Growing up, my family lived in the country, and at one point my Dad had lost his job and was looking for a new one. During that time, he wanted to find work closer to home because he realized that he had a young family and he wanted to be there to help support my Mum and be around for my siblings and me. At the time, he was out of work for several months, and when the opportunity arose to find a job, he felt it would be the right job for him.
He was thrilled to find the opportunity, and it would give him a chance to learn, grow, develop and build upon the skills he had already attained from previous jobs. However, the one setback from the job was that the commute would be about a 45-minute commute to and from work every day. The thought that he would be able to be available to help his family diminished a bit, but he was determined to try to make it work for our family.
Several years into the job, the business he worked for found a larger location, and my Dad was now facing a 50-minute-to-an-hour-plus journey to and from work every day. With the continuous growth and demand at work, it was harder for him to leave work when he should have and make it home on time to help out, with rush hour traffic adding to the commute to and from work daily.
When I finished college, I had a difficult time finding work in my field of study right away, and my Dad's work gave me a temporary opportunity. I had to endure the commute right along with him, and I then had to make some sacrifices to my social life because there were times when the rush-hour traffic home took more time than we thought it would. As much as I would be earning from working with my Dad during that time, I really began to understand what a sacrifice it was for my Dad to be spending a lot more time away from the family than with us.
He may have earned a reasonable wage, but at the end of the day, the value of his income didn’t increase the value of the time he spent with his family. In a lot of ways, he went out of his way so his children would have a good quality of life. I will never regret the time I spent in the car commuting with my Dad, but I honestly wish that we had more time. It was worth so much more.
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