I Don’t Know How He Got His Kid to Orchestra, Dance, Ukulele, and Chinese Class—and Still Found Time to Write

Friday

This morning, I take my first shower since Tuesday night.

Lee and I go out for breakfast. We talk about our writing projects and the personal issues we’re both dealing with.

Lee asks me, “What are you doing to take care of yourself?” I just shrug.

My therapist has talked to me about how all the balls I have in the air right now are not all glass; I can let some drop. But lately I feel like all the balls I’ve let drop are littered around me on the ground. Lee says, “It’s become a ball pit.” Yes. And I don’t know how I’m going to get them back in the air.

I find more spare moments at work to sculpt the play. The story is becoming clearer.

Over dinner, we watch a movie as a family: Hilda and the Mountain King.

I order more cat litter and schedule a grocery order to pick up tomorrow. We’ve been doing curbside pickup for groceries because those bright lights and loud music at the supermarket are tough and take so much out of us. When I do go into the store, I wear my literal rose-colored glasses (FL-41 Lenses for light sensitivity) and my Flare “Definition” ear inserts that take the edge off the noise.

Saturday

I wake up before 6:00 and feed the cat and the bird. I eat some cereal while watching Andor.

I fall asleep on the couch for an hour, then edit Christmas gift lists to send to the grandparents before I head out for my workout at 9:00 a.m.

While driving to my workout, I get a call from our family friend Bert. He fell again and can’t drive himself to pick up his Thanksgiving order from Honey-baked Hams on Monday (which I scheduled for him the other day). My wife says she says she can take him since she has the week off because of the holiday.

I go to the gym twice a week. My wife goes once a week. This gym is a very affirming place. Everyone in a class does the same workout, but every exercise is personalized to each person’s body and progress.

After my fifty-minute workout, I drive home to pick up my son for his dance class. I rush through a shower and listen to the commentary of my Premier League team’s match. They lost. We leave the house at 11:20 for his 11:45 class.

While my son’s in class, my wife finds me to figure out our plan for lunch and the afternoon. Her first words to me are, “You look exhausted.”

I should just assume I won’t get any work done on Saturdays.

My son’s adjustable cello chair arrives in the mail. After we set it up, he wants us to pack him in the box with the bubble wrap, so we do. He tells us to flip the box with him inside. So… We do. We all laugh.

A little after 2:00, I drive to pick up the groceries. I say hi to Eduardo, the guy who usually loads the groceries into our car. He’s a good dude. When I get home, my son helps put groceries away.

The plan tonight was to see the touring production of Some Like It Hot, but I don’t feel like I have the energy to go. I lie down on the floor with our massive Snorlax squishmallow. Around 5:00 p.m., I wake up on the floor. The sounds of my son practicing cello rise from the office downstairs. I decide we won’t go to the show. I also don’t have enough energy to work on my play.

As we leave to get a snack of cupcakes and ice cream, I tell my wife, “I should just assume I won’t get any work done on Saturdays.”

“You said that last Saturday. And the Saturday before that. You keep having that like it’s a new realization.”

At 9:00 p.m., we realize we’ve all forgotten to eat dinner. My son eats the red velvet cupcake we got him earlier. My wife eats chips and salsa and a cold hotdog. I eat a bowl of Golden Crisp cereal.

Sunday

I take it easy this morning and watch another episode of Andor before 7:00 a.m. I try not to fall asleep.

I hang out with my wife and son and send Christmas lists to grandparents.

I spend a few hours downstairs finalizing a draft of my play. Around 2:00, I take a break from writing when my son comes downstairs to practice his cello.

After dinner, I upload the draft of the play for my playwriting group! I spend another hour sending the script to the cast of the informal reading in December.

At the end of the day, around 9:30, I shower and shave.

As my wife and I relax in bed, we hear our son calling for “Mom.” As soon she gets to the bathroom, he throws up. My wife tells me she’s handling it since I have work and she’s off for the week. I check the clock: 10:23 p.m.

I do one last check of my email on my phone. Our son’s cello teacher had emailed that she’s sick, so the lesson needs to be over Zoom or rescheduled. I’ll handle that in the morning.

Whenever our son has been sick, I have a hard time calming the worry to sleep. Is he okay? Is he breathing?

He’s gonna be fine. He’s gonna be fine.

It’s after midnight when I finally calm my brain.

Monday

I’m up with the cat again at 4:53 a.m. She snuggles up on my chest and my neck. I finally go down to feed her and the bird and watch another Andor. Only one episode left!

Our son’s hard to wake up. I don’t blame him because he was up late feeling sick. I email the cello teacher and reschedule the lesson for sometime on Saturday.

I head to physical therapy at 9:00, and it feels like I’m going through a full workout.

I arrive at work around 11:00 a.m. and feel like I’d already been through a full day of activities.

