A few days ago, I almost cried while on a Zoom call with other authors of parenting books. One spoke of teachers who are at their breaking point. Another said parents are threatening to pull kids out of school rather than go forward with virtual learning. A third talked about K-12 schools being forced to make excruciating fiscal decisions. I’m not an economist, but I don’t think you have to be one to appreciate how every variable within the economy is interdependent and how millions of individual decisions lead to macro consequences. Not gonna lie to you—I am worried about what is going to happen to our economy and to our schools. I said as much to these fellow experts. Everyone nodded. Then everyone lingered in silence. One said It’s hard to be counted on to offer advice to others while being so unsure ourselves. More nods and silence. It was long past time to end the call, but we didn’t want to let go of each other. 

It's Mother's Day and my eighteen-year-old daughter Avery says she’s going to drive me to a scenic overlook atop Skyline Drive. I’d last ridden in a car on March 10—clearly she’d been thinking it was high time I got out of the house! We go that very evening. As we leave our suburb, she puts the windows down, heads West, and zigzags up into the foothills. I’m starved for humans. I wave at every driver I see. Every cyclist. Inside the car the conversation is a bit jagged. The mother-daughter dance can be complicated the world over, and we are not immune. I try to come across as chill and lighthearted while carefully choosing every word. Since sunset is in 45 minutes, I tell Avery that I like to chase the sun. She seems to like that. I mention the song “Boston” by Augustana with its lyric, “I think I need a sunrise/I’m tired of the sunset,” hoping the reference is not too dated for her. She agrees that those lyrics do not apply to me. 

I ask her to pull over so that I can capture a beautiful green hill and the sparkly sun and sky beyond. We wait until there are no cars. I take this photo. She starts driving again. As she rounds a corner that gives way to a ravine, I catch my breath and tell her not to drive off the road. I’m not going to drive off the road, Mom. We parents have to work hard not to sound like idiots. I want to get us back on track, but mostly I have to appear not to be working too hard for that. 

Now there are no other cars in sight. I glimpse the marine layer of thick fog creeping its fingers over the foothills like a gentle ghost. I tell her that the first time I ever saw that atmospheric phenomenon, I was seventeen. That having grown up in the Midwest and Back East, it was unlike anything I’d ever seen. She tells me about a t-shirt she once saw that reads, “California: You flew here, I grew here.” There is pride in her voice. I blink back tears thinking Yes baby, this is what Daddy and I wanted for you. That you would claim this breathtaking majesty as your birthright. 

Every now and then she says she is sure the lookout is just around the bend. But before long we are wending our way down the other side of the mountain, snaking through redwoods, feeling the darkness and moisture of the deepening forest. I gaze at the tree ferns rushing by and find myself thinking The virus is not here and if we could live nestled in these woods with the other creatures we could just go on living. It’s colder now. She asks if I want the windows up. A bit, I tell her. Our conversation starts to ease into itself. 

"The virus is not here and if we could live nestled in these woods with the other creatures we could just go on living."

Do you know where we are? She asks, her voice a tad sheepish veering on apologetic. I tell her that I’ve never been on this particular road before and she says Me either. I check for cell service but have none. Yet the fading sunlight is right where it should be, blinkering to the left through a veil of trees, and I don’t need GPS to tell me to just keep on going, that we will at some point come to a big road that will cut east/west which we should take to the right in order to find our way home. I tell this to her. I speak with confidence and there is silence. I can tell from the weight of her foot on the gas that she believes me. 

We continue to talk. In the passenger seat of this car I’m no longer the mom who often gets the tone or words wrong. I am just Julie having an easy conversation somewhere in the hills in Northern California. My spirit lets go of the pandemic. I feel like I am living again. Avery tells me how things are going with her significant other. I confess to a challenge I’m having with a friend. For about twenty minutes we are true confidants. I almost want us to get lost again. 

As she drives us onto the street, that leads to the smaller street, that leads to our cul-de-sac, and then our cobblestone driveway, I can’t help but sigh. My daughter is an exquisite young woman with her entire life in front of her and I would love nothing more than to be her friend. Yet I am her mother. And now we return to sheltering in place in this house with three other people which sometimes feels like a cage. 

"My spirit lets go of the pandemic.
I feel like I am living again."

But I wonder if all along Avery intended to give me a bit more than a car ride. And on the twentieth revision of this essay it’s just dawned on me: Maybe she needed this, too. And all of this—being in nature, being in conversation, this final thought—all of this is keeping my spirit alive.

Go find proof that there are things in your life that are bigger than this pandemic. Create a moment where you can let your spirit unfurl its wings and soar for a time. You know best what you need—is it the hills? The forest? The water? Your garden? The sky? Or maybe it’s a deepened relationship that might happen if you both try.

xo,