AFTER FIVE YEARS of more hard work than any of us had imagined, Global National had become the most-watched newscast in Canada and a profit centre for the network. Winning felt good. Very good.
It was also addictive. I didn’t want to lose ever again, so I pushed. Sometimes too hard. But as advertising markets softened, it became clear that despite our success, our owners would never grant us a large enough infusion of cash to boost our broadcast budget beyond its underfunded start-up level. Our national team members weren’t earning what they should have; technical problems continually bedevilled our broadcasts. I started to fray, too, and was short-tempered at times, especially when the creative freedom that had made it all seem worthwhile started to evaporate. A new management team hired an American news consultant who imported many of the conventions of network news I had struggled to avoid. I was left out of staffing and major editorial decisions and was later broadsided when a major advertiser was promised coverage I felt compromised the integrity of the newscast. My bosses now seemed to want an anchor who would simply read, not lead. By 2006, I was increasingly unhappy.
Then as luck would have it, I met two firefighters at a charity function who were raising money and rounding up supplies for an impoverished village in Nicaragua. They invited me to go there with them, to help out—and threw in the added lure that in our downtime, I could learn to surf. Ten days far away from office politics sounded like a fine idea, and the reality was even better. Travel encourages easy intimacy and the three of us fast-forwarded to the kind of bond that, under normal circumstances, takes a very long time to achieve. On an undeveloped beach where the gentle surf provides a consistently perfect break for beginning surfers like me, we stayed in huts that looked like something out of Gilligan’s Island. The camp had been built by another Canadian, Don Montgomery, a former teacher and rugby coach, who insisted that all guests help out in nearby Jiquilillio. We spent a few days attempting to dig a well by hand at the village school, giving up only when it became clear there was no water table to hit. We also visited local hospitals to see what equipment was needed, so we could try to line it up back home; we met with soup kitchen workers supporting the community of people who subsisted by scavenging in the region’s dump. Purposeful physical labour, good company, beer on the beach and hammock-sleeping took me to a level of relaxation I hadn’t known in many years.
The surf camp had no mirrors and when, on our last night, we checked into a hotel near the airport, I was startled by my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I’d forgotten what I looked like when I was truly happy.
Back at work, I was drawn into increasingly frequent clashes over the content of the newscast and realized I had to make a choice: keep fighting and feel miserable, or retreat and try to be happy. It’s hard for any founder to let go. When you build something up from an idea, it feels like a part of you. I was protective of our team but I couldn’t control what was happening at corporate headquarters thousands of miles away in Toronto. Maybe it was time to try to care less and let Global National evolve on its own.
I didn’t withdraw as gracefully as I would have liked. It suited my managers to portray me as a “problem anchor,” and though usually I was fighting the good fight, for editorial independence, sometimes they were right. It went against the grain to care less. My motto had always been to care more.
For my entire adult life I had been using my work, and the recognition that came with it, as the main measure of my self-worth. Even as an assistant manager at McDonald’s, I’d outhustled everyone in the place, trying to stand out from the pack. If I couldn’t be popular, if my divorced parents were distracted, well, at least at work I could excel.
Being a top performer brought me the attention and regard I hadn’t been able to get any other way, so I kept it up. In my first job in TV, when I was in charge of making coffee, I tried to make sure it was hotter, fresher and tasted better than when anyone else made it. In my first on-air position as a sports reporter I arrived at the station at nine a.m. every day to be sure I got a good assignment and stayed past midnight to ensure the product, which aired on the late sportscast, was the best it could be.
For almost thirty years, and despite life-changing experiences like the one I had at GMA, I’d been treating friendships, fitness and even my family as less essential than the quest to ensure that my work stood out. It did stand out. I got noticed, and I liked that. I liked the work, too, liked witnessing history with my own eyes. In my twenties, it had been thrilling. In my thirties, my job had brought financial security. In my forties, it had allowed me to be creative and build a legacy.
Closing in on fifty, I finally understood that work is just work. It is not me. Whereas post-GMA, I wanted to be in control of my destiny professionally, now I mostly wanted to be happy. So, in 2010, I quit as anchor of Global National. The managers allowed me to say goodbye on air, then our whole team repaired to a bar where we partied hard and shared a heartfelt farewell. It was hard to leave these journalists and friends who’d believed in me and helped build the newscast. They knew me well, and had arranged the perfect parting gift: a Canadian flag that had flown on Parliament Hill, now displayed at our cottage alongside the American flag Peter Jennings gave me.
