Whenever I get stressed, tired, or sad, my brain becomes sluggish, and I’m hyper-aware of every step it’s taking and how it’s operating in slow-mo–like when you try to do something with your non-dominant hand.

It must be hard for people to follow me when I speak. A memory pops up, and I have to process it while talking, listening, responding, taking in the stimulus from the outside world, and thinking about what I’ll talk about next.

Luckily no one else has to be aware of what their brain must go through to talk, or we’d all go mute.

It can be frustrating, and frequently you’ll hear me say, “Just read my blog when I finally make sense of it all.”

So to keep my sanity while I wait for my brain to catch up with what I’m saying, I make a game of it and play Connect the Dots.

Want to play along? Help me connect all the dots that made up the heart of the Holy Child panel for graduating 8th Grade families that I participated in on Friday.

1. Five years ago, I established the Holy Child experts panel composed of our graduating families, so it wasn’t a surprise for Alexandra and me to be on it this year.

2. My time at HC goes way back before I was ever a parent, as I graduated in 1983, Skylar in 2018, and now Alexandra in 2022.

3. For Friday’s panel, we had to pick two questions we wished to answer. They were the same questions I made up five years ago, so I asked Alexandra to choose. “I can answer any of them.”

4. Alexandra picked two, and I said, “Why’d you pick those? How am I supposed to answer that?”

5. Alexandra laughed because apparently, I did have a preference.

6. Then, we each picked our favorite.

7. On a good brain day, I wouldn’t need to prepare. So I convinced myself that would be the case and went to bed.

8. I woke up tired and hadn’t focused on the key points I wanted to say. Before we started, I turned to another panelist and said, “I ramble.”

9. She reassured me she does too. I felt comforted.

10. It was my turn. I began with the obvious. I tend to ramble. But I’ve earned that right, so don’t mind if I ramble today.

11. Oh, that wasn’t how I was supposed to introduce myself. Say how long I’ve been part of the school. Blah, blah, blah. What else?

12. Instead, I tell a story. I went to school here, and I was the second lead in Hello Dolly and the co-editor of the first yearbook.

13. After the fact, I realized I had edited out the fun parts. Dave Boreanaz of Bones was in that play–he was Horace. And Eric was the co-editor with me, the only one of us who had the sense to have an autograph page. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want anyone’s autograph unless they were famous, but I thankfully caved. Oops, missed story opportunities.

14. I did say, “Skylar and I came to Holy Child, but Alexandra chose it.” For Skylar, we had just moved from New York, and we had one week to get Skylar into school. Luckily they were able to take Skylar. But Alexandra chose to go to school here. It’s what she wanted more than anything.

15. I was supposed to talk about what I did as a parent. Right. “I was President. That’s all I can remember. So we’ll leave it at that.”

16. Someone reminds me, “You did Kisses for the Cast.” Oh, right. “Every kiss I sell, I’m sending a kiss to Mr. and Mrs. A.”

17. How could I forget creating Kisses For The Cast seven years ago to honor the memory of Mr. and Mrs. A? He was my favorite teacher of all time, including all of my schooling.

18. I tried to pay attention to Alexandra. What had she already said?

19. Alexandra spoke eloquently, and she didn’t want to make it about herself. I should have told her that you can talk about yourself–that’s the point of a panel to share your experience. I told her nothing. Luckily she’s my John Wayne. She doesn’t get ruffled easily the way I do, even without preparation.

20. It was somehow my turn again. I had to mention my fondest memory. I could do that–tell the uniform story!

21. Skylar and I went here, but Alexandra wanted to go here. She was in the nursery program and wanted desperately to wear a uniform, but I wouldn’t let her because she wasn’t old enough. So I bought her a pretend uniform on Land’s End, and she wore that. Only her teacher saw what was going on and said, “I’ll have none of that.” She marched Alexandra down to the collector’s corner and got her a uniform. Alexandra wore her uniform from that day forward.

22. Jump ahead to this year when Alexandra wanted to be Belle in Beauty and the Beast. But she was so scared. Oh, wait a minute, will she be okay with me sharing that?

23. So when another family was talking, I whispered to Alexandra. “Can I say you were scared?”

24. Alexandra looked at me, sometimes she must find this game amusing, “Scared of what?”

25. “Scared to be Belle,” I said as if we both should have read my mind.

26. Jump ahead from that little girl who wanted desperately to wear a uniform to this year and Beauty and the Beast. Alexandra was scared to be Belle, but she overcame her fears with the help of the directors, Erin and Pat, and rocked it. Of course, there was so much more to the story, but we had three other families on the panel who needed to speak. Had I taken up too much time?

27. So she went from wanting to be the very 8th Grader that she dreamed of becoming to being that 8th Grader. I didn’t say it as well as I just wrote it. It might have come out garbled for all I know. And then I had another question to answer. What will I miss most?

