Archives for May 2018

We called Molly our “Happy Baby Duck.” I’m not sure why we didn’t just call her “Happy Baby” and had to add the “Duck” part. She was our second, Anna was our first. Anna relied on us constantly to be her entertainment. Because we didn’t know any different, we thought all babies were like that. When we discovered that Molly could entertain herself, we rejoiced!

All of our children mispronounced words as they were learning them; so Molly’s mispronunciations are part of our family lore. “Chup-chup” was Catsup, “yun-yun” was onion, “crash can” was trash can, “churky” was turkey—or was it a mix of chicken and turkey?

We would often deep fry chicken fingers for the kids. Once we fried fish instead. When Molly tasted it, she proclaimed, “good chicken!” We just smiled and nodded.

We took Molly to the fair. She saw a watermelon for the first time. So she pointed at it and cried, “Apple!” That was a mighty big apple.

I wish we all would keep our innocence and not be ashamed to make mistakes. When do we decide that other people’s opinions of us are more important than learning new things and being a beginner?

Molly lost some of that innocence in the second grade. It was the first time she didn’t score 100 percent on a test. She was crushed! We tried to explain to her that nobody gets 100 percent every time. She wouldn’t hear of it.

It wasn’t easy for her to grow up as a middle child. Anna and Andrew bonded, I think because the difference in their ages made them less competitive with one another. Molly was often left out. Anna would regard Molly with open disdain. Looking back, I regret not being more insistent with Anna that she treat Molly with respect.

Molly would play with me by treating me like her own jungle gym. She would grab me around my ankle and sit on my foot. Then Anna would do the same with my other ankle. I would try to walk around the kitchen this way, sliding them across the floor.

Molly also wanted to do “hip-ups.” She would sit on my knees. I would pretend to have hiccups. With every hiccup I would jerk my legs upward and throw her into the air, and she would land back on my knees with a jolt. Then she’d rebalance herself and wait for the next hiccup.

Once Jamie left me with the children for several days while she went on a trip. It was the first time she left the children with me for this long. Jamie was nervous about leaving the kids with me, but I assured her that I had it handled.

The morning after she left, Molly awoke with pain in her hip. She could barely walk. But she could, technically, walk. So I sent her off to school. Within two hours, the school nurse called. She said Molly now couldn’t walk at all, and recommended I pick her up and take her to the emergency room.

At the hospital, we found that she had an infection in her hip. They needed to drain fluid from the hip, and they had a big honking syringe for the job. I was deathly afraid of needles, and yet I had to reassure Molly through the procedure. Let’s just say it was a bonding moment.

After that, I’m surprised Jamie ever left town again without the children. And Molly would tease me about being a lackadaisical parent ever after.

Molly played a number of sports. She went out for track in high school. Her event was 100-meter hurdles. She eventually had to stop due to a groin pull, but she did have some shining moments. She made it onto the sports page once when a newspaper photographer snapped her picture going over the hurdles. I think the photographer was impressed by the determined look on her face.

Regional finals arrived, and she made it into the final race. She had never won at a meet before. She had never gone over the hurdles cleanly. But with the pressure on, she cleared every hurdle and won the region championship!

It’s that determination and grace under pressure that helps Molly get through anxious times in her lives. And she’s had a few. Space doesn’t allow me to go into detail. As a small child, she had a line beyond which she was simply inconsolable. Even as an adult, she is conscious of her limits and careful not to exceed them when she has a choice. This is her courage.

At the time, I was uncomfortable with emotion. (I’ve grown a lot since then.) So when Molly got emotional, I tried to fix it. I would try to make her feel better rather than acknowledge the sadness and just be with it. I finally learned how to best be with her emotions in her later teen years.

My relationship with Molly bloomed in high school, particularly after Anna went to college. What I didn’t stop to realize is that Molly and Andrew would leave so quickly after Anna left. So I began to savor my time with Molly more.

I realized I didn’t touch her much, so I started to self-consciously put my arm around her more. She was very happy, and responded. Often when she’d see me from a distance, she would run full-speed at me and give me a full-impact hug. This made me very happy too.

She called me “Daddy” into adulthood, probably still does. Or she’d call me “Daay” and I’d call her “Maay.”

Molly didn’t date in high school. She started “hanging out” with boys in college, but she didn’t have any serious relationship with a guy until she met her Matt. Matt was the president of the Baptist Campus Ministry. (When I went to my Baptist college, it was called the Baptist Student Union.)

Molly didn’t so much convert from Catholicism as she found where she belonged. Like many who have had religious experiences in college, she became passionate for Jesus. I was happy she found her community.

