During the pandemic, I started cutting the kids’ hair at home. I was decent enough to keep at it and it was nice to save that money. Recently, however, I felt a nudge to take them all in for a professional cut.

As John Robert sat in the barber chair, making small talk with the sweet older man cutting his hair, I couldn’t help but think of all the things he was learning: How to talk to a grown up. How to sit still. How to say thank you. How to be patient and wait on his sisters to get their haircuts.

It seems small, but that evening when we got home I told Nate it was a very profound experience for me. One I cannot stop thinking about.

We adore grocery delivery. All hail Target Drive Up. Amazon “Buy Now” could be tattooed on my forehead. Who doesn’t love a local curbside pick-up? But I can’t stop thinking about what my kids might be losing in the culture I have created for us.

Things like: seeing things they want in the store and being told no, seeing something they want and saving their money for it, learning how a grocery store is laid out, seeing the cost of our food, making eye contact and saying thank you to the cashier, smiling at a stranger in the cereal aisle, seeing how we pay for things we need.

To be clear: there is no right and wrong choice here. And different seasons call for different trade offs. But I find when something impacts me this much, it helps me to process it through writing. I don’t have any firm resolutions, but it’s an area in my own life I am evaluating.