Spring. I was all, "I want to enjoy what time we have left." I'd been offered summer school. Ruth was dying. I started taking Zoloft.
Summer. We lose Ruth, then the next month, Randy's father Grandpa Bob. And then, from a virulent cancer, Mia's guinea pig, Little Prince.
Fall. Going back to school is a blessing for all of us. Mia's doing well with supportive teachers. We start taking her on college visits. Nora is thriving as a high school freshman and cheerleader. I'm working with a new team, and studying Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond.
Niles North American Lit/ U.S. History field trip to the Writers Museum, the Field and the DuSable Museum of African-American History.
That Sunday felt like a last chance, the last temperate day before winter. The surf was so loud at Gilson Beach I could hear it from the parking lot but I never considered going to the placid Skokie lagoons instead. Once I got past the breaking waves, I thought I could handle the swells, no problem. I launched and I was able to keep the kayak — her name is Cinnamon Bark— perpendicular to the surf but I couldn’t get the timing right and the waves were crashing on top of us and starting to fill up the boat. There was only time to wish that I’d brought something to bail out water (I never do) and to remember flashes of capsize scenes from Castaway and Moana. And then I was in the trough and a cresting wave was rising up over my head. The feeling was less fear than a sick dread. The wave broke over us and I turned around. No way to get past them. In the way in, I tipped over. I lost my paddle, my flip-flops, my phone and my dignity.
