The Measure of a Day

"Take a load off Fannie, take a load for free;
Take a load off Fannie, And (and) (and) you can put the load right on me."

I don't use an alarm clock, but I do have a toddler son.  Fact is, I don't have to wake up at specific time to go to work.  I am not employed. But I do have to wake up. I do have things to do, things that I want to accomplish, progress I wish to make.  Measuring those efforts, however, is a task not easily done when the yardstick is subjectively calibrated.

Each morning Max begins to stir sometime between 6-630.  Linda and I lie in bed and listen to the crib rails as they start to rattle.  This is our daily reveille, our factory whistle.  We listen via the monitor on the night stand and try to gauge Max's mood by the nature of his morning babble.  "I poopy!" is a common refrain.  Or "My blanket" or "My ladybug" or "My truck."  Lately he's been claiming all that he sees as his.  As Linda and I begin to stir ourselves, it alerts Tommy, our 20 pound cat that it's time for breakfast.  Sometime during the night, Tommy positions himself on the foot of the bed, ready to meow, purr, and nestle into me as soon as he senses waking.  It might seem just an affectionate morning greeting, were it not such a thinly veiled mechanism to just hustle us up to give him food.  If we don't move quickly enough for his liking, he pointedly steps on my chest, thrusting all his heft onto a single paw.  The weight of a 20 pound cat placed acutely to the sternum is a forceful impetus to arise.

There is no designated Max fetcher.  Depending on who has more morning energy, Linda or I will go upstairs to greet Max.  If it's a good day, he'll stretch his little hands high above the crib rail and exclaim, "My Mommy!" or "My Daddy!"  If he's on the crankier side, there's a short debate about whether he actually wants to get out of his crib. If he says he doesn't and I go to leave, he cries for me to come back.  If I go to get him out, he throws himself down and says no.  I tend to ignore his protests, pick him up, change him out of his pajamas and into his clothes completely independent of his state of acquiescence.  We walk down the stairs together and when he gets to the bottom, arriving in the kitchen he exclaims proudly, "I did it!"  If only we took similar pride in the smallest of our accomplishments, there'd be many more to tally at the end of a day.

The weekday morning routine for Max consists of some soy milk, oatmeal, and a healthy dose of Sesame Street.  There's a bit of play, sloppy teeth brushing, and the rigmarole of trying to cajole uncooperative limbs, hands, and a squirmy head into jacket, mittens, and hat. Then it's time to go to day care.  If I am the one to drive him the 14 minutes there, we sing a few songs or look out the windows for cows and ducks.  When we turn the last bend before day care, Max sees the green roof of the building and happily sings, "There's my school!"  I escort him in, hang out for a few minutes and chat with the other kids in Max's age group.  Maya knows my name and likes to say, "Hi Mister Dave."  Gavin is a rambunctious boy who shows me his latest boo boos and, lately, wants me to give him a hug before I go. Drew is mostly suspect of me, preferring to just observe me and answer my questions with only a nod or a shake of the head.  When I left school this morning one of the teachers said, "You want a job?  The kids adore you."  I chuckle at the notion and reply honestly, "I can only take them in small doses.  There's a reason Max comes here every day."  And it's the truth.  I can't love anything more than I love Max, but I really don't know how I could spend the entire day with him everyday.  He's exhausting.  And that might sound callous, but the Sagittarius in me compels me to be blunt: it's hard to spend the entire day, everyday, with anybody - much less a tireless toddler.  Day care is the best place for Max.  He gets to play, learn, interact with teachers and kids, and he loves it.  His day is structured and full.  And so is Linda's now that she's begun her job here in Connecticut.  She's a physical therapist and has a full roster of patients to treat and the requisite paperwork that accompanies each visit.  I, however, have a day ahead of me that is almost completely shapeless.

