13th
It’s been a long day.
Rather, it’s been a long week. As a divorced father of three kids, I’m a full-time parent every other week. This, of course, is in addition to my other full-time job - the careery one that, you know, pays the bills and ensures my family’s continued survival. So on those weeks when my kids are with me, I’m up at 5:30 each morning, and furiously busy from the moment I rouse Conner from sleep at 6:15 until maybe a half hour before I fall asleep at 10:00 or 10:30. The long days are grueling, and by the end of a week of this madness, my eyes are burning and bloodshot, my arms shake, and I’ve started to lose my grip on language.
At no time is my diminished grip on linguistic expression more evident than in the twilight hours of a Friday at the end of a parenting week. Like this afternoon. In the final hours of the day, I had to lead a group of clients and colleagues through a site map presentation. Each question the clients asked sounded less and less like English, to the point where I struggled to visualize their words one at a time as they spoke - just so I didn’t miss something. Somehow, I didn’t crumble. Just barely.
At one point, a memory gave me a shot in the arm when I really needed it. It was a memory of Conner, late Wednesday evening, tucked up on the living room couch - silently protesting Dad’s regimented calls to move it along, get upstairs, brush your teeth, and get in bed - reading.
Conner experienced troubling learning delays between 3 and 7 years old, and was a late reader. There was a point when I worried deeply - and with good cause - that he might never learn to read. But he’s a bookworm today. He tries to read while walking, while dressing, while eating - constantly. And, in three years, his expressive abilities have grown beyond what I once hoped he’d achieve by adulthood. It’s a total “Reading Saves Lives” story unfolding before us both.
So as my momentum - my grip on language - began to flag this afternoon, this vision bouyed me. Reminded me about determination. Administered a little shot of whatever neurotransmitter encourages brain function. Got me through the meeting.
The thing that had spent all week wearing me down, in the end and by surprise, delivered me gently to the end of my very long day. And sent me home feeling not like an exhausted knowledge worker with a dying grip on language, but like an admiring and grateful father.
With an imperfect grasp of language.
