For the past two weeks Kelly and I have been blessed to have her mom and then her dad and step-mom here with us as we’ve begun this new season as a family of four. Kelly and I decided that we can continue to pro-create as long as we can maintain a two-to-one ratio of adults to children at all times.
It is remarkable that each week, in spite of sleep deprivation and being in one house all together for the whole week, we all got along great and were all sad to see each week end. Given the somewhat ‘challenging’ relationships that many of our friends have with their parents and/or in-laws, I am overwhelmingly grateful for our relationship with both sets of Kelly’s parents. I often tell my students who are thinking about engagement and marriage to realize that they are marrying a family, not just each other. For me, that has undoubtedly been a rich blessing. For two weeks they picked up groceries for us, cleaned the house, and woke up with Davis as he pushed his normal wake-up time from 6:30 to 5:00 a.m.
It was with all this help in mind that we decided that I would wait to take my ‘paternity leave’ until this week. So this morning Davis and I ambled past the mall-walkers at 9:15 a.m. on our way to the indoor playground at Southpoint Mall—he had already been awake for almost four hours. As I was fixing Davis’ breakfast this morning and trying to remember what both of our names were, I decided that really the only fitting way to describe my sentiments was to capture it in a form that I have loved since I learned it in the recorder-playing, kick-ball lovin’ days of elementary school: the haiku. And so, here is Day One of Just the Four of Us (We Can Make it if We Try):
Child cries, five a.m.
Oh where, grandparents? Gone. Gone.
Just Four of Us, yikes.
-Alex-san
3 comments:
oh, good times with AK and haikus. As always, this stirs in me deep thought and emotion!
Any sightings of Marion Jones?
Brandon, I knew that you and the old VCU C-team would appreciate the haiku love. For one whole semester, it was decided that any and all group e-mails had to be started off with a haiku. it was stirring, really.
Bart, no Marion Jones sightings at the mall, although I've seen her there at least three times. I suppose she doesn't have any money left at this point to spend at the mall since everyone's abandoned her post-drug bust.
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