We came up north for my birthday weekend and father’s day, so I’ll be sharing some of those images this week.

One of my favorite things about this particular cabin is 1) how easy it is to get to from Minneapolis and 2) how it’s surrounded by pine trees and 3) that reading gazeebo you see on the left. Many, many, many hours have been spent on that screened in porch sipping coffee and reading my own books along with Magic Tree House and Harry Potter books with the kiddo. I wish you could smell the trees in this image.

On Memorial Day weekend… before George Floyd was murdered and part … 2? 4? 11? of the craziness that is 2020 began, I took some photos of my backyard coming to life in the springtime.

And then the world fell apart and I just let them sit on my computer. I almost don’t want to share these images because they seem to come from a different era at this point, but I’m also afraid I’ll forget about them if I don’t post them now.

This is not to say that things are “back to normal” in our corner of the world, but rather let’s just take a moment to enjoy nature — as it’s the one thing that’s keeping me grounded these days.

In case it isn’t obvious, the kid does not want a haircut. And things are getting more and more entertaining in the mornings. But really, who can complain when he wakes up and brings down a book and starts reading to himself allowing you to sip your coffee and catch up on the news of the day. And yeah, I love those banana jammies.

We finally felt like the memorial site would be quiet enough this week to take Ezra. This kid has been to protests and such before, but not during a pandemic. We wanted to talk to him more about what happened to George Floyd and how the community was reacting to it.

Early this morning, there were maybe 30 people there, and everyone was in a mask, which felt safe for us. Again, we are more cautious than most due to our exposure with our nanny family and my exposure to newborn clients, but I was so glad we made it there. It was silent. It was powerful.

I didn’t want to bring my big camera to the site, as I felt that would be disrespectful, so I snapped a few of these images discreetly with my phone instead.

If you haven’t read this weekend’s article explaining the 3rd precinct in Minneapolis and why it was the target of the riots, this lays it out pretty clearly.

It has been a long 10 days for my city.

There are some good things coming out of this, and because I am an optimist I like to focus on the good. But I recognize that right now we should really, really be focusing on the bad so that we can all change for the better.

For my own part, I’m digging in to see what can be done to abolish the police union, which I find to be the heart of many (but not all) problems in the department. I also want to rethink the entire police force and other solutions to bring about safety in our communities, because what we have now clearly is not working.

In the meantime, while I read and research and study, here are some amazing murals which have popped up on the plywood covering my city at the moment. This is a very small sampling that I caught while driving to run a quick errand this morning.

Because of our exposure to Ezra’s nanny family and my newborn clients I have, I am not attending protests and I am not shooting much of my city (except through my car). This is extremely hard on the journalist in me, but I think it’s necessary at this time. Instead I’m donating money and supplies, and working for change as mentioned above. I hope you, too, are doing something to support the cause.

The last week has been hard. Beyond hard.

We have witnessed extreme police brutality. We have watched our city burn. We have feared for our safety. We have had really hard conversations with a five year old about abuse of power, racism and the cycles of poverty that racism fuels.

We have had a few bright spots — the largest seeing our community show up with so much food, so many diapers, so much help. We have seen volunteers clean the streets in quick order. And we have seen community defend each other and watch out for each other in ways that the police cannot.

But it’s still hard, and it’s still exhausting. Imagine living like this daily. Imagine the exhaustion of our black communities.

Now go do one thing every day to make it better.

I am so sad and angry and horrified by the police action in my city. I truly have no words, only sadness today. Waking up and explaining this situation to a 5 year old? That might have made parenting through a pandemic look easy. If you feel the need to do something other than call and write your local politicians, you may want to donate here.

This weekend was rainy and gloomy, so there was a lot of staring out the windows.

But one fun thing was that we invited Ezra’s friends (the siblings that his is doing his nanny share with) over for a play date. Since weekdays are spent at the other family’s home, we thought the least we could do was to invite their kids over during the weekend to give the parents a little quiet time.

This is Ezra waiting for them to arrive, standing guard at his post, as he’s been doing a lot of since March.