There is a calendar on the wall of Kelvin’s kitchen with fourteen days circled in blue marker.
The first of June to the fourteenth of June. His two weeks. The court order says he gets the children for the first two weeks of every June and the last week of every December, and alternate weekends during term, Saturday 10am to Sunday 6pm.
The rest of the year, they live with their mother in the flat he used to call home.
He moved out two years ago.
He rents a room in a three room flat in Jurong West now, which is all he can afford after the maintenance payments and the lawyer’s installments and the CPF that went into the old flat and didn’t come back out.
The room has a single bed, a desk, and a wardrobe that doesn’t close properly because the floor is slightly uneven.
But there is also a second room.
He rents the second room even though it doubles what he pays, because that room is for them. He bought a bunk bed from IKEA the month he moved in. Sophie, who is ten, gets the top bunk. Ryan, who is seven, gets the bottom, because he once rolled off the top bunk at a chalet in Pasir Ris and Kelvin does not take chances with his son’s sleep anymore.
The bunk bed is made up all year.
Fresh sheets, pillows, a small stuffed elephant that Ryan left behind after the last visit.
And that Kelvin placed on the bottom bunk because he thought his son might look for it and he wanted it to be there when he arrived.
The elephant has been sitting on the pillow for five months. Ryan has not asked about it. But Kelvin has not moved it.
He sees them on weekends.
Alternate Saturdays, 10am to Sunday 6pm. 32 hours.
He picks them up, takes them somewhere, feeds them, sleeps one night, drives them back.
Their toothbrushes stay at their mother’s flat. Their school bags don’t come. The weekend is a visit, and it has the energy of a visit, and everyone in the flat knows the clock is already running from the moment they walk in.
June is different.
June is the only time they live with him. Fourteen consecutive mornings. Fourteen dinners at the same table. Their toothbrushes move to his bathroom. Their shoes pile up at the front door. Ryan’s towel ends up on the floor and stays there because nobody is leaving tomorrow. The flat stops being a place he sleeps in and becomes, for two weeks, the thing it was supposed to be when he rented the second room and bought the bunk bed and placed the elephant on the pillow.
It becomes a home.
That is why he plans in March. That is why he wakes at 5am. And that is why the fourteenth day hits differently from a Sunday evening drop off, because on Sundays he loses a visit, but in June he loses a life.
He starts planning in March.
By April, he has a list.
The zoo on Day 2.
East Coast Park for cycling on Day 4.
The Science Centre on Day 6.
Sentosa if the weather holds.
The new exhibition at ArtScience Museum that Sophie mentioned in a voice note three weeks ago, the one about space, the one she said she wanted to see, and he had written it down immediately in the notes app on his phone because he does not let details like this pass.
He has fourteen days. He will not waste a single one.
On the morning of June 1st, he wakes at 5am.
He stands in the kitchen and makes pancake batter from scratch. Flour, eggs, milk, a tablespoon of sugar.
He does not use a packet mix. He does not make cereal. He has fourteen breakfasts with his children and he will not spend one of them pouring milk into a bowl.
He makes the first pancake too thick.
He makes the second one better. By the third one, the pan is seasoned and the batter flows right, and he stacks them on a plate with the good ones on top.
He sets the table for three.
His former wife drops them off at ten.
Sophie walks in first, looks around the flat the way she always does, checking if anything has changed. Ryan runs to the bunk bed room and finds the elephant.
Daddy, it’s still here!
He says, of course it is.
And the flat, which has been a room and a half of silence for fifty weeks, fills up.
The first three days are planned to the hour. The zoo. The cycling. A movie they all want to see, popcorn and the large drink because it is June and June is not a month for saying no.
But the best parts are not the plans.
The best parts are the mornings.
The 5am alarm, the pancakes, the table set for three.
Ryan eats four pancakes on Day 2 and announces he is going to eat five tomorrow, and Sophie tells him he’s going to be sick, and the argument is so small and so ordinary and so exactly like the arguments they used to have in the old flat that Kelvin has to turn to the stove for a moment.
The best parts are the nights.
After the showers and the teeth brushing and the ten minutes of phone time he allows because he is still their father…
And fathers have rules even when they only have two weeks, he sits in the doorway of their room and watches them fall asleep.
Sophie reads for fifteen minutes and then her book drops. Ryan sleeps with his mouth open and the elephant under his arm.
And Kelvin sits in the doorway and listens to them breathe.
He used to do this when they were babies.
Before the arguments and the lawyers and the night he packed a bag and drove to his brother’s flat and sat in the car for an hour before going inside.
Before all of that, he used to stand at the doorway of their room in the old flat and listen to them breathe, and the sound was the most complete thing he had ever heard.
