Two days nursing a sick son...

Not very sick, not dangerously sick, but sick enough, and young enough--he's six--that he did not want me to leave his side for almost the entire two days. Or, more accurately, he did not really want to leave my arms for that long, especially today. I read aloud to him from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for what was at least four hours combined and he curled in my lap almost the whole time, not wanting to move. I understand him. He's all achey and fluey and he wants the physical comfort that comes from being held and stroked and from the warmth of someone else's skin against yours. And when I was finally able to get him to agree that I could stop reading--he had to eat dinner, at least--I went and rented Spiderman 2 for him, and I was really surprised not just at how much he remembered, but at how critically he remembered the movie from when we saw it in the theaters. When Peter Parker decides to give up being Spiderman, Shahob started explaining to us how this decision had both a good side and a bad side. The good side being that Parker would not be able to concentrate more on school; the bad side being that he would have to watch people getting hurt, people he would have helped as Spiderman, and not do anything, and while my son does not really have the vocabulary to talk about guilt and responsibility and accountability, it was clear that these were the concepts he was referring to.

But now at last I have some quiet time to myself. Shahob is in bed with his mother; my in-laws are in their room--they live with us now--and I am here in the living room with my laptop and the muffled noises of Jackson Heights near midnight coming through the closed and locked windows, and I am thinking on the one hand how wonderful it was to be able to take care of Shahob when he was sick, not to have to leave him with my in-laws, and on the other hand how much work I didn't get done yesterday and today, everything from paying the bills to straightening my office to grading papers that I really, really, really need to grade by Monday. And I recognize this feeling: I am overwhelmed by all I have to do and all I want to do and all I would like to be able to start planning to do. And it boils down to this reality: I am not working on the Bustan--the second book of Persian translations I have contracted to do--or on any one of the several projects I have started. I haven't even submitted my poetry manuscript to the few places that I still want to submit it to right now.

And I know there is something building in me to write, and I know it has to do with family, my family and my wife's, and why my in-laws are now living with us, and why I became a father in the first place, and why I don't really feel like a son to my father or that my father is my father, and it's about love and loyalty, marriage and commitment, and why I sometimes feel trapped.