The Council Of Dads Part 3

And, please, take a walk for me.

Love,

.8.

MAX

Pack Your Flip-Flops

IT BEGAN WITH A WALK. On the Sat.u.r.day before cla.s.ses began at Yale in 1983, huddles of freshmen gathered outside the dorms to trek together to the first football game of the season. One was a feisty schoolboy with hippy curly hair and cutoffs, who was so short and bookish he had been bullied in the Iowa town where he lived as a teenager, yet so smart and endearing his mother had trotted him out to beat her friends in chess. Another was me, preppier and a half a foot taller, but also fresh from growing up in a place where it was cooler to slay a rum and c.o.ke than to read On the Sat.u.r.day before cla.s.ses began at Yale in 1983, huddles of freshmen gathered outside the dorms to trek together to the first football game of the season. One was a feisty schoolboy with hippy curly hair and cutoffs, who was so short and bookish he had been bullied in the Iowa town where he lived as a teenager, yet so smart and endearing his mother had trotted him out to beat her friends in chess. Another was me, preppier and a half a foot taller, but also fresh from growing up in a place where it was cooler to slay a rum and c.o.ke than to read To Kill a Mockingbird. To Kill a Mockingbird.

We set out on the hour-long walk to the stadium and an hour later had spoken to no one else. What I remember most was the feeling-the absolute conviction-that this person would be in my life forever.

"Immediately I felt we were kindred souls," said Max, twenty-five years later. "Yet I tried to figure out where your self-awareness had come from. After all, unlike me, you hadn't lost your father when you were three. Your dad hadn't shot himself."

EVER SINCE THAT AFTERNOON, Max Stier was a constant presence in my life. Days might go by when we didn't talk; but, in a quarter century, a fortnight never pa.s.sed when we didn't communicate. For two years we were roommates in college; for two months after our junior year we backpacked from Singapore to Beijing-getting stung by jellyfish in the Indian Ocean, urinating off the Great Wall, and getting booted from the lobbies of the great hotels because Max insisted on wearing tank tops and flip-flops. Max Stier was a constant presence in my life. Days might go by when we didn't talk; but, in a quarter century, a fortnight never pa.s.sed when we didn't communicate. For two years we were roommates in college; for two months after our junior year we backpacked from Singapore to Beijing-getting stung by jellyfish in the Indian Ocean, urinating off the Great Wall, and getting booted from the lobbies of the great hotels because Max insisted on wearing tank tops and flip-flops.

That summer we made a pact to return to Asia when we were fifty, with whatever families we had, and stay in those hotels. Whichever one of us had made more money would have to foot the bill.

About halfway through that summer, Max and I arrived in northern Thailand. We arranged to go on an elephant safari with two blond backpackers from New Zealand. It had all the makings of a teenage male fantasy. But the night before, after we splurged on a meal of chicken, baby corn, and ice-cream sundaes, Max's stomach exploded and everything went running for the nearest exit. Soon he was splayed on the bathroom floor, covered in vomit, shaking. I did the only thing I could think to do: I doused him in water, wrapped him in a bedsheet, and carried him to the nearest hospital. Instead of spending the next three days riding elephants, smoking opium, and chasing my wet dreams, I was camped out in the emergency ward, in between Max and a dying man, whose family had built a Buddhist shrine in the corner.

Two decades later I was the one on the bathroom floor, heaving, shivering, and Max had flown in to be by my side, leaving his wife and two young sons at home. That's when I realized the grim bond we shared: Max's father had died when he was three, the same age as my girls. The man who knew me best had grown up in the situation I feared the most.

MAX S STIER COMES FROM a family of fatherless sons. His maternal grandfather lost his father when he was thirteen and began pushing a fruit cart to support his family. Max's own father lost his father young. "My dad was an only child and my grandmother was extremely possessive of him," he said. "She was also very negative. I was on a kids' television show when I was six and was asked, 'Why does your grandmother love you?' I was supposed to give a cute answer, but I...didn't know the answer. That was the end of my television career." a family of fatherless sons. His maternal grandfather lost his father when he was thirteen and began pushing a fruit cart to support his family. Max's own father lost his father young. "My dad was an only child and my grandmother was extremely possessive of him," he said. "She was also very negative. I was on a kids' television show when I was six and was asked, 'Why does your grandmother love you?' I was supposed to give a cute answer, but I...didn't know the answer. That was the end of my television career."

