Well, well, well, here we are again. Dancegiving has past, our semi-annual Star Wars rewatch is underway, and next week is two days of space cleaning and three days off for Thanksgiving - our first break of the year. The school is quiet and sleepy today (we all ate so much deliciousness yesterday…) and the weather matches our mood: it’s rainy and dark, and many of us are sitting in rooms with the lights out. I’m focused blogging with Hugo and Tamia in the back room, on one of the couches. The radiators are hissing gently. Someone is bouncing a ball in the hallway, and I just left the Makerspace, where Jiji and Olive and Savannah are having a drawing/blogging/listening to comedy party. Earlier, we had a fast check-in/change up and then I bopped around the makerspace, listening to Sufjan Stevens and organizing the shelves. At 11, Xander came to find me for park trip - I’ve been to the park every day this week, and Shark Tag has been our game of choice. Today, I had the grumps pretty bad because I was hungry, but the game was fun anyway. We got rained on, as the final game wore on, and everyone was tagged except Luca and Erez (Erez won in the end). After parky I ate leftovers and talked to Tamia and Hugo and we decided to do mentos and coke/baking soda and vinegar experiments for Chemistry and on our way to the deli, picked up a Savannah. We had a lot of fun watching the fizzes and foams and overflows. Then I just drifted - some Star Wars watching, some leftovers grazing, some singing Steven Universe songs, some listening to Sebastian tell me about new Pokemon - until it was time to blog. A quiet and ordinary day, dim and familial, joyful and grumpy and homey and familiar.

This season has been full of such days. We’ve only enrolled one new kid this fall, and he already knew some of our community members from the space he was in before this. We also lost a number of students, to NYC’s transience and other factors. It’s left us smaller and closer-knit than I can remember in previous seasons - not without conflict or surprises but certainly without them as the focus. We’ve been practicing listening to how we lovingly tease one another, and wondering where the line is of too-far. I’ve been practicing weekly field trips and near-daily park trips and Inktober and losing games gracefully and staying cheerful in the face of chaos, keeping my momentum like a top spinning.

When I look back at my blog of the last 3 years and read posts like this one, I feel so tender about my past selves and the ways this practice helps me stay present. At the heart of things, I am a writer and in making these words I make sense, make meaning, of being here in ALC-land. Grateful to be here, grateful for this season of familiarity and ease, grateful for the past three cycles and the muscle memory I’ve developed.