When Matt and Molly graduated, Matt decided to go on a mission trip to Liberia for several months. They were serious about each other, but to my knowledge they weren’t officially engaged. At the last minute, he was asked to wait a few weeks because a new disease called Ebola was starting to be epidemic in Liberia. Needless to say, he never got on a plane to Africa.

Matt proposed to Molly within a few months are were married before he would have returned from Liberia.

Molly told me before the wedding that she was couldn’t wait to see me cry. I did manage to tear up during my rehearsal dinner speech. But it was too dark for her to see me cry, so she felt cheated. Sorry Molly, you missed your chance!

Matt is a good man, Southern polite, soft-natured and strong in his faith. He’s able to get hired anywhere he goes. He supports Molly in whatever she wishes to do and dream.

Molly calls me for advice. Now that I’ve been a coach for a while, I attempt to coach her through these decisions instead of just giving her my opinion. Once, after several attempts to get advice out of me, she finally said, “You aren’t going to tell me what to do, are you?” So I lightened up on the coach stuff and became an opinionated Dad again—at least a little.

Molly is responsible. Jamie and I have to treat her well because she’s the child most likely to be taking care of us in our old age.

Molly has a good heart, sensitive and yet strong. She cares.

Molly is social, the most social of our children. In that sense she takes after her mom. She comes alive around other people and shows her excitement. Her degree was in technical communications, but she found that to be too isolating. So now she works in an assisted living center, cooking and serving breakfast to retirees. She loves it.

Until I went through my own personal growth, it was hugely awkward for me to tell anybody I love them—not friends, not family. So it wasn’t until they were teens that I consistently told my kids I love them. I think they knew, but that didn’t excuse my omission. I’m happy to say that Molly and I—all of us—are now very comfortable telling each other that we love them. I’m so glad I got out of my comfort zone and started saying it.

I love you Maay.

Daay

I know less about my brother and sister than I want to admit. As a child, I isolated myself and often played alone, lost in my own fantasies. I had few friends and didn’t learn to share and open up about myself. So I can’t say I cultivated much intimacy with Sandy when we were children. She was somebody to whom I could have reached out for emotional support, but I learned way too soon to be emotionally independent.

So Sandy and Brian were people with whom I shared a house and experiences. We weren’t as close as many siblings, but that doesn’t mean that I hold any animosity whatsoever against Sandy. I simply never learned to lean on her or confide in her. Just like everyone else in my life at the time.

Sandy is a lot like Dad in terms of being practical and achievement-oriented. She credits him with making her the person she is today. She worked as an accountant for the local school system and became very successful. She won a big national award for her work. She just recently retired, but she still works fulltime for a national association for school accountants. She hopes she can enjoy a more leisurely retirement soon.

Even as a teen, Sandy was perceptive, intuitive, and smart. She could see through me. Sometimes she would egg me on until I was in a rage and then run and lock herself in the bathroom until I cooled down. (I had forgotten about this until Sandy reminded me recently.) Despite always seeing myself as the victim rather than the bully, I often took out my rage against Sandy and Brian.

Rage still bubbles inside of me today, it’s just now I tend to take it out against traffic lights and stupid drivers. And sometimes the nightly news.

Her first marriage fell apart when her husband committed a crime and went to jail. This was a very difficult time for her. I wasn’t there for her, but Dad told me they were there to help her. She ended up moving back to live in Mom and Dad’s home town and they all still live there today.

She remarried many years ago and by all appearances they are as close as when they first met. Second marriages are typically difficult and have a high failure rate. But they made it work with a blended family of four teen boys.

When she and her husband purchased a new house, they made sure they’d have room to move Mom and Dad in when they could no longer be independent. This is a huge deal, especially to Brian and me! After seeing everything my wife Jamie goes through dealing with her aging parents, I know what kind of commitment she’s signing up for. It’s a big sacrifice and gift to all of us.

She’s already shown her commitment by taking charge of Dad’s care when he had his strokes. She moved him into her home when Dad’s nursing home providers seemed content to simply let him languish. She managed every aspect of his care. She outfitted one of her bedrooms with all the furniture and person-moving contraptions of a hospital room. Sandy was absolutely instrumental in Dad’s near-miraculous recovery. Sandy and mom are the reason Dad has the physical capacity and mental acuity he does today. Against all odds, Dad was able to move out of Sandy’s house and lives with Mom again in his own house.

Sandy has a strong moral center. She and her husband are regular church-goers who truly live their faith. She has strong convictions and values.

