Cards and comic books

A short while ago Max came home from school with a pack of baseball cards that he and my dad had picked up from a local card shop on their way home. It was a grab bag of different cards from the early 90’s, as I scanned through them many I had when I was a kid. Max had been learning about baseball in school that very month and was very excited about being able to look through the cards with me. Seeing Maxs excitement Brandy said that would be a great thing for he and I to do together, we could collect cards. Max loved that idea. Over the next 24-48 hours I however did not share the excitement. Within 2 days I had went out and purchased some comic books because I felt that was a better use of our time together. A comic book can be read and well it’s only so much fun to read the back of a baseball card. I worked to sell the idea to both Max and Brandy, describing how it would work and how we could collect them.

What I missed was everything important about the entire interaction. In my task oriented nature I had to justify our time. I had to see a beginning and an end. It’s as if the thought of doing something without a start point or an end point was foreign to me. I missed the very heart of the matter.

I found myself questioning my actions, why couldn’t I let Maxs joy be enough to guide me. If Max is excited about collecting cards with his dad why couldn’t I be excited about collecting cards with him?

It seemed that I again found myself consumed with buying into the idea that what you’re doing even matters at all. All Gracie and Max want is me, not what I give them or the things that surround or frame our time together. As I have come to realize how much Max seems to like baseball, I realize my errors in being so caught up in being task oriented. As parents we can spend days, weeks and months doing things but failing to redeem the time missing the heart of the matter completely.