I'm emerging from what already feels like, in retrospect, the hardest two months of my career and the hardest I've worked since I was an over-caffeinated undergrad whose diet consisted of PBR and Qdoba (Chipotle if I was in the mood to splurge). This isn't an oblique metaphor or a veiled reference to any one specific thing: it's simply been a very demanding stretch, filled with long nights, longer to-do lists, and stressful incidents. A certain malaise attacks me when I have so much to do and neither time or energy to do even a fraction of it: a recursive stress, a gray goo of Bad Vibes that seeps unchecked without exogenous intervention.
About that exogenous intervention.
Whenever I heard my friends talk about being a parent, the happiness always seemed abstract in much the same way that someone talks about summiting Everest: an accomplishment and pride more than a day-to-day feeling. That’s not what it is: the happiness is visceral, even if trying to speak to it diminishes its power. What I am trying to say is this: every morning, I am the first person Lucy sees, and whether her eyes are hooded by fatigue or her cheeks reddened and dampened with tears, she invariably forgets whatever first-order things are happening and locks her eyes with mine and smiles. This is an event that buoys an entire day (or week, or month.)
Last weekend, we got back from a lovely vacation with my lovely family. We were gone for a week and change, and my in-laws graciously offered to watch Telly.
When they dropped him back off the following day, the thing that finally pierced me and turned me back into myself was not his joy at seeing us, nor mine at seeing him, but Lucy’s joy at seeing him: a joy so bright and perfect that it spawned the loudest and squeakiest shriek of delight I have heard from her and perhaps from anyone. That single noise washed away the past six weeks and untied a few knots in my back.
All of this is to say I have been gone for a while; I missed this, and I'm happy to be back. Thank you for your patience, whether you've been waiting for an email or a text or a RSS notification. I promise I'm speeding towards you as fast as I can, holding a child who through some miracle of physics makes me lighter for carrying her.
