Weaving Dreams: The Joy of Work, The Love of Life

Chapter 9. Parenting with the End in Mind: How I Worked to Instill Responsibility and Work Ethic in My Children

Sitting with my assistant in the backseat of the car that was delivering me to a lunch appointment, my body jolted with the sharp twists and turns that seem to be an unavoidable hallmark of city driving. Lights blinked and flashed, horns blared, and the faint echo of sirens floated ghostlike through tinted windowpanes. Colors blurred together out of the corner of my eye as people hoofed the sidewalks of New York City—a giant smear of civilization evaporating before I could focus on any one single thing.

But then again, I wasn't trying to focus on any one single thing—except for the sound of the voice on the other end of the phone line.

I was talking to my daughter.

Claire is not the little girl she once was, or the one that so many people might remember her to be: a frolicking, pigtailed fourth-grader worried about nothing more than the latest animal she could rescue from the ditches of our nearby country roads. And though my heart pinches to remember the innocent days of mothering a nine-year-old—days filled with squeals and the delights of simple pleasures at home—I have never been prouder of who she is now: a wonderful college student with dreams in her head and feet on the ground.

Claire has grown into a lovely, well-rounded young woman with a good head on her shoulders and an even better heart beating within her. Like me, she loves nature, is gregarious and affable, and ...