Visiting my daughter and her family over the holidays, we all came down with the same illness. It was pretty bad and we were all sick for a week. I am the world’s worst patient. It seems this is especially the case when I am visiting my kids where I want to be the helping hand. Towards the end of the holiday week we were all starting to feel a little better. There was a plan to go out for the day which I was looking forward to. Due to some confusion I got left behind. I got pretty bend out of shape about this and spent the day sitting at the house wallowing in my self pity. When everyone got home I took it out on my wife, which I immediate regretted.
I felt I needed to get out of the house with my bad attitude before I said anything more I regretted. I was out driving around for about 10 minutes or so when my daughter texted me. She had some things to pick up at the hardware store and asked if I wanted to meet her there. I met up with her in the store and we got what she needed. Outside in the parking lot we started talking about where I was at. I explained that I did not want to be in the house with my bad attitude. I wanted to get out and work through it by myself rather than punishing everyone else. My daughter’s response, something she learned from my son-in-law, was an observation that hit me like a sledge hammer.
“Dad, that’s not why we’re here.”
We are not here to only accept and be around each other when we are in the perfect mood with the perfect attitude. We are here to help each other make this journey of life better, more enjoyable and in some moments just more bearable. My daughter did not want to push me away while I was in an awful, inhospitable mood. She wanted to help me work through it and get to a better place.
Growing up I was always told to shape up and lose the attitude. That got reinforced in the military. The lesson that I took away from that was if you have a bad attitude, if you’re having a bad day, if you’re grumpy and struggling to sort it out, go off by yourself and work it out on your own. What my daughter taught me in that moment was that that is bullshit. We express our love by helping each other through our worst moments.
Thank you, princess. I love you, too. And thank you, Mike.