One of my favorite quotes about branding is something Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is credited with saying: “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” As the father of adult children, I’ve found that these words of wisdom also apply to what kind of father you may or may not have been.
The kind of father you've been is what your kids say about you, not only when you’re not in the room, but when they’re grown. Of course, this must be taken with a grain of salt. Not every kid’s perspective is accurate or just. Some people grow up and blame their parents for their own failings.
Fortunately for me, that’s not the case. But in recent years, as I’ve heard my kids recount stories of their younger years where I was involved, I’ve definitely learned that how I remember it may not be how they remember it.
Take our trips (plural) to hospital emergency rooms. Yes, I had some very active boys, and the ER was not an unfamiliar destination. When a trip to the ER was called for, I was usually the designated chauffeur.
The boys played baseball and football, did things like trying to ride bikes in places where bikes can’t normally go, and with that, things happened. As a dad of boys, I got all too accustomed to the drill. You show up at the ER, and after a long wait, an intake nurse or staff member calls your name and makes sure you have insurance, and then he or she asks a series of questions. The first one is always, “What happened?”
In our experience, given the nature of some of the crazy things that happened, the second question is always asked with a puzzled look on the nurse’s face: “How did that happen?”
A broken wrist from a bicycle daredevil stunt, “jersey finger” from a football game, a broken elbow from a pick-up baseball game, a broken ankle from a game of release, and perhaps my most memorable: the time my son refused to wear his mouthguard while playing infield and a ground ball dodged his baseball glove and smacked his lip in just the right way as to staple it to his braces underneath. I had to take him to the ER to get a doctor to un-pry the lip from the maze of stainless steel and titanium in his mouth.
My son still reminds me of the look on my face when the young med student asked me if I wanted to be the one to pull the lip off the braces. It was an all-too-familiar expression of mine when pushed past my limit.
I actually never realized my habits when we’d take these trips to the ER. On the way to the hospital, I’d usually question them on how they did whatever they did to require said trip to the ER. I’m told my volume wasn’t low, and that my questions would rival that of a prosecuting attorney doing a cross-examination.
Afterward, with stitches complete, or casts on limbs, and me having gotten my frustration out of my system, we’d stop at the same Wendy’s, and I’d ask “the patient” if he wanted a Frosty. This was consistent regardless of the situation or the kid, and I only realized it when I listened to the kids tell their dad stories more recently. The good thing is that they laugh about it now.
Then there was a time one of my sons had an Aaron Carter CD, and as I drove him somewhere, he inserted it into the player. Not more than 15 seconds into the song, I must have heard something I didn’t approve of, and as my son now tells it, “Dad just hit the eject button and threw the CD out the window without missing a beat or saying a word.” Now that he mentions it, I do remember that incident, but I had totally forgotten about it. Apparently I wanted to make a point, and a point was made. That’s probably the one time in all my years I littered like that, but who knows—maybe some Aaron Carter fan found the CD and benefited from our teachable moment.
Most of my kids’ memories of me don’t involve me being the bad cop in the house. They usually fall under a category of “Dad Things.”
Like the year we must have watched the movie Field of Dreams five times, the next summer I planted corn in our big side yard that doubled as a whiffle ball field. I would learn that corn needs a lot of sun, and that was not the sunny side of the house. They laugh about that, too. While I failed as a farmer, in my defense, where I grew up, you could cut the grass with a manual push mower and be done in 15 minutes.
Or the year a young stray cat followed my one son home from school, and once he got to our house, he never left the yard. I wouldn’t let the kids name him or let him in the house all summer. He was known as “the cat who’s not staying.” Well, one brisk and windy October day, the cat got my attention as he sat on the ledge outside our dining room window. I let him in, and he stayed for 14 years. The kids still like to remind me that he was my shadow, and I took his death the hardest. Truth.
They talk about dad’s stories and dad’s jokes. They still talk incessantly about our trips to a particular lake in Pennsylvania – the fishing, the canoes, the kayaks, and the hikes up a nearby mountain to the top. They talk about our trips to Disney World and my way of making sure they used the restroom before we stood in a 45-minute line.
My wife made it a point to take periodic overnight trips with her college girlfriends, which gave her a break from being a boy mom for a little while. She’d always leave a short list of chores she wanted the boys and me to do while she was out. “So I don’t come back to a sink full of dishes," she'd say.
That translated to me as, “Why don’t you take the boys to Gettysburg,” which I did every time. My sons still talk about the time we signed up to have a park ranger ride with us to tour the battlefield, and apparently, I kept asking too many questions. You’d have to hear them tell it, complete with dead-on imitations of me. I’d like to think they’re laughing with me, not at me, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Perhaps most gratifying is that I’ve gotten to enjoy that moment that you hope as a father someday comes. You’d like to think that someday your kids will thank you in spite of all your idiosyncrasies, and for the times that as a parent you learned as you went and did your best. I’ve had the good fortune to hear that, combined with seeing how they want to do the same with their own kids.
They’ve thanked me for my rule of not carrying their sports equipment for them. I used to tell them that if they were old enough to play the sport, their bats, gloves, shoes, helmets, and shoulder pads were their responsibility. This had the desired effect. The notion of personal responsibility carried through whatever the endeavor was—be it school, work, or any other activity.
As adults, they’ve thanked me for the time I spent with them on ballfields practicing with them, encouraging them, but perhaps more importantly, for the fact that when they played games in the mud and in the rain, in the hot sun, or on a foggy night, they could always look up to the stands and I’d be there. They tell me this now, and that it mattered to them.
When trying to instill a work ethic in my kids while raising them, I’d often tell them that this is what would someday set them apart, and it would pay them back with jobs, promotions, being able to make a good living, and doing all the things they want to do in life. They’re experiencing that now, and they’ve even said something I never expected: “Dad, you were right.”
The truth is, I don’t kid myself. I know I was wrong more often than I was right, and thanks to my own work ethic, I wasn’t there as much as I wanted to be, but to hear my kids tell it, I was there for them.
The bonus for me is that when I talk to the kids on the phone, they now almost always sign off with an “I love you.” I never counted on that, and I’m pretty okay with it.
Father’s Day is this Sunday, and now I get to see the next generation embark on this journey of fatherhood, and I must say it’s everything I had hoped it would be. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. If you’re a dad, it may be a little early, but Happy Father’s Day!
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