The Shape Of Us

On family, traditions, and the places we belong

No one assigned seats at our dinner table. We just have them.

My dad sits at one end. Caleb sits at the other, closest to the outlet, because of course he does. There is almost always a laptop involved, and apparently dinner is no reason to risk falling below an acceptable battery percentage. My mom sits across from me and Holden. Holden sits beside me. Technically.

In reality, his chair somehow migrates closer to mine every single night until our elbows start colliding and I have to push him back toward his own place.

No one ever sat us down and decided any of this. It just happened. Over time, we found our spots.

This is the shape of us.

For the last couple of years, the five of us have lived on top of one another in a house that was never really meant to hold us all this way. My parents. Me. The boys. Bedrooms have been shared. Things have been stored wherever they fit. Privacy has become a relative concept. Dinner happens around the same table, in the same seats, night after night.

My mom usually cooks. Sometimes my dad grills, and Holden usually wants to help. There is often garlic bread because the kids love it, although this does not prevent them from complaining about whatever else is on the plate and then asking if they can have ramen instead.

Caleb will eat steak as often as anyone is willing to provide it. He sprinkles on a truly unreasonable amount of salt and will literally lick the plate clean.

Holden spends dinner asking everyone if he can try their food, even if he has eaten the exact same thing approximately seventy times before. Then, when he likes something, there is no subtlety about it.

He is all in.

He makes sounds. His eyes close. Butter drips down his chin. Barbecue sauce somehow ends up on his cheeks, his hands, and occasionally in places that seem physically impossible. Then he wipes those hands directly on his clothes despite years of being informed that his shirt is not, in fact, a napkin.

We watch him eat and laugh because there is really nothing else to do.

The boys always ask for ginger ale.

Always.

Some nights, dessert becomes part of the ritual too. Holden and I make brownies, or I throw pre-shaped cookie dough onto a tray so we can have warm cookies after dinner. We pass the plate around and negotiate over the last one.

For a while, I would sometimes bring Crumbl home from work, and we would all taste that week’s flavors and rank them like our opinions carried actual authority.

None of these things ever felt important enough to call traditions while they were happening.

They were just... things we did.

But that is probably how traditions begin.

Quietly. Accidentally. Repeated often enough that one day you realize they belong to a specific version of your life.

Some nights, dinner is terrible.

Someone is tired. Someone is complaining about the food. Someone gets snippy. The kids argue. An adult gets irritated. There are evenings when all five of us would probably be happier eating silently in separate rooms.

But there are other nights when we just laugh.

We have discussed 3D-printing concepts at that table. Holden has told wildly exaggerated stories about school. We have asked Caleb questions like who his favorite teacher is or what his favorite subject is, only to get the same offended response every time.

“Ugh! Why do you always have to ask me that?”

Caleb does not like choosing favorites. Apparently this is an unreasonable burden we continue placing on him.

These are the conversations that fill the space between bites. Nothing profound. Nothing anyone would think to write down while it is happening.

And soon, this arrangement is going to change.

That is one of the strangest things about buying the house. I have spent so much time thinking about what we are moving toward that I sometimes forget there is also something we are moving away from.

There will be a new table. New chairs. A different room. The boys and I will probably develop new assigned seats without ever assigning them. Caleb will almost certainly locate the nearest outlet. Holden will probably still inch his chair toward mine until I remind him that I need room to use my own arms.

Some things survive a change of address. But my parents will not be sitting across from us every night. My dad will not be at the other end. My mom will not be across from me.

And that is different.

For a long time, I thought of this living arrangement as temporary. Something we were doing until I could get somewhere else. Until I saved enough. Until I found the house. Until the next part started.

And it was temporary.

But temporary does not mean insignificant.

We built routines here. The boys grew here. We laughed here. We annoyed each other here. We learned exactly how close five people can live before everyone starts longing for a door they can close.

And somehow, without anyone deciding it, we became this little unit around the table.

This shape.

I think that is what I will miss.

Not necessarily the crowded house. Not the lack of privacy. Not sharing a bedroom with an eight-year-old and his glowing jellyfish.

But the automatic things.

Knowing where everyone will sit. Knowing who will reach for what. Knowing that Holden will be too close. Knowing Caleb will probably have something plugged in. Knowing someone will ask for ginger ale. Knowing there is a decent chance Holden will leave the table wearing part of his dinner.

