Tuesday, 07 September 2010
The arrival of September seems like such a transitional time in the year. With apologies to the equinox, summer is over. The weather this year changed on September 2nd and it’s felt like fall ever since.
For many years of my life, September’s arrival was the arrival of a school year – elementary, high school, college. For several other years in my life, when I was doing volunteer work for the Watchtower Society, September was the start of a new service year, which meant the clocks were reset on achieving the 1,000-hour goal.
Another year, Jennifer and I were married in late August, so the beginning of September (when we finished our honeymoon), was the start of married life. And, back in 2002, I began a new job in early September.
So, here I am. It’s September. It’s fall. Owen is less than a week away from beginning Kindergarten and I am less than 24 hours away from going back to work.
August of 2010 will forever be held dear in my heart. It marked the first month, since I before I was 19 years old, that I did not work a single day. Ah…how nice is that? Not only that, but I still got paid for every single weekday. Yes sir, twenty-two weekdays in August, and I got paid for each and every one of them. This has not happened before in my adult life – not even when I had my wisdom teeth removed, not even when I got married, not even when in college, or when moving, or when Jennifer and I went on a two-week vacation; heck, it didn’t even happen when Owen was born.
And, sadly, it’s not likely to happen again. I mean, unless we have another baby and that baby happens to be born at the very beginning or end of one month AND I’m gainfully employed with a company that allows me to accrue such decent benefits AND I haven’t used up too much of those benefits by that point in the calendar year AND my wife and I feel that so much time off of work is warranted AND financially feasible.
Here, as the sun sets on my paternity leave, I must say – I’m grateful for this time that I’ve had off of work; I know many new Dads who were unable to take off so much time. I promised Owen we’d do many things together, and we did: Children’s Museum, zoo, Train Museum, Electricity Museum, lunch at Jimmy John’s, playgrounds, and walks. I even promised him we’d go golfing – something I finally made good on this evening.
When I returned to work three weeks after Owen’s birth, it seemed too soon. Jennifer also felt like she was expected to return to normal life too soon. So I’m glad I had twice that long this time. We dragged out our return to normal life for as long as possible; Jennifer laid in bed for ten days, our friends and family came in turns that took longer, and the meals people brought for us lasted longer. And even though I’m returning to work tomorrow, this still isn’t the end of the babymoon – there’s still one more appointment with the midwives, and a “welcome the babies party” (for Isla and her new cousin) is coming up later this month.
At any rate, I’m done being a postpartum midhusband. It’s not that I disliked the job, it’s just that the pay was so horrible. Tomorrow it’s back to my old job where the pay is…not so horrible.