by Jim Herbert
Monday was the first day of my daughter Emma’s winter break from second grade. I’ve been looking forward to the more casually paced mornings when we don’t have to rush out the door to get to school on time. At the same time, I’ve been a little bit stressed about how I will keep up with everything else that happens in my life when I don’t have eight hours of free childcare five days a week.
One of the many things that Emma has been looking forward to during winter break is the ability to start the day slowly and watch a little television, which we typically try to refrain from doing on school mornings unless it’s a very short episode of something on PBS Kids. YouTube or Netflix are definitely not on our weekday morning menu.
One of the things I’ve been noticing over the last couple of weeks is that Emma has become far more self-sufficient in the mornings. In the past, she would always wake me up as soon as she got out of bed if I wasn’t already up. She’d wait for me to come into the front room and then ask me to make her breakfast. Lately, she’s been quietly going about her business on her own, some mornings even going so far as getting her own cereal and milk without fanfare. I’m sure I’m not the only parent who has danced on that tender line between wistfulness and pride as their child begins to need them a little less.
On the first day of winter break though, Emma came into the bedroom and crawled up onto the bed next to me. She then asked me to come into the front room with her and immediately pulled something up on the television. As Emma opened the YouTube app and began typing her search, I was instantly transported back in time.
Over the last few weeks when we do allow her to watch YouTube, one of Emma’s favorite things has been the Sugar Plum Fairy dance from The Nutcracker. She had a small part in her ballet school’s recent production, and December has been one long Nutcracker love affair for us, but this Monday morning, she typed in something different.
This Monday as Emma typed in the letters V‑I‑S‑I‑O‑N‑S, I began to realize that she was searching “Visions of the Buddha,” which is a slideshow we used to watch together many years ago.
In fact, Emma’s Monday morning search took me all the way back to when she was two years old, on the days that we would sit together on the couch watching the seven‑minute slideshow of Buddha statues and monuments from around the world. Emma’s interest in the Buddha and other spiritual imagery started very early. In fact, when she successfully completed potty training, the reward she chose for herself was two small Buddha figurines for her bedroom. I’ve told that story countless times, and people are always blown away.
Back then, we would use her Magna‑Tiles to build makeshift shrines, placing the tiny Buddha figures inside while the slideshow played quietly in the background. Those mornings felt simple, sacred, and timeless, so when Emma pulled up Visions of the Buddha again this past Monday, I felt my heart swell, a bit like the Grinch on the day his heart grew three sizes.
I sat there this past Monday for the full seven minutes with tears welling in my eyes, remembering those early mornings when Emma and I had nowhere else to be and nothing else to do. I caught myself thinking, “What I wouldn’t give to go back and freeze that moment forever.” But memory has a way of editing the stories we call up to the forefront of our minds as if they were visions of sugarplums.
The truth is, those Buddha mornings didn’t happen in some carefree, golden era. They happened in April and May of 2020, during lockdown, in the earliest and most uncertain days of the pandemic. They happened while the world felt fragile, confusing, and frightening. They happened while we were isolated in our homes, trying to make sense of a deadly virus that none of us yet understood.
In real time, that period was heavy, anxiety‑producing, and disorienting, yet here I was, years later, remembering it with tenderness.
The whole episode reminded me that the moments we later remember as meaningful, even beautiful, are often born right in the middle of fear and uncertainty. It reminded me that meaning doesn’t announce itself at the time, but rather reveals itself later, through distance and reflection. That realization feels especially relevant to me now.
So many men I speak with, through MenLiving and in my personal life, are carrying enormous weight. Economic pressure. Family stress. Grief. Exhaustion. Men are carrying a sense that the world feels unstable and unforgiving. It’s easy, in moments like these, to believe that we’re simply trying to survive until things “get back to normal,” but then again, what is normal and are we ever really getting back to it?
What if this is all part of the story we’ll one day look back on with unexpected clarity? What if, years from now, we remember not just the strain of today’s individual and global challenges, but also the small moments of connection like the mornings on the couch with the Buddha from my story? Won’t we remember the beauty of conversations we finally had? Isn’t it possible that our recollection will be about the times we reached out instead of pulled away?
Hope, I’m learning, isn’t about denying reality or pretending things aren’t hard. Hope is about staying connected to ourselves, to our families, and to one another, while we move through the hard parts with as much grace as possible.
That’s why community matters to me. That’s why men need spaces where they don’t have to have it all figured out, where they can tell the truth about what’s weighing on them, and be met with understanding instead of judgment.
This winter break morning didn’t solve anything for me and didn’t make the world feel less complicated, but it did remind me that even now, there is meaning being formed that we may not fully see yet.
Sometimes hope looks like a seven‑minute slideshow. Sometimes it looks like sitting in silence beside someone you love. And sometimes it starts with simply not walking through the hard moments alone.
Wishing you the best for a special holiday and a New Year filled with hope and abundance, and I hope to walk with you or see you in one of our other spaces soon.
