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On the one hand I’m like wow perfect parenting

On the other hand California sounds disastrous 😂

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Oh Christin, never perfect parenting. Maybe moment to moment parenting!

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Oh but it WAS disastrous 😅

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I realized later that I might come across as anti-California. Not so CA, not so!!!!

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Wow, thank you for sharing this essay.

"I can’t protect you when you are away from me." hit me so hard. This is how I felt about the students I worked with when we went into quarantine. 🥲

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I had not extended this thought, but I guess it is so true of so many of us in so many spheres. Nurses and patients. Teachers and students. The list must go on.

Some time I'll write a longer story of the train conductor on my little NJ transit train. I recall the first time I rode the train months after 9/11. He had tears in his eyes as he punched my paper ticket. "So good to see you," he said. "I've been watching for MY people." I have never felt more gratitude. We regulars were real people to him, not just passengers riding the train. He had his tribe and 9/11 shattered it. We never knew each other's names, but he'd been hoping many of us would return. Our train+PATH connection meant these particular passengers would come into the WTC at approx 8:52 am each morning.

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Yeah, I think that goes to show how the more specific you are when you write about something, it somehow still finds a way to connect with people outside of that specific experience.

That sounds like such a moving story, I hope you do write it 😌

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