Every year, thousands of kids have their first day of school. Dressed in their fanciest clothes, carrying brand-new backpacks, feeling excited, nervous, hopeful. Only last September, my oldest daughter was one of them. And since her first day of school, she’s found new friends and started trying new things for herself (robotics, baking, theatre). She’s an amazing schoolgirl and is loving the experience so far. So how come I’m feeling so sad?
Don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t be prouder. But a part of her life is over now. Forever.
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For the last six years, she’s been my little girl, my curious little hellraiser.
First, the cutest baby that babbled and giggled at me making funny faces.*
Then, a kindergartener who slept with plush animals and pretended she was a princess.
And now she is a schoolgirl. She’s “in the system”. And sooner or later, that innocent little girl, who I could protect from everything, will be gone. She will never be that young again, and I will never have more time with her than I had then. And as I’m writing this, I keep thinking about whether the time we had together was enough.
As if I had to think about that.
I have spent a ton of time with her. She was born a bit before covid hit our country and I spent most of the pandemic working from home. So I had the luxury (silver lining, right?) of being with her most of the time. But still, there were times when I wasn’t there for the bedtime story, for bath time or for five more seconds of hugging because…there were other things that, at the time, felt more important. Or not important, but more pressing. Finishing a presentation for a big client. Responding to a late-night slack message from my boss. Going abroad for a business trip.
Funny how I can recall almost none of them now.
Which client, what was in the message, or where I traveled.
But she will. Because they were the reason I was not there. Physically or mentally.
I wish I had done more. Because in three years, my boss won’t care that I missed my girl’s birthday because of a conference (almost happened, didn’t budge on that one). But she would.
All of us are adulting in our own way and we are all trying to do our best for our kids. But often, when we are in the middle of our duties and we have a hundred things on our minds, we do not always see which ones are important and which ones just seem like they are. We are not always able to discern between signals and noise.
And while we all want to be successful and achieve excellence, I cannot believe that we were only put on this planet to increase shareholder value. That cannot be what life is about.
So I’m writing this to make a mental note to myself (and maybe, as you are reading this, you’d like to make one as well). A note that the next time we are feeling like we are in over our heads because we have to prepare three new presentations or respond to an angry client or whatever…maybe we just stop. Stop for a second and ask ourselves: “Is this important? Or is it noise?”
I am sure that, for every such pause, our children will thank us one day.
*That still gets a laugh sometimes but most of the time it gets a “daaaad, stooop” and an eye roll.
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