Road weary, the stars pass by the minivan window. My knees hurt, and my big toe is starting to ache. It’s the one that always seems to take all the pressure when I push down on the gas peddle. There’s a stiffness to my neck, and I try to rub it with the hand that isn’t on the steering wheel.
It’s Monday? Maybe Saturday? At this point, it’s kind of pointless to ask.
Boy scout meetings, soccer practice, volleyball, and its metal hard bleachers in a gym that smells like overused cleaner. My oldest daughter will come to me asking for a ride somewhere, to something, to someone. Dad, I have to go, I need to be there, this is important. Everything’s important.
It’s Monday because I stop by the gym first and my daughter jumps out.
“Love you!” she says to no one in particular. I’m just the driver, someone that runs from one place to the next on command. The church is next, probably. It’s a boy scout meeting for my two sons, one five the other eleven. Somewhere between the volleyball and the scouts, I find time to eat whatever is in my lap. It doesn’t matter what it is, I’m too tired to taste it.
The meeting takes an hour. We stick around to talk to other parents. Dark circles under eyes punctuate any question. We are all delaying the next trip, trying to find a little bit of peace in between activities, practices, obligations that at one point we all asked for. None of us can remember now why we did.
I drop the boys off at home and head back to get my daughter. Her practice runs long and those bleachers aren’t as comfortable as the floor. There is a sleeping bag in the back of my car, a leftover from some camping trip we needed to go to this summer for some reason. I could grab it and set up shop but I don’t because it would embarrass my daughter. An hour later, we head home and my wife is already asleep.
The rest of the week hits me in the face like a bowling ball thrown by a catapult. Everything is a blur. More bleachers, more fields, more aches in my knees as I stand and sit a thousand times a night. Soccer practice is done in the rain. It was my call, something that had to be done. The boys needed more work. I just wanted to stop driving for a little bit. Afterward, at home, we get out pencils for math and eat cold sandwiches.
Somewhere after, I’m not sure which day, I’m given a slip of paper by one of the kids. They need something, need it now, it has to be now. The project is due tomorrow, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this afternoon, Dad, when you asked if we had any homework.
And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you on Monday. Or on the weekend. Or last week.
After more practices, more obligations, I spend my evening at a big box store looking at crafting supplies. I zone out for a little bit and only realize that I’ve been standing still for ten minutes without doing anything because someone trips into me. Another parent. Worse off than I am because at least I got ten minutes of stillness.
I get home, hand out supplies and kiss my wife on the forehead before being told that my other kid needs something else and they are sorry they didn’t tell me. I let everyone do the projects without me as I get the next item on the list. By pure habit, I drive to the volleyball gym before I realize that it isn’t the place I intended to go.
I want to sleep in the next day but I don’t get the chance. There is a list on my dresser of things that the kids need. There’s always a need and no matter how many hours I spend at the stores, it can’t be filled. The day moves by quicker than it should. I nap and it is glorious.
Night again and we are back in the minivan. I consider having my permanent address changed to “White Minivan. Suburban highway on the way to a practice.” This time I don’t go to watch practice. There’s a part of me that feels guilty, but I’m just trying to carve out ten minutes for myself. I text my wife to see how her day went. I tell her to put dinner in the fridge for me, and I’ll eat it when I get home.
More parenting at the last minute comes the next day. As much as we plan, it’s always parenting at the last minute. The calendar on the fridge is the first choice, having important reminders written on whatever color pen we can find. This is backed up with the big desk calendar stapled to the wall. My phone calendar is the last resort to buzz at me when something else needs to be done.
A cello plays in my house. It’s scratchy but at least it’s at home. It’s followed by a plucky viola. Not a violin, dad. It’s a viola. There is a total difference even though they look and sound pretty much the same. I sleep for a moment until my phone buzzes. More things I have to do, more places I have to go.
London, Paris, wherever. It doesn’t matter. My little town in Missouri might as well be the moon. I drive to them all, one day after the next. Eating in the car or waiting until I get home to have a microwave heated tortilla with stuff in it.
More notes on my dresser, more things to do. A trip to Mars perhaps? Maybe a nice cruise down the Amazon where I will need to pick up snake venom and an exotic plant because it’s needed for show and tell. Crafting time, spelling homework practice, drawing the blueprints to an 1867 steam locomotive.
Back into my van going nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Watching the stars blur past, cello music still playing in my head. It’s the parenting grind, the day in and day out. It’s a pattern that is outlined by constant worry and self-doubt. Most times feeling cut off from the world. Talk radio becomes a surrogate relationship.
But the bright spot shines most nights after I’m just so over singing the ABC song one more time or running to get some obscure school supply that is only needed one day, for one time. She sits in my bed, more tired than I am. She lays curled in a comforter. Relentless days spent on conference calls and putting out fires. She is my home and every night I’m lucky to join her.
I snuggle in as tight as I can. She mumbles, and I have the chance to think. Fleeting thoughts, anxieties at what wasn’t accomplished today. And about my kids, what they mean to me. To us.
And the last thought usually is how I will miss all of this when they grow up and my days are spent sitting remember about late nights driving down the suburban highway. Hearing their laughter and answering their oddball questions.
Do you lose weight when you poop? Can a butterfly sting and if it can, does it hurt? What’s in my shoe that smells so bad?
When those are gone, nothing but a blog post written ten years before, I’ll sit with my wife and remember when.
And that’s what gives me the motivation to get up the next day and do it all over again.
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Photo by Hamza Bounaim on Unsplash