Emily Brisse

 

Hi all, Well, I'd say summer is almost over, but the truth is summer has been in the rearview for me for over two weeks already. My new set of students filled up my new campus on Monday, and brought with them the very tangible feeling of fall. Make no mistake: it was still hot outside. But school is scholarly and high hopes and eager nerves and very much what's next . I am dog tired. And can hardly sleep for the thirty-two things on my to-do list. But also: how many folks can say they get this--this influx of life  every autumn? Besides the kids and the content and the fact that, you know, I get to talk about books and words for a living, I am so grateful for the way the school calendar is cyclical, for the way even when it's harvest time, for me the world feels new. That said: summer was wonderful. WONDERFUL. So much time outside with my dear boy. There are ridiculous tan lines on my feet from my sandals, and this fact makes me grin, because the last time I had lines l...

  I've spent a good amount of time pointing out and exclaiming over ants, worms, beetles, spiders, and other small insect creatures this summer, so forgive me if I sometimes get completely taken in by the grace of these airy dancers. My boy calls them simply "butter." And, yes. But also, can we just pause a moment and consider how incredible it is that anything at all can flap its bits of wings and fly?

Ten years ago I drove down Highway 43 at dusk, watching the sun melt into a haze of orange over Deep Lake, and with one particular song that seemed to evaporate into the heavy air on repeat, I pulled my car into his parent's driveway. He was home from California, and in that moment, shooting baskets with his brother and two friends under the garage light and an assemblage of summer-drunk bugs. He wore a yellow shirt, thin and wide on his shoulders. When his gaze met mine through the windshield glass--that smile, that shirt, that sun, those bugs, the rest of our lives: there they were. What I remember of that summer was like that look: heady. Anyone who has not just walked toward love but fallen off the dock into the black midnight waters of it will know what I mean. You do not know you can talk that long, grin that big, stare that uninterruptedly, kiss that hard, laugh that loud, dream that vividly, hope that unapologetically until suddenly you are doing all of those things, unti...

Instead of forests, this summer we are Big Sky and pointed fingers. (And it feels fine.)

I'm well aware that not everyone has the benefit of having an active father in their lives, so this weekend, I'm going to try extra hard to be grateful first for my son's papa, who wrestles with El on the ground in a way that's all testosterone and gleeful abandon, and second for my own dad, who taught me, among other things, about the joys of being out-of-doors. I have an essay about him up at Literary Mama , right in time for Father's Day. It starts like this: You were never much of a hunter. Pheasants, yes. Squirrels and chipmunks, I suppose, when you were younger. But you never came home from a weekend away with a buck in the bed of your truck, because you never had much interest in deer season and you owned a sedan. I imagine some people from other places can hardly conceive of a Midwestern man without a shotgun over his mantle, a closet full of blaze-orange jackets, a copy of Field and Stream next to the john. And yet when I think of you, I do see an outdoo...

Hello everyone, hello! Spring has finally and fully arrived in Minnesota, and we are all a bit crazy over it. Fling open those windows! Let it all grow! May everything just multiply.  The grass is so green and so high lawn mowers break down from the abundance. I usually say autumn is my favorite time of year, but this season? This parentheses in my life when my little boy is experiencing THE WORLD up close for the first time? There is magic in the air, people, and living a wild and precious life seems quite possible. Hallelujah. Although these past three months have been full of many things, both unsettling and celebratory, the biggest change has been my resignation from my current school district and my acceptance of a new teaching position in Minneapolis. I am thrilled about joining my new school, meeting a new set of smart and inspiring colleagues, and learning with a new crop of young ones, but it is a bittersweet move. I have been at my current school for the past deca...