Every day at 5:20pm, a Korean father and his little girl, six years old or so, come into the library, head straight to the elevator, and come back down maybe five minutes later with the mother in tow. And I love it. I love everything about it. The story I tell myself is that he's a stay-at-home dad (part-time or full-time), maybe also in grad school, and the mom is working her butt off on her own degree. Mom spends all day (or half-a-day, I never see her come in) in the library, writing her doctorate. Then they go home together to make and eat dinner, and relax.
Seems like a standard life of a higher-education couple. They seem comfortable. And the fact that they come to pick up mom every day speaks the language of comfortable, family love. She doesn't have to drive home herself, listening to the radio and feeling exhaustion overtake her. She doesn't have to think bitterly about cooking dinner for her family. She doesn't have to dwell on all the work she has to do tomorrow, and the endless tasks required on the road to her PhD. That can be a lonely drive, right there.
Instead, her husband and daughter come to her and gently remind her that it's time to put everything else away, and simply be a wife and mother for the rest of the evening. It shows gentleness on the part of the husband, and grateful humility on the part of the wife. Most days, the girl is excited to see her mom, and sometimes she's tired. Most days, they all walk out the handicap door (the girl likes to push the button) in single file, and sometimes mom carries her daughter on her back.
That's the kind of routine I could be happy with.
