I feel like I’ve been holding it in all summer.

What it is I’ve been holding in, I’m not exactly sure. My breath? My thoughts? My feelings? You know when a writer holds in all those words for a long time it’s not healthy. Eventually they’re going to find a way out.

Maybe there’s an imbalance of words because I have spent so much of my time off this summer reading. I have devoured at least two dozen books. I attended the national gathering of Unitarian Universalists and absorbed ideas and songs and Pittsburgh and ate a lot of food and had a lot of conversations. I’ve returned to church and gotten back up on the chancel as a worship associate and a speaker. I’ve made new friends. I’ve eaten a lot of lunches and taken miles of walks with old friends. I’ve been rebuilding my soccer team–now known as Athena’s Arsenal! I am the only player who remains from the original Ice & Ibuprofen squad that made our debut in 2016. I&I merged last year with a team called Far Gone and we’ve had to recruit a lot of folks to build up our roster. In choosing our new name, someone suggested Tottenham Hotties (a riff on the Premiership team Tottenham Hotspurs) and I countered with Tottenham Hot Flashes, but that didn’t win. Perhaps it’s just a reflection of my personal situation. It turns out I am still not really any good at soccer and I’m not sure why I am playing other than to prove to myself that I can and to give myself the gift of two hours a week when I am not thinking about anything else even if I have to run around in circles while that happens. I am organizing an event through church called QA2: Queer or Questioning, Awareness and Acceptance to provide LGBTQIA+ kids and families with an opportunity to make connections and find resources and support. I’m still trying to teach myself to read tarot. What little I have learned so far has offered insights that given me pause and steered me in new directions with surprising confidence.

I’ve been watching my kids grow up before my eyes. It’s like time-lapse photography of their emotional maturity and ability to navigate the world. Niki can bake on their own from start to finish now after a week at baking camp. At the back-to-school open house, they brought cookies they made and gave them out to all the teachers and staff. At film camp they made a silent film–a dark and modern twist on Hansel and Gretel in which they played Gretel. They discovered a previously unknown talent for an interest in being an emcee after performing that role at the end-of-camp presentation at two different camps. They’ve made all kinds of friends at all these camps and are now immersed in various group chats and FaceTime calls. Niki earned their blue solid belt in martial arts after a long stint as a green solid and a final burst of energy and dedication that enabled them to move up. We’ve attended so many martial arts growth ceremonies and they never fail to move me to tears. Always and especially when there are those kids who struggle to break their boards long after their peers have had their new belts tied on by their instructors, I cheer the hardest. We did a bit of rearranging of their room this summer, taking down drawings they’d made during the pandemic (signed with their old name) and hanging photos of them with animals from our trip to the Houston Zoo, and pride posters, and a picture of Megan Rapinoe with the slogan “Be Proud.” And they are. They own their identity and their uniqueness 100% and I am there for it.

Zoe spent a month away from us at Camp Friendship, her home away from home. This was her eighth and final summer as a camper, and her plan is to return next year as a counselor. I remember when she was little and in martial arts and we’d be at the growth ceremony and I would ask her if she could imagine being a black belt, and for a long time she would shake her head, wide-eyed and in awe, and say no. Until one day she nodded and said yes. It’s been the same way at camp. We always asked her if she would be a counselor some day and she couldn’t see herself having that kind of responsibility, until suddenly she could. She said this summer as a camper, she imagined everything she did as if through a counselor’s eyes, and thought about what it would be like to lead little kids in the activities that she has loved learning so much herself. The first week of camp this year, she didn’t know many campers or counselors, as several of her favorite counselors had moved on to other jobs, and many of her camper friends had aged out. She wrote us saying she was homesick, but didn’t let it keep her from making the most of camp life. As more familiar faces arrived each week and she cultivated the relationships with folks she had just met, everything fell into place, as it always does. The camp has a system where parents can write emails through the parent portal and camp will print them out and give them to the campers, and campers can handwrite messages back and camp will scan them and email them to us. It’s much quicker than snail mail but eliminates the need for campers to have their phones with them at camp (which is one of my and Zoe’s favorite things about camp). I loved having the opportunity to update Zoe on the goings on of life at home (mostly boring, without her!) and hear from her about developments at camp. I wish we had some way of continuing that correspondence at home, even though we’re both in the same house. That’s one reason that I am so happy to be taking road trips with her to visit colleges. We’ve toured a bunch of colleges in Maryland and Pennsylvania and New England so far and have several more up and down the east coast on the calendar for this fall and next spring. I love claiming this time in the car with her, to listen to music and books and talk about anything and everything, and notice weird signs and unusual sights along the way, and stop at little bookstores and find cute coffeeshops with resident cats.

This fall, Niki will practice walking to and from school on their own. We’re going to teach them how to take the bus. Zoe is so close to finishing the requirements to earn her driver’s license. Then she will be given a vintage minivan by her grandparents and will be set loose on the world. We’ve discussed curfews and she has gainful employment. This morning at church it gave me so much joy to watch these four-year-old girls dancing around at the front of the sanctuary during the service. I love four-year-olds. But I don’t wish my kids were younger. Or older. I am so excited to be with them at this exact moment in their lives, where they are learning so much about themselves and about the world. Sometimes, that means seeing how people can be awful and the world is kind of a mess. But sometimes we get to fill it with cookies and music and hugs and laughter and forget about the rest of it for a while.

So I will take in a breath and remember to fully and deeply exhale. All the way from my belly up out into the world. I will take it all it, and release. Because I have to let it go so I can take another breath.