A Different Perspective
After Legoland the other day, Half-Pint and I had dinner together. She said something out of the blue that really struck me.
Aside: Now when I say "out of the blue" I don't mean she was sitting there quietly eating and then suddently piped up with a comment. This is not my youngest daughter. Rather, out of a virtual stream of consciousness soliloquy broken only by my verbal punctuation of her oral paragraph, she ventured a new observation on a new topic.
What she said was, "I wish you still worked at Wal-Mart."
Now, I worked at Wal-Mart out of necessity. I left seminary early in the summer of 2001 to go back to full-time work. As the job search dragged on, made worse by September 11, I took a "temporary" job at Wal-Mart stocking shelves, just hoping to help make ends meet until a "real" job came along. I was at Wal-Mart for 13 months. They were some of the most difficult months for us as a family. We scrimped and went without and cut and at times we barely scraped by. But God kept us and we made it. Nevertheless, those were very hard times in many ways.
So why, I asked, did Half-Pint want me to still work there?
Because she and mommy could visit me any time they went shopping, or even just for fun. And she liked those visits, when she would run down the aisle and jump in my arms.
Now I work in an office. She can still visit, but it's harder and much more formal. And unlike Wal-Mart, where I never worked overtime that I can recall, in my new job I sometimes have to work late.
So even though my new job can support our family, for my daughter it's all about seeing daddy.
That's pretty cool.
Aside: Now when I say "out of the blue" I don't mean she was sitting there quietly eating and then suddently piped up with a comment. This is not my youngest daughter. Rather, out of a virtual stream of consciousness soliloquy broken only by my verbal punctuation of her oral paragraph, she ventured a new observation on a new topic.
What she said was, "I wish you still worked at Wal-Mart."
Now, I worked at Wal-Mart out of necessity. I left seminary early in the summer of 2001 to go back to full-time work. As the job search dragged on, made worse by September 11, I took a "temporary" job at Wal-Mart stocking shelves, just hoping to help make ends meet until a "real" job came along. I was at Wal-Mart for 13 months. They were some of the most difficult months for us as a family. We scrimped and went without and cut and at times we barely scraped by. But God kept us and we made it. Nevertheless, those were very hard times in many ways.
So why, I asked, did Half-Pint want me to still work there?
Because she and mommy could visit me any time they went shopping, or even just for fun. And she liked those visits, when she would run down the aisle and jump in my arms.
Now I work in an office. She can still visit, but it's harder and much more formal. And unlike Wal-Mart, where I never worked overtime that I can recall, in my new job I sometimes have to work late.
So even though my new job can support our family, for my daughter it's all about seeing daddy.
That's pretty cool.
Labels: Family
