Big as the Sky

Together Jenn and I pick up Silas from daycare, and then we drive straight to the airport and within an hour, Silas and I are back in the car, now without Jenn. We pick up Rio and head home and I’m in the door and cooking diner before it dawns on me how many different lives I’m living. The boys have a bath and I fold laundry and soon we’re clearing the table and making Rio’s lunch for tomorrow. Jenn calls from the airport shuttle and asks for phone numbers for taxis in Canmore.

The boys and I watch an episode of Avatar, and we snuggle on the couch and Silas, in his casual way tells me “You’re a great Dad, Steph,” the way you might say, “You’re a great fruit, Banana.”

Recently Rio looked and me and told me “I love you as big as the sky.” It’s a refrain we often repeat to one another. Then he said, “That’s really big, because the sky never ends, cause’ it goes on into outer-space.”

I tried to explain to Rio once that space has no beginning and no end, fighting my own impulse to question what, exactly, is on the other side of the end of the universe as it expands at the speed of light? I tell him that the universe bends back on itself to where it started, and then get confused, and instead we ended up reading a Dr. Suess book about how many apples a lion, a tiger and a leopard can balance on their heads while being chased by a bear with a broom. The answer is ten. But not for very long.

Sometimes I ask Rio if he knows how much I love him, and he just smiles and points his finger upwards, and I tell him anyway.

I call Jenn and she’s home. Home. I’m home too. We’re both home, but 954 kilometres apart. Not including the Straight of Georgia, so I guess it’s pretty damn close to 1000 kilometres.

In a couple of days, I’ll be in Canmore too. Then we’ll be apart again. And then…I get anxious just looking at my Calendar these days. Blocks of time with and without the people of love. I’ve got them colour coded. It helps. Not much, but a little.

Home. It’s where the people I love as big as the sky are. And it’s a good thing the sky is so big, because it’s got to stretch a fair distance to cover those three people at any given moment in time.