Of all the goodbyes in my career, this one was the most wrenching, and I wound up leaving the party early. Abruptly. It hurt too much. I’d been at Global National longer than I’d been anywhere; I felt I was stepping away not only from a newscast but from the ambition that had defined my life for three decades. Who would I be without it?
I took some time off, produced documentaries, explored the emerging digital media landscape, saw more of the kids. When they had time, that is. Alex was a creative director at an ad agency, a high flyer at twenty-six; Erica had just finished university and was working her way up at a film production company. Then I went back to work full-time in Ottawa for W5, CTV’s respected investigative show, which proudly boasts of being the inspiration for 60 Minutes. It was an opportunity to make the kind of lengthy features I love.
I was always looking for good stories and, in 2012, Cathy brought me one, sharing a link to a video a kid had posted on his own YouTube channel. On the screen, his shaggy hair poking out at angles under his New Jersey Devils ball cap, he had that shrugging cool demeanour of every teenage boy who’s good at sports. Good-looking kid, the tall, broad-shouldered kind who plays goalie because he fills up a hockey net and isn’t afraid to defend it. He was talking about his life in a voice deeper than you’d expect of a seventeen-year-old, completely at ease in front of a webcam, like everyone of his generation. But he didn’t preen or spout off. He had something special: real clarity to his thinking—wisdom, even. He didn’t look a thing like Alex, but something about his delivery, thoughtful yet ferocious, reminded me of my son. I watched him, wondering. Who is this kid?
Big93scott he called himself on his YouTube channel, but he didn’t say where he lived or what his real name was. In the first three-minute video I watched, he was lamenting the death of a gay kid he’d read about in the paper, a fifteen-year-old who’d killed himself after coming out and being mercilessly bullied. Big93scott came off the way most hockey players do, tough and direct. That, he explained, was one reason he’d escaped bullying after he came out: people accepted him because “I didn’t act or look or sound like anybody’s preconceptions of what a gay person acts or looks or sounds like.”
In the year leading up to his sixteenth birthday, he’d been posting a video every day, chronicling his own coming-out process for anyone who cared to see. That seemed breathtakingly, stupidly brave to me. Why declare you’re gay online, to a bunch of strangers, before telling your friends? Wouldn’t you want to control who knew something that could be used against you?
But for Big93scott, self-disclosure seemed to be the path to self-acceptance. At times he was goofy, the average above-average teenager and, at other times, bored with himself. There were also moments when he looked into the webcam from the safety of his bedroom, clearly terrified. Vulnerable. “I set the knife down on the counter. And I cried for what must have been an hour,” he confided, remembering contemplating suicide at the age of thirteen. “I was so close to getting into the bathtub and cutting my wrists that day. I was so close that it scares me even today.”
That hit me hard. Had Alex ever done that, felt that, before he came out? Or after? How much did I really know about what he had gone through? Now, I was sure, he was happy, living in Toronto’s gay village with his boyfriend. When we went out for drinks in his area, we always seemed to bump into legions of friends. But how long had it taken for him to feel proud? Months? Years? I really didn’t know.
Later that summer, Big93scott posted interviews with his parents and siblings. I was particularly struck by his older brother, Russell, a carpenter, slouched on the family sofa in baggy cargo shorts, T-shirt and ball cap. A guy’s guy if ever there was one. Talking about his brother’s potential boyfriends, Russell said, “You will bring home a partner of the same sex. Will I accept him? Yes—if I like him. If I don’t like him, I’ll let you know. ‘You have a dick of a boyfriend.’ ” The not-so-little brother jumped out from behind the camera for a hug, later posting this: “Without my family’s acceptance I would not be making this video today. Without my family’s acceptance, I would be dead.” To his family, his sexuality was no big deal. To him, it had been a life-and-death matter.
I thought a coming out-story with a confident gay jock at its centre would be perfect for W5. In my pitch, I didn’t volunteer that my own son was gay, but of course that’s why I wanted to do the story. My goal wasn’t just to sensitize the viewing public. I wanted to get one step closer to understanding my son.
Big93scott turned out to be Scott Heggart, an Ottawa boy who, by the time we met in late 2012, had come out to his teammates and was visiting local high schools as an anti-bullying advocate. He was the only openly gay male playing hockey in North America, at any level. To date, no minor league player, no NHL pro, current or retired, has ever come out publicly. Scott had no role models in his sport. So he became one.