"So what is the answer?" I asked.

"There is none. For someone like a grandparent or a parent, the answer is that they just do love you. It's the nature of the relationship. But the painful reality for me is that I've had very few of those relationships in my life."

Max's father, Herbert, was an orthopedic surgeon, a charmer, and a hard-driving father of three in the fall of 1969. "Apparently he was a very smart guy, overly ambitious, who wanted to succeed, so he pushed himself relentlessly," Max said. "He was doing research for the intellectual stimulation and consulting for the money. He started taking drugs to get up, to get down, to work, to sleep. He was trying to be Superman. Basically he had a psychotic break."

The housekeeper found him in the garage of their Tudor home in Los Angeles. He had a gun in his hand and a bullet hole in his heart. He left no note. Max's mother picked him up from nursery school and told him, "Your father is dead." When I met Max fourteen years later, he still believed the story his mother had told for all those years: The shooting had been an accident.

"She was waiting for us to ask," Max said. "And I think she was right. More dramatic for me is my complete lack of memory about the event-or my father. And when I think of my own kids, who are three and four now, I think, 'When do you cross that threshold when you maintain a conscious presence in your child?' I have no doubt I was impacted by my dad in ways I don't remember, but still, I can't remember."

"Do you have some keepsake?"

"I'm not a very materialistic person," he said. "I think I have a watch in a safety-deposit box somewhere. But truthfully, physical objects are not him for me. My connection is the stories I hear from people. My growing sense that he liked to kid around, that he was loyal and intellectually curious. All things I am."

I said one of the hard things for me is that my girls did not yet understand the meaning of death. "I met a woman recently who lost her husband," I said. "She told her eight-year-old daughter, 'Daddy is dead,' and her daughter said, 'Yes, I know. But when is he coming home?' Did you understand that your dad was dead?"

"When I was six, I had a series of nightmares," Max said. He paused to inhale. "This one is really hard to tell." His eyes reddened, and he squinched his nose in pain. His voice fell to a whisper. "The doorbell would ring and I'd get the door. And my dad would be there. But he'd look as if he'd just come out of the grave. Like a zombie. I didn't want to see him."

"What do you think those dreams meant?"

"I think it was part of my ambivalence," he said.

"Part of me wanted him; part of me was afraid of him. And that tension was very strong."

"So let's just say that in ten years, Tybee and Eden come to you and say, 'You were the closest person to our father. The same thing happened to you that's happened to us. What do we do?'"

He reflected for a second. "I would start by saying how much you loved them," Max said. "How I watched you blossom by having children. How good a dad you were. The most important thing a parent can do, I believe, is water a child profusely with love. I would water your children with love."

"What would you tell them to do with the pain?" I asked. "Should they confront it, or try to get over it?"

"It's not something you get over," he said. "It's something that's already a part of you. So you have to come at it directly-and keep coming back at it. The Jewish tradition of remembering those who have died every year is pretty useful. I cry once a year. I say the mourner's Kaddish and suddenly the emotion returns. I feel a deep hurt.

"But at the same," he said, "I would do something else. I would tell them stories. When you lose someone, the loss becomes the dominant memory. You have to build a rival memory. We went here and did this. He took you there and did that. We went here and did this. He took you there and did that. By doing that, you help the girls find their own voice. They take the negative pain and create a positive side to it." By doing that, you help the girls find their own voice. They take the negative pain and create a positive side to it."

BEFORE SITTING DOWN TO speak with Max, I went back and read the journals I'd kept that summer we traveled together in Asia. Beside the youthful atrociousness of my own writing, what struck me most was how much hostility I felt toward him. Some of this antipathy probably came from my insecurities. Max was more confident and independent than I was at the time, and it bothered me. But part of this was his inflexibility. He had to have orange juice every morning before seven; he gave the Chinese lectures about customer service; he was fond of giving me discourses about how his Swiss Army knife could do more than mine. speak with Max, I went back and read the journals I'd kept that summer we traveled together in Asia. Beside the youthful atrociousness of my own writing, what struck me most was how much hostility I felt toward him. Some of this antipathy probably came from my insecurities. Max was more confident and independent than I was at the time, and it bothered me. But part of this was his inflexibility. He had to have orange juice every morning before seven; he gave the Chinese lectures about customer service; he was fond of giving me discourses about how his Swiss Army knife could do more than mine.

