My father always drank his coffee black, so when I started drinking coffee it never occurred to me that I should adulterate it with anything like milk or sugar.

I can’t remember exactly when I drank my first cup, but it was sometime during my freshman year in college. I poured my coffee for purely practical reasons: as a freshman, I’d made the remarkably naive choice to take an Italian class that met at 8 AM, five days a week. Although the smell of coffee evoked pleasant memories of childhood breakfasts, I had no particular affection for the taste — at least, not for the weak, generic stuff mass-produced by the college dining hall. My interest in coffee was utilitarian: I needed it to stay awake.

The affection came later, around junior or senior year. It happened the day I met my friend Dahna at the cafe in our little college town (yes, THE cafe — there was only one), and she said, “Why don’t you try a skim hazelnut latte?” When I tried a skim hazelnut latte, a love affair began: I discovered that if I added enough milk and flavoring to coffee then I loved it, I craved it.

This youthful love affair with skim hazelnut lattes lasted through much of my twenties. For the better part of a decade, I drank at least one skim hazelnut latte per day. Like most youthful love affairs, it was somewhat superficial — based on covering up coffee with a sweet exterior. It also wasn’t particularly healthy: there were the dark days when I discovered that a large enough skim hazelnut latte could serve as a meal replacement. And it was a costly habit; at this time, I was either single or newly married with a postcard-sized kitchen, and the idea of brewing my own coffee simply didn’t occur to me. I BOUGHT every single one of those skim hazelnut lattes, and I bought most of them at upwards of $3 each. When I think back to how many wells I could have built in Africa, how many third world families I could have supplied with livestock, or how many children I could have supported through school with that money, I’m a little ashamed.

The turning point came when Erick and I moved to Berkeley, California. The kitchens in the three rentals we lived in during our stay in the Bay Area were somewhat larger than postcard-sized. We were living off of the combined salaries of a graduate student and a part-time nonprofit employee. And we started having kids. The sensible thing to do was clearly to start brewing our own coffee.

Berkeley, California is a stressful place to drink coffee. To give you an idea of the Berkeley food and drink culture: the church we attended during our time there (and LOVE to this day) had a wine tasting in order to select the best wine for communion. You can only imagine how far people took their quest for the best cup of coffee; if you weren’t drinking a cup of individually-brewed, organic, fair trade, shade-grown, slow-roasted coffee, you might as well be drinking Maxwell House. (Believe me, in certain circles this was a major topic of discussion, and you would be judged).

But Erick and I were too distracted by babies and PhDs to keep up with the ever-changing Bay Area coffee trends. Each morning, we’d use our auto-drip coffeemaker to brew a pot of Peet’s Coffee, which we’d drink black with breakfast. I consider this the point at which I entered my coffee adulthood; when good, strong, black coffee stole my heart away from the expensive, frou-frou alternatives. Now, on the rare occasion that I find myself in a cafe, I’ll order a skim hazelnut latte as a dessert drink — I find them too cloyingly sweet to be anything else.

That would be my happy ending, except that, like most love stories, this one features a period of separation followed by renewed, increased love and appreciation.

You see, less than a year after I fell in love with home-brewed black coffee, I got pregnant. Like most first-time pregnant women, I wanted to do everything right, and all of the pregnancy books will tell you to take it easy on the coffee. Because caffeine is a stimulant, it increases the mother’s blood pressure and heart rate, and has also been found to increase the fetal heart rate. And I don’t do decaf — I can’t explain it, I just don’t. In my opinion, drinking decaf is about as pointless as eating white chocolate (apologies to any white chocolate lovers out there).

So I gave up coffee for nine months. And that was okay, since I’d only been drinking one or two cups a day prior to pregnancy. I had no withdrawal, no headaches or shakes. But did I miss it? You bet. Was I right back on it shortly after giving birth? OH, YES!

And it was during that first year of motherhood, when I was reunited with coffee, that I discovered another facet to love: not only did I enjoy the taste and appreciate the wakefulness provided by coffee, but COFFEE MADE ME A BETTER MOTHER. A better person, actually. Prior to my morning cup of coffee I wasn’t just sleepy — I was numb. The day stretched before me like one long, joyless, impossible task. But add one cup of coffee and I was Carol Brady. Coffee made everything okay — at least for thirty minutes following breakfast.

When I became pregnant for a second time, I decided: I’m not giving up coffee ever again. I care about blood pressure and heart rate — really I do — but the happiness of my little family was more important. Did they deserve nine months of Carol Brady, or nine months of Lurch? (Interesting, completely unscientific side note: Guess which pregnancy ended with an emergency delivery due to high blood pressure? My first, coffee-free one. Hmmmm….)