Digging into the context in which Scott Heggart came out, with a backdrop of high-profile teen suicides in my mind, was a revelation. Even today, when it seems another athlete, rock star or actress comes out every week, gay kids are still bullied to death and are far more likely to attempt and commit suicide than straight kids are. For the first time in my career, I did not want to stand by and report objectively. I wanted to advocate for every gay kid who wasn’t out yet. I wanted to change the social order, so that no child ever again thought death was preferable to being gay.
Coincidentally, as I was working on the feature about the Heggarts I was also reading Douglas Brinkley’s penetrating biography of Walter Cronkite (I was a tiny, no doubt forgotten, footnote in his life: one morning he startled me at three a.m., dropping into the studio with Roone Arledge, then president of ABC News, while I was co-anchoring ABC’s overnight news broadcast; they looked to have been enjoying a boozy night together and were laughing uproariously, their arms slung around one another’s shoulders like frat boys). I was surprised to read that in the sixties, Cronkite and CBS Evening News had enraged the network’s Southern affiliates by openly supporting the Civil Rights Act. Cronkite believed journalists had a moral obligation to put aside their notions of neutrality and play a role in shaping Americans’ acceptance of equal rights. It was the only humane course of action.
To me, that felt like permission from one of the giants of journalism to put aside my own notions of neutrality. I had come to believe gay rights are the civil rights issue of our time. I didn’t want to dig up the obligatory interview with someone who’d provide “balance” by fulminating against Scott Heggart’s presence in a locker room. Eight years after Alex came out, I came out, too, as the proud father of a gay son. “Watching how Scott Heggart handled his personal crisis,” I told viewers, “makes me realize how brave my own son has been.”
For me, that process of “coming out” as the father of a gay son has been gradual and not always easy. I rushed to tell my own parents about Alex because I wanted to protect him. If their first reactions were shock or disgust, I didn’t want him to see that, or to hear any barbed comments or be asked any invasive questions. I was worried that any rejection could be the tipping point for depression, even suicidal thoughts. But my family responded better than I would have predicted. Though my mother was initially uncomfortable, her long-time partner, Andy, was unequivocally supportive of Alex, which probably helped my mom get her head around it. Like my father and his wife, they were never anything other than loving grandparents. Coming out on Alex’s behalf with my family, then, was not difficult.
But coming out as the father of a gay son to people who had no first-hand relationship with Alex was a different matter. To do that, I had to defend homosexuality, not just my son’s right to happiness. I’ve never been a homophobe. I supported gay rights and had always been perfectly comfortable working alongside gay colleagues. Live and let live, was my attitude. To each his own, etc. But these were abstract principles, and they’d never really been tested until my son tested me.
In the weeks after Alex came out, I’d felt sadness, at times, and even grief—reactions that embarrassed me so deeply that I couldn’t talk about them with Cathy. My emotional responses weren’t just politically incorrect, but shamefully self-involved. I felt a sense of loss, but what had I lost, really? My own narrative about the future: Alex would fall in love with a woman, they’d have kids, I’d morph into a doting grandfather. He was rewriting that story, drastically, and I had no idea how the new version would go, much less whether there would be an ending I’d consider happy.
I felt like a jerk. My son was going through a major transition. He needed me, so I had my game face on, broadcasting tolerance and acceptance, but behind it, for many months, I was still wondering: What does my son’s sexuality say about me? Did I fail as a father? Was I not masculine enough? What will my friends think of me?
I wasn’t eager to find out. Though hateful banter has never been a staple of my friendships, we’re men of a certain age. When we were growing up, homophobia was a perfectly acceptable way for young guys to assert their own masculinity. I’d experienced the sting of that a few times myself in high school, where joining the drama club was a “faggy” thing to do. Even at my university, which was large, acceptance was limited. The campus gay club had had only a handful of members.
My closest buddies, my university roommates, are intelligent, thoughtful men, not neanderthals. After Alex came out, I knew I should tell them, but … I was waiting for the right time. Early in 2005 the moment arrived, late one boozy night during our semi-annual weekend at my cottage. High-volume debates about politics and current events are the norm during these retreats, so it wasn’t out of the ordinary that conversation turned to gay marriage. This was shortly after the same-sex marriage legal victories in Canada, with made-for-TV visuals: male couples kissing on courthouse steps, female couples posing together in matching wedding gowns. Most of my friends agreed that some form of civil union made sense, but a few of them were strongly of the opinion that marriage is a church-sanctioned institution reserved for heterosexuals. And as I remember it, everyone resented having to witness the open displays of same-sex affection that stations like mine were broadcasting.
