"Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new" - J Milton

children in the field
Originally uploaded by Florin Draghici

This morning, E was still soundly soundly asleep when it came to be the time that he should be dressed and heading downstairs with his father. It so happened that I had to pick up some booklets and deliver them to our branch in Freeport, so I told Josh to go on without him and I would take E to daycare.

He slept until 8:30 am, and awoke confused. I got him dressed, and we got out the door without much trouble - the one bump being that he wanted to take both the book and the movie of The Sneeches to Sarah's with him, but the movie only exists as a .tivo file on the computer - not something we can transport.

We stopped at the printer, where he was charming and helpful, then drove up to our branch in Freeport. Each Y branch has a "Prime Time" room, where your child can play (supervised) while you work out, so I let E stay at Prime Time for about an hour while I did some work, then we got back in the car, and, with a brief stop for a kiss from Daddy, drove out to Sarah's.

When I got there, everyone was outside. She and her mother were cleaning up the yard and hanging a clothesline. The two girls who are there with him came up to the car to greet us, and once E was out of the car and divested of his coat (and I got a kiss) each girl took a hand and the three of them went running as fast as they could go across the pasture.

I have such mixed feelings about E being at Sarah's, but in that moment any doubts I might have had washed away (for a few minutes). I'm sure they'll come back (after all, my real issue is my overwhelming envy that she gets to spend all day with my son while I'm at work) but its clear he's joyful there, and that's the most important thing.