Only recently did I finally have a conversation with Sandy about what it was like to grow up in our family. I waited almost 40 years to open this conversation with either of my siblings. I felt a little weird simply because it was a different kind of conversation. But I enjoyed it.

I’m embarrassed to not have an abundance of things I could tell you about Sandy. I’m struggling to not be ashamed of that. I couldn’t help the way I was as a child, and the emotional barriers I erected to protect myself.

What I can do—and what this project is for—is to realize that the way I was doesn’t serve me in the present. I don’t need to be so self-protective anymore. I can be more open, honest, and intimate with people. That’s really what’s at the heart of this Six Months project.

Sandy and I enjoy each other’s company, and we have serious conversations when necessary. I’d like to have even more intimate conversations with Sandy. I hope this project will help to make those types of conversations easier, more frequent, and more natural.

I love you Sandy.

Parents do the best they can with what they are given. At least that’s what I’ve been told, and I believe it’s true for most parents (not all). Given this benchmark, my dad has done remarkably well. It doesn’t seem to me that he had any sort of role model for what it means to be a dad.

My grandfather was an abusive alcoholic. Dad once pulled me aside and confided to me about his dad. He said, “Do you see that quiet old drunk sitting in his chair all day? I just want you to know that person is not the person I grew up with.”

As a child, Dad’s older brother would tease him about his stutter. According to Dad, this is why he retained his stutter throughout his life. He blames his stutter for never getting promoted to plant manager at his job.

I don’t mean to give the impression that my dad blames others for his problems. He doesn’t. I merely want to give a few examples of how my dad had a tough life.

He doesn’t talk about it much, because talking about it opens up emotions that he would rather not re-experience. My own experiences as a child taught me that I could shield myself from negative emotions too. Like father, like son. Dad recently had two strokes, and I notice that he seems to express more emotion these days.

In my family, positive emotions were OK, and negative emotions were not OK. The main negative emotions I was aware of growing up were shame and anger. Mom would stand me in a corner; Dad would spank me. Before you judge my dad, remember that times were different back then. For instance, my junior high school gym teacher would paddle students. Could you imagine that happening today? Dad always made sure he calmed down before administering a spanking. I believe he didn’t want to be like his dad, who I’m sure would act out of his anger.

I always wondered why I was so angry as a teen. After all, I had a good family who provided for me. There was no addiction, abuse, or any other reason to believe that my family was anything but normal. Yet my anger bubbled up and I lost control on more than one occasion. I kicked a hole in my bedroom wall. I put the heel of my hand through a window. I acted out and got arrested.

My dad would scold me repeatedly for leaving toys out and otherwise not keeping the house neat and clean. I would feel ashamed, but it wouldn’t affect my behavior. My dad couldn’t understand why I left a mess all the time and neither could I. Today I think it was my way of rebelling. If this was my motivation, then I was completely unaware of it as a child.

When I was a pre-teen, my parents took me to see a psychologist. It may have been because I wasn’t socializing at school, but that’s just a guess. They stopped taking me after that first appointment. I found out years later that my parents couldn’t afford to have me continue counseling. I don’t blame them. Best I could tell we were lower-middle class, and they were doing the best they could.

Our house was too small for a family of five, so he tore he off a portion of the roof and created a large dormer upstairs. That gave us an extra bedroom and bathroom. He got help from family for the main structural stuff, but he finished all the interior himself. It took him years.

Dad tried to teach me what he knew. He would make me watch as he designed a new sunroom or worked on the car. I would get bored, and eventually he gave up. He had better success with my brother, and Dad continued to help him with home remodel projects until his recent strokes.

Dad worked his way up the ladder. His first job was packing light bulbs at the nearby General Electric plant. He worked his way up to draftsman, and finally was recognized for his skill diagnosing and fixing problems with machinery. He was made a Quality Control Engineer despite the fact that he didn’t have a college degree.

Years later when he left GE, he applied at a local plant for an opening for Quality Control Engineer. They were barred by policy from considering his resume because he didn’t have a degree. He found a job at a local truck radiator manufacturer. They were having terrible problems with quality control, and he was able to get a handle on it. After he retired, the company retained him for a time as a consultant for much higher pay.

I only found out much later some of the other things Dad sacrificed for me and my family. I remember him taking night classes toward a college degree. Recently Mom told me he gave that up because it took away too much family time.

My parents moved us from Ohio to Mississippi just before my senior year. Part of the reason is because our schools were tough and I would get bullied. My lack of socialization meant that there was nobody to say “good-bye” when I left the only home I had ever known. As desolate as it felt, things did get better during my time in Mississippi.

