20190816.0430

Over this coming weekend, my wife, Ms. 8, and I will be heading out to Lockhart to spend some time with my mother-in-law. Said mother-in-law normally lives at the family ranch on the weekends, staying in Lockhart during the week to ease her commute to the Texas Parks & Wildlife headquarters in Austin.The weekend, though, will allow three generations of the women in that family to have some fun together--and, given the kind of fun they'll be having, I'll be finding some quiet place to sit and rest up a bit. Things have been busy, and I am a bit winded; the respite will be welcome.
I'll admit that some of the busy-ness has been a result of preparing for the weekend trip. There're a number of things I do on the weekend that I'll not be able to do this weekend, being away from where I do them. Consequently, I had to get them done through now, meaning I had to do just that much more each day. I am already weak enough that what I do in a day leaves me quite ready to find my bed each night; adding to each day's tasks makes it just a little harder for me. And, again, this is not because my daily work is necessarily hard; it is because I am barely sufficient to it as it is, without adding to it. The problem is mine.
That noted, I have caught myself up, more or less, and I am ready to take the trip. It is something of a last little hurrah for Ms. 8 before she begins school this coming Monday, and while Kindergarten is a byword for easy to many, for a five-year-old, it is an appropriate challenge. I have every expectation that Ms. 8 will do well, but I also have every expectation that she will have to work for it--and I think that is a good thing. Having to expend the effort will make her better able to face the many, many other challenges that will come. It gives me hope that, when that day arrives that I am no longer available to help her, she will be able to thrive.
Morbid as it is, I do keep an eye to that end. I know I am not eternal; I know my existence is limited and bounded, temporally no less than physically. I expect, as I think most parents do, that my child will see days after I no longer do. I know my daughter will see a world that does not have me in it; I do not expect it soon, necessarily, but I know it is coming. What I do when I am not being a selfish ass--which is less of the time than it ought to be, because I am a selfish ass--I do with the thought of making things easier for her when she enters that world. It does, I admit, take away from the now to some extent, and that almost certainly introduces problems, but I also know that if she makes it through the now to then, and there is no provision made, it will introduce other problems.
I do not know which will be worse. But I can work now on the problems of now and on the problems of then; I cannot work then on the problems of then.