Just One Of Those Days

Dear Lorenzo:

Today is Tuesday, September 5, 2017 and you've been gone for exactly 14 months.  After less than 20 minutes of meditation, Amira is finally, peacefully, mercifully asleep. Normally, this is around the time that I'd be turning on the t.v. Right about now I'd be watching "Pop Star, Never Stop, Never Stopping" (you would have LOVED it!) before swallowing 2 gelcaps of Tylenol PM and shutting off the dining room light. But with the craziness of Amira's first day of school finally upon us, I wasn't able to write this morning, and since I promised myself (and promised you) that from now on I'd spend an hour writing every day, I figured I'd better get this down before going to bed.

Jabez started Kindergarten today and just as you'd hoped, he's going to Peirce, too.  Amira's thrilled to have her little cousin at the same school as her, and at 3:00 p.m., I stood outside of Jabez's dismissal door, hoping to catch a quick peek of him to make sure he'd had a good first day.  As I watched him interact with his dad, I couldn't help but remember Amira's first day of kindergarten.  As usual, you had taken so long in the shower that I feared Amira would actually be late for her first day of school.  I took pictures of her in her brand new uniform while you were busy getting dressed and when you exited our bedroom, I was shocked to see you in a shirt and tie.  Normally, on your days off from work you wore nothing fancier than a pair of Chicago fire sweatpants but on this day, you insisted on overdressing and making a good impression on her teacher.  After walking Amira to her classroom door and videotaping her with soon-to-be new friends, it was time to let her go.  When she walked into Mrs. Fitzgerald's classroom with not much more than a casual goodbye wave in our direction, you turned to me in shock.  "That's it?" you asked incredulously.  "I'm just supposed to leave my baby here, with these strangers?" And I laughed at the look of horror on your face.

"Ummmmm, yeah" I responded. "This is school, you know how it works, you used to be a teacher. This is what we do, we can't go in with her." You were despondent for the next several hours and at 11:40 on the dot you shouted at me to hurry up, get dressed and meet you in the car.  To my surprise, we headed back to Amira's school, where we sat in the car outside of the playground, and spied on our daughter and her playmates during their 20 minute recess.  Your plan was simple: we'd watch her while she played to make sure she was having a good time; we'd watch her to make sure that she was safe.  

At your insistence, we did this every, single day for a week.  

You used to call me Disneyland and Rainbow Bright.  You said you didn't know what the hell they put in the Cambridge water to make me so damned happy all the time.  You rolled your eyes at my "glass is half full" outlook on life.  You smirked at my ever so sunny disposition.

It's hard to remain an optimist after losing you.

It's hard to watch all of the other dads dropping their kids off in the morning or playing with them at the playground in the afternoon without feeling that pang of longing. It takes some effort to remind myself how lucky we were to have had you in our lives for as long as we did.

Missing you is hard.  Some days are harder than others.

Today was definitely one of those days.