Prologue & Introduction
For my three children—Kevin, Wallis, and Drew.
You teach me volumes. Every day.
Prologue
Long John Silver’s seafood restaurant wouldn’t have been my first choice as the backdrop for hearing what turned out to be the most powerful words my father ever shared with me. I guess things happen where they are meant to happen.
I was fifteen, and it was about a year after my mom had died. Eating Friday-night dinner at Long John Silver’s—my dad’s traditional way of observing Lent—became our weekly ritual after her death. It was during one of those visits, while my dad was enjoying his seafood combo and a cup of slaw, that I decided to throw a question out onto the table.
“So, um, do you ever sort of kind of think about wanting to do stuff, like—you know—like go out, um, on a date? I’m totally fine if you, you know . . . ”
I’m not sure what possessed me to ask the question. Maybe I needed definition in the new world we lived in. I can’t say for sure, and Dad never quite directly answered the question I had posed. But I knew I hit a nerve when—after a very long, uncomfortable pause—I received his direct, pointed, and purposeful response:
“I want you to listen carefully,” he began. Were he a CIA operative, the tone of his voice would suggest to me that he was about to share the highest-level top secret information. But he wasn’t CIA. This was my dad—breathing very deliberately and staring directly at me. I regretted asking the question as I sat there, still holding a fork to my lips.
He continued.
“I will raise you to be a man.”
As I looked back into the depths of his eyes, I clearly knew they were telling me to utter not one more word.
And that was the end of our discussion. Never to be revisited again.
My dad fulfilled that commitment to me in the ensuing years. Spectacularly and selflessly.
It wasn’t until after he died that I learned from his brother, my Uncle Jack, the reason for my dad’s Long John Silver’s message. When he was a teenager, my dad’s mother died. And soon after, my dad’s father remarried and began a new life with a new wife. My dad was told to find his own place to live.
Only then, after hearing Uncle Jack’s words, did I understand the resolve I saw in my dad’s eyes that night in Long John Silver’s so long ago. I suspect that experience from his youth taught him the most important lesson in fatherhood he ever received.
Thirty years later, I myself was the dad. With three young children. And I was staring at a diagnosis of cancer. In retrospect, I was also about to begin the last chapter of my marriage—a painful period for my entire family which remains private. My world was collapsing on all fronts. For the first time ever, I feared for my own children’s future as I came face-to-face with the realization that I may not live long enough to raise them to adulthood—let alone show them a father’s unwaivering commitment.
Flying under the radar screen of life was no longer an option because I had plenty of things to address. Job one, however, was dealing with cancer. I not only wanted to win that battle; I needed to decimate the enemy—and reclaim the life I was meant to live.
And so began my journey toward clarity in becoming the man—and dad—I am today, raising my children with purpose and renewed commitment.
Introduction
Hello. I’m a Bobblehead.
As a kid, I collected bobbleheads. As an adult, I had become one.
With four older brothers, I sort of inherited their old bobblehead dolls when I was a young boy. They were all baseball player bobbleheads. Truthfully, I didn’t even like baseball that much, but I thought it was fun to play with the little figurines and their spring-loaded heads.
My favorite was a Mickey Mantle bobblehead. I liked seeing how long I could keep his noggin in motion with just the right flick from my index finger. Too hard and I’d end up with a spastic head jerk that came to a sudden stop. Too soft and the toy suffered the same fate. But when I found that perfect amount of pressure, I’d enjoy a bobble that would go on for a long, carefree bounce until the head ultimately rebalanced itself.
I was easily amused.
I also was fascinated by how Mickey’s face would maintain a permanent, frozen smile no matter how fast or furious his head rocked.
Thirty-some years later, I was much like that bobblehead, going through the motions of life—perfect smile and all—just bouncing away. By all accounts, I was living a full and abundant life with my family and my career. And, to a great degree, I was. Maybe you knew me back then. I was firing on all cylinders, always in a constant state of motion, and looking pretty stable.
At the time, I even thought I was doing pretty well. But the truth is things were moving so fast in my world, I stopped connecting with the events, experiences, and people waiting for me in each day. I survived by bobbling.
My best bobbling, I’m ashamed to say, was saved for my three kids. Consumed with a job that had me leaving the house long before they were up, I was exhausted by the time I arrived home in the evening.
“Wudya do today?” was my standard question for the kids as I tried to connect in some way to the worlds that were theirs.
As a young grade-schooler, my daughter, Wallis, would always provide feature-length film descriptions of her day, recounting every eye-opening experience and emotion. Like helium escaping from a balloon, her words couldn’t come fast enough. And there I was, wearing my Mickey Mantle smile, bobbling along and pretending to listen while many of her words ricocheted off me at lightning speed.
Bad. Bobbling. Dad.
Unfortunately, kids are smart, and they quickly sense when you’re not really paying attention to them. So they stop talking and, eventually, just grunt or nod.
That’s how we became a bobblehead dad and his three nodding children.
When I reached the age of forty-four, however, my bobbling came to a screeching halt. It was much like the day—as a child—I accidentally stretched Mickey Mantle’s head a little too far and snapped the spring. When my own bobbling world snapped, I found myself with an entire summer at home removed from all of life’s obligations.
How does a middle-aged guy manage to land an entire summer off? Well, I had cancer. It’s something my parents and siblings encounter with regularity. Some families have red hair. Or they spawn a lot of tall people. Mine produces very ordinary people who have a propensity for cancer. So I had plenty of training under my belt when my own world was turned upside down with surgery and a summer at home to heal.
But this is not only a cancer story. It’s a story about a dad who had a chance—at the halftime show of his life—to stop bobbling and relearn many of the life lessons he’d forgotten. It’s a story that reveals the meaning found in simple moments and the people who fill them.
Most importantly for me, it’s the story that unfolded a road map to living the second half of my life with intent.