Yowei Shaw

6.30.

Again and again.

Could be 15 times in a row.

Yeah.

Brian told me, you know what?

Actually, that doesn't even begin to capture it because that's just dinner.

To really help me wrap my head around how exhausting this is for him, Brian logged everything that happened one day after we spoke.

The email is a catalog of one situation after another, any of which on their own might be tolerable.

But taken together without pause feels like one of those Kafkaesque dreams where you keep trying to reach your goal, but the obstacles keep mounting.

Like Brian, his daughter, and his mother-in-law drive to swim class.

Ryan is hoping to catch up with his daughter, but his mother-in-law interrupts, saying, I'm sorry, I've never asked where we're going.

She asks the same question six times in just 20 minutes.

Once they get to the pool, there's more.

Ryan leaves his mother-in-law for just a few minutes to help his daughter change.

And when he gets back, she's already wandered off, worried they left her.

He manages to corral everyone to the car to run an errand, grab dinner.

But then his daughter drops some glitter markers in a sewer grate and loses her shit.

So now she's crying on the drive home.

And through it all, his mother-in-law keeps asking him if Solange is back in town.

Brian says, yes, she got home last night.