Bonus Recs #25: 10 ways of being "here when you need me"

This morning, Ada rose early to shower and gather herself before 5th grade graduation. She ate blackberries, one drupelet at a time, admitting she was nervous as she buckled into slightly-too-big Betsey Johnson floral heels, priorities consistent: fashion first, try and keep the turmoil in check, scope out the situation, then get ready to conquer it.

I’ve asked the kids if they can feel all the energy of New York City. There’s the socialist almost-sweep of the primaries on Tuesday. There’s Zohran on the Knicks parade float. There’s Rama, wearing her custom Knicks-knockoff-merch dress, people clamoring up light posts and onto bus stops to catch a view of Jalen, TAK, and the rest of the Knicks team alongside the mayor and his wife.

Do they notice that the sun is out later, that it’s harder to leave the playground before 8 p.m., that the early spring flowers have fully given way to the roses and the sunflowers? They go from asking how many weeks are left of school to how many days to single digits of days, to declaring they don’t want to go to the last day because it means it will be over.

I think about the last few months, the momentum of the city coexisting with the tumult of being a human. Teachers and parents encouraging and pushing kids through their routines and across finish lines. Parades, celebrations, elections, tests, performances, new schools, old schools, stepping up, moving forward, leaving behind.

Ada asks me to walk her to school for the first time in months. I tell her to look at me during the ceremony if she feels nervous. Heart hands. Heart hands.

Here are 10 acts of parental anticipation, inner resolve, and trying to see each other. They’re little moments of non-verbal communication: parent to kid, kid to parent. They are the ones that say I’m here, I heard you, I see that it’s hard, everything is changing, I know it’s a lot.

• Sitting next to Ada as she practiced piano every day for 6 months without saying a word. Presence, not critique. A big whisper, “thank you,” as she walks off the stage, and past us in the aisle.

• Getting some empty notebooks and leaving them near the kids’ beds when I saw the other ones had been filled up with lyrics and lists and letters and stories. Books and blank paper are two things I’ll never be stingy about.