Nov. 3, 2016

Today is Cozy’s first day in daycare and I’ve come undone. We’ve been attached at the hip for the last two years, two months, and two weeks. Except for my work-related trips and her time with her family in Mexico and Salem, she’s never been out of my sight; maybe in the next room, fast asleep. Now I have actual child-free time and I’m not quite sure what to do. Write a novel, perhaps.

My wise wife suggested we put our daughter in daycare a few days a week so I can get things done. I’m always complaining there’s not enough time to get things done. Things like writing, and cleaning, and working on the house, and getting a goddamn job. The day is spent entertaining the kid. Yesterday we spent an hour just in the sandbox at the OMSI “science playground.” Sand is pretty scientific, until you start dumping buckets of it on little boys’ heads. Well, that might be social scientific with a big enough sample.

There’s a great daycare place in our neighborhood that’s in an old church. The woman who runs it told me that the Black Panthers served meals to Portland families there in the 1960s. Pretty cool place for a radical toddler. We signed Cozy up and I began to fantasize about dropping her off when the doors opened and picking her up right before they locked up, and all the things I would do in the hours between. Hours! Get things done hours!

I bought her new rain boots and a backpack and she was so excited when I told her she was going to “school.” She wouldn’t take her backpack off (or her bike helmet, for some reason). I wrote a little note for he teacher about Cozy. “She’s a little Leo lion who loves all the animals and making animal sounds. Just ask her what an elephant says.” This morning when Andrea and I dropped her off, she was so ready to go, in her pink dress and hat. (I tried to stop the pink thing, I really did.) And with a few besitos, that was it. She was out of the nest.

It’s only been a few hours but I just want to go and check on her. I should’ve asked if this place has streaming nanny-cams. Maybe an app. Did she take a nap, have a snack, pour a box of crayons on a baby? Where is my child???

It’s been strange that, for the last year, my best friend has been a two-foot tall munchkin that likes to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle.” When she says, “Come, Daddy. Cubbies!” I just don’t really want to be with anyone else. We have a tight connection of the heart, as Bob Dylan once sang. There’s such a bond after two years of stay-at-home parenting. We’re like a synchronized bath tub swim team, in each others’ heads. I don’t know if she cares about the outcome of this election (although I did let her mail my ballot for Hillary Clinton so she could brag about it later). I do know that I care when The Count announces the number of the day on Sesame Street. (“Daddy, come! Count!”)

A friend of mine who left work to take care of her small children told me how it’s both joyous and depressing because you miss your “outside” work life. That’s exactly right. I do miss being a full-time full professor and having deep water-cooler conversations with my peers (often about how corrupt the administration was). I didn’t have to explain to anybody that Milk Duds were not “poop.” It was given that that was understood. Or time just to sit at the bar and shoot the shit with likeminded shit shooters. Andrea and I have amazing conversations, but child-time has seriously diminished my normal adult interaction. I might even drool, occasionally. Pudding!

So for these two days a week I should make a “get done” list. So many things. We’re turning the basement into an apartment and I need to get out an promote my new book and maybe fill out a few applications and… but if you see me in the coffee shop or/and the bar, please come talk to me.

Note: Okay, I just drove by the daycare facility and saw Cozy on the playground, with a teacher, pointing at a bird. She was probably translating.