This Is Why You Turn Around

“Dad…Dad…”

It was late Saturday morning. Like 10:30am.

This is the time when normal people and by normal, I mean people without children, still consider kinda early, like you rolled out of bed, caught up on social media, watched a show on Netflix and then decided to go to brunch.

But that’s not what happens with children. By 10:30am, you’ve already had three cups of coffee, let them watch TV, played a few games, read 10 books and then came up with an errand, did the errand and are now on the way back from the errand. That’s before 10:30am.

In my case, I took my kids to the gym (yes, free babysitting at the YMCA, nice) and were on the way home. And that’s when one of my daughters (the one who can actually form sentences) said this:

“Dad…Dad…Can we stop? Can we get flowers for Mom?”

There’s a flower truck on a corner that we pass by quite a lot. It sits in the parking lot of a coffee shop and a seafood restaurant. It’s a neighborhood road, not a busy road and stopping is pretty easy. Plus, my wife would like flowers.

“No,” I said.

It’s a reflex. When kids ask for something you say no. You don’t even think about it. It’s so much easier to say “no” than “yes” because if you didn’t, you would empty your savings account at Dollar Tree. You have to say “no” most of the time.

But not all of the time.

I want my daughter to do nice things for my wife. I want to model respect and love for their mother. I want to reward them for thinking of other people. I want to encourage them to do things for others. And to give. To be generous. To be kind.

This is why you need to say “yes.”

This is why I need to say “yes.”

This is why I turned around.

It was a pain to unload the kids from the car seats.

Cars drove by at a rapid pace.

The woman working at the flower truck seemed mildly annoyed, even though I was giving her money.

My daughter picked out a mishmash of assorted flowers.

They weren’t consistent or arranged in the most beautiful way.

It costs $15.

But my daughter was excited. And she remembered that her father stopped. And that her mother got flowers. And that she picked them out.

This is why you turn around.

I’m Josh Spilker and I wrote a book about God, tacos, empty malls, food trucks and mini-golf. You can get it here.

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