I couldn’t come down on them too hard. They were simply voicing many of the thoughts I’d had myself, before I knew Alex was gay. I hesitated, knowing that if I said anything, it would kill the mood. But by telling them now, en masse, I figured I could avoid having multiple awkward conversations later. I attempted a casual approach: “Guys, by the way, my son is gay.”
Suddenly everyone was silent and serious. Someone finally asked, “Is he sure?”
“He has sex with other boys. He’s sure.”
More awkward silence. Then, “Maybe he’s just confused.”
“No. He’s struggled with it for years. He knows his own mind.”
“How do you feel about it?” one of my friends asked.
I said, “I love Alex. I support him. But I’m still adjusting, to be honest.”
A pause. “Well,” someone said, “at least it’s a lot easier these days.”
Today, the subject rarely comes up in conversation. Old news, and if my friends have something to say about homosexuality, they probably do it when I’m not around. There’s likely some “there but for the grace of God” pity, and quite possibly some residual discomfort. It’s hard not to take that personally. But I understand, because homosexuality is outside my friends’ comfort zone. I’ve secretly pitied those friends whose children have done things outside my own comfort zone, like embracing radical religion or starting families when they’re young and unmarried.
Interestingly, some of the toughest, most masculine guys in my wider circle of friends have been the most open-hearted in their acceptance. I’m talking about soldiers, cops, firefighters, rugby players, men who’ve told me about working shoulder to shoulder in clutch circumstances with gay men, and learning to judge them not for their sexuality but for their abilities. They say they have no problem (I don’t doubt that it took time) sharing showers, tents and bunks with gay colleagues, and even feel protective of them. It’s human nature: the better you know someone, the easier it is to see past a label and judge him by the content of his character.
A lot of men don’t get that opportunity, though. There is still social segregation between straight and gay men; you might work together in an office but rarely go out for lunch or have anything approaching a deep conversation. Most of my male friends aren’t close to anyone who’s gay, and therefore they can’t see past homosexuality. It colours their view, as do the more aggressively sexual aspects of gay culture—frequently, the fringe is mistaken for the norm.
I understand this discomfort with the loudest, most flamboyant aspects of the culture because for a long time, I felt it myself. The year after Alex came out, we went to Pride Day in Vancouver. Cathy and I had made big posters we could hold up when Alex walked by, something that would advertise our family’s pride in him. We thought it would be like any parade, with orderly floats and music, and encouraged Erica, then fourteen, to bring a friend. I was shocked, I have to admit. A group of self-professed “dykes on bikes” kicked off the event, gleefully revving their motorcycles. Topless. There was a lot of leather, guys in sparkly G-strings, someone handing out free condoms, drag queens everywhere, a marked obsession with crotches. Erica and her friend sat on the curb, eyes wide as saucers. Cathy was surprised but she bought in quickly, enjoying the wildness of the spectacle. We waved the posters and cheered like crazy when Alex walked past. But did I feel comfortable? No, I did not.
I don’t like admitting this, because it proves I wasn’t the enlightened, progressive individual I’d always thought I was. And there was more proof. Long after I accepted my son’s sexuality, I continued to disappoint myself. In a room of Alex’s friends, I was hyper-aware they were gay and unable to get the thought out of my mind. I truly believe I’m unbiased when it comes to gender, race or religious affiliation; I experience no discomfort around people who are living with disabilities, or are visibly “different.” Yet I struggled to feel and act normal when I was the only straight guy in the room. I was trying to feel pride, but what I felt was shame: not about Alex, but about myself.
Reporting Scott Heggart’s story forced me to confront the conflict between what I knew intellectually to be true—a gay man is fully the equal of a straight man—and how I felt, viscerally, about homosexuality. Scott’s videos helped me understand some of what Alex must have gone through, and helped me understand the tension that had simmered between us after he came out, too. He’d needed me to be even more accepting of his sexuality than he was. He’d needed reassurance from his father that it wasn’t just okay to be gay, it was actually a good thing, something worth fighting for and defending. He’d needed to hear that from me because he wasn’t sure of it himself.
