Everyone is a suspect.

Readjusting to a new school year takes a lot out of a kid and a parent.
New teacher(s), a new configuration of students, new friends, old friends who become more distant, old classmates who become deputized as potential friends.

It is a little jarring having to grasp a whole new slew of subtleties that your mind had learned to gloss over by the end of June a few short months before.

To rest in between days at school, my children are turning to us more than usual for comfort in the form of being read to, which can fall by the wayside when they are feeling more sure of things.
They also like to watch a show with one of us. Dog tired, getting back into the routine, I am less tolerant of their choices and I have been inflicting my own, especially on my daughter.

We've started watching Midsomer Murders, a classic British "whodunit", on Netflix.

Other than a ghastly murder near the beginning the rest of the shows are a relatively monotonous enterprise of eliminating suspects one by one. For a pastoral place, people sure get murdered a lot.
The detective, and the audience, observe each character for clues for motive. We talk through out the show about our theories. We intently watch and ruminate over the behaviour of the twitchy shopkeeper who keeps looking over his shoulder, the weepy widow, the antique dealer who looks sinister when she is dusting the teacups, and the custodian of the cemetery who sweeps a little too efficiently.

Maybe she killed the butler, or maybe she's really angry and grumpy for another reason, maybe she is really kind and fun-loving or maybe she's really got a nasty temper.

As my daughter navigates a new terrain at school and finds her footing, watching "whodunits" with her mother is practically homework.

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I entered August without you.

I won't visit you this month. You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you. I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.

Keep telling yourself that.

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