one two three
One:
I sometimes can’t imagine what it’s like to be a single parent. Everything I do is aided by Steve. When I first came along, he was so grateful that adult conversations were happening in his house: it created a line, we were the adults, they were the kids, authority didn’t come in only one-syllable sentences. And it created so much more order, I could see that from the start.
Two:
Take Friday morning: I had set the alarm the night before for 6:40 — Steve had to be in the car with Rosie at 7 to get her to swimming on time. The alarm went off; he slept. The alarm went off again at 6:50, and then at 7; he slept. I told him it was seven and he mumbled that he was going to sleep until 7:30. I told him Rosie had swimming and he jumped up and woke Rosie and they were off. If that one moment got botched, if he had slept in, it would have set off a spiral of chaos for the rest of the morning. One adult cannot so easily keep track of the minutia of an entire household.
This morning Jack walked on the good living room rug with muddy baseball shoes. Show Courtney what you did, Steve said. We sometimes need help reprimanding, when one of us is tired or the words aren’t coming.
Three:
I took Rosie to her doctor’s appointment a week ago — last minute Steve remembered and called me and off we went — and set up another one for July 8. I had the receptionist print out a reminder for us and I gave it to Steve. He wrote it in his calendar for July 9. Rosie’s mother called and said she wanted to go with Rosie to the next appointment. Steve forgot I had made an appointment already and Rosie’s mother was off calling to make more appointments. I asked Steve to text her that she could go with Rosie on July 8, which he did, though in his mind it was still July 9. Then Rosie spent the week with her mother, and arrangements were made to pick her up on July 9 and Steve told Rosie’s mother that we’d go ahead and take her to her appointment. Nobody knows, nobody checks, we all try to just trust the other. July 8 came and left, and I was counting on Steve taking her and hadn’t re-checked my calendar, and Rosie’s mother was no longer going to take her and didn’t look at her calendar. Rosie missed her appointment. These miscommunications between three people happen so often. Two people support each other, but with three, the kids’ schedules slip too easily through the cracks.