And so it goes. These days, I put a filter and six scoops of Green Mountain Coffee’s Vermont Country Blend into our coffeemaker before bed. First thing in the morning. when I come downstairs for some solitary reading/writing time, I add the water and let it drip. The smell alone is enough to start my day off right; drinking my morning cup is like lifting a veil between despair and hope. And SOMETIMES, as a guilty pleasure, I’ll reheat what’s left in the pot and have a second cup during the girls’ naptime.

I love you, coffee. And if you’re reading this and you don’t drink coffee, or don’t like coffee, that’s okay. But I hope you have a little coffee-something in your life!

“Once upon a time there was a man who asked himself, ‘Where have all the days and nights of my life gone?'”

-from “All the days and nights” by William Maxwell

The past month was rough on our family’s immune systems. In early March, Fiona, Georgia, and (to a lesser degree) Erick were knocked out by a fever/upper respiratory virus. The next week, Georgia developed her first ear infection. And THEN, days later, Fiona, Campbell, and (to a lesser degree) Erick were taken down by one of the nastiest stomach bugs I’ve ever witnessed.

Throughout most of this (until the stomach bug knocked me out for a couple of days), I was the only Gong left standing. This was a REALLY mixed blessing. I’m happy to care for my sick loved ones, but it’s a lot of work: running around with food trays, bringing books and markers and DVDs, changing pajamas and bed linens (I did about 25 loads of laundry the day the stomach bug hit), forcing antibiotics into a screaming toddler. Plus, there was always ONE healthy girl to be entertained separately from her sisters.

For several weeks, I barely left the house. Playdates were cancelled. School was missed (which makes me verrrry grumpy). The days seemed endless, but at the close of each day I felt a nagging frustration that I’d accomplished nothing.

I started thinking about time. Time is a strange thing, because it seems to work in two ways at once. And my experience of parenthood has only served to highlight time’s dual nature.

It’s like this: The days ARE endless. My first thought each morning is usually, “How am I going to get through this one?” I do get through it, like we all do, by putting activities on the calendar, running errands, preparing meals, washing dishes, doing laundry, reading to the girls, and keeping them supplied with coloring books and stickers and craft materials. But every day there’s a chunk of time — sometimes it’s the entire day, sometimes it’s just the hour before dinner — when the clock seems to slow, when I’m counting the minutes until Erick gets home, when I wonder how I can possibly usher us all through the next hour (or two, or three) without losing my mind.

And yet, time flies. The phrase is overused because it’s true. It’s as if, somehow, all those endless days get smushed into a space capsule at the end of each year and blasted forward at light speed. The last thing I remember, I was holding a brand new hairdryer in a Macy’s bag and meeting a guy I barely knew at Grand Central Station so he could come to an Indigo Girls concert with some friends of mine…and now we’ve been married ten years, we own a home in Vermont, he’s a college professor, and we have three kids and a dog.

I’ve only had children for five years, but I already know that older parents speak the truth when they say, “It goes so fast!” The last thing I remember, you were no bigger than a doll and your eyes were closed but your tongue was sticking out when they handed you to me in the delivery room…and now you have the longest legs I’ve ever seen and you’re a big sister to two and when you grow up you say you’re going to be a swim teacher/singer/mommy.

Life is a series of endless days that fly. So how do we get through the endless days, those eternal minutes until dinner? Are we each destined to become someone who asks longingly, Where have all the days and nights of my life gone? Does every parent inevitably become the empty-nester who says wistfully, Enjoy every minute; it goes so fast! 

Maybe. And maybe that’s not a bad thing; the idea of looking back over time and feeling that it’s flown doesn’t particularly bother me. What does irk me are all the days, here and now, when I think, This day seemed endless, yet I’ve accomplished NOTHING.

Because, as we’ve all heard, time flies…when? WHEN YOU’RE HAVING FUN! But these days — these endless days that will someday be the sum of my time that’s flown — let me tell you: most of them aren’t “fun.” They are lunches to pack and dishes to wash and children to dress and relationships to maintain and bills to pay and errands to run. Even when I purposefully create “fun” moments — painting, baking, craft-making — they’re honestly not much fun for ME; there’s a lot of preparation and clean-up for a few minutes of messy joy. There are transcendent moments, sure, but the majority of the day is dragging drudgery.

To look back and realize that time flew and you didn’t have fun seems to me a recipe for regret.