It sounds the same now.
Exactly the same.
Two children breathing in a dark room, and a father in the doorway who is not ready to close the door because closing the door means one less night, and one less night means the number is getting smaller, and the number was never large enough to begin with.
𝗛𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝗼𝗿 𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗹 𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗼.
By Day 7, the plans slow down.
He stops scheduling every hour. They watch a movie on the sofa, Sophie leaning against one arm, Ryan lying across his lap.
They eat fishball noodles from the hawker centre downstairs, and Ryan gets soup on his shirt, and Sophie tells him off, and nobody is in a rush.
By Day 10, they have a rhythm.
Morning pancakes, an outing, afternoon at home, dinner together. The flat feels like a flat with people in it.
The bunk bed room has shoes on the floor and a towel that nobody hung up and a drawing Ryan made of the three of them at the zoo, stuck to the wall with Blu Tack.
He does not take the drawing down after they leave.
It is still there from last June. There are now two drawings on the wall. He plans to keep adding them until the wall is full.
Day 13.
Tomorrow is the last day.
He makes pancakes.
Sophie eats quietly.
She is ten and she understands what tomorrow means in a way that Ryan, at seven, does not yet carry.
She eats her pancakes and she does not ask for more and she does not say anything about tomorrow, because she has learned, at ten, that there are things you don’t say in front of your father when his eyes look the way they do at the kitchen counter.
𝗗𝗮𝘆 𝟭𝟰.
He wakes at 5am.
He makes the batter.
He pours it the way he has been pouring it for thirteen mornings, but this time the kitchen is different. This time the kitchen knows it is the last one.
Sophie comes out first. She sits at the table. She watches him cook.
Daddy.
Yes?
𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝗜 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘆 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁?
He does not turn around. He does not turn around because his face does something that he does not want her to see…
And he grips the spatula and breathes once, and the pancake starts to burn slightly at the edge but he does not move it…
Because moving it means turning around and turning around means she will see and she is ten and she should not have to carry what his face looks like right now.
I’ll ask Mummy, he says.
But he already knows the answer.
The order says 14 days.
Today is fourteen. His former wife is not unkind. But the calendar does not negotiate…
He drives them back on Sunday evening.
Sophie sits in the front because she is ten now and she asked.
Ryan sits in the back with the elephant.
The drive from Jurong West to the old flat takes twenty minutes, and he takes the long way because the long way takes twenty five.
At the gate, his former wife waits. She is not unkind. She smiles. She takes Ryan’s bag. She says thank you.
Ryan waves from the gate as he leaves. Sophie does not wave.
He drives home.
The flat is quiet.
The bunk bed room has the light off. The shoes are gone from the floor. The towel is gone. Ryan’s drawing is still on the wall.
He walks to the kitchen.
The pancake batter is in the fridge.
There is enough for two more mornings. He made too much yesterday because he was not counting, or because he was counting and did not want to make the right amount, because the right amount would mean admitting it was ending.
He stands at the counter and looks at the batter for a while.
He puts it back in the fridge.
On Monday, he goes to work. He comes home. He eats dinner alone. He does not open the fridge.
𝗢𝗻 𝗧𝘂𝗲𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝘂𝘁.
He throws it out because nobody is coming for breakfast.
He washes the container.
He dries it.
He puts it back in the cupboard, next to the flour and the sugar and the tablespoon he will take out again in March, when he starts planning, when the calendar comes down from the wall and a new one goes up and he picks up the blue marker and circles fourteen days in June because that is what the court gave him and he will not waste a single one.
==========================
There were 7,382 divorces in Singapore last year.
Behind some of them is a father like Kelvin.
A man in a rented room with a bunk bed he keeps made up all year and a stuffed elephant on the pillow and a blue marker in the kitchen drawer.
A man who wakes at 5am to make pancakes from scratch because he has fourteen breakfasts and he knows, in a way that fathers who live with their children full time may never have to learn, that each one has a number.
If you are a father who gets two weeks…
Every pancake counts. Every doorway counts. Every night you sit and listen to them breathe in the dark, that counts more than the zoo, more than the cycling, more than every plan you made in March.
Because they will not remember the itinerary. They will remember that you were there, in the doorway, and that the door stayed open, and that in the morning there were pancakes.
And if you are the child who once asked to stay one more night…
Your father heard you.
And his face did something he didn’t want you to see.
And he said he would ask Mummy, but he already knew the answer, and the drive home was longer than it needed to be because he took the long way.
He took the long way every time.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝗻𝗸 𝗯𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝘂𝗽.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗽𝗵𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄.
And in March, he will start planning again.
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