It’s Delaney’s birthday today.

Typically on birthdays, the Knudsen family, of which I am now a part, writes poems. It’s something I’ve enjoyed doing in the eight years we’ve been together, and the five we’ve been married. But I inevitably get silly when writing these poems, putting them to a Pout Pout Fish or Dr. Seuss type rhythm and making them a little rap (the rest of the Knudsens go with limericks, which have rules and limit the, uh, freelancing I always do).

And as I sit here in another country – Montreal today, Latvia soon, Germany after that, with Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Australia on the horizon – another hotel, a silly poem didn’t seem quite right, because the only thing I’m really feeling is an absolute, overwhelming appreciation.

I’ve never been big on birthdays. I’ve taken mine off virtually every list I can. Hasn’t really been big to me since I turned 21, and even then, it was less about celebration than it was survival. But Delaney said something the other day that struck me: While she, too, had gravitated towards my relative indifference towards birthdays, now that she’s a full-time mom, she has two days left in the annual 365 that are about her: Mother’s Day, and her birthday.

Being a full-time mom (or dad) is hard. Really hard. Harder than I can properly articulate, in ways you won’t fully realize until you’re in it. Even then, some 30ish months into this parenting journey, I didn’t know one of the most difficult aspects of it for Delaney.

For close to 28 years, Delaney had built her life around playing beach volleyball. It’s what got her a free education in college, how she won a National Championship, was named All-America. She played it professionally, represented the United States, did well enough on the AVP, got into coaching. I get to travel around the world, watching and analyzing the best volleyball players on the planet; if Delaney wanted, she could be here in Montreal with me as a player. Of that, I have no doubt.

But when Austin came along in April of 2023, all of that was gone.

She recently told her sister, Lindsey, a new mom herself, that the most difficult part of becoming a full-time mom or new parent isn’t the sleepless nights and crying and poopy diapers and never having any idea what you’re doing and if you’re doing everything completely wrong or maybe getting some of it right but my goodness how do we know because the kid is still crying about something, but the fact that everything you’d built for yourself at that point in your life is now finished. As an athlete, this means permanently.

I never knew that.

It’s a trade she’d make again – and has, with our daughter – but that doesn’t make it easy. We talk constantly of trade-offs, of Thomas Sowell’s quote: There are no solutions, only trade-offs. She traded the life she had built for one in which she was no longer even the protagonist, her world now revolving around one maniacal toddler and the sweetest five-month-old girl and everything they need, which is no small amount.

She could do the daycare thing if she wanted. Could still play beach and build her life for herself. That’s just not a tradeoff she’s willing to make, not how we wanted to raise our kids. Wealth, to us, is how much time we as parents get to spend with our children; we value that far more than money and individual accomplishment. Kids aren’t a distraction from the job; they are the job. In that aspect, she’s as rich as Solomon. She gave up everything she was to become who she is today, one who maximizes her time and love and care and attention on one, now two, other human beings, with more down the road, should that be the plan for us. Discarding one identity and nurturing the next is no easy thing, especially when that next identity has no scoreboard, no medals, no accolades, just a lot of stinky diapers.

She’s Mom.

And on a day that’s supposed to be hers, I’ll be gone and our kids will be needy. She’ll change all of the diapers and weather every tantrum, will have the hilarious toddler conversations and puzzle her way through Harper’s infant fits. They won’t know it’s her birthday.

So no poem today, just a world’s worth of appreciation.