Unless…we’ve forgotten that what we do today IS fun. Perhaps it takes the distance of years to realize: All those endless days and nights, those times when I thought I accomplished nothing — those really were FUN.

How to capture that future perspective, and transport it into the present? Can we live each endless day while holding the hope that this may someday look like flying fun?

I’m not big on Pollyanna-ish denial of reality. Let’s face it: some days will just not EVER be fun. We lose loved ones, we struggle with depression, we clean up bodily fluids from every member of our family.

So I’m trying to think of my days like ice cream. In particular, Fiona’s favorite flavor of ice cream: Playdough (sold at a deli in town). Playdough is a horrifyingly sweet concoction; the ice cream base is something like “vanilla cake,” but Fiona doesn’t get it for the ice cream. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her touch the ice cream portion of this flavor. She gets it for the colored “candy gems” mixed into the ice cream, and she’ll spend enormous amounts of energy digging through the ice cream with her spoon, tracking down every last candy gem.

Our days are like Playdough ice cream because every day, no matter how terrible, has at least one candy gem in it. You may have to go digging for it, you may not find it until the day is past, but I promise it’s there. Maybe it’s something as basic as: I’ve never been more thankful for a working washer/dryer, because I just did 25 loads of vomit-stained laundry today. Candy gem!

I’m going to take my plastic spoon and go digging at the end of each day, so that I won’t have to wait until the time has flown to appreciate all my days and nights.

This is my current Fix-It Pile:

It sits on the kitchen counter next to my “desk” (and yes, that’s leftover Halloween candy in the background, and also a pile of cookbooks opened to recipes I intend to make…someday).

You may have something similar.

The Fix-It Pile, as its name suggests, is a collection of broken things that need fixing. When our girls break something and want it repaired, they add it to the Fix-It pile. Once the Fix-It Pile reaches a size that I can no longer ignore, I plug in my magic hot glue gun (what did I EVER do without a hot glue gun?) and get to work.

The Fix-It Pile in the photo above is obviously seasonal, since it features a beard-less Nutcracker and an angel ornament with broken wings. Usually, the Fix-It Pile includes a rotating selection of the same items: animal figurines with missing limbs, wingless fairies, and headless Barbies. (My girls went through a “Barbie Hospital” phase; Barbie Hospital apparently specialized in head transplants).

I was staring at my Fix-It Pile the other day (in lieu of actually fixing anything), and thinking how it’s an example of something I didn’t expect when I became a parent: I never expected that parenting would require me to spend so much time fixing broken things. In truth, like most parents, I didn’t give much advance thought to what parenting would require of me — but if you’d asked me five years ago, I probably would’ve mentioned quality time with my children: going on outings, doing crafts together, reading to them, and generally shaping them into independent adults.

I do all of those things as a parent — but much less than I expected. I have to squeeze in the quality time between fixing things. Once I set down the hot-glue gun, I pick up the packing tape and become “Book Doctor.” As Book Doctor, I repair the torn pages and broken spines of countless books that have either been well-loved by three children over time, or ill-loved by our youngest daughter. And when THAT’S done, I pick up a rag and a bottle of Kids & Pets (what did I EVER do without a bottle of Kids & Pets?) to clean up bodily fluids. Not to be gross, but as Erick told an acquaintance recently: with three young children and a dog in the house, “there’s always a bodily fluid SOMEWHERE that it shouldn’t be.”

And those are just the physical things that I have to fix. Because here’s the thing: I love my children very much, but they weren’t born knowing how to share, or knowing how to speak politely, or with any desire to think about others. They were born broken. We all were.

So every day, I also get out my spiritual hot glue gun, my psychological packing tape, and I try my best to repair broken relationships and mend fragile egos. I’d like to say that my invisible work lasts longer than my Fix-It Pile efforts — but it doesn’t. Just as the same toys and books keep coming back for fixing, the same hurts and injuries keep opening up in our family. I’ve already said numerous times to Fiona — who’s only five: “WHY do we keep having the same conversation over and over again?!” It’s the same question I ask Erick. And my own parents. And myself. Also, God.

Parenting is a relationship, and it occurs to me that all relationships — at least the real, meaningful ones — ARE essentially about having the same conversation over and over again. And that conversation boils down to the soul-cry: Why can’t you love me the way I want to be loved? We’re all waiting on the Fix-It Pile with our broken hearts, and sometimes a parent or friend or spouse will paste us together for a time. Sometimes we gather the tools and strength to repair our own cracks. But in my experience there’s never a permanent fix — not in this life, at least. We keep breaking, and having the same conversations over and over again. I’m unaware of a single person who’s made it to the end of their life, and who couldn’t have used another dab of glue or piece of tape.

