Interested

My life used to be a lot more interesting.

Twice I was on the sidelines covering the College Football Playoff National Championship when Clemson won. I’ve had conversations with civil rights leaders, local change-makers, and families who’d just lost a loved one in the kind of horrific tragedy that makes front-page news. I had a newspaper column with my name on it — not that it was any sort of major deal but it was known well enough to garner occasional praise from bartenders and baristas around town as they took my credit card to swipe through the reader.

We regularly had friends over to our house for gatherings around the fire pit. We’d grill dinner, play music, drink beer, and laugh well into the night.

We traveled. We went to concerts — so many concerts.

My life used to be a lot more interesting.

Now, I stay home with my daughter. We spend days going for long walks during which we seek out turtles and squirrels. We are working on visiting what feels like every playground on Earth. We do a toddler version of “ballet” in the living room or in any room where the mood strikes, really. We mold snowman after snowman out of play-doh and have the same back and forth each time one is broken.

“I broke it!”

“That’s okay. We can build it again.”

And we do.

We make a big deal out of checking the mail. We walk with our best buds to drop the older girls off at school as often as possible.

We both enjoy the time spent with them, but only one of us thinks about how before too long we’ll be dropping her off at school and our days won’t be filled with excited squeals about squirrels or requests to listen to “talk about Bruno” one more time.

My life used to be a lot more interesting — on paper, on social media, by most of the usual standards.

But I’ve never been more interested in my life.