Quiet, ordinary, enough

I’m on my second cup of tea of the day.

Waiting for my husband to come home so I can head out into the world with our youngest, giftcards burning a hole in her pocket.

We woke up in the dark, but knowing that we gained 5 minutes of sunlight already. We lumbered into awakeness through pages read, quiet conversation, and a plan for this second to last day of the year. A plan that will inevitably change, much like it always does.

We continued at the kitchen table, laying out hopes and dreams for the year to come but also reflecting on the year past. We are walking into 2026 with gratitude, dragging our tired bones behind us, but also reveling at the strength that sometimes comes from just surviving the challenges that were embedded in our lives.

2025 will be remembered for some of the darkest days I have had as a parent, searching for answers in how to give a child hope enough to last into the next day. Leaving my home not knowing what I would come home to. Waking throughout the night and wondering whether someone is truly okay or just pretending and whether the tomorrow we wake into becomes a break in our timeline, the before and the after.

But we didn’t.

And so I continue to seek out the ocean as I winterbathe tellling myself that I am okay. That we are okay. And I walk into 2026 with this in my head. I am okay. We are okay. Reveling in the little moments of calm. Of my second cup of tea looking out into my frost covered garden, waiting for the sound of nearly all teenage feet to inevitably stumble into the kitchen demanding my attention.

Our lives are lived in these moments.

In quiet contemplation, in quiet joy that is right there detectable but only if you look. In late night movies, in pages turned, in situps and pushups (nearly anyway), in marveling at the stars although we have seen them so many times, in the taste of a well-cooked meal. In a child waking up for one more day with the fortitude and strength to continue living. In getting dressed and heading to spaces where we get to be part of the quiet joy of other peoples lives. Where for a moment we can help others feel seen, feel understood, and feel like being there, together, actually does matter.

Some of the children we teach are not striving. They are surviving. And on some days, so are we. It is a truth rarely spoken out loud, tucked beneath the language of goals and growth, beneath the expectation that learning must always look like progress. And yet, sometimes the most meaningful thing that happens is simply that someone returns. That they show up. That they choose, once again, to be part of the day.

At its heart, education is not about fixing what is broken. It is about being there. About becoming one of the quiet, steady places in a life that may feel anything but. A pause, a familiar routine, a story that asks nothing in return. About recognizing that survival is not a failure of ambition, but often the bravest work being done.

And so we show up. Not because we have answers, or because presence will solve everything, but because it matters.

Because sometimes what carries us forward is knowing that someone will notice if we arrive, that there is a place where we are expected, where we can sit for a while and simply be. Our lives, and our classrooms, are made of these moments. Quiet, ordinary, enough.