Mr. Jake's Fight Club
Few times have I been so proud/embarrassed as when my wife called me "a middle school boy whisperer."
When we finally made it through the waitlist for childcare, I had to get a job to pay for it. So now I watch other people’s kids while some other people watch my kids. It still feels absurd to me some days. But Tlingit and some other native parents don’t traditionally spend too much time with their kids after a certain age, leaving the raising of children to aunts and uncles. They understand the challenge of being patient or strict enough with your own kids.
As much as I tell myself that I’m being a better citizen of my tribe, I underestimated how draining my job would be. Many days the time away from my own kids doesn’t give me any more patience for them in the evenings. Maybe that’s not the point as much as the fact that at least now it’s just in the evenings and mornings and weekends.
I’d imagined time between work and family, to do my thing. On paper, I’m off work by 4:00 and have until 5:30 to pick up my kids, so I figured I would have at least an hour to write every day, and I aimed to split my time between the newspaper and this blog. But in another effort to save money, I deleted one of my old websites that it turned out had the email for signing into this blog. The darkness set in, without much snow to brighten it up. Just rain and darkness, and living with my parents while house hunting. And I began to fall behind with newspaper stories too. The only mandatory time I had to myself was when it rained enough, and I had to go bail out our skiff so it wouldn’t sink at the dock.
A few precious afternoons, after bailing out the skiff I treated myself to a row around the harbor, but I couldn’t go far and make it back to the daycare on time. Plus I felt guilty that I hadn’t brought my kids out in the boat.
Then I agreed to coach middle school wrestling.
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