The ordinary choreography of people who have eaten enough meals together that nobody has to think about where they belong.

Soon, the boys and I will have a new table. A new house. A new version of normal.

And I am ready for it. I really am.

But I think there will be nights when I look around that new table and remember exactly where everyone used to sit. My dad at one end. Caleb at the other. My mom across from me. Holden pressed too close at my side.

And me, right there in the middle.

This was the shape of us.

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This Is So Stupid (One Minute Memoir)

A Memoir on Inflatable Costumes, Family Entertainment, and Absolutely No Dignity

Setting: October 2026 — An afternoon when the sidewalk became a mid-October Halloween parade

The boys’ cousins passed inflatable Halloween costumes on to them this year. Caleb got Garfield. Holden got a dinosaur.

Naturally, before Halloween actually arrived, they needed to try them on.

Holden and I had already made a Dollar Tree run for batteries because the costumes inflate with little battery-powered fans. What I had not fully appreciated was what these things look like before the fans do their jobs.

Out of the bag, Holden’s dinosaur was less “costume” and more enormous pile of orange synthetic fabric with several unexplained openings.

My mom, dad, me, and the boys were all in the living room while my mom attempted to get him inside it.

This did not go smoothly.

There were arms where legs should have been. Legs where nobody seemed entirely certain legs belonged. At one point, they had put the entire thing on backward. The dinosaur also came with clawed feet and matching claw gloves, because apparently getting an eight-year-old into a giant inflatable reptile was not challenging enough.

My mom was getting increasingly frustrated. My dad thought the whole thing was hilarious. She informed him that perhaps it was funny from where he and I were sitting on the other couch, but it was considerably less funny from inside the situation.

She had a point.

From our vantage point, however, it was excellent.

At one point, watching my mom wrestle yards of orange material around Holden, I said it looked like she was helping him into a wedding dress.

A wedding dress with a tail.

Eventually, through a combination of determination, problem-solving, and what I assume was blind luck, Holden was inside. Then somebody switched on the fan.

The dinosaur began to grow.

And grow.

And grow.

Within seconds, Holden had transformed from a child wearing an unreasonable amount of fabric into a massive orange dinosaur standing in my parents’ living room. He immediately started clapping his little dinosaur claws together and singing something that did not appear to be in any language known to the rest of us.

By then, my mom was an expert. Caleb’s Garfield costume went considerably faster. Soon we had one enormous dinosaur and one enormous orange cat occupying most of the living room.

Someone suggested they go outside.

Caleb ran toward the door in full inflatable Garfield form, laughing.

“This is so stupid,” he exclaimed.

He was correct.

It was also apparently exactly what we needed to do.

They headed to the end of the driveway and started walking up and down the sidewalk. Except “walking” is generous. Inflatable costumes do not really allow for normal human movement. The boys sort of waddled. Wobbled. Bounced.

Then they started chasing each other.

There are few things funnier than watching Garfield flee from a giant dinosaur at the speed of someone trapped inside a balloon.

Cars started honking. Then more cars honked. At one point, even a garbage truck joined in. My mom and I stood back in the driveway taking pictures and laughing while the boys continued their deeply dignified neighborhood performance.

“I hope nobody I know drives by,” I said.

Which, of course, was ridiculous, because by that point they had already attracted the attention of approximately everyone traveling down the road. There was Caleb, enormous Garfield head bobbing as he ran, and Holden, a giant orange dinosaur wobbling after him.

Caleb was right.

It was so stupid.

But for a few minutes, all five of us were laughing, the boys were still young enough to run down the sidewalk in inflatable costumes, and nobody cared how ridiculous it looked.

Because for one ridiculous afternoon, childhood looked exactly like this.

This post is part of my One-Minute Memoir series — short reflections on small moments that still manage to say something big.

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Two Kinds of Extraordinary

On big hearts, brilliant minds, and two very different boys

Caleb and Holden are almost comically different.

Holden will give you half of what he has before you have even asked for it. Caleb would like to know why you are touching his stuff. Holden notices when someone needs something. Caleb notices how something works. One leads with his heart. The other leads with his mind.

And I think one of the strangest things about raising two children is realizing how early they become unmistakably themselves.

Holden has always been generous in a way that feels almost instinctive. He gives away food he loves. He buys things for other people. He brings gifts to teachers. He tries to win over kids who are unkind to him by being kinder.

