Photo by LeoThere are rare bird sightings.Then there are rare teenager sightings.Summer has become a complicated choreography of music theater, birthday parties, sleepovers, concerts, camps, and friends. Leo’s calendar has somehow become fuller than mine, and Kelly and I have started joking that if we’d like to spend time with our own kid, we should

I’ve been thinking about power this week.Not the kind that comes with titles or degrees or corner offices. Not the kind that lets you decide budgets or policies or who gets promoted. A quieter kind of power. The kind almost all of us carry without realizing it. The power to shape the story another person

Today was the first day of Young Writers Camp. Nearly eighty kids showed up on a rainy Pittsburgh morning carrying backpacks, water bottles, and nervous energy. Some found each other immediately. A conversation about K-Pop somehow turned into a conversation about squirrels. I couldn’t follow either topic, which felt like a reminder that I am

Cedar Point, OhioThe music felt loud.Not louder. Just loud. I was driving our RV from Sandusky, Ohio to South Haven, Michigan when I noticed it. Two hours earlier, the exact same playlist had sounded fine. Now every song felt one click too high. I shifted in my seat and tried to get comfortable. My lower

On Monday morning, my body hurt.Not in a concerning way. More in the way your body hurts after you’ve spent an entire weekend convinced you’re twenty-five and capable of moving mountains.I stood in the kitchen holding my coffee and looking out at the backyard. The new flowers were planted. The bird bath was in place.

Can you find the missing headphones in this picture? Hint: Yellow AirPod case.I didn’t say no much as a kid.Honestly, most of us weren’t really encouraged to.Back then the gold standard for children — especially girls — was agreeable. Helpful. Easygoing. Respectful.Say yes.Be polite.Do what you’re told.Don’t talk back.Don’t be selfish.And I became exceptionally good

Molly Booker May 2026Last night at PPG Paints Arena, I wasn’t sure if I belonged there.Bruce Springsteen is a privileged white man. This is his crowd, right?Lots of older white guys in denim. Beer. Arena rock mythology. America.As a queer lesbian raising a mixed-race, nonbinary child in this political moment, I’ve grown used to quietly

Meet Shelly.We picked her up on Friday—a 2025 Coachmen Leprechaun, twenty-eight feet of “are we really doing this?” energy—and within an hour, I was driving her solo down winding Pennsylvania roads like a woman who absolutely has her life together. Kelly followed behind me in Penny, the Subaru, dogs in tow, probably watching me like,

What Does Success Even Mean?Robert Holden once asked me a question that stopped me cold:How do you define success?Molly and Kelly in Costa RicaI was completely caught off guard.Had I ever actually slowed down long enough to answer that for myself? It felt like one of those questions that should be easy—like Who are you?—and

Birding taught me something this week: you don’t rush. You move from perch to perch. You stop. You wait. You notice. This essay does the same.Perch: PaperThis week, for Environmental Imagination, we read The Conference of the Birds. This is a must-read. Check it out from the library. Buy it if you can. It’s worth