Tag: single dad life

Play Dates

I’m writing this from the basement.

Upstairs are 5 children under the age of 12. Two of them are mine.

We’ve been having a pretty quiet Sunday morning. I even got coffee on the couch. We started moving around a bit and then the request came, “Can we go see if the kids around the corner can play?”

Sure. We don’t have plans until after lunch. Go run and get your wiggles and sillies out.

A few minutes later, “They can’t play.”

No problem. They settle in. M asks if she can go for a walk. T asks if he can play Spider-Man. Yes to both. I keep moving, cleaning bathroom, moving laundry from dryer to hamper and pretending someone else is coming to fold it all.

A knock at the door.

“Zac, they can play!”

Great!

“They said they just have to be home at 2.”

I look at the clock. It is 10:30 in the morning.

Admittedly, I am relatively new to this play date thing. But, sending your young children to a neighbor’s house for 3.5 hours feels like a big move, right?

I’ve met these kids’ mom one time.

I just realized lunch is within that timeframe. Am I supposed to feed these three?

I mean, of course I’m going to take care of the kids and make sure everyone’s having fun and being safe. I’ll make sure they have a good lunch. I’ll help my kids clean up the messes that follow my specific “you can play with whatever you want as long as everyone picks it up before they go home”.

I’ll parent the hell out of this play date.

And, I’ll keep wondering about the wisdom of this move. I’ll work myself to being okay with assuming there won’t be any reciprocity.

Because, I have two kids and know how much it all feels like on the second day of a weekend when they keep looking to you for what’s next and what they can do and snack. I know what it’s like to have two, and can imagine what it’s like to have three who are all even younger.

Because, sometimes, it’s all so heavy that I understand how a parent brain might think, “That guy with the kids around the corner passed muster in the three minutes I talked to him. Maybe he and his kids can carry this weight for a little bit.”

13 Jan 21 – Once a runner

This is the longest I’ve gone without running since I started running 18 years ago. I’ve taken breaks. The couple of times I did two marathons within a couple weeks of each other I was off my feet for a few months. It worked out okay because that was a stupid thing to do (twice) and my brain would have no more of that nonsense.

Not running wasn’t a thing I’d registered I’d be giving up on the road to single parenthood. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. But, both kids are too young for me to head out for any decent distance. We all get anxious when I tell them I’m taking one of the dogs on a walk around the block. We’ve tried going on a run together – one on a bike, the other running with me. We made it a mile in about 20 minutes. I wouldn’t say it was running so much as moving quickly in short bursts with bickering in between. So, not exactly what I was looking for.

Plus, there’s a pandemic on. Combine that with my first full year of parenting and I’m always exhausted. I’m not, it turns out, too exhausted to snack. The steps and stamina required to snack are well within my much diminished capabilites.

What I also knew clearly but hadn’t registered was the break that running gives me. I’m not an athlete. I have no interest in lifting heavy things. I cannot dribble anything other than hot soup. I was on the losingest t-ball team in our league the year I played.

When I found running, something worked. It was time to myself. I couldn’t do anything else. In the last 18 years, when I had something I needed to process, I went for a run.

I’ve needed running this year, and it’s been just out of reach.

Tomorrow, at lunch time, I’m going for a run. It won’t be long. It’ll kick my ass. Two days from now, I’ll curse myself. For two miles tomorrow, though, I’ll be a runner again. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The one word I keep

It’s my first year returning to school as a parent. The new reality has me thinking about conversations of hybrid, distance, in-person, synchronous learning differently. While I can’t know how childless Zac would have thought through these options, single dad of fifth and third grader Zac keeps coming back to one word, listen.

It is my deepest hope for the adults into whose care I will be entrusting this little humans for the coming school year. Listen.

In the best case scenario, my kids would be coming to their new school in a new district as part of a new family. All that new would be enough. But that’s not all they and their peers across the country are starting back with. They are the first children of pandemic in generations. They have quarantined, teleconferenced, and fought loud battles over why they can’t go play with friends down the street, “WE SAW THEM YESTERDAY WHEN WE DROVE BY!”

My kids, like all kids, are walking into school this year carrying so much more than they should. Because I know some things about learning and human needs, I also know they need places to lay down all they are carrying before they can pick up the important work of reading, math, music, Spanish, science, PE, social studies, and the rest.

They cannot lay down what they carry unless they know someone will listen.

Both kids, but particularly the 8yo, have this habit of telling me something and ending the statement with, “Right?” I learned early on this “Right?” is not to be ignored. It is a check in to make sure I have registered what has been said, and that I can validate whatever fact or opinion has been shared. Did I hear them? Did what they said matter? Was I paying attention? Was I listening?

As I think about the listening we will need to do as adults, I also think about the listening we will need to do to adults. Few of any of us has had the time and space to grieve what we’ve lost in the last half of a year, and that’s just speaking of the routines of life. For those who have experienced losing someone they love from a distance, that grief must remain all the more raw.

I’m fairly good a creative solutions to complex problems. I love a good conundrum. And, I am terrified of how I will navigate these next months as I feel through the intellectual dark to find what will become normal. And, so, I hope those to whom I turn can listen. I hope all those who care for the adults who care for our children will listen. We have not been this way before.

I hope my kids’ teachers give them spaces to express. I hope journaling in words and pictures and questions is part of every student’s day in the coming weeks. I hope they have the time to get out what needs expressing before they’re asked to ingest standards and facts and the ideas of others.

I hope I remember this too. I hope I listen to those with whom I work, because I cannot be the only one who feels as though he’s got the world in that spot right between his shoulders. I hope I remember self care will do in a crisis, but that I can care for others and ask for their care as we work toward what’s next.