28. “I tell Alexandra, “write it all down: what it feels like to be on top of your world. You will never have this opportunity to be an eighth-grader again. When you graduate high school, you’re going to college. When you graduate college, you’re busy getting your first job. But this moment, it’s all you’ve got.

29. And if you’re going to get cancer, get it here. This is the place. My first chemo was the day before Alexandra’s birthday, and I had to give up being a mom.

30. But I did. It’s like I had to give in my papers. From this day forward, I’m taking a leave of absence from all duties that you have grown to expect from me. Ouch! There’s a well of sadness in me because of that.

31. Oh, right. The story. So I asked a mom to take care of Alexandra for her birthday. And she did. She didn’t even do anything for her daughter’s birthday, but she made sure Alexandra had a wonderful day. And I never even thanked her.

32. I should have mentioned that any mom in the class would have gladly done the same thing. But all I could say was this place is so much more than community. Community doesn’t begin to explain this place.

33. This is love. I might have said the word three times and then, “I love you.” And I do. Everything always comes back to love for me now.

34. Alexandra says, “How am I supposed to follow that?” But she speaks, and I don’t hear her again. I whisper, “Aren’t you supposed to answer the second part of the question?” And she whispers back, “I already did.” Great, I somehow missed another mom opportunity with my daughter.

35. Another boy on the panel says he’ll miss most talking to the teachers in the hall.

36. I’ll miss that, too. There’s so much I didn’t get to say, wanting to make sure everyone had a chance to share their truths. And I didn’t encourage Alexandra to share more of her own. Maybe I should have thought this through—I’m feeling speaker’s remorse.

37. The other boy starts talking with such quiet power you have to lean in and listen. He says our class has had a lot of sadness, and we have cried together and comforted each other and have come out and been better for it.

38. How did he know enough about life to say that? I never cry in front of people if I can help it. It isn’t a pretty sight. But he went on with examples.

39. “The first time we cried was when Mr. B left.” He was my kids’ version of Mr. A. How could I not have cried when that man left?

40. “And the second time was when Mr. A died.” He remembered Mr. A! The line wrapped around the building and mazed along the halls as we paid our respects to his family. But all any of us wanted was to have a moment alone in his 8th Grade classroom.

41. The last photo that the school photographer ever took was of Mr. A with the girls and me. I orchestrated it in his 8th Grade classroom, and then I asked, “where’s a field hockey stick? We can’t have a picture without that.” It was one of the things we loved most about him; he’d whack the desktop of anyone who needed to pay attention. I think kids feigned sleeping for the fun of it. Only, Mr. A. smiled and said, “I use the board of education paddle now.”

42. Mr. A. and the board of education paddle faded. I had no idea that the panel had ended, but people had been crying. The President spoke to wind it all up.

43. How did this happen before I figured out what I needed to say?

44. One of the panelists thanked the principal for keeping our school together through Covid; we gave him a standing ovation. His eyes were glistening, too.

45. Afterwards, I talked to Tom. He said, “I didn’t know that about the yearbook.”

46. I said, “It’s not like I planned it.”

47. He said the very words that I hadn’t formulated myself, “Your classmates saw it in you when you didn’t see it in yourself.”

48. Imagine a community where those around you can see what you don’t see in yourself. The women with younger kids who don’t yet understand what we expert parents have been through thanked me for sharing my stories, it meant so much to them, and I spoke from my heart, “Make your magic–this is your school now.”

49. It’s all starting to make sense. There aren’t that many more dots left to connect. Alexandra dreamed of being the 8th Grader she became.

50. The moms were there when I couldn’t be the mom for my daughter.

51. All those years ago, my classmates and Mr. A (we can’t forget him) saw me for who I was when I didn’t believe in myself.

52. This is how a community works–one dot at a time, we create a heart. It came together for me when I said to Tom, “These kids, they have heart. Covid took everything away, and when the kids got it all back, they knew what they lost, and they have “heart” as I’ve never seen before.”

Or I just as well could have been talking about myself. I don’t know. Now I’m saying things, and Alexandra’s saying it didn’t happen the way I told it.

“You’re telling it better than it happened,” Alexandra said.

And Skylar didn’t believe my rendition either, “No one cries on a panel.”

I guess you had to be in my mind to understand.

But now I have “Heart and Soul” playing in my head. It’s jagged and raw and haunts me. It took me 52 years to understand what that 8th Grader already has learned (even if he didn’t say it exactly the way I said he did). There’s magic in all that sadness. Because when we comfort one another, we become whole again.

And now, for the fun part. We don’t need 8th Grade anymore to remind us we always have it in us to be on top of our world. Let’s make our magic; we’ve created some “Heart and Soul” with all those dots we connected.

If we played it before, we could play it again.