The Summer season has so far seen its expected share of fun and carefree days as well as its awful and miserable ones. It was during one of those bad days, when both the kids were behaving so badly that we grounded them and there was much screaming and wailing and we were so miserable that we considered just giving them the keys to the house and leaving, that my lovely and talented wife mentioned offhandedly, “This Fall we’ll have 45 minutes twice a week without the kids.”

Have you ever had a moment when the world instantly seemed completely still and far away, when you were filled with a sense of wonder and amazement, an epiphany exploding silently in your mind, a warm glow coming over you, troubles and problems hissing into vapor, carried away by a gentle breeze, the steady rythm of your heart beating slowly in your ears – a moment so perfect that even the birds stopped singing because that would spoil it – sort of like the moment your child was born (but less bloody)? Well, when she spoke those words, it was like that.

It took me a few seconds to compose myself enough to think about how this could be. Both the kids will be in school this year. The Boy in preschool and the Girl in kindergarten. At the same time. The school hours aren’t identical but there are 45 minutes of overlap.

Overlap. Ha! 45 minutes of HEAVEN.

Comments

1. quadrapop on 2005-08-12 02:20:20 wrote: I was wondering how you were going to acheive the 45 minutes… I’d love to have two 45 min dates with my DH a week. Not sure how we would acheive this though as we home educate and only have some extremely elderly family in our city to baby sit (and they live on the other side of the city). I know what you mean about the stillness of revelation though. Our births weren’t quite that bloody - in a water tub bubs and mum come out pretty clean:-) Q’pop from flickr