Best Part/Worst Part

A morning practice in presence.

For seven years, the worst part of my weekday was quickly followed by the best part of my weekday.

From 7 to 7:40 am, Monday through Friday, my wife and I would hustle our daughter Jensen out of bed, out of the house, into my car, and to the bus stop. The seven years spanned her time from 4^th through 10^th grade—all at the same school, all from the same bus stop.

The getting-into-the-car part of this ritual was so replete with agita that it’s not worth getting into here. So, I’ll spare myself the agony of reliving it—it was the worst part of every weekday. Trust me.

But the moment Jensen was in the car and buckled in, everything shifted. That’s when the best part of my day began—at least 12 minutes of total and complete alone time with my daughter.

The conversations ran the gamut of experiences, ranging from utter silence to hysterical laughter. Some mornings, she stared out the window the whole way—do not engage, practically written on her forehead. Other times, she'd launch into some wild cafeteria story or dream about a squirrel president, and we'd laugh like idiots before we hit the main road. I never knew which version of Jensen I'd get, but I showed up for all of them. And sometimes, in the in-between, I caught a glimpse of both the kid she’d been and the person she was becoming.

My day began much earlier than Jensen’s. After waking up, I meditated, and by the time my meditation was over, I could hear Jensen rustling on the other side of the house as I put together her breakfast. By the time we got in the car, my mind wasn’t preoccupied with emails and the news—it was total free thought time for me, playing games with whatever was happening in the moment in the car, while being aware of where Jensen’s mind and mood were. On the days I sensed or outright heard stress, I stayed with her about it. When it felt right, I stayed in the quiet with her. It was classic “meeting someone where they’re at.”

Some days we worked on inventions:

• Self-cleaning eyeglasses. Not much progress on that one—I’ve since handed the idea off to my grandchildren. They’ve made zero progress.

• An app way cooler than “Find My iPhone.” Jensen came up with this to help me with my constant inability to keep track of mine. It involved something from another dimension, but since I struggle with this dimension, I can’t explain it well.

• A floating freeway to the bus stop. We invented an environmentally correct road that would disappear at 7:42 a.m., just as the bus was departing. Last I heard, that one is going through review by the EPA.

One day, when Jensen dreaded a test that she felt she wasn’t prepared for, I suggested that we dress up our dog, Peasley, to take her place. That conversation went in so many directions that—unbeknownst to Jensen—I drove past the bus stop and made the 35-minute drive to school. By the time we got there, Jensen was laughing so hard that she was crying. So much for the dreaded test.

The silence, the nonsense, the detours—none of it was planned, but all of it was real.

Maybe that’s what meeting people where they are looks like: just showing up without an agenda, not needing the perfect thing to say, but just being there, staying with them, and sometimes, missing the bus on purpose.

TL;DR: Mornings were a disaster until they weren’t. I got 12 minutes of peace, invention, and sarcasm with my kid, right after 40 minutes of pure misery getting her in the car.

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