Sometimes I watch him do these things and think, How are you real?

Then there is Caleb.

Caleb is not especially interested in sharing. This is putting it politely. He likes what is his to remain his. He does not approach snacks, possessions, or personal resources with Holden’s open-door economic policy.

But his mind is incredible.

He understands things quickly. He notices patterns. He gets absorbed in how systems work. Technology, music, machines, complicated little problems that would make my eyes glaze over seem to light something up in him instead.

His brain is always doing something.

Thinking.

Building.

Figuring.

Questioning.

Connecting.

Sometimes I look at one of my children and wonder how someone can move through the world with such an enormous heart.

Sometimes I look at the other and wonder how one small head can hold so much.

For a long time, I think I subconsciously expected siblings to be variations of one another. Same ingredients. Slightly different recipe. Instead, I got two entirely different people.

One who would hand you his last chicken wing. One who would probably ask why you did not plan ahead and buy your own chicken wings.

And somehow, I adore both versions.

There are things I hope Holden learns from Caleb. How to protect himself a little more. How to understand that generosity does not require giving everyone unlimited access to him. How to keep something for himself without feeling guilty about it.

And there are things I hope Caleb learns from Holden. How to loosen his grip sometimes. How to notice what another person might need. How to understand that there are things worth giving away simply because giving them makes someone else happy.

But I do not want either of them turned into the other.

I do not want Holden’s softness hardened out of him. I do not want Caleb’s intensity dulled down into something easier.

They are not unfinished versions of each other. They are not balances on opposite sides of some scale. They are two entirely different kinds of extraordinary.

One amazes me with the size of his heart.

The other amazes me with the size of his mind.

And somehow, the more different they become, the more certain I am that neither one needs changing at all.

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I Painted Them Pink

On pretty things, possibility, and getting ready for maybe

One Saturday morning in August, I painted my fingernails pink. This would not ordinarily qualify as an event. But I hadn’t painted my nails in years.

I was home alone that morning. I had met someone new a month back. Things had been tense between us for a few days, but we had spent several weekends together back to back by then. Seeing him on the weekend had started to feel almost automatic. There was no actual plan for that Saturday, but I still thought he might text.

So I waited.

I put on Skywalkers on Netflix, thinking a documentary would distract me. It did not. I watched for a few minutes. Checked my phone. Watched a little more. Realized I had absorbed almost none of what I had just watched. Paused it. Checked my phone again.

Nothing.

Press play.

Pause.

Check.

Nothing.

As the morning went on, I became increasingly aware that he might not text at all. At some point, I got out the nail polish anyway.

Pink.

I don’t remember consciously thinking, I should paint my nails in case I see him. I’m not sure I even admitted that to myself. But I know why I did it.

I wanted to look pretty for him.

That was something I had started doing with him: putting more effort into getting ready than I wanted him to know I was putting in.

Before one of our dates, I bought a new dress specifically to wear to ZooBrew. Wine red and short, something I knew would look good on me. I carefully picked out and bought the black tights and shoes to go with it, too. I wanted him to see me and think I looked amazing.

I just absolutely did not want him to know that I wanted him to think I looked amazing.

When he saw me that night, he looked at me and said, “Wow, you look amazing.”

Exactly what I had hoped he would say.

Naturally, I immediately lied. I told him I had worn the dress to work that day because I was still new there and hadn’t realized it was casual Friday. I had realized it was casual Friday.

I had bought the entire outfit for him.

Another night after dinner out at an expensive restaurant, he asked if I had worn the tights I had on for him.

Absolutely positively not.

What kind of woman did he think I was? A woman who stood in front of her closet thinking about what a particular man might like before choosing an outfit?

Ridiculous.

I had worn the tights for him. I had specifically bought them for him, too.

I confessed by text the next day.

There was something almost embarrassing about how much I liked doing those things. Not because there is anything embarrassing about wanting to look good for someone, but because I had not felt that particular kind of excitement in a very long time.

I bought dresses. Tights. Shoes. I thought about what I would wear before I saw him. I noticed myself caring about little details I normally would not have cared about. Getting ready became part of looking forward to him. Maybe that was why I kept pretending none of it was for him.

It felt safer to let him believe I had simply happened to show up looking exactly the way I hoped he would like. I could enjoy his reaction without having to admit how badly I had wanted it.

