On Tuesday morning, if someone had suggested I take the bulk of the day off to stay at home, I would have given several reasons why I could not do that, including:
- It was only my second day back at work after eight days of vacation;
- There were still over 100 emails and dozens of online messages awaiting my response;
- I was scheduled to attend a webinar in the early afternoon on a subject of interest for my work.
But then the call came about 9:30 a.m. that my wife was having a physical issue while taking care of our granddaughter, and she might need to go to the hospital and have someone else care for our granddaughter. Suddenly, there was no question about taking the rest of the day off to do something both more important and more urgent. So I left work, went home, got a crash course in the care and feeding of my granddaughter, and spent the rest of the day being granddaddy while my wife had tests run to make sure she was alright.
My wife is fine. She came home Wednesday afternoon and the worst fears were not realized. My granddaughter and I did just fine together, although I flubbed up opening the package of baby wipes correctly and she got her little pants wet from a very full diaper before I realized it mid-afternoon. But we survived and I am grateful for the one-on-one time together for about 6-7 hours – the first time that’s happened in her nearly 14 months of life.
The lesson from the experience comes from the fact that when we must, it is quite easy to change our schedule on the fly and do something we had no plans of doing. It’s a matter of priorities and acting on them. Family is more important to me than work – always has been, always will be. No contest.
Why, then, is it so difficult to act consistent with those priorities in the absence of an emergency?
Leap year lesson #119 is It shouldn’t take an emergency to act according to our priorities.
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