Emily Falk

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, it was a typical night in my house.

And what that looks like is one of my kids was jumping up and down on the couch.

He was playing his guitar.

The other kid was trying to show my grandmother something.

something that he had built, probably a Lego creation, like kind of really, really close up in her face.

I was trying to get dinner on the table.

So you can imagine sort of dishes clanging and my phone is probably pinging with emails and text messages from people that I work with who would really like a response very quickly.

And when I was in that situation, I sort of had this sense of like, oh, my gosh, there's so many different things that I'm trying to juggle right now.

And in that particular moment, I decided that I was going to prioritize a little bit of time with my grandmother.

And my grandmother, Bev, is now 100 years old and she's one of my very favorite people.

So she's over at my house for dinner and I went over to her.

I left, you know, the pasta going and handed that over to my partner to handle.

And I took her hand and I walked her outside and sort of in the dusk, I was feeling like a little bit of a sense of relief.

Like I was feeling like, okay, we're getting outside, we're getting a little quality time together.

And I felt like I had made the right decision until she turned to me and she said that even though she really liked coming to my house and seeing my kids, who are some of her very favorite people, she said, we aren't really spending time together.

And, you know, it really struck me when she said that because, like, I really didn't want her to be right about that.

Like, of course we're spending time together.

What do you mean?

Like, you're over here making dinner for all of us and, you know, we're outside together now.