Time Well Spent

6 months into a pandemic

I'm sitting here in the office listening to my spouse out in the living room explain to my five year old what to do next in Zelda: A Link to the Past and I've got a big grin on my face. It reminded me of something I learned about recently called "Time Well Spent" which just really uplifted me for a bit. Just three little words that don't need more explanation, really.

See, earlier today I was lamenting how little control I had as a father in helping my kid right now and how the pandemic was just jamming that realization into my eye like an icepick. Over and over again. He struggles to stay entertained, and struggles to understand that we can't always play. I can't control what school is going to look like, and right now I think I'm just going to have to accept that he won't be having a "normal" Kindergarten experience…nor has the last 4 months been "normal" for him. This will be with him for his lifetime, and I don't think parents have generally had to field questions like "When do you think the germs are going away?" or "When the germs go away, can we please do X?" I'm fully prepared to talk about sex and religion and even death but "your entire way of life has to be altered by this novel thing" is taking some getting used to. That's the stuff that has me huddled up on the couch every night playing a game and drinking my wine and packing on the pounds. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in telling myself to just keep swimming.

But, you know what? We really have had lots of Time Well Spent, too. He learned how to ride a bike with training wheels, and then without, and now we straight up trespass at distribution centers and go exploring on our bikes. We had an hour long conversation about ants. We've cleaned up all roads within two miles of the house. He hiked the full lake loop at Table Rock and was paying rapt attention the first time he saw the mountain on the drive up. We got to have some great conversation and connection, just the three of us, as we hiked. He was GAME for climbing up some beastly ledges.

And we've had some great movie nights. Onward. Wizard of Oz. Incredibles. He seemed to really enjoy the backyard fireworks (except for that one he yelled out was "lame"). And we've been playing so many games. I have a whole thing I wanted to write about games but this morning we woke up at 4:45am for some reason (both of us) and we marathoned the ending of Final Fantasy XII. We played the entire game together discussing the story and the cutscenes and him constantly giving me HORRIBLE advice about how to play the game. We're going to be tearing apart our nearly dead dryer to see how it works once the new one is delivered (hey, anyone want a 14 year old still functional washer?). We drew a 90 foot long whale on the road. We've done some Dad Lab. We've put up a playset and added blasters to it. We finally caught the damn mole!

Squirt’s going to remember this for his lifetime. I'm going to remember this for my lifetime. But…they won't all be bad memories, and we're very lucky that's the case. We'll remember the bad but…we'll also remember Time Well Spent.

Squirt Says (3 years later…)

There is always positive in negative you just have to look for it