May 30: "Max annoyed me a little bit today."June 8: "I got really mad at Max tonight."July 8: "Max is not the most sensitive friend I have."

At one point we actually split up for three days.

In retrospect, we were probably incompatible as roommates. Max is an early-to-bed, early-to-riser; I'm the opposite. Max insisted on doing push-ups and bench-pressing our backpacks every morning; I ate leftover dumplings. Max is obsessively neat; I'm only mostly neat. At one point we actually saw a production of The Odd Couple The Odd Couple in Chinese. in Chinese.

But precisely because we endured those trials, our friendship became unbreakable. What happened in Shanghai stayed in Shanghai, and what was left was as enduring as the Great Wall. Max was my "Purple Heart," as in, "I went to war with this person, got wounded, but survived." He's the friend who nicked me a few times when we were younger, but our connection became so strong that the wounds soon melted away.

I would want him to tell the girls how we earned those wounds, of course-who we were when we first left home. But beyond that, I would want Max to embody for Eden and Tybee the values he has always represented to me. The loyalty of the friend who sees how far I've come instead of how far I have to go. The dignity of the person who has devoted his entire life to serving others. The self-respect of the man who insists on meeting his own standards instead of succ.u.mbing to those of others.

Max would teach them how to live. "To me it all comes back to when I was a teenager being bullied in Iowa," Max said when I asked where those values came from. "I had to make a choice. I could change who I was and become more acceptable to the people around me, or I could stick to who I was and not worry about others. I decided that the world be d.a.m.ned, I was going to stick with who I was."

Armed with that self-reliance, Max became one of the most focused, efficient people I know. He was Phi Beta Kappa in college, clerked for the Supreme Court, counseled presidents. He started and still runs a nonprofit that encourages young people to go into public service. His confidence and sense of fairness were on display in one of the more selfless decisions Max ever made. He agreed to give his first son, Zachary, the surname of his wife, Florence Pan, the first Asian-American judge in the nation's capital.

"To me it was a no-brainer," Max explained. "There are no males in Florence's family, and it was meaningful for her dad to have the name continue. I honestly feel there is no legitimate reason why a child should have the father's name instead of the mother's. Plus, with our second son, we flipped. Noah got my name."

"You make it sound like a logic puzzle," I said.

"To me, it's part of equal parenting," he said. "When you're married to somebody, you need to put yourself in their shoes. There are some things I do better; some things Florence does better. But they have nothing to do with the particular XY chromosomes we have."

"Where does that att.i.tude come from?"

"Part of it is a cultural norm," he said. "You're the same way. But there's no doubt that in my case it also comes from not having a dad myself. I value fatherhood more because I know what I lacked. And for me, the great thing about being a parent is that even though I feel like I didn't have much of a childhood as a boy, I'm having one now as a father."

As he talked I realized Max was speaking in a voice I had rarely heard him use. It was the voice of contentment. The fatherless boy had finally found peace in part by becoming a father himself. That morning, before coming to see me, he planted a vegetable garden with Zachary. That evening, he read a book to Noah on the phone and was genuinely worried about the golden treasure stolen by the pirates. That night, he was still wearing a tank top and flip-flops. Perhaps Max's greatest accomplishment is that he would still get kicked out of the great hotels of Asia for appearing too much like a child.

"So let's say we're lucky enough to make our trip when we're fifty," I said. "What will we have built in the intervening thirty years?"

"First of all, we're going to make it, Bu-ru-su," he said, using the j.a.panese version of my name. "And I think the answer is, we have a deeper love for each other. Part of it is sharing experiences over time, the encyclopedia of knowing someone forever. But the most important part is just being good friends. Someone who is there when you need help, there when you have something joyous to share, there to hold up a mirror so you can understand how you've changed."

"And are we going to stay in those fancy hotels?"

"Not if I have to wear long pants," he declared. "And not if I can't wear flip-flops."

"What's so important about flip-flops?"

"It's nothing to do with footwear," he said. "It's back to my philosophy of self-reliance over fitting in. I want to do the right thing, and to me that means not wearing too much clothing in a tropical sweatbox."

