One down – two to go. Seventy-five pages cast in stone. So to speak.

I am working on final reports for three of the projects I was working on during my trip the other day. Just finished one of them and have sent it out for proofing.

It's a good feeling, when you will yourself to finish a project, with no regard for the time of day. Testing your mettle. Besides, with my wife working like crazy, I have had no choice but to work nights as well. But man, am I exhausted!

I shutter at the thought of getting up in three hours, working a full day, and of finishing two more of these by Monday.

dinner.jpg

We had a welcome but all to seldom seen guest show up for dinner: My wife, the overworked.

To mark the occasion, we treated her to a feast of avocado soup with fresh cilantro and tuscan bread, and home-made Spaghetti Bolognese:

There are strange, bright-red, birds singing outside my window. Most probably on their way south.

Even though it is warm, I know that fall will be coming soon. I can feel Nature, heavy with her burgeoning fruits and unfolded flowers, slowing down her frenzied run through the summer. Pausing to catch her breath. Her pulse slowing. The fever subsiding.

Preparing for days of darkness and slumber.

I woke up this morning, thinking how fortunate I am. Which is intersting in itself, because my last thought as I was falling asleep last night was how miserable I felt during the weekend while trying, with little effect, to ease the suffering of my sick, little girl.

I used to have this little List of things I would check in my mind, when I felt really down. It has been quite a while, probably years, since I saw fit to do The List the last time, but there have been dark times in my past when I needed to do it daily, even many times a day. The List changes obviously, as life goes by, but currently goes something like this:
- I was born into as normal a family as any,
- in a peaceful country with few crimes and no wars,
- was brought up in a sane and non-abusive manner,
- have never gone without food or love for any length of time,
- have found my partner for life,
- am blessed with true friends,
- am healthy and wish others well,
- have so far achieved the education that I have sought,
- am successful in the work that I have chosen to do,
- do not have too much money or things, but enough, and
- have been entrusted with the most precious little girl in the World.

Sometimes I can't check some of the things on The List. I may not have had any money. At all. Or seemed to be about to flunk out of school. Or something. But the big things have always been there. Family, friends, love.

I may not have had any special reason to do The List this morning. But it was good to remember it. One shouldn't just pray when things are bad.

Man, that was one tough weekend.

Not that I had any lack of respect for people with young kids, especially single parents. But holding your little girl in your arms for a weekend, while she sobs and cries from feeling just miserable, and not being able to do much about it, that just amplifies the awe I am in of those that have more than one toddler to take care of, let alone for those that are doing this by themselves.

This is probably the best job on Earth. But it's a tough one, too.

Being useful is calming. When you need to become the pillar of strenght, it just seems to happen naturally.

It has almost been a week since I came back home. Being away for three weeks was too long, and its effects were apparent. My wife, a tough cookie herself, was completely exhausted from trying to balance a heavy workload with taking care of our little girl. She just started a new rotation, which means that she is up at 5 am and out the door, and is seldom seen back home until after 7 pm. And she is also taking calls again. For example today, she was off to work at 7 am, and won't be back until noon tomorrow. Having probably gotten no sleep at all.

I can admit to having been a bit sleep-deprived myself when I came home last Sunday night, but it is interesting how you can suddenly gain extra strength just from seeing that your force is in demand. So I have spent the week waking up with my wife and seeing her off, getting a couple of hours worth of work done before my daughter wakes up, feeding/dressing/brushing her teeth and driving her to the daycare, paying bills, haggling with oil people/phone people/repair people, getting the cars maintained, studying, stocking the fridge/pantry, working some more, fetching my little girl and playing with her, buying flowers/wine/other distractions for my wife, making dinner, feeding and nourishing my wife, bathing my girls and putting them to bed, and maybe getting a little more work done.

And I've done it. Calmly and completely. Because I am wanted. And needed. By a couple of people that live in my heart. One of them moved there a decade ago. The other one just appeared there last summer. Yesterday, I was struggling with the question 'Can you miss something you've never actually had?' Today I realized that of course you can. If you realize that it is something you have wanted for longer than you have known. My little girl, for example. Being apart from her for a few days soon after she was born made me miss her like crazy. Even if we only just met. Missing her was also missing the opportunity to get to know her better. To verify what I felt she was like. Or maybe learning something completely different about her. This was the challenge of being away from her, these last few weeks. It is the loss of time. Seeing it disappearing without being there to spend it with her.

But now I am back. And I am making good things happen. My daughter greeted me as if I had been away for only a few minutes, and I hope she didn't feel this sting in her heart that comes from missing dearly. But I secretly also want to believe that she missed me, a bit. Just a little. Isn't that the essence of human relations? You do not just want to enjoy the company of other people. You also want to know that it is reciprocated. That there is balance. That you are not just feeding on others, but that they are getting good things in return from you.

This may be my single, greatest dread about my little girl growing up, besides her becoming a 'socially conservative' Repulican. It is that she will not derive the same pleasure from my company as I do from hers. Which actually is pretty likely, eventually, I guess, even inevitable. I even want her to outgrow me, and us, her parents. But I know it is going to break my heart when she starts trying to break free.

Oh, listen to me! How silly. Worrying about her moving out, when she has barely moved in. As I am writing this, she is sound asleep after a challenging night and morning. Late last night, she woke up and started crying. Something she practically never does during the night. When I checked on her, she was miserable. Eyes red and puffed, nasty cough, and what a runny nose! How can such a little thing produce so much snot?

She woke up a few more times in the night, and each time I put her right back to sleep. My wife took her with her downstairs for breakfast before she left, but the little critter hardly ate anything. She spent most of the morning whimpering pathetically in my arms, eating and drinking a little from time to time, finally collapsing into exhaustion on my shoulder. I know it is a terrible thing to say, but there is something so endearing about her when she is this feeble. Probably because that is when all she really wants is to be carried around and cuddled.

Which gives my a reason to be comforting. An excuse to be strong.

This is the hour, at which the World changed. I saw it happen. We all did.