For Father’s Day, I want to share an excerpt from Be There Dad with dads everywhere. Half a dozen first grade girls were engaged in a conversation on the playground during recess one morning. It was a conversation similar to others that have taken place on similar playgrounds many times before. Like the other exchanges,…
I sat only a few hundred yards from the dorm room where I had left my daughter as a freshman. Just four years ago, she had taken the biggest step of her life to that point.
When the time to go came, she gave me a kiss, squeezed my hand and told me “I will be here when you come out”. These were the truest words I have ever heard.
One evening, instead of retiring after the news, as he usually did, my dad hung around and watched the entire movie with me. The selection that night was entitled Spencer’s Mountain* starring Henry Fonda.
As I stood there wearing my Be There Dad shirt, I saw some of our dream coming true. Parents and children were working together. This is how we teach our kids.
On Saturday morning, I stood among some 5000 others in what they call the runners corral waiting to run a local half marathon. Trying to stay warm in near freezing temperatures, my mind wandered to the last time I had stood in a similar crowd waiting to run my first “half” over thirty years ago.