We’re library fiends around here: I just noticed on our calendar that 24 books are due to the library tomorrow, and 32 more are due the day after.

From Dickens’ David Copperfield: The man who reviews his own life, as I do mine, in going on here, from page to page, had need to have been a good man indeed, if he would be spared the sharp consciousness of many talents neglected, many opportunities wasted, many erratic and perverted feelings constantly at war within his breast, and defeating him.

Upon finishing my portion of our Sunday evening popcorn snack last night I began my fatherly task of picking up the puffs and kernels that had fallen mainly under N’s seat. As I munched on those I carefully selected from among the other country-living rubble on the kitchen floor, however, N protested: “Daddy, I was going to eat those!”

These times are, of course, the most important of all, now and forever, with each moment slipping from its own impatient grasp into the longing past. That knowledge does somehow make less tiring H’s late-night sleeping breaks with her full-steam-ahead fussing, laughter, and slobbering wet kisses on my nose, even as the stresses of daylight’s duties not imperceptibly near.

But it does not always render seeking a moment’s sanity less imperatively felt. With pending kitchen, minivan, and waterline projects hanging in the balance and calling for the kind of creative production that for me is not seamlessly compatible with playing Uno or peek-a-boo, I’ve had a stressful few weeks of wanting time to work but knowing my attention is more needed elsewhere.

This week, though, so far feels better. The hour and a quarter I spent bent over in the misty rain this morning picking sixteen quarts of strawberries from the garden out back has perhaps refreshed me more than could have the free-for-teachers coffee I intended to pick up at 7-11 on my way to school but couldn’t. I’d forgotten my empty mug back at home, where my three darlings with their morning smiles all nestled together in bed had sent me on my way a full man.

She was quite sleepy, but N contained her restlessness quite well through M’s spring choral concert yesterday afternoon, and required minimal distractions: pretzels to eat out of my hat and colored pencils and a notepad.

Once she’d adjusted to making comments in a small whisper (“That lady’s throat jiggles when she sings!”), she listened quite well to the choral selections but especially well to the orchestral component, Vivaldi’s “Spring.”

While I listened, it occurred to me that I should personally thank the one person I knew on the program’s list of donors to the choir for fostering such a great fine arts environment for my child.

I didn’t cross paths with that person there, however, and after M changed back into her street clothes, we stopped by McDonald’s for a surprise end-of-choral-term celebratory snack (I was craving burgers), and drove home through the rain.

In the car M asked N what had been her favorite part of the performance.

“I liked coloring,” she said.

(Later M told me the rest of the story: The day before, she’d taken N to an “instrument petting zoo” at a nearby university, then to Dollar General. That night in bed, she asked N about her favorite part of the outing: “All the interesting things at the store,” she said.)