My wife calls me after working with Bert. In addition to picking up his Thanksgiving ham and turkey, Bert also wanted help running errands. She spent almost her whole day with him. She says that he asked us to be on call for shoveling snow for him over the winter. The man lives across town. That’s a no from me.

I leave work early (3:00 p.m.) to drive an hour to a theatre that’s producing a short play I wrote, along with five plays by other playwrights. This is billed as holiday comedies for adults only. The theatre’s paying each playwright $500, which is not bad for a twenty-minute play.

I quickly down some McDonalds in my car and call my wife before going into the theatre building at 4:30.

Rehearsal starts at 5:00 p.m. We see costume ideas, set designs, and hear a reading of all six plays. I stay for the readings to hear what the show sounds like put together.

I’m able to leave rehearsal much earlier than expected (a little after 8:00 p.m.). There’s construction, so it takes about an hour and a half to get home.

I greet my family, relax a bit, and then email a new cast member for my informal play reading.

As I prep for bed at 10:30, I see a voicemail from Bert. He’s asking if my wife can take him to his doctor’s appointment tomorrow. I talk to my wife, and she tells me that someone else was supposed to take him to the doctor.

However, the completed draft isn’t the “win.” The “win” shows up in the tiny victories,

Tuesday

The cat wakes me up early again, and there’s a voicemail from Bert at 5:20 a.m. He calls two more times before 7:00 a.m. My wife has a migraine coming on.

Our boss’s boss told our team that we could work from home today, Wednesday, and Friday because of Thanksgiving. It’s a relief. My son is off school starting tomorrow, and we have some fun planned just the three of us.

At 9:00, my wife tells me that she’s taking Bert to the doctor. He also asks her to take him to the bank and to get his allergy shot.

On my break, I review the requirements for the Playwrights’ Center Core Writer application. I text Lee, asking if she’d write me a letter of recommendation.

At noon, my wife texts me that Bert fell while getting his allergy shot. She texts me again from Bert’s house that she’s helping him call the hospital to speak to his neurologist.

At 2:00, I pick up our Thanksgiving dinner from Whole Foods. We knew that we’d be exhausted this week, so we turned down invitations to hang out at other friends’ houses for the holiday.

Later that afternoon, my wife runs to Wal-Mart, the only place nearby to get fideos for the Puerto Rican rice I’m making from my mom’s recipe for Thanksgiving. She also grabs some root beer and ice cream to make floats since I hate pie. She and my son always make pumpkin and sweet potato pies together for Thanksgiving.

I play video games with my son for a while, then head up to do my laundry that I didn’t do over the weekend.

Once the laundry’s in the washer, I collapse on my bed. My son comes in, and we discuss Minecraft. I really don’t know a lot about Minecraft, but I love hearing him get all excited talking about it. Then, he shows me a sweet little note from his friend that he has a crush on. It’s a kind message, and he’s absolutely glowing. Months ago, she told him that she has a crush on him, too, but they both decided to wait until high school to date. Their plan.

Our friends are going out of town for the holiday, so my wife and son leave around 6:30 p.m. to learn how to give pills to their cats. I stay home to make pasta and smoked sausage, our first home-cooked meal in about a week.

When they get home, we eat dinner and watch our “family show,” Hilda.

At 10:00, my wife goes to my son’s room to read a bedtime story with him. He’s thirteen, but he still loves having books read to him. It’s a sweet time just the two of them.

Reflections:

Spotlight on your artistry this week: In my therapy sessions over the past four years, I’ve been working through feeling like I was too old, too unsuccessful, or too busy being the foundation of my family’s survival to have an artistic career. My therapist told me I needed to find the reason that I write: What does writing do for me? How is it fun?

For me, the fun is in the challenge, discovery, and surprise. I’ve been wrestling with the play I finished this past week since 2020, so having a draft is a massive achievement! However, the completed draft isn’t the “win.” The “win” shows up in the tiny victories of teasing out the characters, playing with dialogue, and the joy of being able to sit deep in my thoughts and express something of myself.

Spotlight on your caregiving this week: I love that I’ve been able to cultivate open discussions with my son. He’s called me his “emotional support parent.” Even if there’s a difficult subject that comes up, he knows that he’s safe. He knows that what he says is valued and that it’s between us.

Tiny moments of intimacy and vulnerability, like sitting on my bed and chatting with my son about the note from his crush are everything for me.

Spotlight on your support systems and resources: My wife really gave so much of herself this week. I needed to be a source of listening and support for her.

What has really helped us support each other is the book How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing by KC Davis. The idea that grounds us is that you can never balance the amount of tasks to make things “fair.” Instead, you make sure to balance the amount of rest.

To that end, I think the more Squishmallows you can have around your home, your office, or anywhere in your life is absolutely helpful. The bigger the better. Snuggle and rest.