"Life is chaos," she said. "Mornings in my house are unimaginable. I have to get the kids up and fed, more or less, and out to where the school bus picks them up. At the same time I'm getting myself ready so that I can leave for work once I know they're on the bus. I don't leave before, because if the bus doesn't come, which happens more frequently than it should, I have to take them to school."
The day before school resumed, Sara spent the afternoon with her daughter, just being together-nothing extravagant, just simple delights: a playdate, a temporary face tattoo (because, why not?), pockets of slow time woven together. On the walk home, the temperature dropped sharply. The subway felt impossibly far. Her daughter said she was too cold, too tired, too done. So they shared a pair of headphones.
