It's The Little Things

I got far less done today than planned.

I moved the car for street cleaning. I re-read Everyman.

I finished grading a paper -- a graduate student's paper, a smart one, with complicated and unusual issues arising from the student's unfamiliarity with the norms of study in English programs, and so it took an unusually long time to read it, and to write feedback.

I cleaned the kitchen -- at least once. I kept track of The Offspring in the playground after school, and I walked him home, and I fed him, more or less continuously from arriving home until bath time.

I lined up a speaker and started planning a reading of Old English poems for a student event. I wrote thirty-four email messages, mostly in response to student questions about papers and the upcoming event, several about a PTA fund-raising drive, and various other random ones.

I supervised homework and violin practice. I oversaw bath and the taking of medicine. I rubbed The Offspring's back, and sang him to sleep.

The day-to-day routine of parenting doesn't lend itself to a sense of Accomplishment. Yet all the little things add up to Love, Security, Structure. Important stuff.