Choosing Wisely.

“You promised you would be there. Everyone else had a Daddy and Mommy. I had no one!”

It was the final performance of his kindergarten year. Despite everything, I arrived as people began spilling out of the auditorium doors. Long before I found him crumpled on the bench, my tears began falling as I realized that I could not get this moment back and that my work had once again wedged itself into our life. Looking at his tear-stained face, I knew in that moment that everything we had dreamed about had changed.

It had to change. They needed it to change and I wanted it to change.

It had been so simple before. We’d build the house we wanted, not simply buy the one available. We’d have the family we dreamed about, children that would be the best of us and better than us. We’d enjoy the simple things in life and experience the rest it had to offer. We’d enjoy our work, but it would not define us.  

He loved his career, a job that little boys imagine and that others embrace as men. He was invigorated by the challenge, dedicated to the principles and driven by the possibility of change. Each day was one of unknown risks that we both accepted as a reality. But the love he had for his family was deeper than his passion for the job and he easily shed each workday and its trappings.

But where his job posed unknown risks, mine was the one that held the most opportunity.

It was the one that could mean an earlier retirement. It meant no extra jobs for him and more exploration for them. It validated the first degree and the second. It erased student loans and car payments. It was the difference between a yard with a pool or one without. It was the one with the long nights at the keyboard and hours of work on the weekend. It was the reason I was late for dinner, a dinner inevitably interrupted by the grating ring of the phone. It was the reason I stood in my bathroom before dawn listening to angry people I did not know scream into my ear, on a morning that I did not know would be our last together.

He made the frenetic pace possible, survivable. But without him it exhausted me and stole from them. And now we are standing on the edge of a decision that will decide our future – an adventure in a distant place that drives my career forward or the comfort of the familiar and a decision to slow down. We’ve been standing at the fork in the road for days, knowing that there is no wrong choice and there is no right.

There is simply the choice of choosing wisely.