The summer holiday is over, although one could be forgiven for failing to have noticed that it had ever begun.
Eloïse is back at school, but now a fully fledged eersteklasser. The transition was painless; enjoyable, even. All of the children in the higher years assembled in the eurythymy hall and sang to the new eersteklassers as they entered the room, crossing a symbolic wooden bridge in the process. It was a touching sight and another poignant reminder of the inexorable march of time, those grains of sand slipping ever faster through our fingers, our children growing, ripening, finding their way in a world that is ever more alien, inhospitable and unlikeable to their father. The older they get, the more they learn to cope with and take their world for granted. The older I get, the more out of step I feel with the world I live in, as if this planet and I have deviant orbits, and I am watching myself become ever more tangential to the society I nominally inhabit. Sometimes, my family feel like the only tethers binding me to this earth.
With school come all of the extracurricular activities that fill the weekly calendar, leaving scarcely enough time to do groceries and eat meals. Even finding the time to shave, shit and shower can be a challenge now. At least two of those activities can be deemed non-essential and indefinitely postponed.
Ilias continues to thrive, his incarceration in the hospital now little more than an anecdote that I still recount almost daily to those we haven’t seen since his birth. It’s interesting to gauge the reactions, which run the gamut from those who think the doctors saved his life, to those who think that the integrity of our family was violated by a bunch of arrogant bastards in white coats.
Florence and Mike returned to Providence a week ago. I can’t thank them enough for the support they gave the children and me while Sarah and Ilias were being wrung through the medical mangle. I don’t know how we would have coped without them.