One thousand one. One thousand two. One thousand three. When you think about it, a second is such a tiny increment of time. It takes 60 of them to compose one minute.
“Just a minute!” I hear my daughter yell down the hall to her children. And I hear my voice in her voice. It's one of the parents' issues I've passed down to her.
How many times in the course of 18 years do we say this to our children? One thousand, perhaps?
“Mom, look what I drew!”
“Just a minute,” we say, distracted, as we try to get dinner prepared before soccer practice and at the same time supervise homework and other family home activities.
“Mom, come see what I built!” says a small voice outside the bathroom door.
“Just a minute,” we say, trying to mask the I-just-want-one-minute-to-myself tone.
Just one minute. Sixty seconds. One thousand one. One thousand two. One thousand three.
How many family ideas make up a minute?
If we stop everything we are doing to look, see, celebrate, cherish whatever it is that our children are saying, doing, sharing -- how long does that take? And how much is that time worth?
I left law school because one night, as I sat in my room at a computer table strewn with case books, notes and outlines, I heard a slight noise behind me. Turning in my chair, I discovered that my youngest child -- at three, still my baby son, his hair still downy soft, his cheeks still smooth and chubby, his heart still tender -- sat in the doorway. His little back leaned against the doorpost as if he had settled in for awhile.
“What’s up, Sam?” I asked.
“I was going to ask you to play with me,” he said sadly. “But you’re studying. So I’ll just sit here.”
I decided that night that I would leave law school at the end of the semester and pursue a teaching credential instead. And the change paid off -- not in dollars, perhaps, but in minutes. Teaching afforded me those precious minutes I needed to play G.I. Joe with him, take him to Little League games, stay late for basketball practice once he was in high school and go to all his games -- at home and away.
Was it worth it? You tell me. In the last basketball game of his high school career, at the end of double overtime, in the last seconds of the game, he made a shot that won the game against our biggest rivals. In the last seconds … one thousand one … I saw him make that shot … one thousand two … the ball arced up … one thousand three … and in … one thousand four … the game was over -- in less than a minute.
Just one minute.