Privilege

After a week of ghosting round the house by myself, my wife and children and back. Let me share some emotional slop (as opposed to AI slop) about what a privilege it is to have them around.

This morning I got woken up early (6:15am) and headed downstairs with the one-year-old to wait for the onslaught. An onslaught that arrived at 7am on the dot with the four-year-old making her way downstairs, closely followed by her big brother. A one-year-old is chaotic. All three of them together is something else.

But for a brief moment we sat in a line on the sofa, my arms around all of them. Then we went and had breakfast together. We sang silly songs and the baby banged pots and pans and the six-year-old talked my ear off while the four-year-old did gymnastics as I tried to get her to eat.

It was wonderful exhausting chaos.

When I’m old and the kids have grown up and flown the nest and I’m echoing round whatever house I live in, I’m going to look back on mornings like this one and wish for it back. This is current me letting future me know that I knew this was privilege and even if you think that you took it for granted, you didn’t.