While our younger daughter was in Puerto Rico over the holidays, there were lots of little, and some not-so-little, earthquakes. She told me that some nights everyone slept in the living room together (and just the other night I learned that our friends had lectured her: If our English suddenly stops working and we’re running, FOLLOW US, instructions which made me double over with laughter). None of it seemed to bother my daughter, though, so I didn’t worry. Besides, it wasn’t like I could do anything.

But the night before she was to arrive home, I jolted awake, adrenaline pumping. My first thought was that there’d been a big quake and she was hurt. I lay there, panicking, wondering if I should wake my husband so he could check his phone. I didn’t, though, and eventually the panic subsided and sleep overtook. (I later learned she had felt an earthquake that night, but it’d been several hours earlier and, again, she hadn’t been much fazed.) So maybe I was a little worried after all?

It wasn’t until a few days after she’d returned home that they got hit by the first serious quake, the next day followed by The Big One. That morning when I came downstairs, my husband filled me in on the news (he’d taken the early-morning calls and texts): Six-point-something, tsunami warning, evacuation, island-wide power outages—

Abruptly I started crying, and my husband, confused, stopped his bad-news litany. “Well, I didn’t expect that reaction,” he said, and I half-wailed, half-shouted, “This upsets me!”

But truth is, my response startled me, too. I’m usually pretty even-keel and pragmatic and the facts were: our friends were fine, the tsunami warning was canceled, the devastation wasn’t nearly as bad as it could’ve been, or as it was in Hurricane Maria. But when friends are terrified, facts have less power to calm. The fact fact is, the island has been through so much, and now this.

For the last few weeks, the island’s collective stress — both physically and emotionally — had been building, taking a huge toll everyone, and now, even though scientists say that this was The Big One and everything should settle down, there are still dozens of tremors, making it hard to sleep and keeping them in a constant, elevated state of anxiety. They send us pictures of their mattresses all lined up outside, and emails filling us in on the details of a life displaced.

But as they gradually catch up on sleep (or at least get some), their energy, and their sense of humor, returns. One morning’s email was titled “Refugees Day 2,” and Chiro posted a video of his makeshift earthquake meter: a gallon jar of water atop a concrete pillar, eerily sloshing away.

A couple nights ago, I marinated thin slices of cube steak in Chiro’s pincho sauce. We had rice and refried beans, avocado and lime. Our local Puerto Rican friends braved the snowy roads (safe to us; deadly scary to them) to come eat with us and drink hot chocolate and tell us more details of the news from home.

This next week, MDS sends down a couple people to assess the damage and plan a response.

And so it goes.

This same time, years previous: boys in beds, homemade lard, our little dustbunnies, sourdough crackers, one year and one day, the quotidian (1.9.12), salted dulce de leche ice cream with candied peanuts, hog butchering!, baked hash brown potatoes.

For weeks, we searched high and low for lights to go above the new island. They needed to be cheap and sturdy, provide clean light (I was sick of the yellow-green glow from our old hanging lamp), and probably made from something aluminum-ish, to go with the fridge and stove. I scoured the internet, poked my head into stores, discussed options with my husband, and asked around. Nothing.

And then one day I’d decided I’d had enough of the whole thing and off we went to town, me and my husband. We went to all the stores and looked at all the lamps. And then, in Bed, Bath, and Beyond, my husband jokingly picked up a metal dog dish and flipped it upside down. “I could make one,” he said.

“Yeah right,” I said. “That’s not nearly deep enough. The bulb would stick out.”

A minute later he resurfaced brandishing a colander. “How about this?”

And then, my brain slowly shifting gears, I spied some metal mixing bowls. “Or these?” Suddenly the options seemed endless.

We bought both a colander and a metal mixing bowl and, back home, we decided we liked the colander best — with directional lighting, there’d be no bright glare daggering our eyeballs through the colander holes — and my husband mockwired it. It seemed okay, so he went ahead and cut a hole in the bottom. If it didn’t work out, we’d only wasted fifteen bucks.

He sanded down the shiny stainless steel on the inside to reduce glare. We debated cutting off the handles, but then decided against it — if you’re going to use colanders as hanging lights, you might as well go all the way. (Our younger daughter suggested I dry my homemade pasta from the handles.)

Once we were sure we liked it, he bought a second one, wired them both, and that was it — our island had lights!

I’m still not entirely satisfied — the light feels a little too bright, and it doesn’t quite reach to cover all of the island’s surface (we might have to install a dimmer switch or experiment with different kinds of bulbs) — but for now it’s plenty good enough.