And on that Saturday morning, I was doing it again. Except this time, there wasn’t even a date to get ready for.

There was only the possibility of one.

So I sat at home with Skywalkers paused on the television and painted my fingernails pink while I waited for a text that might turn the day into something else. Maybe he would ask what I was doing. Maybe he would tell me to come over. Maybe whatever had felt tense between us would disappear as soon as we were in the same room again.

Maybe.

I had become very good at living inside maybe.

I let the polish dry. I checked my phone.

Nothing.

Eventually, I pressed play again.

He never texted that morning to ask me to come over.

We didn’t see each other that day. By afternoon, I knew we weren’t going to.

My nails were still pink.

There are much bigger things I could remember about that relationship. Things that were said. Things that happened. The beginning. The ending. The moments that eventually made me understand that wanting something very badly could not make it become what I wanted it to be.

But for some reason, I remember that Saturday morning.

I remember the documentary I couldn’t concentrate on. I remember pausing it over and over because I was too distracted to follow what was happening. I remember checking my phone and watching the morning disappear.

Mostly, I remember the pink.

Maybe because, looking back, they seem like such a small record of how much hope I was carrying around then. I had painted ten tiny pieces of myself for a possibility.

He never saw them.

But I did. 

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The Room We Shared

On jellyfish lamps, early mornings, and the nights I may miss

Since September 2024, Holden and I have been roommates.

This was not a sentimental parenting decision.

My parents’ house simply does not fit all of us very well, so we share my brother’s old bedroom. Two twin beds on opposite walls. His stuff on one side. Mine on the other. A temporary arrangement that somehow became our normal.

Living this close together has required some compromise. Mostly mine. 

For starters, I have endured his jellyfish lamp for a very long time.

I do not like lights when I sleep. Holden, unfortunately, has different interior design standards. He wants the jellyfish glowing beside his bed every night, floating around in their little plastic tank while I lie across the room wondering why darkness apparently became optional. We have had this disagreement many times. He remains unmoved. I remain the one who caves.

The lamp has not been our only source of conflict. There was also the 6 am phase.

For a long stretch, Holden would wake up at approximately six every morning and immediately wake me up too. There was no period of quiet contemplation. No attempt to entertain himself. His eyes opened and apparently his first responsibility as a citizen was to make sure mine did too.

I tried sending him back to sleep. This almost never worked. He just started talking. It went on for ages.

Eventually, I attached a watch to his bed and explained that he needed to look at it before getting up. If it did not say 7:00 yet, he was supposed to stay in bed. I thought this was brilliant. It worked for several days.

Then the novelty wore off.

Apparently, the existence of the watch did not mean he felt particularly bound by its findings. On many mornings, he would get up before everyone else anyway and get on the computer, which meant the rest of the house would soon wake up to Holden becoming increasingly furious at a video game.

So much for preserving the peace.

Last school year brought another morning ritual. The second Holden opened his eyes, he asked me the same question: “Do I have school today?”

Every morning.

We tried explaining weekdays and weekends. We even made up a little chart: Monday through Friday, school. Saturday and Sunday, no school. This is a concept understood by millions of children around the world.

It did not take here.

I would wake up on a random Tuesday to a small voice from across the room asking whether he had school, as though the educational system might have quietly reorganized itself overnight. 

It had not.

And yet, there have been other nights too. The nights he threw up and I was only three steps away. The night terrors when I could get to him before he was fully awake. The nights I looked over and found him sleeping completely upside down, somehow rotated 180 degrees from where he had tucked himself in. 

Sometimes his thumb is still in his mouth. Sometimes one leg is thrown over the side railing.

Those are the nights I remember because they are strange or funny or a little scary.

Most nights are much less eventful. 

I usually climb into my bed shortly after he does, and then I listen from across the room. I wait until I hear his breathing change, becoming slower and heavier, and know he is finally asleep. Then I turn on the television quietly and watch something from my bed while he sleeps across the room.

For a long time, I thought mostly about the inconvenience of all of this.

And it has been inconvenient. Wildly so.

I am thirty-seven years old. I would like my own bedroom. I would like darkness when I sleep. I would like to wake up because my alarm went off and not because an eight-year-old needs immediate clarification on whether Wednesday is still a school day. I would like to watch television without waiting for another person’s breathing to reach the correct level of unconsciousness.