Now, as a grown man, Alex didn’t just want tolerance. He wanted my approval—not only of him, but of homosexuality itself and gay culture. Supporting him, in his eyes, meant more than standing on the sidelines making high-minded pronouncements about equal rights. He wanted me to stand right beside him, look squarely at his world, see it the way he saw it, and recognize that being gay wasn’t a handicap he had to overcome. He needed me to go all out, to believe that he is actually better off because he is gay.
It wasn’t enough for me to talk the talk, and tell him I accepted him and loved him. He needed me to walk the walk, too. That’s what makes a man a man: having the courage of his convictions and the strength to push past fear so he can own his own life. The way Alex, and Scott Heggart, and every gay man must, in order to come out.
Bear-hugging Alex on that Thanksgiving Day in 2004, I had no idea how much I would have to evolve in order to become the father I wanted to be, to both my children. I thought my acceptance of Alex at that moment was all that mattered. But I’d underestimated the distance between us, or the ways he felt I’d failed him in the years leading up to that moment. By trying to help him be sporty, popular and all the other things I hadn’t been myself, I’d made him feel inadequate. He didn’t think I could possibly accept him as a gay kid because he hadn’t felt I’d accepted him when I thought he was straight, either. I now know that he’d expected I might reject him altogether when he came out. This stunned me, far more than the revelation that he was gay. Forget career setbacks—this was true, catastrophic failure. My son did not believe my love for him was unconditional.
I did not want to lose my child. I knew there was a very real chance that once he was surrounded by people who shared his experiences, he might start thinking of them as his family, and leave us—or more likely, just me—behind. A lot of kids do that, for a lot of different reasons. In a way, I was lucky that with Alex, the signposts and the risks of alienation were so clear. I was also lucky that he didn’t want to let me go, and kept daring me to do better. The starting point, and it took several years because I was afraid to admit it, was to acknowledge that homosexuality—specifically, one man’s desire for another man—just didn’t feel normal to me. Once, when another man had put his hand on my knee, I’d felt angry: How could he think I was gay? But also scared: Did I seem gay?
Anger and intolerance are products of ignorance, and like many heterosexual men of my generation, I was almost wholly ignorant of gay culture. I was midway through my twenties before I met a man who was openly gay. Although I had gay colleagues, men and women I trusted and respected, I’d never had a close friendship with anyone who was gay.
Only by admitting my ignorance to myself, examining it and educating myself—and allowing Alex to educate me—did I get past it. When my son came out, I’d feared that older gay men would be predatory; instead, they were fatherly and caring. I assumed Alex would embrace promiscuity, but actually he sought monogamy. His gay friends were lively, intelligent and creative—exactly the kind of people whose company I enjoy most. Why would spending time with them threaten my sense of masculinity? Was it really so fragile? In fact, I came to see, these guys were in some ways more masculine than I was: they had the courage of their convictions and the strength to insist on owning and defining their lives.
One thing Alex needed to accept about me was that I don’t like overt demonstrations of sexuality, period. I don’t care whether it’s a man or woman, gay or straight—to me, there’s just something cartoonish about advertising sexual availability. In a gay bar this means I wince at leather thongs, but in a strip club catering to straight men, I’d wince at sequined thongs.
The hopelessly square truth is that when love is part of sex, it’s much easier for me to understand and celebrate. One man’s desire for another man—a particular man, not every guy in the room—now strikes me as a pretty normal thing, and nothing to turn away from. When I notice same-sex couples holding hands, my primary feeling is relief that they are now free to show the rest of us how they feel about each other. What could be more normal than falling in love and wanting to hold hands and kiss in public? When I’m with Alex in the gay village in Toronto and a young man recognizes me as “that guy who does the news,” he will occasionally ask if I will be in a picture with him. A few years ago, I might have worried about what would happen if a gossip columnist got hold of one of those selfies. Not now.
I realized how far I’d come when, in the summer of 2014, Cathy and I went to an outdoor dance party in a huge park on Pride Day. Alex had to work, but his boyfriend had invited us, and we joined a long, rambunctious lineup for the security screening wondering if we’d ever be able to find him, but we did. Pretty soon we were inside a quadrangle where club music was blasting from enormous speakers. As I lined up to buy liquor tickets, a guy complimented me on my chest. A few years ago I would have flushed, and might have been angered by the comment. This time I thanked him and told him that his chest was pretty solid, too. When he moved on to other body parts, I smiled and assured him I wasn’t in his league. He figured it out, and laughed. Later, up on a giant screen, a slide show: shots of all the men who’d taken off their shirts in the mid-summer heat. Most of them appeared to have been lifting weights (and, in some cases, taking steroids, by the looks of things) for months to look their best. I’d never seen so many jacked men in one place, not even a gym.
