Member-only story
Learning What It Meant To Respect My Father
How my father’s triumph over failure has made me a better father
Dear Boys,
There’s a secret I need to share with you.
It’s a secret that I’ve been carefully preparing since you were born; a lab-tested vaccination against the growing virus of doubt that, I know from experience, will only strengthen over your adolescence if left untreated.
Let me begin with a story.
“Nothing’s going to change my world…”
Once upon a time, I was a sobbing sixteen-year-old behind the steering wheel of my old 1986 brown Volkswagen Jetta.
With my window rolled down and the CD player blaring the Beatle’s “Across the Universe,” I cursed God, and life, and the cruel irony of the song’s chorus.
“Jai Guru Deva Om. Nothing’s going to change my world.”
A few hours earlier it had been an idyllic Saturday morning. It was late spring. I was a teenager sleeping in. Life made perfect sense.
The look on my father’s face as he entered my room, however, had immediately cast a dark shadow on the warm midmorning light streaming in from the window overhead. Still groggy as he…
