You’re sitting at a picnic table on the school grounds. You’re using the stopwatch function of your phone to time your seven-year-old as he runs to various points that you designate. He hasn’t figured out that you’re just burning some of his boundless energy, or that these sprint times aren’t being logged at all, much less for some greater purpose. But he seems to enjoy the running for what it is, and laughs, charging forward each time. So you don’t feel guilty about your ruse.

It’s the sort of thing you might write about, back when you used to write. You’d peck it out on your phone with quick, confident thumbs, and post it with the cocksure certainty that people want to read these trivial offerings about your absurd life. Your bacon taste tests. Your Vegas antics. The salsa you ate which was hotter than Satan’s colon.

But you don’t write anymore. Because somehow you can’t. You’ve lost your voice, or your confidence, or both. And you don’t have good answers as to why. After a tragic year of unspeakable loss, you don’t have answers for much of anything anymore.

Gentle friends have said kind words. Indeed, some of the kindest you’ve heard. Buddies have prodded you. Even strangers have inquired. But you’ve got nothing. Less than nothing. Bemused, you float forward through your days as a non-writer. An un-self. A wraith.

Today is no different. You’re waiting outside the cafeteria for your older son. He will show up and collect the all black shoes, jeans and shirt that you had to buy this afternoon on an “emergency” basis because he’s supposed to wear them as part of the theater stage crew tonight. Seriously? Like it’s not hard enough to keep your shit together managing a full time job and four kids without one of them forgetting to share critical information like a mandatory outfit he needs to wear within hours?! Can you do a headstand for anyone while you’re at it?

But you don’t complain much. Because you’ve learned all too well that there are so many worse things than being inconvenienced for the sake of someone you love with your whole being.

And it’s while you sit there with shopping bags in your lap, like some bearded bag lady with phenomenal calves, that your daughter finds you, and asks you for advice about how to break up with a boy.

Wh-what? What would you know about it? You’ve been monogamous since your twenty-first birthday. The last time you broke up with a chic, The Little Mermaid was in theaters – for the first time! In fact, you broke up with two different girls after taking each of them to see that movie because you’re a laughable, ridiculous creature. You don’t know the first thing about how to properly break up with someone, least of all a fifteen-year-old in the age of Instagram and Stupidchat. Good God, man! You can’t give her useful answers, you’re a troll king masquerading as a human!

But she doesn’t know that. Indeed, she can’t know that. Because she’s the reason you started this adventure in the first place. And her belief in your humanity makes it true. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, she makes you real.

So you do your best. But even as you struggle to formulate your answer, some part of your mind laughs at you. Because you imagined you were finally getting this whole parenting thing down. But here you are, slogging through an uncharted swamp yet again. Foolish Hamilton, when will you learn? It’s make-shit-up-as-you-go-along, forever. And the advice you come up with is mostly unnecessary, because the things you would tell her to do are already inherent in her nature: be compassionate, be honest, show gratitude, empathize (but not so much that it prevents you from doing what you intend to do). So what comes out is more like “be kind” and a shrug.

You’re not really satisfied with that answer. And she probably isn’t either. So at home, you call in your closer, and send her upstairs to speak with her daughter. And she walks her through things, and sits with her on the bed while the deed is done.

Later, your daughter is relieved, and happy, and singing in the library while doing her homework. And you’re finishing the dishes when you recognize the song. It’s one of your favorites, but you didn’t realize she knew all the words. And as you hear Ani DiFranco’s lyrics paired with your daughter’s voice, it’s like you’re hearing the song for the first time. And something deep within a lost crypt inside you begins to stir.

“Because the answer came like a shot in the back
While you were running from your lesson
Which might explain
Why years later all you could remember
Was the terror of the question
Plus I’m not listening to you anymore
My head is too sore and my heart’s perforated
And I’m mired in the marrow of my (well, ain’t that) funny bone
Learning how to be alone and devastated
Where was my conscience?
Where was my consciousness?
And what do I do with all these letters
That I wrote to myself
But cannot address?”

And you stand in the kitchen alone. And you dry your hands and reach for your phone. And slowly, your thumbs begin to type. The words feel clunky, and covered in cobwebs, and they come at half the speed they once did. And you’re not sure how you feel about any of it.

But it’s a start.