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Last week, as part of my plodding attempt to be licensed to practice dentistry in Australia, I went online to request transcripts from dental school and my residency. Six years’ worth of classes and grades, and they were delivered in seconds to my email account. I shakily clicked on the link to read and download them, and when I did, an ocean of memories washed over me.

NOT TO BRAG (because, trust me, much has changed), but I did okay for myself through high school. College wasn’t so bad either, though I had to grow accustomed to being in a bigger pond full of people who also did okay for themselves through high school. But in dental school? In dental school I fell solidly into the middle of the pack. Average and mediocre were words that felt lobbed at me by many of my grades, and by the transcript that reflected them back to me after twenty years. But it was during my residency that the wheels truly fell off, in a stunning deconstruction of my identity, both the personal and professional sides of it.

What, like a girl would move from Alabama to New York out of anything other than a sense of desperation?

I’ve lived long enough that the memories are piling up faster than I can retain them, and we’ve even lived in Australia long enough now that the boys’ memory piles aren’t too shabby either. Yesterday, The Kid looked thoughtful for a minute then said to me, “I think getting stuck in that bathroom last week changed my life.” And how. He’s already announced that he’ll no longer be using public bathrooms, and even at home he kept the bathroom door cracked this morning when he went there for, as he puts it, “business time.”

And Little Brother? He’s lived the majority of his life here now, but I find myself being the one who needs to access more of his memories. He’s had a struggle adjusting to life as a first-grader after a stellar kindy year, and so many of our mornings have ended with his teacher urging him into the classroom as I reluctantly let him go. Yesterday he cried as he was pulled away from me, and I hotfooted it across the school grounds and into the car, where I burst into tears myself.

Good times.

Then I get reminded–by social media, no less–of last year, when he went through the same thing, and after I lamented this to The Sis at the time, she told that he was right where he was supposed to be, and he was going to make kindy his bitch. Both of which were true.

We forget, and are reminded, and this is its own rhythm. Grace reminds.

It’s so repetitive. But so many things that matter are. This morning, TK naughtily let the dog out just as we were leaving for school, and after a few expletives from me, he asked if I would forgive him. LB asked if I was feeling more forgiving or more angry. And we worked through it together, not for the first time and not for the last, this process and rhythm of mistakes and forgiveness.

Over the weekend, we went to the “real” beach–the surfing beach with its open water and enormous waves–and while LB was more content to stand at the shoreline, TK went out with me and his boogie board past the break and into the deeper water, where the waves were cresting, and we rode them together. Over and over, his joy reminding me of my own childhood in the Gulf, riding different waves that somehow still connect to these through water and time.

And yesterday, in the midst of a nasty mood, I abandoned previous plans and donned my swimmers and went back there, alone. I trod across the sand and into the water, colder than the sea I grew up in but no less beautiful, and I rode the waves again. And again. Until they sent me back to the shore, and home.