Finally landing a full-time job, or as my sister’s friend calls it a “J-O-B Job,” has meant a lot of things for me. It’s meant consistent paychecks with taxes taken out (taxes taken out!) which has helped lessen the sense of anxiety and impending doom that I’ve mastered.  It’s meant waking up most mornings around 2:12AM with a to-do list that is part real and part imaginary from the depths of my troubled mind.  It’s meant finally getting a handle on most everything and realizing summer camp is as fun as it’s supposed to be sometimes. But mostly it’s meant Huck’s first summer of his entire ten year old life without me to hang out with all day long in equal doses of fun and boredom.

Last Friday the Northwest Arkansas Fencing Center came to The New School and led workshops for our campers all morning long.  Huck’s group was first, and I texted the above picture to the other two moms of the boys posing with the Olympic fencer.  Both were very appreciative and one said, “I wish so badly I could be there right now.”  And then I realized I was the mom who got to be there right now.  How about that?  A couple days later Troy noticed that one of his breaks from the preschool children coincides with Huck’s lunchtime, and so now they get to end the morning and begin the afternoon together, catching up on all the camp stories of the day so far.

When we three began attending the family friendly Wednesday night services at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, we happily discovered that they often end the evening with our favorite song “Seek Ye First.”  The first time this happened the three of us accidentally harmonized as we sat with our arms around each other in the most grotesque and cutesiest family formation you ever saw.  It was as if we finally found land after nearly drowning in rocky waters, holding onto each other for dear life.  We realized how awfully adorable we must have looked to anyone who had the misfortune of glancing over at us, and it’s one of our favorite memories to this day.  We still sing it together, but we try to play it just a little more cool now.  So in the spirit of our gross family preciousness, I give you the New School Nerd Family in all of our summer camp t-shirt glory.  Because this, more than anything, is us right now.