Rory Fitzgerald“I’m busy.” I used to think I knew what that phrase meant. As a child, it meant “I’m playing with Lego”. As a teenager, it meant, “I’m watching TV”. Now, with three small children, and a busy work life, I think I have finally learned the true meaning of those words.
From 6am most mornings, life is a constant rush. A typical morning involves a whirlwind of Weetabix, lost socks, whinging, spillages, bickering, peacekeeping, accidents, pranks, wailing and a strange inability to ever find two shoes from the same pair.
I have a solo run in the mornings these days as my wife now has an earlier start in work – at least that’s what she says. She certainly drives off somewhere before the mayhem really kicks off. I wouldn’t be surprised to find her parked around the corner reading the paper and drinking coffee with Classic FM on the car radio. I wouldn’t necessarily blame her, either.
9.01 is my favourite time of day. The kids start school at 9.00 and a sudden hush descends as I walk out the gates, unencumbered. I need only think of my own things: phone and wallet – check. I no longer need to make sure that I have drinks, nappies, wipes, PE kit, maths homework, reading books, £2.50 for the school trip, that form filled out, five toilet roll inserts for art class and the million other things that three small children apparently need in their busy little lives.
Relative calm
Then follows the relative calm of the commute, as I drive to work alone. I usually don’t turn on the radio, but choose instead to marvel at the silence. If it weren’t for the handprints on the windscreen and the dummies stuffed into the glovebox, I could for a moment believe myself to be young and free again.
Then I arrive in the blessed rationality of work.
For many, commuting and work are the most stressful and harried part of the day. But when you have small children, the situation suddenly reverses entirely and work becomes a kind of welcome sanctuary, however busy it is.
Yet it’s not long before you miss the kids and your heart travels ahead of you towards them as you drive home. It leaps when you walk in the door and see them.
As you hear about their days, you re-enter their universe where small things seem big, and big things small.
I might think I was doing something quite important in court that day, but now that is as nothing compared to the catastrophe of not being able to find my daughter’s monkey suit for her dress rehearsal.
Then follows cooking a meal, eating together, playing in the garden, homework, pyjamas, brushing teeth and bedtime stories.
When at last they slumber, it’s time for housework, paying bills and ordering food online, because you just don’t have time to shop anymore.
As I collapse towards a fractured sleep – which will be interrupted several times by the baby -– I wonder how it is that all this chaos does not make us parents miserable, as others might assume. In fact, despite it all – or perhaps because of it – you go to bed happy.