Last weekend was my weekend, spent with my two youngest. It was one of those “down” weekends when I felt like the loser father that I am, missing the long quality unpressured hours I used to have with my children and being at the crossroads of their lives.

A few days before I had received some leftover T-shirts from work, some extra large ones that would be good only as pajama shirts. I gave them to my kids, with extras for my other kids and my ex. An hour later my son sent me a video of him curling up in the shirt like a crab, legs and arms coming out of the arms holes, causing laughs and giggles from my other children and my ex. I felt like a sad fly on the wall of a family life and home I used to be part of.

But here I sit a few days later, remembering two things my kids did.  Perhaps I do have an effect on my children.

Over the past few months, when there’s not much time left in an evening visit and their homework is done, we’ll turn to Amazon Prime and watch the next episode of the TV series Monk. It gives us a good laugh as we sit around my computer monitor.

As we start up an episode, my 16-year-old daughter gets up out of her chair, cuddles up next to me, and says,” Dad, I sure love you!” I returned the expression of love, impressed that she’d make that extra effort.

Before she did this, my 14-year-old son, while making popcorn for the show, said several times, “I love you, Dad!”

I can’t think of what elicited these comments.

These thoughts came because this evening as I got home to my empty apartment, I turned on my favorite podcast while I pulled together a bite to eat. It’s mostly a political commentary, but this fellow often ends with some uplifting spiritual, family, or positive comment. He starts telling about fishing with his five-year-old son last weekend. They were gone for several hours. They caught nothing. As they wrapped up, his son said, “Dad! I want to be a great fisherman like you someday.”

His son was saying he loved his dad and loved his time.