There were days when Benjamin Railton had plenty of important things to do. Then something happened to make him question everything about how he was spending his time.
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When I was still married, I begrudged some of the time I spent with my boys. I’m not proud of it, but there it is.
For all the years between my younger son’s birth and my divorce (when they were 6 and 5), I was the boys’ main solo caregiver. My ex-wife is a physician, and so those solo times were frequent, if not at times constant (or so it felt). They were often challenging, always tiring, and at times I could quite literally feel the time I could be spending on my writing and career slipping away. In those rare moments when they would both nap at the same time, I would desperately try to get something done, knowing that any minute I’d hear older son’s feet hit his bedroom floor (a sound that, I am ashamed to admit, I often winced to hear in those days) and be back on daddy duty.
To be clear, when I was with them I was with them, as present as I could be—I hate the dads who say that they’re “babysitting” their children, and was never much of a fan of those whom I’d see on their phones while their kids played on the playground. But at the same time that I was present, I was also, too often, frustrated, aware that my ability to make time for other things in my life that also felt important and meaningful had been, it seemed, irrevocably taken away.
Then I got divorced. Now, every other week I have nothing but time for myself, for my work, for my own life—7 days and nights without the boys, or with only brief moments (an extra drop off at school, a party or event in their classes) when I get to see them. Now, I want nothing more than the ability to make more in the days and weeks when I do have them, to carve out extra minutes and hours in those precious times and stay there with them as long as possible.
This weekend, the first big snowstorm of the winter gave me just such a chance, and the contrast struck me with especial power. I had planned to drop the boys with their Mom in the early morning and spend the day working, but the snow meant they were at my house until noon; we spent the morning playing board games. In the afternoon their Mom was scheduled to take them to their weekly skiing lesson, but I have a 4WD car so I found myself at the bottom of the slope instead, waiting to wave to them at the end of each run. And when I finally got home at 5, cold and wet and ready for a hot shower, I saw my older son’s prized Blankie on the bed and knew I’d be making one more round trip to their Mom’s house.
That last moment was the most telling, I’d say. It had been a good but long and tiring day, and I had just gotten in after a stormy drive, my clothes wet, my fingers and toes frozen. The kind of moment that’s made for time for one’s self, to relax and warm up and decompress. But when I saw Blankie there on the bed, my first thought was about none of that, not about myself at all. It was that I was going to get to see the boys again, and moreover to bring a special delivery that would help make the start of their time with their Mom as good as possible. I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life, and not making enough of my past time with them is one of the biggest. But I can, and will, make the best of all the time I’ve got now.
Photo: Flickr/Blue Eye Cat