A good year

A year ago today we left Colorado Springs after an all-nighter packing, a teary dawn farewell to the mountain trails, a last day at daycare and daycamp, and smoke billowing in the rearview mirror as we drove northeast from the wildfires and from Air Force One, which was touching down to survey disaster. At the time it felt like we were fleeing everything, with little sense of what lay ahead. Tom had no job, we'd never seen our apartment, we didn't know the area, and we weren't even sure the school was functional.

Today we enjoyed a warm, sunny family day on the Main Line, where everything is green and lush from regular rain, and where we alternated time between friends and places we've come to know and love in a year, those who have resurfaced after 25 years, and those that were brand new just today. We've done a great deal in a year and while still settling, we are grateful for all that has been.

At the beginning of this month I completed a wonderful first year of teaching middle and high school, capped by marching into commencement in those rather vivid velvet orange doctoral stripes, my eighth graders asking what those were and why I hadn't worn my robe for our class's mock trials (and the juniors asking why the stripes weren't Yale blue). Yesterday I completed a successful three weeks of hermetic curriculum work--shades of the archives--revamping two courses wholesale, in league with a colleague who has become a great working partner and friend. Monday I will officially become department chair.

Tomorrow Tom will officially complete his role as half-time youth pastor at the church where he has made himself integral over the past year. Monday he will begin as full-time pastor of a range of ministries at the same church--developing laypersons' gifts, coordinating social justice work, and overseeing a broader youth program. He will fly to Puerto Rico with a group on a mission trip next week. He is respected, trusted, and valued for what he has to offer, and he has developed a new community in Haddonfield, while renewing connections with the broader community of New Jersey Methodist clergy who have nurtured him from the beginning.

This morning we all went to the Farmers' Market, one of our first finds in Bryn Mawr last July and still a favorite outing. Now Edith is able to ride her two-wheeler there, which she does with glee. Now we bump into people we know.

Afterwards we found our way to a lovely new park in this labyrinthine township of multiple villages, to meet up with one of my earliest childhood friends, whom I had not seen since eighth grade. (He found me when his wife noticed my post on Facebook about living a mile from the U.S. Open.) Those early friendships run deep, and it wasn't hard for us to feel quickly on common ground. He and his wife and their three children, two of whom match ours chronologically, live just a few miles away. Within half an hour he had invited Tom to his standing guys' night out, and we all agreed to take advantage of summer downtime to get together. It has been hard to form friendships locally that are not connected to work, since we have neither a neighborhood nor a church here. Now we have a chance to build a "new" friendship with a running headstart, thanks to years of formative shared history.

Since we live in a 19th-century summer resort hotel, we decided to spend the afternoon as if we were vacationing at a 19th-century summer resort hotel. The wide front porches with their cushioned black wicker furniture have become one of our favorite spots, and we carried down books, games, and bikes (yes, they're big enough for little people to bike) and spent the afternoon in the company of a neighbor couple/Edith's Mandarin teacher, playing Pictionary Jr. for the first time. It turns out that even Alice is up to the task; rudimentary drawing skills prove all that are needed when the player comprehends the task at hand. She was an avid competitor, gleeful at guessing Mary Poppins correctly before anyone else and chortling half an hour later over her efforts to draw "outhouse" and "nose hair."

Farmers' market veggies, cheese, and crackers for dinner, children in bed by 8 (a small miracle), and parents now trading off workouts in our private fitness center.

Not a bad year at all.