I Traded 997 for 955. Now I’m Rethinking My Daughter’s Grades.

At five in the afternoon, I push the door open. Little Lemon is sitting on the play mat, building with blocks. She looks up at me, then lowers her head and keeps building. I hang my bag behind the door, squat down, and ask what she is making. “A big tall building,” she says, and presses a red block onto the top. The building collapses. She stops for a second, then starts laughing.

I pick up the blocks one by one and help her rebuild. The range hood is roaring in the kitchen. My wife is stir-frying. The living-room window is not shut all the way. A draft comes in and blows a grocery receipt off the coffee table. I pick it up and stuff it into my pocket.

Three years ago, it was not like this.

Three years ago I worked at a 955 company, 9 to 5, five days a week. The work was light, the pace easy. I got off at five-thirty and still got home in time for one episode of a cartoon. But I was not at ease. The industry was in a bad stretch. One company laid people off today. Another shrank tomorrow. At night I lay in bed scrolling job boards, the phone light shining on the ceiling. My wife turned over and said, “Still not asleep?” I said, “In a minute.” Then I scrolled for another forty minutes.

I worried my competitiveness was slipping. I worried that if the company went under, I would not find another job. I worried and worried until I started having insomnia. I woke at two, woke at four, and when the five-thirty alarm went off, my head felt like it had been held underwater all night. Eventually I went to the hospital. After the questionnaire, the doctor said mild depression.

To lower my career risk, I jumped to a 996 company, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. Before I went, I thought: take a gamble, grind for two years, make the résumé look better, be safer later. After I got there, I found the actual schedule was closer to 997: nine to nine, seven days a week. Out the door at nine in the morning, gone after nine at night, Saturdays assumed to be workdays. Little Lemon was just over one then, right when she was learning to walk. When I left in the morning, she was not awake. When I got home, she was already asleep. Once I was working over the weekend and she had a fever. My wife took her to the hospital alone. I got the WeChat message at my desk, replied “Thanks for handling it,” turned the phone face down, and went back to revising the proposal.

In those three months, my weight went from 70 to 80 kilograms. When I washed my hair, one grab left a palm full of strands. At the company’s annual physical, my blood pressure was 150/100. I folded the report twice, pushed it into the back of a drawer, and did not tell my wife.

What stopped me was an ordinary night. I got home from overtime close to eleven. The living-room light was still on. Little Lemon’s toys were scattered across the floor, and a cloth rabbit lay on its back beside the leg of the coffee table. My wife had fallen asleep on the sofa. The TV was on, a shopping channel. I stood in the middle of the living room without changing my shoes and without turning on the big light. I just stood there for a while.

The next day I handed in my notice.

After I went back to a 955 company, another year and a half passed. This company has not developed well either. Business is lukewarm, and the year-end bonus was cut. But my blood pressure is back in the normal range. Less hair comes out when I wash it. I lost about five kilograms without trying. I just eat on time every day and take the kid to the park on weekends.

I moved the blood pressure monitor from the coffee-table drawer to the top shelf of the cabinet. At first I measured once a week. Then only when I remembered. Then a thin layer of dust settled on it.

At five every afternoon, I am home. Little Lemon runs over for a hug. I pick her up, and she pats my face. My wife calls from the kitchen, “Wash your hands, dinner’s ready.” On weekends we take her to the river to throw stones. She cannot throw far. The stones land in the mud at the bank and splatter spots onto my pants. She laughs so hard she squats down.

My attitude toward work now is simple. If a good opportunity comes, I will work hard for it. If not, I will live well. Future risks, I will face them when they actually arrive. That sounds like a slogan. For me it is not. I bought that sentence with three months of 997, a handful of falling hair, and a physical-exam report that read 150/100. I know I cannot afford that price.

Little Lemon is three now. I still cannot tell whether she has any academic talent. She can only count to ten. She recites two lines of a poem and then runs off to play something else. My wife and I have talked about school for the future, and halfway through we stop, because we do not know what she will be like.

But I have thought about one question. If she comes home with a test paper marked 70 someday, what will my first reaction be?

I think about those three months of 997, when I missed her learning to walk. My wife sent me a video. She pulled herself up on the sofa, wobbled three steps, and fell into my wife’s arms. I was in a meeting room, phone on silent. I only saw it afterward. I still have that video, but I was not there.

So I think if she comes home with a 70-point paper, I will probably look at her eyes first. See whether she is afraid of me. If she is, the first thing I have to do is take that fear away. Then ask her whether anything happy happened at school today. I am not being noble. I know what it feels like to be pushed along by anxiety. During those two years of insomnia, no one forced me. I forced myself. I do not want her to learn to force herself by the time she is ten.

Learning matters. If she has talent, I will support her as much as I can, as long as it does not cost her sleep and exercise. If she does not, she can grow up happy. That sounds like self-comfort. I mean it. I have seen people with great grades who are not happy, and people with ordinary grades whose lives have flavor. Grades are connected to happiness, but they are not a switch.

At nine at night, I give Little Lemon a bath. She sits in the tub and slaps the water. It splashes onto the wall. She asks me, “Daddy, are you coming home at five tomorrow too?”

I say, “Yes.”

She smiles, showing her four top teeth and four bottom teeth. I wrap her in a bath towel and lift her out. Her wet hair sticks to my neck.

The blood pressure monitor is still on the top shelf of the cabinet. Tomorrow morning I will take her to kindergarten, then go to work. At five in the afternoon, I will push the door open.