Around us, it felt like every other family was doing something. Different classes for different things — some tied to school, some more general, all meant to give kids some kind of head start. Other kids his age were already going somewhere every week for it. We weren't. I just didn't feel the pull to enroll him in any of it, even as it kept becoming the more common thing to do around us. For a while, that reluctance didn't feel settled at all. I'd watch other kids come back

There's a specific kind of exhaustion I feel most days on my way home. Some of it is from work itself. But most of it is from what's waiting after it. I catch myself hoping, almost every evening, that today will be different. Quieter. Easier. I don't know why I keep expecting that, given how rarely it actually happens. But I do. Then I open the door, and it's the opposite. Complaints before I've even taken my shoes off. Shouting from one room or another. Something got broken,

Every morning, my alarm goes off with a clear job to do: wake my son up for school. Simple task, clear responsibility. My brain knows the drill — routine, punctuality, get moving. My heart has other plans. This is the only part of the day he's fully mine. He sleeps with his mom through the night, in a world I'm not really part of. But in those last two or three minutes, when I go in to wake him, he reaches out without even opening his eyes. Half-asleep, he hugs me tight and s