Understanding
Dear Xander,
Your 4th birthday approaches, and with it, your growing maturity. It is ironic that I speak of your maturity at such a young age, yet it manifests in ways your mother and I simply do not expect.
And last Sunday, you made it clear to me just how much you’ve grown.
Your mother and I had a crossing of words, stemming from a supermarket, and moving on to one of our not-so-usual fights during the drive home. Your mother was planning on buying groceries home to cook the night’s dinner. I thought we were eating out. One thing led to another, and suddenly it was finances, my unemployment, tears, and silence.
Things were more or less resolved by the time we reached home, and we were getting ready for bed while your mother was in the shower. As we started to drift off to sleep, you said something to me, the significance of which I didn’t realise until much later.
“Daddy, tomorrow I’m going to school?” you asked.
“Yep,” I replied.
“So Daddy pick me up from school tomorrow?” you asked again.
“Yes, I will,” I replied.
“After Daddy pick me up, Mummy pick me up?” This was our usual after-school routine, where I pick you up from school and we wait for your mother to arrive from the office in the car before we went to dinner together.
“Um, yes.”
“Then we go home first, okay?”
“Huh? Then what about dinner?”
“We eat at home.”
I told your mother what you said the next day, and mid-conversation it dawned on me that you understood your mother and I were quarreling about dinner the previous night.
And you were helping me plan out the next evening’s activities so that we wouldn’t run into the same problem again.
What did I do to deserve an angel like you?
Yours, for as long as I live,
Dad
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