I regret this day. There was nothing I could have done to change it. But I regret it.
In all honestly, it wasn’t an objectively bad day. Work was fine. Very little went wrong. Any other time, I’d have considered today a pretty good one.
But today, before work, my little boy got clingy. I don’t know why. It came out of nowhere. He would begin to cry if I was out of his sight. He just turned two, and this is not usual for him. Ordinarily, he’s happy to play with his blocks, or watch his favorite movie. But today, he wanted to be with Daddy.
“Come?” he would ask, when I needed to go out of the room. “Come?”
So we would hold hands, and he would come. And anything I had to do today, that’s how we’d do it---Holding hands, and him tagging along.
I had to go to work in the early afternoon. My daughter came to take over. The little guy likes spending time with his big sister, and he was good about letting me go to work. But later, she posted a photo of him sitting in her wheelchair. When she'd asked where he wanted to do, he said,”Daddy work.”
I love my job. I’m good at it, and I don’t want to miss any of it. But today, I wished I could have called off and stayed home. Let the city of Lock Haven take care of itself for a while; my little boy wanted me.
We only get just so many days with our children. And I regret this one. I spent the morning with him, but I wish it could have lasted longer. All he wanted was to spend time with Daddy. And today, I couldn’t do it for as long as he wanted.
He was mostly asleep when I got home. I picked him up to take him to bed.
His little eyes opened sleepily. “Milkie?”a tiny voice asked.
“Yeah. We can make that happen.”
So I got a bottle, and let him drink milk while I held him. And we spent a few moments that way.
And tomorrow, my day off, we’re going to spend the day together. We’ll play some game of his own invention. Maybe we’ll go down to the park. And we’ll color at the kitchen table. Maybe we’ll color ON the kitchen table. I don’t care.
I just want to spend the day with my son.
