There is something deeply insulting about being told that the future depends on responsible families while so many people with actual power treat the conditions required to have a future as optional expenses. We’re supposed to raise thoughtful children, keep everybody healthy, pay the bills, and perhaps grow a tomato, while apparently also serving as the unpaid maintenance department for civilization.
Here at our small branch office, Ezra is officially one year old, a development his sister celebrates by calling him her “big one year old” in the sweetest little singsong voice I’ve ever heard. Whatever grievances I have with the passage of time, she is making a persuasive case for this particular stage. She seems to be coming out the other side of a rough patch herself, and last night delivered a breakthrough in the longstanding negotiations over showering. For roughly two years, we have done the shower every day, but enthusiasm has remained elusive despite reward charts, consequences, and my increasingly extensive experience in hostage diplomacy.
Last night I was tired enough to consider postponing the whole operation until morning, but when I announced bedtime, she lovingly informed me that she “can’t go to bed without a shower,” and then got in. Apparently, the policy I have spent two years advocating is now her deeply held personal belief, and I will graciously accept this victory without requesting an investigation into who originally proposed it.
Our oldest goes back to his mom’s today for his week there, which makes the morning school goodbye feel a little heavier. He’s done well during his first week back, and I’m proud of him, but knowing he won’t be coming home to us this afternoon is always a bummer, especially for his little sister, whose preferred custody arrangement would involve keeping everyone she loves within immediate reach.
My husband also gave me what may be the sweetest gift he has ever gotten me. He noticed how much I was enjoying my charcoal pencils, noticed that the cheap ones kept breaking, and noticed me looking online for replacements. Then, being the architect of my imagination that he is, he spent hours researching better pencils and had a set overnighted to our front door.
There are many ways to say “I love you,” and apparently one of them involves conducting a thorough investigation into the structural integrity of drawing supplies. He saw something that made me happy, saw what was getting in its way, and quietly took care of it, which is how he keeps giving me room to create and reasons to feel safe.
And then there is the enormous news: Ezra has an MRI appointment, officially, in Portland on September 30, at a state-of-the-art facility. After everything it has taken to get here, my baby boy is finally scheduled to receive the care he needs and deserves, and I would like the word “finally” printed large enough to be visible from the hospital parking lot. I’m declaring a firm no-backsies policy, although I recognize that my jurisdiction over hospital scheduling remains regrettably untested. For now, we have a date, a place, and something concrete to move toward, and the relief of that is difficult to overstate.
In between all of this, we’re trying to give the living things outside our house a little more room, too. My husband spends just about every spare moment clearing English ivy and invasive blackberries from the forest, while we continue our exhausting diplomatic failure with bindweed, a plant that appears to consider removal a request for additional branches.
We’re planting native plants with the hope of making our backyard a better home for the animals that share it, doing the slow, ordinary work of helping an ecosystem recover. It’s a modest ambition, really: healthy children, decent pencils, a medical appointment, and a patch of earth where something other than the most aggressive organism gets to thrive.
Which brings me, naturally, to the people making decisions about a considerably larger patch of earth. According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service’s report released today, August 2026 tied July 2023 as the hottest month ever recorded globally in its ERA5 dataset. The global average was 1.65 degrees Celsius above the estimated preindustrial baseline, and sea surface temperatures outside the polar regions tied their highest monthly average as well.
That monthly figure doesn’t mean the Paris Agreement’s long-term 1.5-degree threshold has permanently been crossed; the World Meteorological Organization explains that the agreement concerns sustained warming over a much longer period. However, that distinction doesn’t necessarily make me feel better. Closer to home, NOAA reported yesterday that the contiguous United States experienced its hottest summer in 132 years of records, surpassing the previous records from 1936 and 2021. By September 1, drought covered roughly 59 percent of the lower 48 states, an increase of more than ten percentage points since early August.
Copernicus identifies both fossil-fuel-driven warming and strengthening El Niño conditions in the current heat. A natural climate pattern can add to the temperature, but it does not absolve us of responsibility for the heat we keep adding ourselves. Speaking to European lawmakers today, UN climate chief Simon Stiell connected climate disruption to food, water, public health, infrastructure, and insurance, arguing that it has become an economic security emergency. These are the things families are trying to keep dependable, and treating climate policy as an optional cultural preference doesn’t make the consequences optional for the people living through them.
