I’m part of that class of people that has to work evenings often enough, because that’s what salaried professionals do. We send our kids to bed, tuck them in, come back downstairs to our tools and props, and we get back to work on that thing that we’re supposed to be presenting to those people at that meeting next week. Sometimes it consumes us for weeks or months on end, and it’s those times we try to remember we’re glad that at least we like our work this well.
We try to stay human during these stretches, because these stretches strain our relationships. The kids we just tucked in remember when we used to read to them at night. They can read to themselves now, but they remember the cuddling and laughing that we used to do around bedtime, and they know they’ve lost that to a computer and a pile of papers downstairs. The spouses and fiancées and girlfriends and families know we work hard, and they appreciate it, probably admire us for it - a welcome ego boost - but they’re not generally communing late into the evening with us, and that’s doubly lonely.
My dad remembers when it was he who sat at a desk or dining room table until late in the night while I pitted futility against insomnia in a too-early darkened room upstairs. My mom remembers when it was she who didn’t have time to talk about poetry and after-school activities, the neighbor boy who’d been brained while playing on the train tracks, their kids’ secret crushes. Did you know that, at this very moment, over 144,000 people are listening to that one Harry Chapin song- in North America alone?
Who says statistics aren’t poetry, Mom? But you can’t hear me anymore, can you, and I still have god knows how many hours to go.