National Daughters Day

Every day is take your daughters to work day for me! Well, in my head it is, at least. My daughters are all grown up and have their own jobs, so the days of having tagalongs to the office are long gone, but I still carry them with me everywhere I go. Work is no exception!

Now that they’re both building lives and careers for themselves, I love peering into their world every now and again to see how they’re affecting change. Maddi, for example, was charged with mentoring some of the nurses in the PICU who were older than her, after just a year of work! And Ellie, is off to a great start after joining the Pulte Group as a Market Intelligence Analyst.

So why am I talking about my daughters in a post? Because September 25 is National Daughters Day! And, because memories of my trip to the Paris Olympics are still fresh. So many amazing things happened there, but one in particular stands out, and it had nothing to do with sports.

If you read my previous post about my day in Nice on my way back from Sicily, you’ll know that I already have so many wonderful things to say about the hospitality and kindness of the French. And this story is no exception.

One night, when my traveling companions, Pat Kanewske, Todd Iwanicki and I were at dinner, we sat by a young couple from Lille. They had their daughter with them. She was about five and precious. Early in our conversation, Todd was trying to think of something that might make the little girl smile. He fished through his bag for a pin of a ballet dancer. When he handed it to her, her eyes lit up. Her mom told us that she was learning to dance, and we talked about how her daughter wants to be a dancer when she grows up. Pat showed them a picture of his daughter dancing. Then Todd showed a picture of his daughter dancing. Then I looked for one of Maddi, who also danced for years, but couldn’t find one. But I found one taken with Ellie to share. The mom told us how much she enjoyed seeing we were proud fathers. In the end, the little girl asked her mom if she could get a picture with the three American men whom she had met. It made us smile. After the picture was taken, the mom exclaimed, “My daughter will remember this moment for the rest of her life. She will always remind me about the American men she met in Paris at the Olympics.”

What this experience taught me was that compassion is universal and there are so many lovely people who want to live in harmony. The world has so many precious lessons to offer, and the future is going to be better for all of us when we start paying attention to those lessons and work to build community wherever we go.