It’s funny looking back on this season of life and motherhood; in the throws of Covid, one year post divorce, one year before losing my dad.

Sometimes motherhood can feel so permanent, like the phase you’re in is never going to end. Some phases are rough and you’re practically willing them along and others are sweet and you long for them to linger longer than they do.

I could never have seen Covid as the blessing then that I know it to be now. Not, of course, on a global scale, but instead in terms of the forced closeness — navigating school from the dining room table, then school on the road, and – mostly – learning what to do with a whole lot of nothing to do.

We had hit the road just weeks prior to this and visited Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. We came home only to escape again, this time visiting Northern California, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah.

The seasons are changing and I feel the sand sliding through my fingers. I welcome it in a sense — getting to watch them grow and become more independent is a true honor. Looking back on these memories, before their wings seemed so vast, carries a new appreciation. A greater value. Doing this all on my own is the hardest and the most fulfilling; a true testament to how so many things in life coexist. An integration of opposites, not a separation of parts.

Cities visited: Lake Tahoe, Briggs, Yellowstone, Livingston, The Grand Tetons, and Salt Lake City.