In honor of Father’s Day, Alamo City Moms Blog is bringing you a series of posts written by local dads about topics related to fatherhood.
You’ve probably heard this story before: There once were two men chopping wood in the forest. One man worked each day with intense effort from dawn to dusk. The other man also began at dawn but each day he stopped an hour before dusk and went to his cabin to spend a short time sharpening his saw.
Over time, the first man’s tool dulled and became less effective while the second man’s saw remained sharp to better attain the man’s goals.
As parents, especially of very small children, it can seem really impossible to take that time to sharpen your saw, between work, meals, activities, and generally keeping children alive and healthy. In our household, my wife and I manage our responsibilities in shifts, where I take care of our daughter during the day and work or meet with clients at night, while my wife is at the office during the day and takes over once she gets home. You can imagine that it’s not easy to make sharpening the saw of your relationship a priority when your schedules are both so full. However, I think maintaining a strong relationship with your spouse, encouraging each other and making time for each other, is one of the most important things you can do for your health and sanity, as well as for making sure you’re refreshed, encouraged, and able to work as a team to take care of your children and meet their needs too.
An exercise my wife and I began performing recently in our home involves listening to a song (once or twice) followed by a shared Rap Genius-style comment forum. We take turns choosing a favorite song, presenting it and listening, often from our smartphones at our kitchen table—a kind of date night for people who have only about 15 minutes available for date night. Under the most ideal conditions, lyrics have been printed, but again, if we don’t have time, we just look them up on our phones as part of the exercise.
We sit together and listen to the song once or twice through. After it ends, we try to share our observations, which can be as broad or as narrow as we like. It often turns out that the song is just the base layer of our conversation, and that we end up adding our own experiences, cultural references, and thoughts to the expository process.
You’ve probably experienced that end-of- day feeling when you can’t think of conversation starters or when your greatest desire is to just sit back and relax in front of the TV without talking. By using a song as the canvas and starting point for the conversation, we are often able to communicate and share in a curious, open-minded, reflective state. The lyrics give us a framework to start talking and can lead to deeper conversations, to reflecting on our day and more. We typically plan to spend maybe 15 to 20 minutes or so, but sometimes the conversations can stretch on, simply because sharing our thoughts reminds us how much we enjoy talking with each other. Something in the song may trigger a memory, give us a place to share compliments or feedback with each other, or open up opportunities to discuss other topics that have been on our minds without being confrontational. Music is such an emotional experience for many people (even for my wife, who claims to not like music unless it’s the Hamilton soundtrack) that these conversations can open up doors and help us deepen our relationship even if we only have a few minutes to share together between baby naps, client meetings, or volunteer commitments.
It’s just one way that we’re able to help each other sharpen the saw and maintain our relationship. To close, I wanted to share with you the lyrics from one of the songs that I chose for this exercise, which gave me an opportunity to not only discuss some music, but for us to remember and reflect on what we mean to each other, even on days when it’s not easy to be busy parents:
I’ll be here
When the sky turns gray
The sun goes blind
and the moon won’t stay
I’ll be the light to guide your way
onto some place new
I’ll be here
when the crowd
is gone
The last note fades on the very last song
I’ll be the road to take you home
I’ll be here for you.
—Robert Earl Keen, “I’ll Be Here for You,” Walking Distance (1998)
Will is an attorney, husband, dad, and native Texan. Although Will grew up in Fort Worth, his work over the past several years has taken him to many small towns in the South Texas area, and he has fallen in love with the culture and personality of the Alamo City and its surrounding communities. He enjoys traveling with his best friend and wife, Natalie, following current events, and managing his fantasy baseball team.
