February 15, 2026

While he plays, I am reading the Sunday Times, watching something on TV, or worse, doomscrolling. I do play with him, but I ask myself if I should be playing more and that’s usually when he will make it abundantly clear that he doesn’t want me to play with him.

”Sit on the couch” he’ll say. I laugh and then secretly dive into a crisis of identity. I imagine who his dad is from his perspective. Am I just a guy who sits on the couch passively all the time?

I try to not spiral into overthinking or reverse engineering the thoughts of a toddler, because then there are the days that when I open the Sunday Times, he grabs a section and wants to read along. My heart fills when he invites me into his world, I hold back tears of joy when asks to join mine.