Is It Ever Enough?
We got back from Toronto about a month ago, and I'm still thinking about it. Blue Jays games, the CN Tower, the zoo, the aquarium, Casa Loma. Five days of doing all the things. And somewhere in the middle of it, I caught myself wondering if we were actually taking any of it in.
The kind of trip you plan for months and talk about for years. Good food, big city energy, the kids seeing things they'd never seen before. It cost a lot and it was worth it and I don't regret a single part of it.
But there were moments where nothing felt like quite enough. And I knew that look. The one that's already thinking about what comes next instead of being inside what's happening right now. The one that asks "what are we doing after this" in the middle of something that should have been enough on its own.
I didn't know whether to say something or let it go and hope the memories settled in later.
I did a lot of both. Neither felt completely right.
We got home and almost immediately it was time to gear up for ball season. New bat, new shoes (because these boys' feet grow at an almost offensive rate), and suddenly we were knee deep in opinions about equipment. Strong opinions. The kind that come from spending too many hours watching guys on YouTube review the latest gear, rank the best cleats, and talk about what the pros are using like any of that has anything to do with a thirteen and fifteen-year-old playing ball in small town Manitoba.
I deleted YouTube from the TV and I'm not sorry about it.
The initial reaction was about what you'd expect. Some grumbling, some negotiating, some version of "but I was just watching baseball stuff." And then slowly, almost without anyone acknowledging it, they just went back to playing. Outside. With each other. Making up games, arguing about rules, coming in sweaty and hungry and actually present.
Like the noise had been turned down and they remembered what they actually liked doing.
I grew up rural. We didn't do big vacations. We didn't have the newest gear or the nicest equipment. If you wanted to play a sport, you played it in whatever you had, and nobody was asking whether their cleats were up to standard. Fun didn't require the right setup. It just happened, because there wasn't much else competing for our attention and we hadn't yet learned to need more than what was in front of us.
I didn't feel like I was missing anything. That's the part I keep coming back to.
We're the ones who bought the better stuff. We're the ones who said yes enough times that yes became the expectation. We're the ones who handed over the tablet and turned on the TV while we tried to get supper on or just needed twenty minutes of quiet. You don't end up with a kid who has opinions about bat brands by accident. That gets built slowly, without you really noticing, one yes at a time.
I'm not saying that to pile on anyone, including myself. I'm saying it because I think it's worth being straight about where it actually comes from. We love our kids. We want them to have good experiences. We want to give them things we didn't always have. And sometimes all of those things together quietly move the line without us noticing, until you're standing in the middle of Toronto, surrounded by everything, and something still feels like it's missing.
Gratitude isn't a lesson you teach once and check off the list. It's something kids absorb slowly, mostly by watching the adults around them and by being in situations where they have less instead of more.
Which means the answer probably involves some discomfort. For them and for us. Saying no when you can say yes takes its own kind of discipline. Letting them be bored takes patience we don't always have. Watching them be disappointed without rushing in to fix it goes against every instinct.
But I think those are exactly the moments that teach them something no good trip or new gear ever could.
I want them to use last year's glove and just go play the sport they love. I want them to taste the food and feel the moment and remember the trip for something other than what they got out of it. I want them to know the difference between a want and a need before the world makes it impossible to tell the two apart.
And the world is very good at blurring that line. Every screen, every algorithm, every YouTube rabbit hole is quietly making the case that what you have isn't quite enough yet. That the next thing will be the thing. Kids are absorbing that constantly; in ways we don't always see until it shows up at the dinner table on a family vacation.
I don't want to raise kids who are ungrateful. I also don't want to raise kids who are performing gratitude because they know that's what's expected. I want them to actually feel it. That quiet, settled sense of having enough. Of being right where they're supposed to be without needing it to be something more.
We're not there yet. Some days we're closer than others. Some days I delete the apps and say no to the screens and drag everyone outside and it works, and I can see them settle into themselves in a way that makes me think we're going to be fine.
And some days we come home from the best trip, and I can already see the wheels turning toward the next thing. And I just sit with that and ask myself what I could do differently.
I don't always have a good answer.
But I think asking the question out loud is at least a start.
And I think the fact that it bothers me that I notice it and name it and lose a little sleep over it, means we haven't stopped trying.
That has to count for something.
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