The last 10 weeks have been something of a jumble: Ali is in the thickest bit of her high school application process, with interviews, tours, shadow days, open houses, meetings with coaches, plus something like 4,000 essays to write. Claire’s 12U rec soccer team had a roaring late-season run to win their league championship against a tough bunch of girls who had earlier beaten them twice (go, Sharks!). Jack is learning experientially that he may have bitten off a morsel more than he might comfortably chew in running a club, an affinity group, and his Boy Scouts troop all at once—while logging as many student driver hours as we can give him. Katie is having one of her busiest stretches at work ever.

And how has your faithful Dad’s Corner columnist seen his frenetic family through the start of such a blisteringly paced school year? By enrolling in the most intense post-bacc class I’ve ever taken, while committing to maintaining my usual level of (perhaps marginally overinvolved) at-home parent service delivery.^[1] Since early September I’ve read six novels, a novella, and two plays, written two research papers, and sat on 10 three-hour Zoom classes. It was so much fun!

In 2019, this tension led our family to come up with the Summer List, an annual tradition of putting together all of the things that each member of the family wants to do in the precious space between school years. I’ve written about it here a few times,^[2] most recently this July. The Summer List has become part of our family mythos, and we all look forward to making it each spring. Once something has made the list, Katie and I put in the work to make it happen, and we aim to cross everything off, every summer.

But what about the rest of the year? Fall and winter practically beg for their own lists, and though spring tends to be somewhat less tradition-dense, there’s plenty to remember and nudge ourselves to do in those months, too. But so often the whole year just careens by! The frantic pace of life with children of all ages doesn't like to leave room for making sure we get to all of the things we want to. We miss beloved seasonal events because we forget they exist in the moment, as often—if not more—than we miss them because we “don’t have time” to attend, day-of.

I’ve set ours up as a shared Google Calendar, tracking things like:

• When the SF Symphony, SFJazz, Chamber Music SF, and the Marin Symphony start selling tickets each season
•  When the Marin Shakespeare Company, the Curtain Theater, the Marin Theater, the American Conservatory Theater and the Berkeley Rep announce their lineups
• When hard-to-get campsites like those on Angel Island become available to reserve
• Reminders to sign up for family shifts at the SF-Marin Food Bank
• When Emporio Rulli sells their panettone paradiso
• When the Giants, 49ers, Stanford Football and San Rafael Pacifics announce their schedules
• Reminders to schedule our holiday tea, Lightscape at the SF Botanical Garden, Flower Piano, Dipsea hike, Acacia bloom-watching walk and Christmas light-spotting drive
• Wildflower blooms, meteor showers, salmon runs, fall colors at the Japanese Tea Garden

In other words, it’s a lot of stuff that takes a lot of cognitive overhead to keep track of. The Family List is outsourcing at its best, freeing up our mental capacity to enjoy more experiences, find new ones to appreciate, and not stress that we might be missing out. It’s not about binding us to doing certain things, but making sure we have the chance to do the things we want to do. It aims for presence, not perfection.