Do not go gentle to that good nap...actually, please do.

Choices

So…
I said,
time for nap, yay!

The response did not match my level of enthusiasm. But I continued.

Would you rather,
I asked,
lie in your crib, or would you rather have me hold you?

There is a place for both independence and choice in this world. There are situations where you leave the road ahead wide open. And there are situations where you provide an either/or scenario.

This is the joy and the responsibility and the agony of being a parent: we provide a starting point, and we provide choices along the way that help them get to a good place.

That’s the idea and the plan anyway.

So we snuggled, and I held him in my arms, and he may not remember, but I will never regret a moment of those arms around my neck as his little body took a break from going hard and got recharged. In my arms.

Eventually he went into the crib, with a deep sigh and a nestling into the comfort of his slumber sanctuary. So sometimes you do end up getting your cake and eating it too. That’s how I choose to frame things.

Poetry

We reviewed Em Dickinson (1861’s Hope is the thing with feathers), John Donne (1624’s No Man is an Island), and did a first read-through and discussion of Dylan Thomas’s beautiful plea for his father’s continued existence, Do not go gentle into that good night, first published in 1951.*

Short Stories

We talked about Guy de Maupassant‘s 1884 classic The Necklace, in which our not altogether-likeable protagonist spends ten years of her life working to pay off a necklace she borrowed and lost. Life’s dreams and hopes are lost along the way and she becomes cold, hard, jaded, bitter. But finally, the debt is paid. And then, a chance run-in, and the story takes a different turn at the end…

Other

We played soccer at the skate park and played with a wild chicken running around.

Every part of the sentence above is true, although the use of a certain verb might be misleading. But technically it’s all true.

“LIBRARY!” He screeched, he screeched with all of his two-year old excitement. How did I keep a gigantic smile off my face at hearing this?

I didn’t.

What happened on the drive home? Oh, no big deal. Just the world’s loudest Hamilton sing-a-long. No big deal.

We took bets on the way home over what Becca would be playing when we walked in. Would it be:

Phosphorescent? Or Xavier Rudd?

Finally, we entered, to the smells of baking and the sound of x-marks-the-spot. We are together, it is good.