As soon as he said that, I suddenly flashed to that kid in curly hair and cutoffs I first met when we were teenagers-bookish, boyish, ready to outsmart you in chess, and able to turn his defiant taste in shoes into an enduring axiom of personal integrity: No matter where you are, you should always be true to yourself. No matter where you go, you should always pack your flip-flops.

.9.

THE LESSON OF THE DUNES

WHEN PEOPLE HEAR THAT I am a writer, they often ask if I learned it from my dad. "My dad never wrote anything longer than a memo," I usually quip. I am a writer, they often ask if I learned it from my dad. "My dad never wrote anything longer than a memo," I usually quip.

But what memos!

My father is the master of the memo pad. The Shakespeare of sticky notes. Few people I know say more with less.

From the time we were kids, we got stacks of news articles slipped under our doors (later they were faxed, then e-mailed, now texted), each with a specific coding: R&R R&R meant read and return; a double arrow meant read and pa.s.s along to the next person. We got reams of note-paper encrypted with his paternal haiku. meant read and return; a double arrow meant read and pa.s.s along to the next person. We got reams of note-paper encrypted with his paternal haiku.

Your will / Let's discuss / When?

Cleaning the porch / Sunday morning / Command performance.

These dispatches were invariably written in flat-line cursive with blue, red, or green felt-tip ink. And they would never be longer than ten words. On the day of a piece of bad news: How do we solve the problem? How do we solve the problem? On the morning of a big transition: On the morning of a big transition: Don't look back Don't look back.

My dad makes Twitter seem expansive.

When he turned sixty, we gathered a number of my father's most memorable Dad-isms and put them in a book.

If you don't like it, don't eat it, but don't kick.

If it can be solved with time or money, it's not a problem.

As long as you're still talking, you're still negotiating.

Some were wicked, like his comment whenever a child took a tumble: Did you hurt the floor? Did you hurt the floor? Some were wise, like his remark about his mother's Alzheimer's: Some were wise, like his remark about his mother's Alzheimer's: It's more difficult to bring down parents than to bring up kids It's more difficult to bring down parents than to bring up kids.

At least three are enduring. They grew out of the pivotal moments in my upbringing and became the proverbs that most embody my father to me.

MY DAD IS ONE of those men who become better-looking the older they get. The distinguished seventy-year-old with the bald pate and silver temples who reminds people of Gene Hackman was once a skinny Eagle Scout with nerd-wavy hair and Dumbo ears. Edwin Feiler Jr. was an awkward child, and he was often overshadowed by his dashing younger brother, Stanley. When their father built a subdivision, he named the prized front street after Stanley, the rear one after my dad. of those men who become better-looking the older they get. The distinguished seventy-year-old with the bald pate and silver temples who reminds people of Gene Hackman was once a skinny Eagle Scout with nerd-wavy hair and Dumbo ears. Edwin Feiler Jr. was an awkward child, and he was often overshadowed by his dashing younger brother, Stanley. When their father built a subdivision, he named the prized front street after Stanley, the rear one after my dad.

"Stanley was just more polished," my father said. "When I was fifteen, my father took us to Hunter Army Airfield and tried to teach me how to drive. He failed. Yet Stanley, who was only twelve, picked it up. He was just easier to train. He was always popular. He had better social skills. You could take him places where I wouldn't fit in."

What my father had was discipline and determination. Those rabbit ears aside, he was the cla.s.sic tortoise. He gritted his way into the top ten of his cla.s.s at the Savannah High School, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and navy ROTC. When I asked him how he became an Eagle Scout, he said, simply: "I try to complete the things I start."

Ironically, a rare lapse in that self-control became a central moment in his life. He called it "the hour that changed my life." "In 1956 I was commissioned into the navy and sent to training school," he said. "My grades gave me the right to pick any a.s.signment, and I chose to be stationed in Europe. But several weeks before graduation, I cut a cooking cla.s.s and took a nap. I thought I wouldn't get caught, and I got caught. That's how I got a.s.signed to the U.S.S. Wisconsin Wisconsin in Norfolk, Virginia, which is how I ended up marrying your mother." in Norfolk, Virginia, which is how I ended up marrying your mother."

"So your delinquency brought us here today!"

"Absolutely. And I was not normally a very delinquent guy."

