“Kid moments” require aspects of both quantity and quality, right? We want a quantity of time for our quality of togetherness.
Quantity is what I miss when I look back at the years and ponder how quickly time has thrown me and my kids into different spaces. I go to work; they go to school. I go for a ride; they go to dance practice. I putter on a weekend night; they go to a sleepover and come back late the next morning. As they get older, the moments are less frequent–so the focus goes more to quality.
You can’t fight it.
Eventually, the “Hey, let’s hang together tonight” begets “What! I’m going to Nicole’s house tonight!” or “I’m not watching that stupid old movie,” or just “Daaaad!” Or maybe, “Mom, will you please talk to Dad!”
An old story.
Lucky for me, my kids are still relatively young so the obstinate factor is undeveloped. Otherwise, I’d be too “seasoned” of a parent to be writing this. But, hey, I didn’t have “you darned kids” for nothing. You have to hang with Dad – or you don’t go to your sleepover Saturday, and you don’t get money for that dress, and you don’t get desert. Even better, your charging cord will vanish for the weekend—that’s a good one. Hang with Dad!
At our house, there is only one sleepover per weekend: it’s a line in the sand.
But, about those moments. Dad’s power is meaningless if the moments are vapid. Quality moments, to me, are not sitting and yelling at the edge of the soccer field; not “hi–bye” or “how was your day” or “did you get enough to eat?” Nor silently having dinner together, driving together to the blaring radio, or watching TV reruns together. That’s all blather.
The moments I mean are when you and your kid wash the skunked dog together, crawl under the house to collect the rat traps together, or when you actually teach them something (a sport; to repair something; how to build a campfire). Better yet, it’s when the kid has to stop and ask you something so as to better understand—so they (“she” in my case) might be transported from ignorance to that place we call the informed “real world” without too much trauma.
In the last two weeks I’ve had two meaningful kid moments at my house:
One was when my ten-year-old held the flashlight while our neighbor (a doctor who was home and lacked his office lights) took some stitches out of my cheek. My daughter didn’t realize that was on the menu; just that she and I were going to visit doctor John so that he could have a look at my face. She had to confront the delicate procedure and keep the small beam focused and steady, lest Dr. John accidentally snip off my ear by accident. “Dad,” she said shakily, “I’ll hold the light real close.” She asked if it hurt when the Doctor John dug for the imbedded knots. “Can’t feel a thing,” I lied. Her steeled stoicism was a pained expression of strength—just for me.
The second moment was with my oldest, who capitulated to one of my weekend cinematic whims. As it rained and blew on a dark winter day, we sat together in the gloomy family room sharing a big pillow and watched one of my favorite movies–a touching one about a family on extended winter vacation at the Overlook Hotel. We stopped the movie once, so I could address her plot-related question. That’s when I got the chance to roll my eyes back into their sockets, contort my head in her direction, and raise my little finger to respond to her inquiry in a crackly voice: “Daddy’s not here, Olivia.”
