I’m fifty and it’s times like this that for the first time in my life I feel a perfect sense of home and family.

Diving right into their new books. So many thank you’s and I love you’s. Cat snuggles.

Plans for tomorrow. Touching base with friends and family.

I made a home.

We are home.

My connection to my kids seems to get deeper all the time. The more mature they get, the more they express. The more we trust each other. There are bumps — a preteen girl and a perimenopausal mother are going to have bumps. But Claudia’s love for me shines through so strongly as she attempts to be a “better” student, daughter, friend, classicist. How could I even have hoped to be part of such honor?

I have to say, it’s lovely to hear it secondhand as well. When someone tells me Claudia has talked about me and how much she appreciates how she is treated, and how we have created our home, it kind of leaves me breathless.

Béla’s love is just a tumbling, generous avalanche. He’s no mama’s boy, but I honestly think he’d keep me next to him forever. It may be in that Korean DNA.

They have so much they want to do with their lives. Claudia definitely thinks she’s going to finish Tales of Japan this very night. Happy as a little lark.

Working more analog this week is, I think, going to be a relief. Although I have learned more about how long they can sit and work independently (longer than they’d let on). I’m excited. Although ugh, the trail of workbooks shuffling between the back room and the front room… well, we are a house of Stacks. No chance of being anything else. It will be interesting to see if the kids grow up into minimalists because of it.