Bill stood in his kitchen and looked at the honey-do list that his wife had left him before going out to run a few errands around town. At the top of the list was Go through boxes in the garage.
He sighed, grabbed a cold drink from the fridge, and got to work.
After rummaging through a box and throwing out a few things he no longer wanted, Bill found one of his old journals from ten years earlier. A writing habit to capture his thoughts before bed.
Bill went into the kitchen, sat down, and flipped through the pages. He smiled as he read and was reminded about his life back when he still worked and his son was still little. He came across an entry he had made one Saturday night after Matthew, who was eight at the time, had gone to bed.
Earlier that day, the two had gone fishing.
It was Bill’s idea. He had talked it up the entire week, telling his little boy after he got home from work every day how much fun they were going to have out on the lake, catching fish that Matthew’s mom promised she would cook when they got home. As he read the entry, memories flooded back from that day — Bill had become frustrated with the outcome of the trip with Matthew.
“Didn’t catch a thing; a whole day wasted,” he had written.
Bill set the journal aside and closed his eyes. He could remember everything from that trip with Matthew. How disappointed he had been and wished he and Matthew hadn’t even left the house.
Then he thought of something; Matthew, who was now eighteen and had just left for college — wanting to be like his dad, he had also started keeping a journal around that same time.
Bill stood, walked upstairs, and entered his son’s old room. When he got to Matthew’s bookshelf, he crouched and started looking through the many journals that his son had kept over the years.
A few minutes later, Bill finally found what he was looking for.
He wiped the dust off the ten-year-old journal before removing the elastic string that held it closed. The letters were large and hard-pressed into the page by a little kid wanting to spell every single word correctly. Bill cautiously flipped through the pages to see if his son had written an entry on the date of the fishing trip.
He found it.
Bill expected to read about how disappointed Matthew had been with the trip. How it had been a total waste. Bill set a finger on the page and dragged it underneath his son’s entry as he read it.
“Spent the whole day with my Dad; greatest day of my life.”
How we see the world isn’t how our kids see the world.
And our children’s memories can be far different — and much better — than our own.
Dads, don’t worry too much about how you spend time with your kids. Just spend time with them.
Because time spent with a child is never wasted.