One or two weeks a year, all four kids end up spending a week or so with their grandparents. Whether some time away, or attending a camp, it’s a week that is different from any other. Before it starts, however, I always do the same thing. As we prepare to pack the kids’ things, we first spend half a day giving the house a deep cleaning. My goal is to start the week with a totally clean, and picked up house.

The week is different. There’s a low-level feeling of always being switched on. From 6:30am until I go to sleep, at any moment I’m ready to be queried. A child can emerge at any moment with a request or just to chat. I don’t notice it, except when the children are away. When I’m switched off, things are quite unfamiliar.

I’ve been a father for over a decade, and in that time, I have somewhat forgotten what life is like when I am fully in charge. I have lots of work to be done, but I’m also free to choose every aspect of my day. When I walk, where I work, what I do, all of it can be made without considering external factors.

In this year’s week, I went to the dentist alone, I spent half a day working in Alison’s office, I worked out of a coffee shop. All of it was nice, including writing without interruption. But it’s not the way life is supposed to be.

The neat, orderly, quiet, and sterile atmosphere is not how the family is meant to be. The kitchen stayed clean all week, and the beds made, and toys picked up, but it was a house nearly empty of life. The low hum of children running around, the voices of play, the small pleasures of funny phrases, all of it was missing. This is the great mistake of avoiding children: they are fountains of joy.

Parenting is not easy, and giving everything leaves you exhausted, but it is the clear choice when compared with the alternative. When I went to pick up the kids, after several days of not seeing them, I switched back on. But it wasn’t exhaustion or dread or longing for quiet that accompanied this switch. It was a broad, permanent, subconscious smile. Things were right again.

We only have eighteen years with our children, before we send them into the world to start their life and families. In every tired moment, every frustrating situation, every hour spent picking up, I try to remind myself of this fact. One day, I will be an old man sitting in an empty house, longing for the days when my children filled the house with their joyful presence.