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7th December, 2021

With my wife returning to work after maternity leave, I decided to take most of December as time off or working from home (instead of the office). In a way, it was a sort of delayed extension to paternity leave, a chance to spend more time with my son.

For two of those weeks at home, I was able to take my boy to his Baby Sensory class (a sort of psychedelic trip without the drugs). There, I chatted to someone who, it turns out, happened to work at the same university, far enough away from my department as to essentially be worlds apart, professionally. While I joked in pleasant small talk about this person having been able to avoid the mania of a university pivoting to an online teaching model, she rightly shrugged it off as being something she needn’t think about whilst on leave with her newborn. She was committed to thinking about work only when she was at work. Not now. Not until this period of leave was over.

It reminded me of how much of an engrained over worker I am. I don’t bemoan having ambition, at all, but I do recognise that, in times when I should be relaxing, I ‘stresslax’. I’m always on. Always thinking about work and the next move, the next nudge of the needle.

In times like these pleasant conversations of pure happenstance, I’m grateful for what should be an unnecessary reminder to enjoy the moments that I can’t ever claw back. Now is the time to watch every frame of my children’s smiles emerge from their innocent, insatiably curious wee faces. The delayed side of the same gratitude will come when I have no regrets in my future about having decided to slow things down and make the most of parenthood time that won’t ever repeat itself.

How can you make the most of the moments that happen only once?

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