I will happily keep planting things, and my husband will undoubtedly continue his personal campaign against every vine attempting a hostile takeover of our trees, but our backyard can’t substitute for public policy. There’s no quantity of native shrubs I can purchase that gives our household jurisdiction over fossil fuel emissions, and it’s offensive to keep suggesting that individual conscientiousness can carry responsibilities that belong to governments and industries.
The same question follows our children into school: how much responsibility can you place on a family while unsettling the institutions meant to help them? According to NPR, Kelly Rogers, who has been overseeing the Education Department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, announced Wednesday that she will resign effective September 11. Her announcement came just before many staff members were scheduled to begin working from the Department of Health and Human Services as part of the Trump administration’s reorganization, and NPR reported that her replacement was unclear. The office helps oversee implementation of federal special education law and manages about $15 billion supporting students with disabilities.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act still provides eligible children with a right to a free appropriate public education and related services; a resignation and an office move don’t erase that law. The question is whether the people and structures responsible for making those rights real remain equipped to do their jobs. A parent trying to get a child the support they need should be able to find someone with both the knowledge and the authority to help. If your grand plan for reducing bureaucracy leaves families wondering who is in charge, I would suggest that the bureaucracy hasn’t been eliminated so much as reassigned to the mother with seventeen browser tabs open after bedtime.
Having finally secured an appointment for Ezra, I am especially disinclined to accept additional administrative endurance as a reasonable requirement for receiving care, which brings us to Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage delivers Medicare benefits through private insurers, making those companies’ decisions consequential for the people enrolled in their plans. Axios reports that insurers appear headed toward benefit cuts and market exits for 2027 as they pursue better profits.
Meanwhile, CMS’s finalized payment policies project more than $13 billion in additional payments to Medicare Advantage plans for 2027. That aggregate increase doesn’t establish what any individual insurer’s costs or benefits will be, but it does make the public question rather pressing: what dependable care are beneficiaries getting for the public money flowing into this arrangement?
For a company, revising its offerings is a business decision; for a person who needs care, it can become another round of phone calls, comparisons, and uncertainty. I find it difficult to celebrate a system’s flexibility when the flexibility is principally exercised by the institution and the resulting gymnastics are assigned to someone who already has a medical condition. Medicare says plan members should receive their Annual Notice of Change in September, explaining changes to coverage and costs that take effect in January. It’s worth reading carefully, and contacting the plan if it doesn’t arrive, because a familiar name on an insurance card doesn’t tell you everything about next year’s coverage.
I’m delighted that my daughter has embraced showering, proud of our oldest, grateful for a husband who invests in my imagination, and so relieved that Ezra finally has a date on the calendar. These are the pieces of a life we’re trying to build, alongside the plants we put in the ground and the care we give one another when the day has been too much. What angers me is how often that ordinary effort runs up against decisions that make the larger world harder to live in, while the people making them congratulate themselves on being practical. There is nothing impractical about wanting a livable planet, a school that can support your child, or healthcare you can actually use.
My husband understood the assignment when he bought the pencils: pay attention, find out what’s needed, and help make the good thing possible. A country that expects this much care from its families should be required to show some of its own.
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I'm so glad Ezra finally has his appointment, even if it means a long drive!
Medicare Advantage plans are a scam to benefit the insurance companies. They consistently jerk people around. Regular Medicare plus a Supplement Plan is the way to go, because they don't suddenly decide that you can no longer see a particular provider.
WONDERFUL that you've finally got a date for that MRI!
I've been thinking how ironic it is that over here in Germany, one can simply call and make an appointment for an X-Ray, MRI, CT scan, and get in within a few days. The cost, including the doctor's assessment immediately afterwards, is about 1/10th of the U.S.'s. Yes, taxes are "sky-high" here, per my daughter Yvonne. But she says, "Mom, I don't have to worry about friends dying because of a lack of medical care, or friends being evicted because they've lost a job or fallen ill." It's a trade-off.