Dad, can we play Monopoly?
Dad, will you take a look at my bike please? It's making a funny noise but I want to go for a ride.
Dad, want to watch this video I made?
Dad, can I teach you this new dance a friend sent me?
Being a parent is a time sink. If I thought I wasn't getting enough alone time when the kids were in school, a summer spent sheltering in place followed by an upcoming school year of distance learning suggests a rude awakening may yet be in store for me.
The flip side is that the kids will soon value time with friends more than time with us; may not confide in us the way they currently do; will naturally learn to define themselves in contrast to us. We approach their next stages of development with a mixture of dread and resignation. If this sounds overly pessimistic, my response would be a refrain I've heard time and again from multiple sources:
The secret to happiness is low expectations.
Keeping this in mind, I feel incredibly grateful to be in a position to say yes to the status interruptus of requests for my time.
Yesterday afternoon I had planned an agenda for what I hoped to do and when I intended to accomplish it. That was tossed completely out the window when my daughter asked if we could take a bike ride together.
My designated quiet time for writing blog posts was interrupted repeatedly last week by my son entering my office to make jokes in gibberish and poke me in the belly. I responded in kind. It was an inefficient, entirely wonderful distraction to indulge.
This morning, instead taking a customary solo bike ride, my daughter and I donned wetsuits, masks and snorkels to explore a local cove. The water was glassy and flat, and we floated over kelp forests past harbor seals lounging on protruding rocks, spotting garishly colored garibaldi (the state fish of California, basically a giant goldfish on steroids) and circling schools of sardines.
It was the first time we'd braved deeper, colder water than the sandy beach break where we usually go bodyboarding. Although her lips were purple as we emerged from the Pacific, we both left the water smiling.
We are in the thick of difficult times. The more fortunate among us are struggling to work from home while tending to our children's needs, coping with furloughs and lost income, trying to hold together a sense of normalcy on the verge of disintegration.
The ability to say yes when your kid seeks your company is a gift. Financial security allows you to do so more often, without reservation.
Which helps me feel that this nerdy passion of seeking converts to embrace financial literacy is a form of head fake. I hope to help others reach a position where they can say yes without reservation.