Quality Time

Yesterday was Wesley's 4th birthday.  I've often thought that I am not doing a good enough job instilling a work ethic in my kids.  When Tessa and I first got married she bought me a journal.  Looking back at one of the first entries reminds me of the thoughts I had when I first got married.  Rather than quoting directly from it, I'll summarize an entry from February 9, 2001.  For a frame of reference it was 2 years before we had kids.  My main concern that day was how to spend quality time with my kids.  Work was nothing new to me, but I was coming to terms with the 8-5 40 hour work week.  My main problem with it was not the work, or the time, but the separation from my family.  Most of what makes me a man came from time shared working in the field with my Dad.  What will my kids have?  If I can't have them work alongside me, how will they learn to work?  Without shared work and accomplishments what memories will they have of time spent together?

I hated (and still do to a certain extent) the idea of 'leaving for work'.  What message does that send to children, "Farewell children, I go to seek prosperity through toil in a foreign land.  Grow up well and perhaps one day you'll get to leave your family alone all day too."  Seriously, and what 'toil' huh?  Sitting in front of a computer screen in a temperature controlled office doesn't sound too bad to most people.  I struggled a lot with self image at that time, wondering how the world sees me.  As a kid I knew, "He's a farmboy."  I was okay with that.  Then I was a "College boy", that's okay too.  Even during college I worked part time in a warehouse, or doing electrical work.  Now (or then) I left work at the end of the day in khaki pants and a Polo shirt and not a speck of dirt or sweat on my brow.  How can what I get paid to do possibly qualify as work?  I fix things, it's fun, but doesn't work involve blood, sweat and tears?  I felt I didn't fit in anywhere.  How was this man going to teach his kids how to work, when I barely felt like I worked at all?  My transition to a 'business professional' was happening whether I was ready or not.  In my journal entry I listed activities that I believed I could do with my children to add quality time with their father to their lives.  (Side note: at that time Tessa and I were at an impasse, I wanted 3 children, she wanted none.  My how things have changed.)

Hopefully no one expected resolution here, for I am far from perfect and out of my list I have done far too little.  I do think that now may be the time to start some of the things, and I'm open to any suggestions.  As for the self image thing, Tess and I got Wesley a construction site set complete with toolboxes, jackhammers, dump trucks and the like.  He's played with it all morning (I'm home sick today).  These toy guys are practically action figures, often holding a jackhammer in one hand and a skillsaw in the other.  He just put all of the little guys in his dump truck and said to me, "Look, there are a lot of Daddies in this truck."  I think there's still time.