Contours

I’m in a bar. A local bar. Near our Airbnb.

We’re in an Airbnb because we’re renovating our house, and have been for the last five months.

I’m five beers deep, plus ten buffalo wings. Pitch and Fiddle. Populated by the local folk.

I am not the local folk.

Local, but not the folk.

I don’t go out with the boys. I have no boys. I have my boy children.

I’m thinking about the contours of my life. That word in particular: contours. What it means, exactly. What my life looks like from the outside. What it feels like in relation to other people.

I don’t relate to anyone around me.

Different people. No discernible families. I’m sitting next to a 75-year-old man. Everyone else looks under 30. Young men. Working men. Out with the boys. Out with the girls.

My family sleeps at home.

I traveled this week.

I arrived in Sacramento around midnight on Saturday after spending two weeks in South Florida. I did family things. Unpacked. Checked the progress on our house. Checked into another Airbnb.

Then I woke at 4:30 a.m. Monday to catch a flight back to the East Coast.

Rented a car. Stayed in a hotel. Worked 12-hour days, because when you are on the road, what else is there to do?

Work and eat.

I shook hands all week. Conducted five hours of training. Had business dinners with colleagues in Massachusetts.

This morning, I woke at 3:30 a.m. Eastern Time to catch my flight home. I had packed everything the night before.

I slept for the first hour of the flight. Worked the rest.

Then LAX.

I spent a two-hour layover in the Delta Sky Club and eventually landed in Sacramento around 1:30 p.m.

I met my family at our half-renovated house.

Good progress.

The foyer and laundry room floors are in. The kitchen countertops go in tomorrow.

I answer work emails.

I pick up my son from River School at the park. When I arrive, he is lying in the dirt as if he has fallen asleep there.

I greet him with a popsicle.

He is covered in dirt.

He is excited to show me what is in his backpack. He reaches inside and retrieves half a dozen rotten pecans he collected from beneath a tree.

I show appropriate astonishment at his discovery. I examine them with great interest.

He is pleased.

We head to the new Airbnb.

My wife is happy to see me, but she also clearly wants me to understand how difficult the week has been while I’ve been away.

She hands me the baby.

She tells me she’s hungry.

There are steaks in the fridge.

I walk out to the rear patio. There is a nice pool.

Dope.

I try the grill.

Nothing.

No propane.

We lament the situation, but fortunately Christina recently bought a Lodge cast-iron pan because Airbnb pans are invariably scratched, terrible, and coated in deteriorating Teflon.

I cook the steaks.

Rice. Parsley. Lime. Avocado.

I fry myself an egg.

We eat.

Then we retreat to the pool.

I play with the boys. I hurl my four-year-old higher and higher into the air, eight feet, maybe ten.

He is crazed with adrenaline.

Dad is home.

My wife takes the baby inside for a bath. Soon I follow with my older son.

We switch.

The bath is warm.

Soothing. Calming.

I am tired.

I look at the time and realize that waking at 3:30 a.m. Eastern meant waking at 12:30 a.m. Pacific.

I get out of the bath, dry off, and get ready for bed.

My son follows shortly after.

I am almost asleep when he tells me he needs to poop.

I tell him to go.

He does.

I am almost asleep again when he yells that he needs help.

To wipe, of course.

I get out of bed. I wipe him. I retreat back to bed.

We lie there for three minutes.

Then he tells me he forgot to brush his teeth.

We brush his teeth by the light of my phone.

I am exhausted, but I do it thoroughly. I thank him for remembering.

We go back to bed.

He follows me, then stops at the bedroom door.

His mom is putting his little brother to sleep and disappears behind another door.

I lie there for fifteen minutes and realize I cannot sleep.

It’s 8:30 p.m.

I start looking at nearby places to eat and drink.

I find one.

I get dressed.

And now I’m here.

Some local bar.

Full of locals.

Blue-collar. A mixed bag.

I cannot relate.

I am tired.

I’m thinking about my life.

There is screaming. Kissing. Loud music. Neon lights.

I feel like I’m in a dream.

I think about the decisions I’ve made. The pivotal moments. The forks in the road that did not feel particularly consequential when I encountered them, but somehow determined everything that followed.

How did I end up here?

Not here, exactly.

Here.

This life.

This particular configuration of wife, children, career, house, airplanes, hotels, renovations, school pickups, rotten pecans, steaks in a cast-iron pan, bathwater, work emails, and five beers at a neighborhood bar where I know no one.

I scroll through my phone.

Twenty years of my life pass beneath my thumb in a matter of minutes.