It's after I wake up, feed the cats and Max their breakfast, after Linda goes to work and after I drop Max off at school, and after that last cup of coffee from the pot is drunk that the weight of the day begins to impress itself upon my consciousness.  I have things to do, of course.  There's dishes to wash, laundry to fold, and food shopping to be done.  There's household projects that I can do, yard work at my in-laws, genuine internet research that's waiting for me.  I pride myself on being on top of the mail, the bills, the correspondence both paper and electronic; I can easily lose an hour or two on that if I am not careful. There's all of that plus the urge to read the news, scan Facebook and last night's sports scores.   Then there's my hobbies.  I want to learn more about gardening, so I visit the Putnam Farmer's Cooperative and browse their supply of spades and garden forks.  There's this blog that I've committed myself to, this honing of my craft in hopes of somehow translating my written words into paper dollars.  I must also eat and because I try to eat healthily and don't even have a microwave (by choice), I can't just zap a pizza pocket or inhale a Pop Tart.  Before I blink it's usually 11:30am.  And before I blink again it's 2pm.  On the days that I go running around the hills of Pomfret, the days become shorter.  God forbid I require a shower; the day dissipates faster than the water runs down the drain.  And with the recent time change, the day's end comes with a swiftness that is cruel, unyielding, and unforgiving.  With the coming darkness I look outward as well as in and try to assess where the hours went.  What do I have to show for the time that passed?

Linda or I will pick up Max sometime between 4 and 5 and in the two or three hours that follow we play, eat, bathe, read, and get ready for bed.  By the time he hits the pillow it's close to 8 and there's dinner to be made, eaten, and cleaned up.  If we choose to relax in front of a baseball game (basketball now- damn Yankees) or a portion of a rented Netflix movie, it's only an hour before we both start sinking into sleep on the couch.  Bed calls.  We read for a bit, but it makes us both sleepy and it's not long before the lights are off.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

The past few days I've been going to my in-laws to stack some of the cords of wood that were recently delivered to keep the cottage warm in winter.  It's been satisfying to turn an unwieldy pile of logs into neat stacks.  I enjoy being able to clearly see the product of my labor, a physical manifestation of work.  On days when I write, I feel a semblance of accomplishment - taking unwieldy thoughts and turning them into some kind of narrative - though not always a neat one.  I enjoy getting the comments I do, especially when they come from readers not related to me (though I appreciate those comments, too) - it's proof that someone other than me and my loyal family has read it.  It makes it real.

On the days when I go running, like yesterday, when I charge up a steep country hill, my heart pounding and my breath forceful, I feel a kinship with nature - both the nature that surrounds me and the nature that governs the flow of blood and oxygen in my body.  There's a feeling of satisfaction I get from feeling the direct effect of physical effort, the clear causal relationship.  On the days when I nourish my body with foods that are not processed, packaged, or laden with fat, sodium, or sugar, I feel like I am honoring my body, that I am translating ideas into actions and actions into a healthiness I can feel in my body and see in the mirror.  On the evenings that Max is wholly content and gives us the most satisfying squeeze, the tightest goodnight hug his stubby arms can muster, I am grateful and satisfied that I've somehow impacted his day in a positive way, that the safeness he feels in his home is the result of the love Linda and I can't help but heap upon him.  And later when my wife and I curl up together in bed and hold each other, I am deeply grateful for her love and companionship.  That's a measurement of a day to be sure.

I don't have an employer.  I don't punch a time clock.  I can't look at a pay stub to see the 'value' of my time.  I don't measure my day in sales calls made, patients seen, classes taught, papers corrected, or customers served.  I can't account for the hours of my days in meetings attended or in miles driven.  Since I stopped working, nearly 11 months ago, it's been difficult for me to assess if my day has been of value or not.  More often than not I feel that I haven't fulfilled the promise of the day.  Intellectually, I know there's been value in it, but I don't know how to tally it - or frankly, why I feel I need to, yet I do. Emotionally, my ego - the most dangerous of psychic apparatuses - silently screams for more accurate accounting.  Some days I can offer a physical manifestation of my effort.  Other days there's a strong sense of satisfaction that quells the ego's thirst.  But most days, the question lingers unanswered in the dark and slumbers as I do only to awaken in the morning to the sounds of the rattling crib rails and the weight of a heavy and hungry cat.