I wrote notes on my morning walk, these are them: 

Before Roby was born I thought about her as an adult a lot more than I do now. I think of her as her now. As the living gift and present wonder.

That’s true. I have a hard time imagining her as older than she is, she’s Roby. She’ll be older, some day, but for now, she’s her and that’s nice, it’s the best. 

Maybe I think of her differently, I probably do. At least that seems to be true given how constantly I am baffled by the thought processes of other parents. I spoke with a parent today, someone I don’t know very well, but it was very strange. He said that my idea for this school sounded great, he understood my desire to do it because his children were getting close to school age and he was having a hard time accepting that he had to, in his words, “institutionalize” them.

He was committed to working as much as possible this summer so that he could spend as much time with them as possible this year, their last before institutionalization. 

That this is seen as inevitable, and even acceptable, is quite insane.