At My Convenience

Years ago, I called my parents for my weekly check-in, but they were out and I got their answering machine instead. Not their voicemail. Their answering machine. The recorded message was from my father, who explained in his official voice that they weren’t home and would “return your call at my earliest convenience.”

When he called me back, I made a point of noting his message. “That’s rude, pop,” I explained. “At your convenience is like telling callers you’ll return their call if and when you have absolutely nothing better in the world to do and will, finally, deign to respond.” He didn’t mean it, and hadn’t thought about it. When I pointed it out to him, he realized it was the wrong message and changed it to “as soon as possible.” It was still in his official voice, but at least it wasn’t rude.

KJ Dell’Antonia writes about “parenthood,” which is one of those curious topics to write about since pretty much anybody can be a parent, and there’s no objective basis to heed one parent’s ideas of good parenting from another’s.

Being on the far side of the parenting mountain, almost everything you believe is critical about parenting while you’re doing it will turn out to either be wrong or insignificant. But that’s impossible to see while you’re doing it, where you believe you’re the center of their universe and your every decision could make the difference between success and disaster.

Dell’Antonia offers an essay which, I guess at least in her mind, is about putting her children first.

I’m 47 years old. Two days ago, you sent me an email, which I did not answer. I didn’t answer it, in part, because I am 47 years old.

I appreciated your email. You are a person, who has written an email, and I am a person, who should reply to that email. However, your email arrived on Wednesday afternoon, and just as I opened it, my 16-year-old son came in. He wanted to describe to me an app he is in the process of developing. Then he showed me a funny article someone had sent him, and I showed him a funny article someone had sent me, and then I explained that I had work to do, that I needed, in fact, to respond to your email, and also to write 3,000 words in the next 36 hours. “I’ve only written 300,” I said.

It seems fair to assume that the email in question is from an acquiantance. It’s not a business email. It’s not a time-sensitive email. Without describing either the content of the email or the relationship with the sender, it’s left dangling with the statement that she “appreciated” the email. But she didn’t respond because life, her children, got in the way.

There’s nothing wrong, or even particularly notable, about not responding to an email about nothing in particular from an acquiantance for a few days. What is wrong, and particularly notable, is her rationalization for her failure to do so. As Dell’Antonia notes, she’s 47 years old, old enough to be a parent. Old enough to know better.

I was so inspired by this that I abandoned your email, and I applied myself to my work. I would have replied to your email after a few hundred more words, I am certain, except that my 11-year-old daughter came in, clutching some pieces of paper that I had earlier asked her to remove from the kitchen counter because I had accidentally started to butter one of them.

Was it beyond her limited capacity to both be inspired and respond to the email? If her desire to apply herself to her work was more important to her than responding to the email, that’s fine, even admirable. Work comes before chatting with an acquiantance. Children too. But why the need to come up with an excuse for it? Don’t feel guilty about not giving a damn about the email. If you don’t care that much, that’s reason enough. But cut the crap.

Your email sat among emails from bosses and editors and orthodontists all through the next workday. My children were at school, and I had not yet managed to write 300 words nine more times.

Little by little, reality leaks out. She was so inspired to write that she “abandoned” the email, but didn’t manage to write a word. Not only was this acquiantance email sitting ignored in her in-box, but so too were emails from “bosses and editors and orthodontists.” The former, bosses and editors, aren’t the sort of emails a responsible writer ignores. The latter, the orthodontist, takes the wind out of her mommy sails. She cares deeply, but can’t be bothered dealing with important things any more than inconsequential things.

It is possible that I will answer your email later, in a few hours, or in a few years, maybe when I am 57, and I will be so happy to have your email. We will trade words, and those words will again seem so real to me, a whole world in my laptop, where I live, sometimes, because there is so much that is seductive in there, where time moves fast and yet never moves at all. I will take my laptop outside and I will sit among the trees, listening for the voices of children who are no longer home, and I will answer your email.

What are the chances that the sender of the email will be sitting by her laptop waiting for Dell’Antonia to find that perfect moment in her very business life to deign to reply? “In a few hours, or in a few years, maybe when I am 57”? Does she suspect that, unlike her, this acquiantance has no life, nothing else to do in the world but awaiting the moment in the life of the most important person in the universe to finally, after these hours, days, years, find her email worthy of response?

Some day, the voices of the children will be gone, as will the caring of the person who took the time to send you the email. Would the few minutes of her precious life have been that much of a burden that she couldn’t have realize that other people’s worlds don’t revolve around her earliest convenience?

At My Convenience curated from Simple Justice