I emailed his kids’ school — I had the contact information because Owen had texted it to me with the original weekend plan, in case of emergency — and let them know Max and Ella were staying with their aunt and that I’d be handling drop-off for the next week or so. The school’s administrative coordinator asked me to fill out a temporary authorized adult form. I did.
I also called Brooke, not Owen, to make sure she knew what I knew. She knew about the lease delay, she said. She thought it was closer to a week. She was looking for a more permanent arrangement herself, had a few leads on an apartment in the city where she was working. The long-term temporary assignment had turned into what looked like a longer-term thing.
I made a note of all of this, not because I was building a case, but because I’m a payroll coordinator by profession and I don’t trust my memory for logistics.
## What School Mornings Were Like
Max is nine and has opinions about breakfast that are more developed than some adults I know. He does not eat eggs. He will eat cereal, but only specific cereal, and the specific cereal I had on hand during week one was not the right cereal, which I discovered at 7:14 on a Wednesday morning when I needed him dressed and at the table in six minutes.
I learned. This is what people don’t account for when they talk about watching someone else’s kids for an extended period — the learning curve isn’t just emotional, it’s logistical. What Max eats. How long Ella takes to locate her left shoe. The fact that Ella requires approximately twelve minutes of buffer time between waking and functional presence in the world. That Max is punctual to the point of anxiety about it and will tell you, repeatedly, how many minutes remain before the bus stop window closes.