If I may share a story with you gentlemen. Please bear with me as this is rather long. I actually had to bring out the laptop so I can type. Much better than the Ipad.
Anyway, when I was sworn in my eldest daughter was 3 months and 3 days old.
I knew the job was going to take a lot of my time from my family and we were going to have to sacrifice a lot. My agency is unique in that I was immediately assigned to narcotics and I was a U/C. Interesting to say the least, but I made every effort to spend all my free time with my wife and child.
Fast forward to 1998, my daughter was not yet 3. Through a series of events I was assigned to then the United Customs Service. It was a prestigious assignment and guaranteed and extra $15,000.00 a year in overtime. I was assigned to an international airport in my area. I was excited and jumped into my assignment with relish and excitement.
Come to find out that the hours were 1p to 9p and if I caught duty that night it was 4p to 12a.
Since my wife had to work as well my daughter was in daycare. So I would take her in the morning, but by the time I got home she was asleep. It was really getting to me and I was feeling the lack of time spent with my daughter. I was there almost a year. At that time these were 3 to 5 year assignment, minimum. I was really debating asking to come back.
I didn't really want to say anything as I didn't want come across as an ingrate. Again, these kind of assignments were considered a "perc" and not everyone would get them. Also, once you were done with these assignments you could pretty much write your ticket in my department.
So, for the time being I suffered through it until one day I'm sitting in the office and my wife calls me. As I answered the phone I hear my daughter bawling in the background. She was screaming bloody murder. I got scared. I thought she got hurt or something.
Turned out that my wife arrived home as normal from work and picking her up from daycare. As she entered the house my daughter ran in looking for me. She couldn't find me. She immediately started crying and saying "I lost my daddy." "My daddy is gone." Somebody took my daddy."
My wife tried to explain to her that I was just working late. My daughter just could not wrap her head around that. It broke my heart. I immediately took the rest of the night off and went home. My daughter would not leave my side until she went to bed.
The next day I went to work and wrote a memo asking to return to my office. Never regretted it, although I had a Lieutenant back then pretty much tell me that I made a mistake and shouldn't have done it. Bullshit! My family comes first.
My eldest is now 18 in college and I have a younger one that is 13. Fortunately the 18 year old commutes so she's still home. Even now though, I get called out on investigations that sometimes they don't see me awake for a week at a minimum. When that happens I make it a point that the first free day I have we do something together as a family. We'll go shopping, movies, and dinner.
I'm also fortunate in that I do ok in the OT department so we go on exotics vacations. Two years ago for my wife and I 20 year wedding anniversary we went to Hawaii for a week. This year I'm looking at the Cayman Islands or Turks and Caicos.
Gentlemen I introduce to you my family. I am truly blessed. My wife Lizette, my younger Arianna and Alexis my eldest. This was last year as my daughter won a college scholarship offered by the NJ Honor Legion.
