After an extraordinary summer, we're back to the everyday. But we've grown.
The kid is finally back in school; a big third-grader who keeps surprising me at the dinner table with sass and insightful questions. I'm back to rotating my WFH perch along with the day's light and humidity. Back to the WhatsApp thread reporting out pre-war rental building woes. Back to dodging inattentive drivers veering into bike lanes. Back to constantly refreshing the Park Slope Food Coop shift calendar so that I can restock on nutritional yeast. Back to coin-operated laundry (when it works).
It feels good to be back home in the routine.
The kid who started the summer at Sesame Place is not the same kid who returned Labor Day weekend from the Catskills. Making note that this summer was the first time bedtime stories looked like us reading on our own in adjacent twin beds. When I woke up hours later, our friends had darkened the rest of the rental house, but the reading lights above our heads still burned. And there my kid was curled up under the covers, gently snoring, nose tucked in her book. She delighted in informing me over breakfast that I fell asleep first.
The kid's brain explodes in front of my eyes. And in her eyes—and on her face—I watch her heart grow. At drop-off on the first day of school, I witnessed her process two friends running off without her. I watched her track them, breathe in deeply, tuck her fingers under her backpack straps, and turn to bravely walk over to her new teacher.
That same night the kid caught me self-editing hard emotions, utilizing a proxy for something painful. "Mom, keep me posted on Ohio," she heard me say to her grandmother on speaker. After we hung up she poked a hole through the shelter I haphazardly erected: "Why did you say it that way, Dad? Why didn't you ask Moma to let you know how her brother is doing? You already told me he was sick." What proceeded was a long, remarkable bedtime conversation about being present when people are dying and what happens when one person isn't able to be by their loved one's side. The kid then echoed back to me the most important lesson: it is important to talk about big feelings. "Especially for artists," she added.
This is also the summer that my kid started introducing me to new pop music. More than once she came home requesting songs she heard on the summer camp bus. I still don't know, nor care to remember, the mind-numbing dance earworm with apparently only two lyrics that she repeated ad nauseam in the bathtub. Curse those camp counselors; the OG influencers!
It is a well-worn cliché that parents don’t appreciate their kid’s music, but I feel quite the opposite. As much as I loathe the requests for the shockingly still-popular Blue (Da Ba Dee), I am eager to learn about the world through her ears. If making playlists is one of my preferred love languages, why wouldn’t I want to share music and lyrics with her?
One memorable afternoon, on our way to an upstate skate park, the kid popped into the back of the car with her cousin and requested Miley Cyrus' Flowers. I silently said a prayer of gratitude that I (generally) appreciate her taste. (Or is she mirroring mine?) As the song neared the end, the kid asked to start back at the beginning so she could understand what the song was all about. Her cousin jumped in, "It's just about singing and being famous." My child, who can sing along to Sondheim, knew better. I tried to quickly explain that while many songs are about love just as many (more?) are about what happens when your heart breaks. I was mid-way through my mini-lecture on independence and self-reliance when I was quickly cut off by her cousin requesting a change to Wrecking Ball. Everyone’s love language is different.
Next up: "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" — on sharing music with my parents
🎉
Happy (Belated) Publish Day to my friend Jenny Laden!
Her beautiful, visual YA novel This Terrible True Thing weaves together diary entries, drawings, poems, and prose to give a first-person perspective of being the daughter of a gay dad getting sick from AIDS complications at the dawn of the 90s.
A bunch of us kids-of-queers (aka COLAGErs) gathered to celebrate—we all feel a particularly urgent responsibility for carrying on the stories of our mothers and fathers. Never forget the folks who fought for our collective liberation.
Fun bonus! All of the chapters of Jenny’s book are song titles and there is a corresponding time-capsule playlist.
🙏
Thank you, Rose, Jean, and the rest of the Unstuck 2023 writing retreat cohort for encouraging each other to just keep writing…
Stay awhile, stay awhile with me…
xx Kyle
P.S. 👏👏 The Guardian named Draw Together with WendyMac one of the top 33 Substack newsletters to subscribe to. Come draw with us!
Dear Kyle,
Once again, your heart and your writing thoroughly engage me. And your delightful sharing of the wonders of parenting nurture me.
I am so looking forward to seeing you this week!!
Travel safely!!
🙏❤️🙏❤️🙏❤️🙏❤️
Moma