Fine, Busy, You Know

Somebody in the group chat asked how everyone was doing and I typed "fine, busy, you know" and sent it before I'd finished reading the question. That's how automatic it's gotten. Fine, busy, you know. Three words that mean nothing and cover everything. Here is what "busy" means. It means I've been getting up at 5:15 to answer emails before the kids are up, and it means I've been doing that for about fourteen months, and it means that somewhere in month nine the emails stopped being work and started being the thing I do instead of lying awake. It means I coach my daughter's soccer team on Saturdays and I'm good at it, everyone says so, and I drive home after and sit in the garage with the engine off for a while before I go in. Here's what "fine" means. It means nothing's wrong. Nobody's sick. The mortgage gets paid. My wife and I don't fight, we don't really talk enough to fight, we do logistics. Who's got pickup. Did you call the guy about the gutter. Fine. Everything's fine. I'd have a hard time pointing at the problem, if you asked me, which is why nobody asks me. "You know" is the part I've been thinking about. Because I don't think they do know. I think I've spent so long being the guy who's got it handled that I've made it impossible for anyone to see that I don't. Last Tuesday I was in the garage again, engine off, and my son came out to find me. He's nine. He stood at the door in his socks and said, "Dad, what are you doing," and I said, "Just finishing a podcast," and there was no podcast, the car was silent, and he looked at me for a second in a way that told me he knew that. "Okay," he said, and went back in. I sat there. I thought, he's going to remember this. Not this exactly. But the shape of it. A dad who sat in the garage. And whatever he thinks that meant, he's going to carry it, the way I carry my own dad on the porch with the newspaper he never turned the page on.

So I did a thing. I'm not going to make it sound bigger than it was. I went inside and I found my wife in the kitchen and I said, "I don't think I'm okay," and she stopped what she was doing, which was wiping down a counter that was already clean, and she said, "I know. I've been waiting for you to say it." I've been waiting for you to say it. We talked. Not all of it. Some. She's known for a while, it turns out, and she'd been trying to figure out how to bring it up without making me defensive, and she'd been getting up at 5:30 and seeing the light under the office door and not knowing what to do about it. We're both tired. We're both doing logistics. Neither of us wanted to be the one to say the plane was losing altitude. I've got a call with someone next week. A counselor, through work, it's a benefit apparently, I'd never looked. I don't know what I'll say. I'll probably say "fine, busy, you know," out of habit, and then I'll have to say the rest. The group chat's moved on. Somebody's posted a thing about the game. I typed "how are you actually, though" to one of them, Dave, who's been a bit quiet, and I looked at it for a minute and then I sent it. He hasn't answered yet. That's okay. I know how long it takes.