Dishes, mostly. And gobs of laundry. You wouldn’t think three kids would have so much laundry, I mean how many shirts can three kids possibly wear, it’s not like we live in the Arctic and they have to have twenty layers of fabric so they can go trap wolverine for pin money or whatever, but you don’t know these kids, these are their mother’s kids, and thus genetically far more attentive to graceful appearance than their dad, who looks like a dissolute wolverine. These kids are apparently ornate musical productions with lots of costume changes, and the way they clean their rooms on Saturdays is to shovel all the clothes on the floor down the laundry chute at the bottom of which is their father, roaring.
But I asked for these children, I begged for them, I prayed and yearned and was thrilled and delighted when they emerged from my wife one after another like a circus act, and I wrote lyrical sentimental muck about them when they were little, and now that they are lanky and sneering in ways I could never have imagined, I cannot retract the vows and oaths I swore when they were born, which were that I would expend every ounce of energy and creativity to be their most excellent and attentive dad, which I have tried to be for fifteen years, with middling success and a stunning amount of laundry and roaring. I got exactly what I asked the Coherent Mercy for, which was the chaos and hubbub of children, who are the most extraordinary creatures of all, and I have often thought that what I am here for, if I can get over the whole laundry problem for a minute, is them. Also I have often thought that the Coherent Mercy has a dark and devious sense of humor, and clearly relishes irony, and often gives you exactly what you asked for, which is more than you knew you wanted.
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Also I am here for sunlight and hawks and the way dragonflies and damselflies do that geometric astounding zigzag thing in the air totally effortlessly which absolutely knocks me out and I have spent many hours staring at them in a trance, explaining to people that I am conducting a scientific project. They look at me oddly. And I am here to hear thrushes in late winter and to gape at osprey