What Made 2025

Made It Better, That Is, Than it Might Have Been

What makes a ferry better? A rainbow.

…For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

George Eliot, Middlemarch¹

I know that I’ve used the quote above before, at just this time of year, to explain how I feel about the past twelve months, but it’s here again, a Ghost of New Years’ Past. Because truly, for better or worse, I will never know how this year might have gone, if not for this handful of people, circumstances, and experiences, these unhistoric treasures on which the growing good of this year has more than partly depended.

1. Writing Fiction: Once upon a time, a dear friend went on a vacation, taking herself to a tidal island on which perched a medival monastery. What would it be like, we daydreamed, if half a dozen women retired in such a place, reading, writing and painting away their autumn years behind the stone walls of an ancient and beautiful place? I daydream about most places, if I’m honest—any interesting house I pass gets at least a half-sentence of imagination, until I find the next one—but this particular fantasy took hold of us. A story grew around it, sending vines of plot and digging roots of character between the stones of this fictional abbey. I didn’t start this year—a year meant for a graduate degree and getting a proper job—with plans to write half a novel, but that’s what I’ve done anyhow. Someday, it will be the sort of thing that my mother and a handful of other people will want to read. For now, it’s a pleasant retreat lurking in the corners of my imagination, waiting for a spare hour here and there.

2. Text Messages: I’ve taken several backward steps away from social media in the past few years. As I asked myself Whose attention am I after, really? and Do I actually have time for this? I found that I didn’t have good answers to either question. Instead, I’ve tried to be better about texting individual friends when I see something that makes me think of them. Group texts have become the the space to beg for prayer before my first job interview in 15 years, to see videos of a family member’s dance performance, or to share something so funny or lovely that as many as ten people at once should see it. For now, that’s plenty.

3. Community: After seven years out of the classroom, I accepted a job in April that meant I’d not only begin working full-time in mid-August, but that I’d also have a solid month of training in July. This absolutely couldn’t have happened without the help of a team of loyal friends and family members, each of whom responded to my trepidation about the busy summer and the new job with a resounding, “What do you need? How can I help?” From taking my kids on adventures to the beach, to after-school hangs with their aunt and uncle, to a carpool swap that’s led to a series of delightfully wild Friday family dinners, I couldn’t be more humbled by the community that surrounds us. We are rich, indeed.

4. Books: I read 49 books this year, and though they varied widely in quality, these were the best of them:

   1. Best Fiction To Read With An Accidental² Book Club: Enchanted April, by Elizabeth Von Arnim³: Four women rent a villa in Italy for the month of April. Growth, healing, and hilarity ensue.

   2. Best Audiobook for Sunrise Drives Across the City: Pride and Prejudice⁴, by Jane Austen read by Julie Andrews for the Jane Austen Stories podcast: Several sisters with little money and plenty of charm meet wealthy men in fields, forests, and country estates. There are five proposals, three weddings, and one major scandal.

   3. Best To Read Aloud With Daughters: Anne of Green Gables⁵, L.M. Montgomery: An orphan is sent by mistake to the Canadian Maritimes. In every chapter, she gets into hilarious trouble and charms, exasperates and transforms the lives of her elderly guardians.

   4. Best Fiction if You Also Want to Watch a PBS Masterpiece Series Adaptation: Miss Austen⁶, Gill Hornby: Many of Jane Austen’s letters were burnt by her sister, Cassandra. But why?

   5. Best Non-Fiction to Bring to Job Interview at a School Focusing on Literacy: Reader, Come Home⁷, Maryanne Wolf: How has reading changed in the 21st century? What does deep reading mean? How should we preserve our capacity for it when technology has steered us toward short-form consumption? If your future boss asks what you’re reading, could you possibly have a better book on hand?

5. Wednesday Dinners: It is a pitiful understatement to say that going back to work was a large adjustment not just for me, but for my whole family. My husband took over nearly everything I’d been doing for the past several years, including but not limited to shopping, laundry, supervising lunch making and transporting kids to school and back. The absolutely delicious series of hearty soups and pasta dishes that he serves on Wednesday nights, the longest of my days as I scoop our eldest up from choir rehearsal and roll in at dinner time, is just symbolic of a year in which he’s taken on a whole bunch of new things and absolutely nailed it.

6. The Anglican Church: Though this deserves a post of its own, this year also saw us beginning to attend a new church. Though we haven’t completely left behind the large, nondenominational church in which I grew up, most Sundays will find our family in a much smaller community, reading through a centuries-old liturgy and sharing meals and worship with a warm group of new friends.

7. Camp: My family and I went to camp this summer. All together. My parents went to, and the camp itself was a place that has a long history for my dad and his family. And even though I grew up doing things like this in the summer, and remember loving it, I wasn’t quite prepared for the delight of watching my kids run around a redwood forest, making new friends and singing old songs. It was a truly grand time, and I hope we’ll be back someday.

8. Air Conditioning: My car’s air conditioning broke in June. I was too busy to fix it, suddenly finding myself in a situation where I actually needed my car every day, so I had a hot July of windows-down-on-the-freeway, anticipating this would last until I didn’t need the AC anymore. And then, with no intervention of mine, cold air began flowing again in August. I turned up to meet friends at the lake and declared that “Jesus fixed my car as a graduation present.” Only about half of them were in a position to take me seriously, but to be honest that’s still what I think.

9. Learning New Things: Though I’ve been a teacher for two decades now, starting at a new school, with a new grade, with a new mission and style of teaching have all involved a wild amount of learning. Putting my shiny new M.Ed. in Literacy to use, I’ve spent the summer and fall learning to teach spelling, phonics and grammar in structured, multisensory, and explicit methods, many of which involve learning to trace cursive letters backwards in the air in front of me. At the same time, I’ve told fairy tales about overhead projectors and A/V carts to my young colleagues and become unexpectedly fluent in bizarre Gen Alpha slang⁸.

10. Remembering Old Things: Exactly twenty years ago, I was on winter break from student teaching, getting ready to return to five periods of ninth grade language arts at Ingraham High School. And even though kids have phones now and we’re teaching reading in a whole new way, there have been plenty of full-circle moments this fall. It’s been fun to return to weekly planning, to create assignments that are aligned to our curricular goals, and to play Balderdash with a new group of kids. I’ve also been surprised at how valuable my experiences as a parent have proven in the classroom. Nothing learned is wasted, I’ve discovered again and again.

1. Eliot, George. Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life. William Blackwood and Sons, 1871–1872

2. It’s a long story. But I swear, we were only going to meet once. To discuss one book. That was… a lot of books ago.

3. Hornby, Gill. Miss Austen. Flatiron Books, 2020.

4. Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice: A Novel. In Three Volumes. London: T. Egerton, Military Library, 1813

5. Montgomery, L. M. Anne of Green Gables. L.C. Page & Co., 1908.

6. Wolf, Maryanne. Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. HarperCollins, 2018.

7. Hornby, Gill. Miss Austen. Flatiron Books, 2020.

8. 6-7 is just the beginning. Aura farming, in my opinion, is when things get interesting. Also see: The many connotations of cooked and cooking.