You'll Never Get These Years Back

It started with a comment about a comment my 15-year-old daughter made about me not being a supportive sports parent because I only made it to one soccer game this season. She claims that as a musician, I’m more supportive of her forays in the arts than I am of what she does in sports. I say that’s not true. I definitely enjoy her arts activities more, because I was never a sports person. In 16 years at Syracuse University, both as a student and a staff member, I only went to two basketball games and one football game. Heck, in high school, I was on the math team. But that’s something different.

“I shouldn’t have to get all excited over my dad showing up to one game,” she said.

And I reminded her that last year I made a point of going to all her home games that fell on my regular Fridays off. The same thing the year before, when she did three sports. This year, with so much else going on and a new system that made it seem like games were popping up randomly rather than being on a pre-set schedule that we were given at the start of the season, it slipped my mind to check the system until it was almost too late.

When I recounted this conversation online, I heard people saying that every home game on my day off wasn’t enough. I heard them say that every home game wasn’t enough. I heard them say that I needed to be at every game, whether it be here in Syracuse or in Botswana. That’s what a parent who supports not only his daughter, but the team, does.

And when I suggested that that was perhaps going a little overboard, that was when I heard it…first from one person, then another, and then a veritable Greek chorus joined in with the line I keep hearing from people, and am now finally going to speak out against:

Enjoy these years with her. You’ll never get them back.

I don’t buy it. I just don’t buy it. I don’t buy the idea that I have to be at everything my kid does, and embrace every moment because I’ll never get this time with her back. I don’t buy having to be at every game because “I’ll never get this time back” any more than I buy having to be at all three nights of the musical (and this is a certified arts person saying that).

Do I enjoy my time with the kid? Sometimes. And there are also times when she is an annoying, selfish, jerk. Should I embrace these moments too, because “I’ll never get them back”? I don’t think so.

I like having the kid around, but I also enjoy those weeks when she’s away at camp, at a choral festival, or on a mission trip, because it gives me time alone with my wife. And that’s time that I need to make the most of too, because I’ll never get that back either. In fact, with as much time as we spend with the kid, at her activities, and schlepping her back and forth between activities, I’ve worried that my wife and I were on the fast track to becoming one of those couples who discovered that they had nothing in common but the kids when the last one left the nest.

A few days later, my wife was lamenting having to take the kid shopping. She doesn’t even like to go shopping for herself. And when she finished complaining, I smiled and said to her, “Take her shopping. Enjoy this time with her. You’ll never get it back.”

I think she wanted to hit me.