I’m in France at the Euros. I’m having an amazing time. I’m so lucky. I’m being paid to be at the biggest football tournament of the year but, right now, at 2:40am, I can’t sleep because of how much I miss my kids.
There’s no amount of logic that can help me to sleep. I’ll see them in four days. Doesn’t help. Some parents don’t see their kids for months because of work. Doesn’t help. I should sleep because I have another show to do in a few hours. Doesn’t help.
I miss them.
I’m awake because I miss them. I’ve spent the last hour watching videos of them on my phone. It makes me miss them more. They are tiny bits of me that broke off when they were born. I watch them grow and I care for them and I nurture them and I protect them and they steal a piece of my heart every day until they have all of my heart and then, when I can’t see all the bits that make up my heart, I feel empty. I miss them.
This is not a letter of complaint. Nor is it a plea for sympathy. There are people who deserve the right to pen letters of complaint. There are people who deserve sympathy. This. This is all I have right now. Wide awake. 2:46am. I miss them.
I will see them soon. I will hold them and kiss them and tell them how much I missed them. But that missing them bit is happening and it’s happening hard right now.
For every parent who has ever and for every parent who will ever miss their kids, cherish these moments. They’re not easy. They’re hard and heartbreaking. But they’re a reminder of how much you love them; how pure that love is; how important we are to each other.
Feel it. Embrace it. Remember it.
Because, pretty soon, the normality of life returns and the intensity of these moments dwindles and life takes over and it’s not always apparent, through the nappies and the homework and the tidying up and the washing, that this intense, raw, unquenchable love is there.
But it is.
It bubbles under the surface of life. If you ever check that it’s there, like I am right now, and you open the hatch and peer in, it hits you like the blast from a hot oven; a molten, hot, lava flow of love bursts forth and burns the love into your soul.
It’s 2:53am. I miss my kids.
I am David Zachary John Moore. I am married to Tracy (who used to be Velcro Girl on 2Phat). We have four kids: Andrew and Samuel and Nina and Anna, the babies, are twins. We have a dog called Lorna, a lurcher we rescued in 2005. She can leap a nine-foot wall in one go. I am tired.