Dad was always a family man, and he loved to take us traveling on vacation. Even as small infants he took us all on vacation. At first we tent camped and later Dad purchased a travel trailer. He was a purist—no TV in the camper. It was a treat when we camped at a KOA because they had a pool and utility hookups. I would look longingly at places Dad called “tourist traps.”  (I never did get to “See Rock City.”) We traveled across the U.S. and back. By the time I was a young adult I had been to 46 states.

Dad became assistant scoutmaster at my boy scout troop. Every summer we spent a week at Beaumont scout camp. We also took week-long trips to high adventure camps, such as Tinnerman canoe base in Canada and Philmont backpacking camp in New Mexico.

Dad recently told me, “There’s nothing more important than family.” It’s one of the very few times I’ve ever seen him tear up.

After I graduated college, this frugal man suddenly became generous, simply giving me money when he got the opportunity. He’s still giving away his retirement savings. I wondered, what happened to the man I grew up with? I concluded that he wanted to be generous all along, but waited until I was responsible.

Responsibility was a major value to him, something that he passed along to all his children.

So it’s like I said at the beginning: Dad, you have done remarkably well with what you were given. You may not have known everything I needed as a child, but what you did know you gave. For my part, I was pretty ungrateful. From the age of 16 I couldn’t wait to get out of the house. Yet I chose a local college and was home almost every weekend.

You’ve told me repeatedly that you’re proud of me. It’s taken me a long time to say this, but know that I’m proud of you too.

To be completely honest, if my dad wasn’t my dad, I don’t think I’d take the time to really get to know him. We’re so different. If that sounds harsh, I’m don’t mean to be. If anything, it simply means that Dad knew that his children didn’t have to be his best friends, and that made him a better parent.

I think my parents still wonder if I still hold a grudge against them for my childhood. I don’t. Because I have my own issues opening up and expressing my emotions, I don’t think they can read me very well. I hope this letter is a start to me doing things differently.

I was given a gift after Dad had his strokes. For months it appeared his mind would never come back. He doesn’t remember almost a year of his life. But his mind did come back. What he lost was mostly physical: the ability to see and walk well. He retains his sense of humor. He tells me every time I see him that he really enjoys my company and wants to see more of me. If he hadn’t come back, I wouldn’t be able to read this letter to him. How many people get a second chance?

Common wisdom says to never get into business with or loan money to your friends because you’ll lose your friends. I got into business with two friends—Randy and Jim. The common wisdom is wrong. You’ll lose only half your friends.

Jim was one of a special group of friends I made at Mississippi College. This group of friends made a huge difference in my life. You can read more about this group here.

Jim lived directly across the hall from my dorm room. Other than my roommate Randy, I may have spent the most time with Jim. (Remember Randy; he comes up later in this letter.) I think it’s because he was always friendly and approachable. I was deathly afraid of being seen as foolish or an outsider in our group. I was rarely treated this way, but that’s the way I saw myself. Jim had a way of getting me out of my absorbed self and into relationship.

I remember bringing Jim a just-released Peter Gabriel album, an actual vinyl record we played on a turntable. He really liked one of the songs on the album and started dancing around the room, hopping first on one foot and then the other. It’s this kind of spirit and serendipity that attracted me to Jim’s personality. He did things I was too self-conscious to do.

He had a bird in his room, a cockatiel. We could teach it to speak. It learned to mimic the sound and timing of the telephone well enough to fool us into thinking the phone was ringing.

Once I was on a date with my future wife Jamie. It was late and I hadn’t come back to the dorm. So he called me to make sure we weren’t doing anything we might later regret. He didn’t need to worry, but he was thoughtful to check up on me.

One of my college courses was in microprocessors. This was programming at the lowest level. My “computer” was a circuit board that included a central processor, a row of LEDs, a speaker, a memory chip, a rudimentary device to load binary numbers into memory, and not much else. We had to write a program, convert it to binary, and enter it by hand into the memory chip.

We wanted to play a song on the speaker. We could write a program to buzz the speaker at a certain frequency to play a note. We knew what frequencies corresponded to certain notes. But what song would we play? We settled on the Pac Man “intermission” ditty. If you’ve played Pac Man, you might remember it.

Jim was a music major, and I had heard that he had perfect pitch. So we asked him to write the notes of the Pac Man song. This he was able to do, and he helped us load the song into memory and play the song.

I don’t know if this was the motivation for him to switch majors. I only know that shortly thereafter he started taking computer science courses.

Jim transferred to a different college to finish his degree, and I moved up to Virginia to work as a civilian for the Navy. Randy was already there, and he recruited me. Jim joined us in 1986.

