My wife left me with our six daughters for a wealthy man. Fifteen years later she texted to say she’d be at our oldest daughter’s wedding — and my daughter told me to let her come, because she had already prepared a special welcome for her.

Three things from those fifteen years, since “I raised them alone” is four words covering a lot of ground.

The first is the schedule, which I ran for nine years and which nearly killed me twice. Nights at Pilcher, five in the evening to five in the morning. Home at five-twenty. Breakfast, braids, three separate bus stops. Dot’s car in the drive at seven-forty. Sleep from six-thirty to two. Up, laundry, the little ones home at three, homework, dinner at four-fifteen, out the door at four-forty.

I fell asleep at a red light on Fennimore Road in the November of 2014 and woke up because somebody behind me leaned on a horn. I have never told my daughters that and if they read this it will be the first they hear of it.