Conventions are fun, but reality is back to school

When you are a stay-at-home mother, certain weeks of the year bring home with extra poignancy both your intense proximity to the quotidian things and your echoing distance from the grander scheme.

I am thinking, naturally, of the fact that the political conventions take place over the very same two weeks that we are all getting our children fitted with new shoes and notebooks and slotted back into school.