The beat of the music was insistent, and after Alex’s boyfriend bought me a beer, I began to move to the rhythm like everyone else. As the afternoon went on, more dancing and drinking loosened up the crowd. Shirts came off, including, eventually, mine (with Cathy rolling her eyes, especially when I dared some of Alex’s friends to match my dance moves; wisely, they passed). When Alex’s boyfriend whipped out his phone for a selfie, I threw my arm around his shoulder, and the image he caught is of two men, shirtless, smiling back at the universe. To me, that snapshot captures my evolution as a man and as a father, my understanding that pride in one’s sexuality—in-your-face exhibitionism of that pride, even—is something to be celebrated, not feared or disdained. When I posted it on Facebook with the caption “Sharing in Pride with Alex’s partner,” my son was the first to comment: “I wish I had been there, too!” Given all that we have been through, together and apart, that felt good.
I didn’t expect or want to be the father of a gay son, it’s true. I had great expectations for Alex, and they didn’t include being homosexual. But Alex has met—exceeded!—the dreams I dreamed for him while I was rocking him to sleep on my chest twenty-nine years ago. Today, he is athletic, adventurous, popular. He is also highly successful. And here’s the thing: he became all those things largely because he is gay. It was his own bravery in coming out and living his truth that enabled him to thrive. If he’d stayed in the closet, he could not have become the man he is today. Being gay has given Alex the life I always dreamed of for him. It has also made him a man I not only love, but deeply admire.
Another surprise: I’ve changed for the better, too.
In December 2014, Cathy and I returned to New York to attend a GMA alumni party in the lobby bar of the Empire Hotel—the same place I’d called home those first terrifying months in New York. As Cathy and I hopped into a Yellow Cab and headed to the hotel, I was nervous. I wasn’t sure many people would even remember me; ABC had written me and Lisa out of the show’s official history. And then there was the way it had all ended, and reminders of the shadow that had existed over Cathy’s health when we left. So much had happened since then to make me stronger and more confident, but for a few brief minutes the bruises felt tender again.
Almost as soon as we walked in the door, my apprehension shifted to excitement. It was so good to reconnect with these people I’d shared so many early morning hours with, and everyone was amazed to see Cathy looking so well and then genuinely thrilled to hear that she’d been misdiagnosed. People asked after our kids, and we had wonderful stories to share: Alex had won a gold medal in the Young Lions competition at Cannes, the most prestigious event in advertising, and Erica was thriving as a production assistant at an animation company. Both of them had serious boyfriends, men we liked. As the evening went on and people loosened up, a few of the studio crew pulled me aside and said how sorry they were about how GMA had ended for me, that they felt I was never given a fair shot. It felt good to be able to tell them I was just fine and, in retrospect, thankful it hadn’t worked out. I had a better-balanced life. I was finally happy.
And then Charlie Gibson showed up. The respect in the room was palpable. He had been unrelentingly courteous to every person at that party during his eighteen years as co-host, and now enjoyed their uncomplicated, unstinting affection. Everyone wanted some face time with him, so I hung back. Near the end of the evening, though, he found me and Cathy in a corner booth and sat down with us. We talked about our children, his grandchildren, Cathy’s health, his wife, Arlene. Charlie had retired in 2009, stepping down voluntarily just three years after starting his dream job, anchoring ABC’s World News. I suspected that he’d also discovered that work is just work. But I asked anyway: What did he miss? “Nothing,” he replied. “There is so much more to my life now. It’s so much richer. How much more work do you really need?”
I knew exactly what he meant. All those years, I’d looked at work as the way to become a better man. More successful, more approved of, more respected. I got all of that, but it did not make me a better man. My family did. I think I avoided falling in love with celebrity, or becoming bitter when I failed, because my family grounded me.
Here’s the part I never would have predicted twenty-nine years ago: my children have been the most important teachers in my life. They have tested my beliefs and challenged my will. They have called me to account and made me look at the world differently. They have taught me to aim for true success, the kind that lasts and matters: being a good father.
I’ll keep trying.