And soon, I will.

When we move into the house, Holden will have his own room. So will I. There will be walls between us. He can run the jellyfish lamp all night if he wants. He can wake up early and stare at his own ceiling. I can sleep in actual darkness. 

It sounds wonderful. 

It probably will be.

But lately I have started wondering whether I will miss this.

Not all of it. I am fairly confident I will survive the loss of the jellyfish lamp.

But maybe I will miss looking across the room and seeing him asleep. Maybe I will miss the sleepy little voice from the other bed. Maybe I will miss knowing exactly when his breathing changes and he has finally drifted off.

Maybe I will even miss opening my eyes and hearing, “Good morning, Mom.”

Most mornings now, that is what he says.

Not “Do I have school?”

Not an urgent announcement about Roblox.

Just, “Good morning, Mom.”

Pleasant. Happy. Holden.

I spent a long time thinking of this room as one more temporary thing we had to get through before our real life could begin. Two twin beds. Not enough space. Too much light. Too little privacy.

But maybe this was real life, too.

One day soon, I will stand in my own quiet bedroom, in my own house, with all the darkness I wanted, and remember the little boy who used to sleep across from me.

Upside down.

Thumb in his mouth.

Jellyfish glowing beside his bed.

And already I will miss the years when there was hardly any space between us at all.

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Humbled by Hot Chicken (One Minute Memoir)

A Memoir on YouTube Recommendations, Burning Lips, and Misplaced Confidence

Setting: March 2026 — Somewhere between YouTube confidence and a spilled cup of ranch

One Sunday, when Holden got back from his dad’s house, he asked if we could go to Dave’s Hot Chicken. I had never been there.

“How do you even know about that?” I asked.

He said they had driven past it. Then he mentioned something about hearing about their sauce on YouTube.

Naturally, I said not today.

Holden responded the way Holden often does when he hears the word no: with a dramatic and immediate protest.

I told him we could try it another time.

Later that week, I started researching the place the way I do when we’re about to try somewhere new.

Was all the chicken spicy, or just some of it?

Did they have mild options?

Why was there no children’s menu?

Was it takeout, dine-in, order ahead?

Going somewhere unfamiliar always makes me a little nervous. Holden, however, was completely confident this would go well. In fairness, he eats Flamin’ Hot Cheetos constantly and seems to believe that qualifies him as something of a spice expert.

Eventually I decided the only way to figure it out was to just go.

When we walked in, it was immediately clear we had no idea how the place worked. We stood just inside the door for a moment, looking around. There were people at the counter, large monitors showing order numbers, and a lot happening very quickly. Holden was distracted by the colorful murals and happily pointed them out while I tried to determine the system. Eventually we realized you ordered on a touchscreen.

The menu had a bunch of sauce options. Holden kept wanting to pick them himself, but I wasn’t sure if the sauces already came with the food or not. Did it include ranch? Maybe. Maybe not. I added some to the order just to be safe.

We settled on a chicken bite flight with fries so we could try three different flavors, plus two pops. Then we waited. When our name was finally called, we went up to the counter with the enthusiasm of people who had been curious about this place for weeks.

We started with the fries. They had a red seasoning on them that looked slightly intimidating, but they were actually pretty good. Then we tried the chicken. Two of the three flavors were hot. Not mildly spicy.

Actually hot.

Within a few bites, Holden put down his fork and told me his lips were burning. I suggested wiping some of the sauce off to reduce the heat.

This did not help.

At some point during the process, Holden also spilled an entire cup of ranch all over the table. We tried a few more pieces anyway. Another bite. More ranch. Strategic sauce removal.

Eventually we looked at each other and admitted the obvious. Even Holden, who had been very confident about his spice tolerance, was done.

We threw in the towel.

It turns out that while Flamin’ Hot Cheetos had given Holden a great deal of confidence, they had not actually prepared him for Dave’s Hot Chicken. We left with burning lips, an abandoned pile of chicken, and considerably less faith in his spice tolerance than we had arrived with.

But at least now we knew.

Sometimes trying something new ends with discovering a new favorite. Sometimes it ends with spilled ranch and an overly confident child admitting defeat.

Next time, we’re ordering mild.

This post is part of my One-Minute Memoir series — short reflections on small moments that still manage to say something big.

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