My FedEx War of 25
As part of preparing for the birth of our first kid, my wife decided to leave her job of three years. That should tell you something about how excited we are for this kid. Her job wasn’t amazing, but it did come with flight benefits and allowed her to work from home. We used the benefits often to visit family, and we even got to go to France a few times. In other words, we gave up our free world travel, and her comfortable work space for our child.
For those that don’t know, it took my wife and I years to jump into parenthood. We had a long list of reasons to put it off and even considered foregoing the experience all together. It took constant conversation, serious reflection, and careful maneuvering, but we eventually concluded that we could, and should, start a family.
I say all this not to convince you we’re prepared for it, but to set the frame for the following story. See, having a baby involves a whole lot more than delivering it. In fact, for us, the hard work started the moment we found out we were pregnant. We started reading books, attending doctor visits, watching videos online, and changing our habits.
Even now, I often find myself questioning my choices. It’s become almost instinctual to ask myself something like “do I want my child to grow up around this?” or “how would my kid respond if I acted this way around them?” Having a child isn’t something you just do. It’s a big change in your life, and you feel that change ripple through everything you do.
So, I bring you back to what I mentioned at the start of this message. My wife gave up our flight benefits and left her job. That choice is just one in a growing list of decisions we’ve made to prepare to be parents. Because of that decision, her company asked her to mail in all of her office equipment. Not too big of a deal, right? Well… kind of. Let me explain.
As of today, my wife is 38 weeks pregnant. Translation: The baby could come any day, or it might not come for several more weeks. In any case, my wife is tired and more than a little ready to get the baby out. But that doesn’t stop her from wanting to be productive, so I helped her pack all her things, then we drove to the nearest FedEx shipping office together.
It was supposed to be simple; it wasn’t. She had 5 boxes, and 3 e-mails that contained QR codes for the worker to scan. She’d print the labels, stick them on, and we’d live happily ever after. WRONG. Instead, the worker scanned the QR codes at least twenty times and couldn’t get them to work. To her credit, she kept looking for solutions and never gave up on us. Ultimately, however, she was at a loss.
“Let’s just try it one more time,” she said, after checking and rechecking everything on her computer and my wife’s emails on her phone. Boom. It worked. Almost. We thought we were finished, but only the first two packages scanned in. Ever heard the phrase “womp, womp?” Well, we heard it at least five more times over the following half-hour.
Look, I won’t bore you with all the nitty gritty details. Just understand that it took at least four phone calls on our end, and some creative thinking strategies before we finally completed the task and left. Basically, a lot of things didn’t go how they were supposed to and to my very pregnant wife and I, it felt like a war. Battle after battle, we fought to gain ground. We won some and lost others, but ultimately, we triumphed!
And that is what I wanted to write about today. I know it sounds silly, but it felt amazing walking out of that store having solved the problem. Even though it should have been an easy in-and-out task, the unexpected challenge left me more fulfilled.
Later, as I reflected on the situation with my wife, I mentioned how there were several moments I wanted to lash out at the workers, the people at the other end of our phone calls, etc. To my surprise, my wife shared that she thought I handled the whole thing rather calmly and she never would have guessed that I was so stressed.
I guess that’s why I walked away feeling like I’d won the war. Not because I finally shipped out a few boxes, but because I’d maintained control and stayed calm. It reminded me that I can be strong and capable, that even in stressful situations I can be aware and kind—even if sometimes I feel the rage monster inside me trying to punch its way out.
