Lately I’ve been employing a strategy I came up with when we lived in Saudi Arabia. A strategy of appreciating the moments even as they present a challenge. Of recognizing that while this time in which I find myself feels permanent, it is not. The hours march steadily on regardless of heat, violence, illness, smoke. On the hottest of days in the desert, when it seemed as though the afternoons stretched on endlessly in a heavy silence that was broken only by the call to prayer, when the heat pressed down into our very bones, rendering us sleepy and sticky, it was difficult to believe this was just a fleeting moment in our lives. I never imagined then that four years later I might miss that experience, and yet I do. This morning as I sat in Sierra’s room helping her with math worksheets in an unnaturally pale light that was filtered through layers of smoke, I thought about how in a weird way I will miss this too — maybe not the daily struggle to make school at home an attractive or at least somehow viable alternative to real school, but the quieter days at home, the feeling that we are surviving this together, even if imperfectly (and believe me we are very imperfect).

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