Over the next few years we all got married. Jim married Robin, and I married Jamie. Randy and his wife Cindy moved to San Antonio.

In 1986 I started a business writing a computer program for income tax preparers. Within a few years I could afford to hire a few people. I hired Jim as a programmer. Later we hired Robin’s sister.

In 1989 I recruited two major partners. I wanted Randy to become Chief Operating Officer, and a guy named Al was to be our V.P. of Marketing. With Jim and I in Virginia, Randy in San Antonio, and Al in Orlando, we had to find a common city in which to locate our business. So our little seven-person company went on the road in search of our new headquarters. We chose Rome, Georgia.

Business boomed, and we quickly outgrew two offices. In time we had a few hundred employees. Things stopped being so much about our friendships and became more about business. Al, Randy, and I were the three partners, the “three amigos.” I hardly noticed when Jim started to feel disaffected and unappreciated.

By the mid-1990s, I was burned out. Jim was ready to leave the company. A few others were ready to join him.

I found out later that this happens from time-to-time with mid-sized businesses. But it had never happened to us before. Randy and I in particular saw it as mutiny, insubordination, and a betrayal of our friendship. Never mind that we had taken his friendship for granted for a decade.

So when we suspected that Jim was planning to interview with a competitor without letting us know, we lawyered up. Jim had signed a non-compete agreement, and we told ourselves we had a right to protect ourselves. It was complete emotional over-reaction.

We could have just let him and the others go.

Instead, I’m ashamed to say that we hired a private investigator to follow Jim to his interview in Washington state. I’m pretty sure the investigator illegally recorded Jim, but he the PI didn’t admit it so it didn’t bother us.

When Jim got home, we summoned him to our attorney’s office, grilled him for hours, fired him, and confiscated his work computer. Is it any wonder he made it as difficult as possible for us after that?

Our resulting lawsuit to attempt to enforce our non-compete agreement was fueled by our anger and wanting to win at any cost. By any cost, I mean to say that we spent over a half-million dollars in attorney’s fees on our suit and a counter-suit that Jim and the other former employees filed seeking overtime pay.

I want to pass on a valuable lesson in the event you, dear reader, ever want to sue somebody. Don’t ever file a lawsuit because you’re angry. For every document you file pointing out the other guy’s outrageous behavior, he gets to file a document claiming that your behavior is even more outrageous. Yes, you get to drag him into a deposition and have your attorney grill him. Then he gets to do the same to you… and to your family, your friends, and your coworkers. Then the other guy’s attorney starts acting outrageously and you start to hate on him too. Lawsuits keep your emotions alive for years until it’s time for the trial and the anxiety overtakes you.

Near my home was a billboard rented out by a personal injury lawyer. The billboard said, “Injured or angry?” Having to pass this billboard every day was my penance for filing the lawsuit in the first place.

It was two weeks before trial. None of us wanted a trial, and yet we were entrenched in our positions. Somehow, some way, Jim and I realized that we’d have to get the attorneys out of the way and try to settle this ourselves, one-on-one.

Jim called me and we hashed out an agreement. I still remember it as one of the most difficult and stressful moments of my life. There were so many things either of us could have said, wanted to say, that would have blown up the conversation. Every word was deliberately prepared and carefully delivered. But somewhere, underneath all the animosity, a fragment of our underlying friendship still existed. It had to be Jim and me in that conversation.

In the end, only the attorneys won. We gave the former employees enough money to pay off their lawyers and Jim gave us his stock in the company. We figured that Jim would still find a way to work for our competitor, but we were done.

In the divorce, Randy and I got the mutual friends. Or at least summer visitation rights. Five families from our college group had been meeting every summer for years. Jim and Robin stopped coming. Perhaps they were willing to step aside for the good of the group, and to continue to step aside every year thereafter. For Randy and my part, we resolved not to force our mutual friends into the middle of our conflict with Jim. This letter is the first time our mutual friends will know most of these details from me.

About 11 years ago Jim’s father died. So when Randy lost his father under similar circumstances, Jim attended Randy’s father’s funeral. The two of them re-bonded over their respective losses. When our mutual friend Greg told me about this, I expressed that I was open to seeing Jim as well. But I didn’t know when the opportunity would present itself. Then Jamie recently reached out to Robin. When I started this project, I knew I couldn’t continue to put it off. I’m sorry it took a kick in the pants to seek out reconciliation.

Jim, for all of the above, I am truly sorry. I acknowledge that I treated you unfairly. I don’t want it to remain between us. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. Whether you forgive me anyway is up to you. Know that I’ve valued your friendship over the years, and I hope we can move forward as friends.