My favorite week of the year

This is my favorite week of the year—the last seven days before the autumnal equinox, or, if you like, the final week of summer. After 44 years in schools, it has become a familiar rhythm: the first “normal” week of the school year, when the classrooms settle into their hum, the routines click into place, and there is a quiet, steady pulse to the days.


I walk in the soft light of morning, I bake and fill the house with warmth, I carve out moments for self-care, and I care for others. There is a gentle fullness to these days, a sense of being present in small, deliberate acts. And this week carries birthdays of some of my favorite people: my youngest brother, my high school best friend, a college friend with whom I share countless memories, and my adult bestie and travel companion whom I only met 10 years ago. Each of them occupies a season of my life, and their presence lifts me through the week like sunlight through leaves.

But this week carries its ache too. It is my grandfather’s birthday. He died when I was in sixth grade, and I still carry the absence of him. Though he settled in Chicago after the war, he was a farmer at heart, tending a large lot with gardens so lush they seemed almost impossible in the city. I often wonder what he would think of the life I live now, the choices I have made, the gardens I nurture in my own way.

So this week is a tangle of joy and longing, laughter and memory. Sweetness and sorrow braid together, and maybe that is why I love it so fiercely. It is a week that holds the past and present, the seen and unseen, and reminds me how rich life can be even in its fleeting, fragile fullness.

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