I tried to think about what I was going to say when this day came.

Instead, my mind kept going back to this blog post I wrote on our fourth day in the hospital after the boys were born. They were jaundiced, they were small, and I was up at all times of the night to check on them and my wife. And this came to mind from that post:

We’re being discharged tomorrow. We’re leaving the safety of the hospital for the open world, the treacherous landscape called Earth, where people will want to hurt my babies, without even knowing they’re going to.

Bullets flying in every direction and some of them, words to hurt, pain of the heart, will hit my boys. There’s a quote from the show “Firefly” that goes:

Everybody dies, Tracey. Someone’s carryin’ a bullet for you right now, doesn’t even know it. The trick is, die of old age before it finds you.

I guess it’s my job to be the hospital from now on. To keep them safe from that bullet headed their way for as long as possible.

I was, clearly, very tired when I wrote this.

My twins, codenamed Baby A and Baby B, started kindergarten today.

The straps of two children's backpacks.

And now it’s just me at home with Baby C. He starts preschool soon, but in the meantime, it’s just us. Baby D comes in October, and, that’ll be pretty difficult, sure, but this feels like the end.

I called this ‘First Day’ but it feels like an end. The end of our time. The end of this bubble that was created shortly before COVID and lockdown hit. I left my job as an educator and became a full-time stay-at-home parent. I also left my freelance writing job for George Takei shortly after Baby C was born, because it was piling up.

But it was still us. All of us.

Now we’re a little less.

And yes, reasonably, realistically, I know this is good for me. I’ve put myself through the mental health ringer these last few years to try and be the Best Dad Possible. Physically, emotionally, mentally, all that. It’s all been tested, reset, and countered down to nothing. I needed them to go to kindergarten. I needed the break.

But down, deep down, in the core of it all–

I’m sad.

I’ve started to wonder if I did enough. If I taught them enough. Demonstrated enough how to be a good person, how to be helpful, how to listen, how to give it your all when things get tough, how to ask for help when things get tougher, and most of all, how to look out for one another when that bullet comes.

Guess I’ll find out today at pickup.

Thanks for reading,

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