TFW my kids scare me half stupid
It's my own damn fault
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My friend Jason Meinershagen asked me to contribute to an anthology he compiled called “Notes From Dad.” The book is full of challenging and powerful and hilarious ruminations on what it means to be a dad. Buy it right here. My essay is below.
TFW my kids scare me half stupid
The wind whipped against my bare arms and legs, stinging like a thousand paper cuts. Standing next to me, my daughter shivered, and we were equally to blame for our predica – nah screw that it was her dang fault. This polar plunge was her idea, and all I did was encourage her … and be dumb enough to promise to do it with her if nobody else would.
Which of course nobody else would because they’re too smart to be outside in shorts and t-shirts when it’s 25 degrees out.
As we stood on a beach in suburban St. Louis, waiting for our turn to jump in the frigid lake, the emcee prattled on and on. Why this event needed an emcee, and why he needed to introduce us, and why he needed to prattle on and on when it was, as I mentioned, 25 degrees out and we were wearing shorts and t-shirts, I didn’t understand then and still don’t now.
We needed to get this over with!
Without introductions!
Or needless prattling!
Finally he yelled “go.” I sprinted into the water, spin-jumped and flopped onto my back. Next to me, my daughter sprinted, too, and she dove in headfirst.
The average pool is about 80 degrees.
The water temperature was 39.
The shock felt as if someone waxed my entire back at once. My chest seized as if my skin was suddenly three sizes too small for my rib cage. To my left, my daughter glowed red, and her eyes popped as if they were suddenly three sizes too big for their sockets. We ran together to a building to warm up, and every step on the beach and sidewalk plunged nails deep into our feet.
I was miserably, painfully, desperately cold and proud to bursting because so was my daughter, and yet she endured it.
As I warmed up in a nearby locker room, I marveled at the profound change in her life, and mine, that this adventure represented.
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When she was about 3, my daughter ascended to the top of a big slide, looked down, said, “I don’t think this is a good idea,” and climbed back down. This happened time and again. No matter how I tried to cajole her, reason with her, bribe her, I could not persuade her to go down the slide.
I’ve been a writer for 30 years, and rule No. 1 in storytelling is show me don’t tell me. That should be rule No.1 in parenting, too. She would learn nothing if I told her what she would get out of going down the slide, if I lectured her about the importance of facing her fears, if I explained to her she would build mental strength by doing hard things. But if I showed her those things, she would grow to embody resilience.
The problem was, at the time, I could not show her those things because I did not know those things. I had not lived a life that taught me them. My life had been too easy. I had pursued, and caught, comfort. I had not challenged myself or been challenged.
Soon enough I learned lessons about perseverance the hard way—when I got laid off from my job at Sporting News Magazine.
Even though I knew the layoff was coming, I was wholly unprepared for it. Faced with life in turbulent water, I nearly drowned because I didn’t know how to swim in anything but a pool.
Fear consumed me as I pursued a career as a freelance writer, and that fear made me timid. I lived as if I was atop the slide and unwilling to go down it … but also unable to walk back down the ladder because there was no ladder. I had no choice but to take the ride in front of me.
That fear is still there, sometimes, like a yell echoing across a canyon. But I learned to face fears in the professional world by facing fears in the physical world. I constructed a mantra: If I can persevere through hardship when I choose that hardship and can quit at any time, I will be that much more prepared to endure hardship when it chooses me and I can’t quit.
I went rock climbing and ice climbing and surfing and white-water rafting and ziplining and to dog mushing school and climbed a 60-foot red oak named Willa. I competed in Tough Mudder and adventure races and organized my own endurance events—three 250-mile bike rides across Missouri and an event I dubbed 50-50-50, in which nine friends and I hiked 50 miles, biked 50 miles and canoed 50 miles, all in one epic weekend to celebrate my 50th birthday.
The morning after that, I came downstairs and my daughter said, “Dad, you look terrible!”
I considered that a high compliment … and proof that I was showing her important lessons I could never adequately tell her.
The world teaches us to crave comfort, to bask in ease, to always seek the path of least resistance. But we grow most when we push ourselves, when we strive for goals that are just out of our reach, when we doubt whether can do something and try anyway.
Over the last 10 years, I have tried to live a life that shows my two daughters that.
The only problem is … well, I kind of wish I hadn’t.
Because watching them live like that is going to put me in an early grave.
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First it was skiing. I was shocked they wanted to go, shocked again when they strapped the skis on for lessons and gobsmacked when I couldn’t get them to leave even as night fell.
Then I nearly froze to death in Lake St. Louis, and after that came a trip to Colorado so I could write a family vacation story. I called it “He Thrills, They Chill.” I planned to go rock climbing and hiking while my wife and daughters made jam and petted animals and did experiments looking for evidence of pollution in creeks. I hoped to coax them onto the thrill side, but I wasn’t expecting much.
A sure sign that a day is going to be good is if I have to sign a waiver, wear a helmet or use a carabiner. When I have to do all three, I know it’s going to be epic. What I didn’t realize was how difficult it would be to have my daughters alongside me for such an adventure.
It’s one thing to encourage your kids to live a life of adventure, to face their fears, to build perseverance by doing hard things. It’s quite another to snap their carabiners into place, make sure their helmets fit, and then watch them navigate danger.
I mean, they could get hurt!
And so could I!
And their mom would kill me!
But chickening out would have been disastrous, so I scribbled my name on the waiver next to the printed version of mine …
AND THEIRS!
WHICH WAS SO MUCH HARDER!
… and double- and triple-checked their equipment. Every helmet was too small or too big or not padded enough or whatever—it was clear whoever makes these things doesn’t know the first thing about protecting my girls’ precious brains. Anyway, when I made the final snap of her harness—I ALMOST FORGOT TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE HARNESS—to make sure it was properly tightened, my hand slipped, and I bonked her face …
SO HARD!
… I thought I broke both her nose.
Nervous, who, me?
We turned our attention to the ropes course at Winter Park Adventure Quest. The apparatus looked like a jungle gym as imagined by the set designer for Lord of the Rings. Wires and rope bridges and planks ringed the two-story structure.
Imagine two stories off the ground and facing a series of ropes shaped like giant U’s hanging from a crossbar overhead. To get across, you step from one rope to the next.
My daughter stood on one end of the obstacle. I stood on the other. She asked me how to do it. I offered my best guess but did not try to show her because I couldn’t deal with my own fears, my girls’ fears, and my fears on their behalf at the same time.
For a minute, two, three, she couldn’t move. She wanted to give up. She wanted to go. She wanted to give up. She wanted to go. I thought she was going to climb back down, just like she did on the slide. But she didn’t. After instruction from the guide, she not only tried, she finished.
Sunshine shot out of her ears!
Lightning bolts shot from her fingertips!
Relief shot out of every one of my pores!
Then she climbed down off the ropes course and scaled the adjacent rock wall before I could even get down to watch her.
Who’s teaching who about the joys of risk taking, I have wondered over and over again since then. Now when she’s not jumping in frigid lakes or scaling rock walls she’s acting in local theater productions, which requires an entirely different kind of fear-facing and yet also jacks up my heart rate at the same time.
Do I want my daughters to live adventurous lives? Unequivocally yes!
Do I want to witness any of it? Unequivocally no!
It scares me half stupid, and I know from experience that the only way I can get over that fear is to force myself to watch them do it over and over again and //keels over of a heart attack//.
They don’t have to show me. They can just tell me later.