How to Enjoy the Good Old Days While You’re Still in Them

1. Theo of Golden, Allen Levi

Congrats! The first book mention in my dad newsletter that I didn’t actually enjoy.

I mean, it was fine. I finished it. But I found it more cheesy than poignant, and the main character was just a bit too predictable and polished for me.

See?! I can be a little discerning.

2. “The Pay-to-Play Childhood”, Caitlin Moscatello

If you have kids in youth sports, this New York Magazine piece is worth your time. It’s behind a paywall, but the subtitle says it all: Private leagues have made youth sports more expensive, hypercompetitive, and all-consuming for families. But at least investors are making a killing.

I’ve been coaching kids for 25 years, and I have plenty of thoughts on this one. I wrote three separate blog pieces about it last year.

Here’s the bottom line: If we parents weren’t willing to pay for all of this—driven by our own delusions, fear of our kids falling behind, keeping up with the Joneses, etc.—we could wrangle back some sanity.

So I encourage you to speak up. I’m freshly off a three-page letter to our local soccer club leadership about the ridiculousness of the whole thing, namely how blatantly not about the kids and their development so much of it has become. And in our case, we had tremendously poor (and at times harmful) coaching to boot.

It doesn’t have to be this way, but changing it starts with parents being willing to say something.

At the same time, it’s not as simple as saying, “Well, we just won’t play club sports.” In many communities, there’s increasingly no middle ground between highly competitive, expensive club sports and barely playing at all.

We’re currently living this tension ourselves. One of our kids, despite being a captain on the top team, won’t be returning to club soccer this year. There has to be a better way.

3. Widow’s Bay, Apple TV

I know we’re a little late to this one, but we just caught up. And I loved it.

Really, really funny and clever. It somehow manages to be creepy, absurd, and genuinely funny at the same time without feeling like it’s trying too hard.

One of my favorite shows we’ve watched in a while.

“Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are.”​
— Mary Jean Irion

“Forever is composed of nows.”​
— Emily Dickinson

How to Enjoy the Good Old Days While You’re Still in Them

I’ve been a no-good sentimental mess these last two weeks as we learn how to do life after our first college drop-off.

Sure, there’s reason to celebrate. We did the whole “give them roots and wings” thing. We’re deeply confident in the person we’re sending into the world. And we trust there were no words left unsaid.

And yet. It’s. Still. Tough.

Our family structure has forever changed. It marks the end of childhood for him and therefore the beginning of the end for the four kids that follow him. Cue The Final Countdown.

If all this sounds dramatic, that’s because it is.

We’ll never get these years back. We’ll never again be one unit under one roof with two parents and five “kids.” And despite all the anti-aging self-care, there’s no escaping the fact that this also means my wife and I are officially getting . . . old.

Whaaaaahh.

But in this tumult of feelings, I recognize something bubbling up besides the occasional tear: gratitude.

I’m grateful because I genuinely feel like I’m present. I know I’ve been present. And I know I’m appreciating the good old days while still living in them. I say that not to gloat, but to offer a stupidly simple trick that has worked for me.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote in A Man Without a Country:

“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’”

Man, that’s good. If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is. I have my own version that I say out loud, mostly to my wife:

“Well, isn’t this lovely.”

I usually say it a little jokingly, sometimes in situations that are not traditionally “lovely.” I say it to make her smile. But it has also become a tangible way to return to the present and name the simple joys that are available every day.

The dinner we just cooked. The sunset. Everyone around the table. A funny story. A car ride home after practice. A dumb video that has the kids rolling. Even the chaos of a full house.

Including all the socks.

“Well, isn’t this lovely.”

To be clear, this isn’t toxic positivity. Parenting is tough. Sometimes it’s awful. We’re tired, overstimulated, underappreciated, and usually balder than we were before kids. And because our brains tend to fixate on the negative, we have to actively push back against that bias. Otherwise, we can live under a storm cloud, replaying only the hard parts of raising kids.

No one wants to look back and realize we missed the beauty of this short window together. I hope we all get long lives and decades to enjoy our kids as adults. But childhood? Childhood is short.

So find yourself a phrase. A talisman. A little pinch on the arm. Something that zaps you back into the present to remind you: this is real life.

And this, right now, is the good old days.

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Thanks for reading, dads.

Let’s make this time count!