August is a funny month.
The crickets are chirping. And according to my Great-Aunt Bernice, that means the first frost is six weeks away. I have no idea if Great-Aunt Bernice was scientifically accurate, but I’m not about to argue with her. She had a way of saying things that made you believe she knew.
It still feels like summer, but you can see the end of it coming. The days are long, the evenings are warm, and there is still time to sit outside and have a glass of something cold. But somehow, we have started talking about September. School supplies are showing up in stores, people are making fall plans, and the calendar seems to be quietly reminding us that summer doesn’t last forever.
I’ve always thought of August as a kind of in-between month. And maybe that’s why this August feels particularly familiar.
We are in-between a lot of things right now.
On July 1, Mikelle’s budget took a 2% cut. And this wasn’t the first cut of the year. It was the second. Two percent doesn’t sound like much when you say it quickly, but when that budget pays for the people and supports that help someone live her life, 2% is not nothing. And we are expecting more cuts.
That’s the part that makes it harder. We don’t know exactly what the next cuts will look like or when they will come. We don’t know what the final numbers will be or what adjustments we’ll have to make. So we wait, and we watch, and we try to plan—which is a little funny because how exactly do you plan for something you don’t know?
Then there are the midterms coming up and all the uncertainty that seems to accompany every election these days. There is the economy. There are wars happening around the world. Families are worrying about what comes next, and a whole lot of people are trying to figure out how to make sense of things that sometimes don’t make much sense.
Some days I find myself thinking, Okay, what do we do with all of this?
And I don’t really have an answer.
Maybe we don’t have to have an answer right now.
Because in the middle of all of this, life is still happening.
Mikelle is making art. For the fourth year, she has a piece in the $99 Art Show at Access Gallery, and every year she has been in the show, she has sold her work. I love that. Not just because selling the art is wonderful—I certainly hope somebody buys it—but because she is still making things. She is still trying something new. She is still putting a piece of herself out there and saying, Here. I made this.
And then there’s me.
I’m paddle boarding, taking dance lessons, and playing tennis. I’ve always loved to move, and it turns out I still do. The dance lessons have been a joy, and the tennis has reminded me how much I like the rhythm of a good match—the strategy, the competition, and that wonderful feeling when you hit the ball just right.
Maybe that’s part of this season for me, too. I’m not waiting around for life to settle down. I’m still learning, but I’m also enjoying the things I already know how to do well.
There is something about being on the water, on the dance floor, or out on the tennis court that brings me right back to the present. For a while, I’m not thinking about budgets or elections or what might happen six months from now. I’m just there.
And that feels important.
Sometimes I think we get so caught up in preparing for what’s next that we forget that we’re actually living through what’s happening now. We need to plan for the future. Absolutely. That’s a big part of what we’re doing with Our Back Office. Families need to think about succession and sustainability. They need to think about what happens when parents get older and what happens when the systems they have depended on change.
We can’t ignore any of that. But I don’t want the future to take up so much space that it steals the present.
So I’m trying something different. I’m paying attention. I’m doing what I can. I’m worrying when there is something worth worrying about, and then I’m going paddle boarding.
There is something about being on the water that makes the world seem a little less complicated. For an hour or so, my biggest problem is the next wave or where I left my paddle. That’s manageable.
Mikelle has her art, and I have my paddle board. We have the podcast and people around our kitchen table. We have new team members and old friends and conversations that sometimes go places we didn’t expect. We have work that matters to us. We have things that are uncertain and things that are hard, and we also have these beautiful August days.
Maybe that’s what being in-between really means. It doesn’t necessarily mean waiting. Maybe it means continuing.
I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking about transition. What happens next? How do we prepare? How do we make sure Mikelle has what she needs? How do we build something that will last?
Those are still important questions.
But lately I’ve been thinking about another word: becoming.
Because maybe we’re never really done.
Mikelle is still becoming. I’m still becoming. Our families are becoming, and our work is becoming. Even Our Back Office is becoming something we couldn’t have completely imagined when we started. That’s both exciting and a little unsettling, but maybe that’s okay.
Maybe becoming means we don’t have to know exactly where we’re going to keep moving.
It also doesn’t mean that we ignore what is happening around us. We can pay attention to the cuts. We can advocate for Mikelle and for the many people whose lives depend on these supports. We can vote. We can have hard conversations. We can worry about the economy and the world our children and grandchildren are growing up in.
But we can also have a beautiful afternoon.
We can make art.
We can play tennis.
We can dance.
We can get out on the water.
We can sit around the kitchen table and laugh about something completely unrelated to Medicaid or politics or the future.
So we’re going to keep milking these last days of summer.
We’re going to make art and paddleboard and dance and play tennis. We’re going to record podcasts, talk about things that matter, and probably complain about the weather at some point.
We’ll keep an eye on what’s happening around us. We’ll keep advocating, planning, and doing what we can. But we’re not going to wait for the world to settle down before we enjoy our lives.
Because it may never completely settle down.
And maybe that’s the lesson August is giving me this year.
The crickets are chirping. Great-Aunt Bernice says we’ve got six weeks until frost. September is coming whether we’re ready for it or not.
So, for now, we’re going to enjoy the summer we’ve got.
Mikelle is still making art.
I’m still playing tennis, dancing, and trying to stay upright on a paddle board.
We’re still learning. We’re still laughing. We’re still figuring it out.
And we’re still becoming.