January 2: A Good-By, Small Moments, Day One

This morning is the first official morning of vacation for me.  Normally, I would be at the office right now, registering patients, putting together charts, thinking about the upcoming weekend.  When I'm at work, I think about being at school.  When I'm at school, I think about being at home.  When I'm at home, I think about being at work.  And when I'm on vacation, I think about the work I would normally be doing at the office.  It's a strange, vicious circle.

I got my kids off to school this morning.  I was actually looking forward to getting up with my daughter when I went to bed last night.  My alarm went off, and I got out of bed, made breakfast for her, and turned on the TV.  Then I actually woke the sleeping beast.  She was tired and cranky and whiny.  She kept saying things like, "I don't want to go to school" and "I'm not hungry" and "I don't feel good."  I responded with things I think every parent has said:  "Well, we all have to do things we don't want to do" and "It's only a three-day week" and "Once you eat something, you'll feel better."  By the end of our time together, she was screaming at me about her shoes and her lunch and the color of the sky and the injustice of the health care system in the United States, and I was dreaming about being at the office.

Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye is being kicked out of his boarding school at the beginning of the novel.  He's standing on top of a hill on campus, trying to figure out how to say goodbye to the place.  He hates leaving somewhere without feeling a sense of closure.  Then, he strikes upon this:

I was lucky.  All of a sudden I thought of something that helped me know I was getting the hell out.  I suddenly remembered this time, in around October, that I and Robert Tichener and Paul Campbell were chucking a football around, in front of the academic building.  They were nice guys, especially Tichener.  It was just before dinner and it was getting pretty dark out, but we kept chucking the ball around anyway.  It kept getting darker and darker, and we could hardly see the ball any more, but we didn't want to stop doing what we were doing.  Finally, we had to.  This teacher that taught biology, Mr. Zambest, stuck his head out of this window in the academic building and told us to go back to the dorm and get ready for dinner.  If I get a chance to remember that kind of stuff, I can get a good-by when I need one--at least, most of the time I can...

It's a tiny moment.  Simple and unimportant.  But it provides the comfort Holden's seeking at this point in the story.  He's able to say his goodbye with that memory in his pocket.

This morning, in the midst of my daughter's drama, my four-year-old son came up to me and tugged on my hand.  "Daddy?" he said.  I looked down at him.  He was in his winter coat and boots.  He backpack was on the floor beside him.  My daughter was shouting in the kitchen.

"What do you want, buddy?" I said.

"Can you come out to the bus with me?" he said, and he smiled.

I nodded, took him by the hand, and walked outside with him.  His bus was waiting.  He gave me a hug and kiss and climbed the steps onto the bus.  I watched him get buckled into his seat.  Then, he started waving at me and my wife.  He kept waving until the bus pulled away from the front of our house.

That is the moment I'm going to hold onto this morning.  I'm going to try to forget my daughter's back-to-school hysterics.  I'm going to think of my son's face, smiling, and his hand waving.  The trust and love of that one, simple moment of goodbye.

Saint Marty's day is off to a good start.

He made it all worth it