The world is not the kindest, but I choose kindness…I’m asking you to lead by example. Let the future generation see how they should behave in the face of cruelty and adversity…as the one and only Michelle Obama memorably said, ‘When they go low, we go high’.”

Tiffany Haddish: “And then I want to buy two streets that intersect, Tiffany and Haddish, and I’m gonna build a big youth center, a mental health center, I might do some transitional housing, too. But I’m gonna own it. And I’m gonna have music and all the other stuff they’re taking out of schools. Right now, my mind’s on one street, but it might be in every city, every metropolis, and it might turn into a big thing. It’s gonna be amazing.”

Mary P. Shriver: “I chameleoned to every situation. I’m very good at compartmentalizing.”

Juggle Momhood and Workhood.

Ode to Auntiehood.

I pay a lot of attention to to articles like this about dementia. My biological grandparents did not face it, but I know it doesn’t mean that someone in my life right now may not have to face it when we’re all a little bit older.

Sex stuff.

And now have a laugh with Kathy Griffin.