Only having my daughters every other weekend forced me to be intentional with my parenting. I didn’t have time to waste.
I couldn’t help but notice that as adults, we’re constantly telling stories from our childhood. Pay close attention, and you’ll hear it sprinkled in many conversations.
Sometimes those memories are good. Sometimes they’re bad. But those experiences clearly impact us today.
So if this is true, I knew that I was creating memories every day by accident. What would be possible if I was intentional?
Although my time was scarce, I still had enough time to create these experiences that will become the stories they tell as adults.
I made it a point always to have some activity planned. It was simple stuff, nothing complicated or expensive.
All these activities would then allow me to teach them a multitude of other lessons.
Playing at the park. Swimming. Playing basketball. Throwing the frisbee.
Playing chess. Drawing. Painting. Spoken word classes.
Sometimes we took some road trips to explore other cities. They really loved those weekends.
Whenever something memorable would happen, I knew this would become a story. Perhaps it would even become a “core memory” as in Pixar’s Inside out. Only time would tell.
Through this process, I learned that they didn’t care for expensive toys or games. My girls just wanted to play and to spend time together. They wanted to be kids.
They began to expect the adventures and would ask me what we were going to do on our upcoming weekend together.
It’s so hard to believe that they’re not little girls anymore. Now I’m just curious to hear those stories in the upcoming years.