Besides, the fact that we’re using colanders as lights delights me to no end.

What a hoot!

This same time, years previous: the Baer Family Gathering of 2019, today, the quotidian (1.9.17), how we kicked off 2016, what it means, date nut bread, between two worlds, buckwheat apple pancakes, candied peanuts.

This weekend my older son moved out of our house and into a basement apartment in town.

Now he’ll be close enough to school — he starts classes tomorrow — that he can walk or bike, which means he won’t waste time and gas driving back and forth to town and can take full advantage of campus life. Though I’m not sure how much time he actually have for extracurricular fun and games: rumors are the nursing program is intense.

The people renting the room to him — friends that we met when I was eight months pregnant with our son — gave our son the freedom to do anything to his room as long as it was an improvement, so the weekend was spent getting him set up.

My husband and I helped him clear the room out. My son, with the help of a couple of the kids, painted it. My husband and I went shopping with him for a rug remnant cover the tile floor and to lighten and cozify the room. We gave permission (in certain cases, begrudgingly) for him to make off with bits and pieces of furniture from our house: lamps, mattress, bedding, twinkle lights, a chair, etc.

And now the room’s all set up and lovely!

“Are you sad I’m moving out?”

“Not exactly sad,” I said, slowly stirring the white sauce for the macaroni and cheese. “More” — I paused, searching for the right word — “more verklempt.”

“Verklempt! What’s that?” and, without waiting for a response, my son pulled out his phone and googled it. “Overcome with emotion? Unable to talk?”

“No, no, not that. I thought verklempt meant sad, but in a happy sort of way. Melancholy, maybe.”

Because this is good, his moving out, studying, getting a job, working. I wouldn’t want him not to move out, right? But still….

“I’m excited about your adventures,” I explained, “it’s just, I’m going to miss hearing about them all the time.”

It’s almost cruel: just when kids grow up enough to be interesting, they leave.

It used to be that when the kids were little, I was constantly bored and overwhelmed and frazzled. Forever in search of meaningful projects and conversation, I seized every opportunity to escape.

But now, it’s flipped. The older the children get, and the more they strike out in search of their projects and work and relationships, the more I feel a pressing need — correction: desire — to be present. Now’s when I need to be available, to listen and support and coach.

The coaching (read: lecturing) is intense — one child recently asked me why I didn’t pursue a career that required me to lecture full-time; she wasn’t even being sarcastic — and oddly enough, much of the things I enjoy (the movies, games, Ultimate, conversation, food) now involves and includes my children. Being with them is often (but not always) both fun and satisfying.

In other words, I’m experiencing a complete reversal of the early years with them.

What a pleasant surprise.

I was recently telling some friends about this shift, kind of puzzling over it because most of the people I know do the opposite — stay home and then return to work when their kids reach their teens — but my friend said that she had a friend who worked out of the home when her kids were little but, once they hit middle school, she quit her job and stayed home because the middle and high school years were when she felt most needed.

So I guess maybe I’m not the only one who feels this way?

Sunday night, after our family night movie, he loaded the last of his stuff into the car, I gave him a candle (because candles make a place home) and, laughing, we hugged good-bye.

We’ll still see lots of him, of course — he was back the next day to do some chores, eat lunch, and have coffee, and he’s called a number of times to fill us in on his adventure stories, and there have been texts and emails (You got any ideas for some non-time-consuming meals I could cook…?) — but it’s different. We no longer have four kids in the house.

The balance is shifting.

In recent months when I’d come downstairs in the morning, my son would often be slumped in the soft swivel chair by the bookcase, or maybe curled up on the end of the sofa in front of the fire, carefully cradling a cup of coffee in his hands. There’d be nothing to occupy him — no phone, no book, no nothing — just the slow, steady, meditative slurping of his coffee. Sometimes he’d take so long to drink it that he’d have to reheat the mug partway through.

My husband and I teased him that he’s a stodgy old man already, methodical and routine rigid, but truth is, both my husband and I were quite fond of our coffee-drinking mornings. In that seam between night and day, the gray, early-morning light filtering through the windows, the three of us would chat and tell stories and bicker and make plans. It wasn’t perfect, but it sure was special, and I’m going to miss those moments.

I’m going to miss him.

This same time, years previous: high-stakes hiking, Christmas cheese, marching, high on the hog, 5-grain porridge with apples, breaking the fruitcake barrier, when cars dance, headless chickens, cranberry sauce, baguettes.