{thanksfully: 7}

Today, I am grateful for my youngest sibs, my nieces and nephews, who, like my students, gave me a shadow of the experience of parenting: watching someone grow past the expectations everyone has had for them. My niece just received a richly-deserved promotion to a senior supervisory position. After the dysfunctional family-owned business, where her boss’s mother routinely screamed at her boss over design decisions, after the boss who asked her out, repeatedly, and hung over her desk and stared when she wouldn’t date him, her current job, where she’s seen, valued, and appreciated must be a relief. It’s been a long, grueling march – but her end goal is finally in sight.

the long game

moving the tassel
signals commencement. we cry,
the future is now!
more truthful: futures exist
endurance is the new “now”