I don’t mean this to sound completely hopeless, because I think it’s the opposite. I think it’s liberating. There are fairy figurines in this house whose wings I will NEVER permanently affix to their bodies; there are cracks in my children that I can NEVER mend. But in parenting, as with the rest of life, I think we get points for trying. And trying again.

When we found out that we were expecting a fourth child, we had to cancel our planned trip to California. Yes, we’d booked airline tickets to California almost a year in advance. This has NOTHING to do with our own organizational skills, and everything to do with the generosity of Erick’s father, who had given us his airline miles for the trip. We had to book tickets with those miles by a certain time, so we went ahead and scheduled a 2-week visit to California in June 2013.

Then we found out I was pregnant, due in early June. Obviously, California wasn’t happening this summer.

Traveling anywhere from Vermont isn’t easy. Since we moved here in summer 2011, we’ve taken two out-of-state trips as a family: a two-hour jaunt to Lake George in upstate New York, and a four-hour drive to the Maine coast. Traveling to California requires a one-hour drive to the airport, at which point we’d pack onto a teeny-tiny plane bound for Chicago or D.C. or Detroit, where we’d transfer to a San Francisco-bound flight. (And that’s the best-case, single transfer scenario; there are no direct flights between Vermont and California).

To be honest, I don’t relish the idea of traveling with three (never mind FOUR) young children, so most days I’m grateful that the logistical challenge of leaving Vermont forces those less burdened by dependents — like our parents — to come to US.

But I’m sad that we’ll have to postpone our trip to California. Here’s my dirty little secret why:

I really, really miss our friends and family in California.

There! I said it!

The thing is, I’ve moved so much in my adult life: from Virginia to Massachusetts to Connecticut to New York to California to Vermont. Like most Americans, I have leaving in my genes; I’m descended from leave-rs. My ancestors left England and Scotland and Italy, bound for the farms and factories of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. So, I’m a pretty good leave-r; I say goodbye to places and people I love, and I don’t look back. I’ve prided myself on this adaptive skill. Somehow, I got the idea that missing people was wimpy, and would get in the way of embracing the life of whichever new place I’d settled. I’ve loved every place I’ve lived, but when it comes time to say goodbye I take an “out of sight, out of mind” approach. I just move on. I’m horrible at keeping in touch.

But Fiona taught me a little something about missing this year. One night when Erick was out and I was putting the girls to bed, she said, in her understated way, “Mommy, I really, really, really, really, really, really, REALLY miss Daddy!”

And I said, “I know, honey, but you’ll see him tomorrow. And there’s me; I’m here now!”

To which she replied, “Mommy, I love you, too. But the thing is: you’re not gone.”

Just like that, I saw that I’d gotten missing completely wrong. Here I was, trying to convince my daughter not to miss her father because she’d see him soon, dangling the carrot of my own presence to distract her from his absence. Teaching her how to adopt my own “out of sight, out of mind” coping strategy. And Fiona showed me that NO, it’s okay to just MISS someone. Missing doesn’t have to get in the way of loving where you are or who you’re with; sometimes you miss someone just because they’re not there.

So (deep breath): I MISS the people we left behind in California. This includes Erick’s extended family: aunts and uncles and cousins whom we haven’t seen in almost 2 years. And it includes our friends in the East Bay, a community the likes of which we’ll never experience again. These were the people with whom we had our first children, all of us struggling through the exhaustion and confusion and elation of first-time parenting: celebrating new births, bringing meals, watching each others’ babies so we could have date nights, mourning challenges and losses, organizing a home-based co-op preschool so that we could afford to give our kids an early education. It saddens me that I won’t see these people who shaped me as a mother, who played such a significant role in our daughters’ early years.

The other night, I had a vivid dream which is going to sound cheesy but which I promise was very real. Erick and I were standing outside a pub with our pastor from California (those of you who know our pastors from California realize that it’s not at all incongruous to find a pastor in a pub — or maybe this was just my subconscious mid-pregnancy desire for a stiff drink). All of a sudden, various friends whom we hadn’t seen in years started gathering with us. They didn’t all look great; as I recall, almost everyone needed a haircut, and a few had clearly had a bit to drink already. But it was a reunion of pure joy. In my dream, I was sobbing with happiness. When I woke up, there was still a lump in my throat.

There is no doubt in my mind that my dream was about Heaven: a place where you don’t have to miss anybody anymore.

I love Vermont, and our life here, and our friends here. But the thing is: they’re not gone.