The Staleness of Late Summer

On Balancing a Fulltime Job and Home Renovations, August 2024

I sit and watch as the bright pink color of the raspberries in July turn into a deep purple of blackberries, blue bells and the very last of the lupins that have been flowering all summer. I sit and watch the flies hanging lazily in the dense late summer air.

I sit and watch my husband go to work all day, spending all of his good hours away, and coming home exhausted and unable to do anything other than make a meal and go to bed.

I sit and watch.

Last August Herluf was on a student’s holiday which meant he would not begin his studies before some time in September. We spend all of that first August outside, building a wood shed and making firewood for all of winter. Our child and I would sit on a carpet outside and watch him work, together with his father and his brother, he would build, and work, and laugh, and sweat.

“How I wish I could stay here at home,” he says now.

And then he leaves for work. Sometimes he has already left when we wake up in the morning. In order to spend some time with the child, before she goes to sleep in the evening, he has to leave a 5.30 in the mornings. Then he will be home just in time to enjoy a couple of hours with her, where they run, laugh and play, before she is tired and needs to be put to bed.

From the sand box where my child is making yet another sand cake or pile of mud I now watch the piles of lumber that still lay just outside the woodshed, waiting for someone to pick up the axe and and let it fly through the warm air into the perfectly crisp firewood.

But he is not here. Instead he is away, making web solutions and app installments for a company in the big city.

We knew this day would come where we would have to seriously slow down on our projects in the home. Where Herluf would have to start a 9-5 job in order for us to pay of our loan on the house, and while I would still have our child at home, making it impossible for me to get any serious work done in the day.

We knew the day would come, but still, I have to admit, I find it very difficult to face it.

I miss my husband and I miss the sun in his face.

But on this very day where I sit with our child in the sandbox in the hot afternoon sun, eagerly awaiting her father’s return, I notice a difference. We are almost half-way through August, and suddenly a breeze swings by and awakes my from my trance. Something is coming, I feel it. It’s a breeze in my hair and the smell of autumn.

It’s the sound of a car that drives into the drive-way. My child looks up from her play.

“Father! Father is home!” She runs to the gate to greet him as he gets out of the car. And there it is, a different look on his face, as he embraces our child and a cool breeze surrounds them and play with their hairs.

“You’ll never guess what happened today,” he says. “Tell me,” I respond. “I asked my boss if I could work from home, and he said, that it would be no problem at all. He was very happy with my work so far, and was certain this would continue on even though I worked from home some days.”

His face lights up in the late summer sun, and soon after he brings home a new desk and his work computer. He sets up everything in a small corner in our bedroom, which is the only room besides the bathroom that has a door.

Now - for three days of the week - he doesn’t wake up to an alarm, but to the voice of our child. “Father, there’s yoghurt!” she will exclaim with great enthusiasm, and he responds: “Is there coffee too?” “Yes!” He joins us for breakfast and for lunch, and because he doesn’t have to waste time on commute, he is often free one or two hours earlier.

By time mid August rolls around, I watch him work from the window where I do the dishes. In the afternoon he is no longer tired, but eager to get on with firewood before autumn sets in. The pacing is still slow, but that is perfectly alright with both of us. Each week the pile of firewood outside the shed gets smaller and smaller.

It’s a small change, but we feel it’s effects tremendously.

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