It's ironic that, as I work with adolescents to prepare them for future education and their eventual career, they may well be headed for a field or profession that doesn't even exist right now.

Most of what I do for a living was beyond my imagination when I was thirteen, whether because technology had not yet made it possible or simply because of my own ignorance of the existing possibilities.

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We were playing with my toddler nephew on the day of our departure when my husband said to him, "I'm going to miss you."

The two-year-old didn't hesitate. "No miss!" he said crossly.

The message was clear: "We aren't going to talk about goodbyes. We aren't going to wallow in sadness. We're playing right now. We're going to live in the moment and keep our goodbyes light."

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For a knitter, I have a real shortage of knit hats.

It's not just that I don't have as many hats as I would like (or would like to give as gifts). It's that there are so many hats I would like to make — fabulous, intricate patterns that I see on sites like Ravelry and bookmark for later.

I could be frustrated by my lack of hats and my lack of progress toward the hats I want. But I realized early on in my knitting career that the whole fun of the hobby was knowing that there were always beautiful things I could be making and still more beautiful things to make. It would never end, and I would never be finished.

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As we motored the sailboat gently into its slip at sunset, there was bedlam on the dock.

A couple dozen people were hanging out there and upon a large sailboat adjacent, eating and drinking—but mostly drinking. “Welcome to Laurie’s birthday!” they shouted.

It took awhile for someone to come over and grab our lines to help us tie off (something we didn’t strictly need but is always nice to have).

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All over the United States this month, new high school graduates are moving into their college dorms.

It’s a migration that’s exciting and, for many, has a feeling of inevitability. However, freshman year of college is not thirteenth grade. Higher education is a separate endeavor from secondary education, a non-compulsory privilege. Whether it’s today, tomorrow, November, or sometime next summer, some of the members of the class of 2021 are going to figure that out. They’re going to realize that they do not want to participate and they don’t have to. Welcome to adulthood, friends!

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