I heard footsteps.
Slow, hesitant, making their way down the basement stairs.
No door to knock on, no barrier to pause at—just the makeshift “Do Not Disturb” / “Beep Boop Come In” Star Wars sign sitting at the top of the steps, a flimsy attempt at setting boundaries in a house that runs on curiosity and a mild disregard for rules.
A small face appears around the stairwell, hopeful, expectant.
“Dad—”
But I’m already raising a hand. Not a wave. Not a welcome. Just the silent, universal signal of every work-from-home parent: One second.
It’s never just one second.
I see it happen in real time—the quiet disappointment, the realization that even though I’m physically right there, I’m still somehow out of reach. A nod. A retreat. Footsteps back up the stairs.
I hear a sigh. From both of us.
Unreachable, Within Reach
I don’t take this for granted. I know that. I remind myself of it constantly.
I’m here. I get to be here. I get to have lunch at the kitchen table instead of a breakroom, I get to overhear giggles from the next room, I get to be the one who picks them up from school/dance/cross country/drama club/softball.
And still.
Still, there’s this pull, this tension I can’t quite shake.
Because they don’t get the version of me that’s fully present. They get the fragmented version, the one tethered to a screen, to deadlines, to meetings that always seem to stretch a little longer than planned.
They get the physically present but mentally elsewhere dad.
And I hate that.
Somewhere in the Middle
There are moments when I try to bridge the gap.
I mute a call just long enough to whisper, “Be right there.”
I step away from the desk to watch a dance move, admire a LEGO creation, answer a deep and urgent question about boys (ugh, boys).
I make a dramatic show of shutting my laptop at the end of the day, like some grand proclamation of my availability.
And yet, the cycle repeats.
I don’t want my kids to remember a childhood of waiting within reach.
I don’t want them to grow up thinking work is the thing that made their dad too busy.
I don’t want to look back and realize I was with them, but not with them.
The Things That Will Matter
One day, when I’m old and gray (well, grayer), I won’t ask to see a spreadsheet of my productivity. I won’t want to replay old Zoom calls. I won’t be scrolling through old project files.
I’ll want my people.
And we won’t be talking about work-life balance.
We’ll talk about the moments—the tiny, unplanned, mundane moments that somehow end up meaning the most.
If I get this right—if I close the laptop enough, if I choose them over just one more email, if I break the cycle of one second—then maybe, just maybe, they won’t remember the waiting.
Maybe they’ll remember that I showed up.
Brilliant summary. I worked from home for so many years and never quite “nailed” this. I felt like it was important to try and send signals that I wanted to. In my first house in Ohio, for example, my office was in the basement where the boys played. When we built a makeshift space down there for me to have a wall to hide behind, we put a window in. Literally, an exterior window so that if the boys were playing and they wanted to speak to me right at my desk they knew that I was always accessible. It was the weirdest thing to explain when we tried to sell the house.
In the next house, I made my office the place where the PlayStation was. So whenever they wanted to play PlayStation they associated the idea of fun with going in dad’s office. The problem was I had to be willing to not let this bother me but “remember the reason” it invigorated me.
I do think it really does come down to the difference between who makes the first move.
If it’s always them interrupting us, then the balance is wrong. But if it is us more creating space or getting up to simply be with them. then maybe we’re closer to “nailing ” it… or at least holding the “hammer” together.