Wanderer

 0-2 loss, but remember.  The ideas.  How child-birthing shifts perspectives so completely.  How for the first time (except maybe marriage) you see things … the past most especially, not as yourself but through your parents eyes.  Watch your whole life.  

I love how it has taken this long, with this person, in this house.  To be sure.  Sure.

Manifestos

June 30, three months as owner of 114.  Can we settle in now, avert the eyes from the screen in favour of books and pen?  Let’s try through the summer anyway.  Writing it down makes it feel more real, they say, so here.  Now Guinness and oyster time, before the Wanderers.  Let’s sing it.

Bearings

Back at 1601 again.  Some consistent players, some new ones given the different public utility under the gun.  Portrait of the retired Chair hanging in the hall.  New chinstrap or lion's mane beard for the Board counsel.  Preliminary legal skirmishing over a frankly baffling point.  Mix of cross-examination, mostly expected and happily relaxed knowing that none of the responsibility lies with you.  Chess candidates tournament running in the background on the laptop, disappointing results after a solid Hikaru win yesterday, alas.  A few stray pdf references, eventually caught.  Predictable Board members, on top of the issues, and an Application that does not push the envelope looking like a success.  Need to get the time entered to close off another month.  #2 in the young life of our sleeping man.  Unlikely scenarios that have brought him into the world, and the magic miracles of life that keep him going.

Hard to understate how much the pandemic changed.  Still need to adjust to the new life and figure out the nesting plan.  Get writing and do those photo books.  And keep the spirit going.

   

The Real Struggle

Purple crying and newborn tears, inability to self-soothe, 8-week sleep regression, and everything along with it.  The helplessness.  The feelings of inadequacy.  Hoping it will improve, sure it must, but how?  We shall see.

In the interim, a return to the Thames is booked, with work to be done on the passport and visas, but plans for a return to Bankside so exciting.  What it will feel like to stroll that walkway with those humans, a bit of a bookend?  A last farewell for some time?  Perhaps, with other places to see and spend the money on.

The hosting of the church ladies a success, the stress over teamwork and again being called out for lack of patience.  Hearing tomorrow, let’s just get through this week and then a more relaxing July lies in store.  And let the hearing go just a day so there is time for the vaccination appointment tomorrow.  Be well, young man.  It’s so hard.

Annual Update

I have prepared and made a written record of my professional development plan for the period of June 1, 2022 to May 31, 2023 (i.e. next year), and this is it.  Looking out over the Halifax Harbour from the Main Boardroom, the goals are to focus on M and AA, keep learning how to be a parent and balance those demands with the technological advancements of working from home while maintaining relentless quality client service.  The plan is for some specific, on-site research in the Middle East and on the African continent.  And the plan must be to remember.  What it feels like with the newborn.  What it feels like to navigate the early years of marriage amidst a move and emergence from a pandemic and welcome into the family.  And to assume the responsibilities of those retiring, the sense of stability that gave you the confidence to embark on this wholly new chapter in the first place.  Bring on a most prosperous year.

Even-Keeled

As a further coda, the argument also involved mood swings on account of the first period since July, which helps explain the irrationality of the focus on "clearly" wrong.  Hyper attention to language and the need for patience, always.  This is the lesson of the first 6 weeks of AA's young life...  The value of a patient approach and attempts to try and stop worrying.  Constant, ever-present.  Find respite where you can in order to keep the mind balanced, to ensure smooth and stable sailing.

First father's day in Moncton.  Top Gun for the second time, followed by excessive wine consumption for the surf and turf.  Survived it all unscathed, easier and easier in terms of the assimilation into the Canadian family.  New home helping, and although it is not perfect it feels as if it is where you belong.  If you can figure out the routine, then you will be all the more settled.

Milestones for 7 weeks note that the "haze" of raising the newborn may slowly be lifting, and that seems to be the case.  Amazing the consistencies across the realm of different human birthing experiences, the magic in recognizing commonality in the stresses and challenges universally faced by all.  The same old stories. 

As is the forgetting.  How to remember what it feels like will be a constant struggle.  Then, in turn, relearning the joy to be found in a single, solid, uninterrupted night of sleep.  The refreshment.

Back in the office, overlooking the harbour.  How much, how much has changed, as the anniversary of the Zanzibar trip rolls around again.  The old self would have considered this new one to be trapped, by a mortgage and a marriage and a new life.  Instead, Zorba's full catastrophe is simply what is next, the proper order of things.

Wrap

As a coda, the argument was really about second guessing, concerns about the visit to the parents as the source of worry about the child, trusting all other sources of information over her instinct/action.  Perhaps resolved after initial pictures and sleep and further good behavior by our new stranger in his first strange land.  The facial expressions coming in, the delightful look of pondering on his face, trying to puzzle it all out. Maybe he will.  

Mr. Expert

Had meant to record the little losses of temper, the frustrations breaking through.  Fortunately they have been few and far between, although they linger.  A wayward comment about the Beluga wrap and nothing to be done about the efforts to learn, the "clearly" wrong remark lingering on and on.  What other comment was there in a similar vein just before Mom's arrival, something along those lines.  Always something.  And the concern about being left alone while you work.  The last few days have been time not well spent in that regard, watching as first Peru and then New Zealand failed at the last hurdle to get (back) to Qatar for the main event.  Clarifies things at least, and I am thinking even more about what to do in the context of the cruise ship booking.  The maximalist approach not as convincing as it may have been, in the circumstances of the plus two, and the need to relax (and write?) during that Zambia interlude.

Also feel like the 4 day London trip in August is needed as an escape, the August 13 week preferred.  We shall see what comes of it all, but always fun to anticipate a fixture drop with an eye on attending games within a certain window.  The fateful randomness at work again.  Thinking of that line from the Globe piece, how it interweaves with the housing hunt and the stock picking and the wondering over the future.  For so long everything has focused on planning, eyes on the future, etc.  Hard to put the phone down and not think about implications, return again to now.  The addiction to the faint blue light is growing stronger within the house though, even with the miracle of the precious child in view.  Perhaps as a distraction to the crying, but it is worrying in its potency.  Need to break the cycle, get down to the lake for mind-clearing meditations and a return to basics, setting up a routine for the writing that must be done before the packing begins for Cape Town.

Let us see how this all unravels, shall we?  Less concern about the daily development of the little man, he seems to be progressing well.  We can only hope.  Work will be eventful for a few weeks, so get back into that groove for this latest push before a bit of relaxation in July.  Then August laziness, then September hearings, then October Cape Breton and Thanksgiving.  The countdown clock to Qatar continues to toll, one day at a time.  Everything working toward it.

Then the work of finishing the story - 2014 to 2018 to 2022, and before that as well.  To finish you must make a start, so do that now.  Go make up with your wife and best of luck on the first drive back into NB.  Compare it to the one made on March 17, 2020.  819 days.  You have made the most of them, there is no doubt of that.  142 to go before wheels up back to Africa.  Allez allez.  It's later than you think.

New Traditions

First birthday has passed without a tape, the first as a father.  A full day still managed as per the magic of the day.  Sound system secured, Zambian flight via Cape Town purchased, wine bottled, hair cut, then the magic of Top Gun: Maverick with AA along for the ride.

Thoughts?  Just that it doesn’t need to change everything, it’s just a new form of exploration and discovery.  Still the same emotions, applied in new directions.  Same shortcomings, exposed in different ways.  The same addictions remain that you now have new motivation to address.  Perhaps, anyway.

Another post that has been hung up in draft form for days.  So is life at the moment, concentration at a premium, but so it goes.