Two years later, on the day my mother was supposed to attend her graduation from the University of Michigan, Edwin Feiler and Jane Abeshouse were married in Baltimore. Her mother serenaded them with a homespun version of "Dixie."

They're on their way to the land of cottonEd and Jane won't be forgotten...In Dixie-Land they'll be so happyGrits and juleps to keep them snappy The next year they moved back to Savannah and settled into my great-grandmother's old house. "When I left Savannah in 1952, I thought I would never come back," my father said. "Savannah wasn't much of a place. There was no air-conditioning. No television. The only people who had TV set up giant antennae to receive one or two stations from Jacksonville. There were tons of unpaved streets, even downtown. Lady Astor said Savannah was like a beautiful woman with a dirty face. She was right! Plus, it was highly and uncomfortably segregated."

But something changed along the way. He did. "When I was living in the Northeast, I realized I didn't like the values of the New YorkNew Jersey corridor," my father said. "One night in college, I was in the Bryn Mawr train station after taking out this girl, and I said to myself, 'I don't want to live here. Savannah's a much better place to raise children.'"

The gambit paid off. By the 1960s, Savannah was on the move, my father was finding success building houses, and my mother was pregnant. But when my brother was born in October 1961, crisis. The eight-pound, eight-ounce baby had an enormous growth protruding from the bottom of his spine, a rare defect called a myelomeningocele. "It was this big blob, sticking out of his body, that was larger than his head," my father recalled.

My mom's father, Bucky, a prominent urologist, was in the delivery room. "When Bucky saw it, the first thing he did was scratch the instep of the baby's foot," my dad said. "Andy wiggled his toes. Bucky concluded that the boy's spinal cord was intact and said that even though only one in ten thousand people with this birth defect ever walked, Andy could be the one." The next day a team of thirteen doctors removed the growth and closed my brother's spine. After the surgery, Bucky a.s.sured my mother that her son would live a normal life and said he had to return to Baltimore to operate.

A month later Bucky Abeshouse had a heart attack and died.

"Since that time," my father said, "whenever I hear that somebody had a baby, I always say, 'Is it healthy?' because in twenty-four hours the responsibilities of fatherhood came down on me very, very quickly."

For two years, doctors measured my brother's head every other month to make sure he was developing normally. After learning that he was, my parents consulted with experts at Emory University as to whether they should have more children. The doctors saw no reason not to try.

"When Dr. Bodziner came out of the delivery room on October 25, 1964," my father said, "the first thing he said to me was that you were healthy. That was a huge relief. Because remember, only one in ten thousand with that condition ever walk, and we'd already had the one."

WHENEVER I I CONJURE UP CONJURE UP images of my father from my childhood, he's usually sitting down: at the head of the dinner table carving a roast; in the living room smoking a pipe; on the beach reading a novel. I have strong memories of him coming into my bedroom every night when I was in high school, pulling up a chair, and asking if I had anything to talk about. I usually brushed him off and went back to my homework, but the message was clear that he was open for counsel. images of my father from my childhood, he's usually sitting down: at the head of the dinner table carving a roast; in the living room smoking a pipe; on the beach reading a novel. I have strong memories of him coming into my bedroom every night when I was in high school, pulling up a chair, and asking if I had anything to talk about. I usually brushed him off and went back to my homework, but the message was clear that he was open for counsel.

He was certainly active-played badminton, was an early jogger, took walks-but the values he conveyed were thronelike: wisdom, stability, calmness. He was, in the best sense of the word, settled.

And when I think of the wisdom he pa.s.sed on from his seat of power, three pearls stand out.

The first occurred when I was thirteen. It was the night of my bar mitzvah, and my parents had invited friends over to our house. Near the end of the party, my father called me over to the bar, ordered a gin and tonic, and handed it to me. "You're a man now," he said. "You're responsible for your own actions." And if I ever had too much to drink, he said, it would be among the greatest pleasures of his life if I would call him and ask him to come pick me up.

The moment was cla.s.sic Ed Feiler: trusting, indirectly emotional, constantly nudging us out of the nest. It was his way of saying, as he often did, that he was our cheerleader. His goal was to provide the shoulders on which we would climb into the sky. He wanted nothing more than to be "between the commas" in some magazine, as in "Bruce Feiler, son of Mr. and Mrs. Edwin J. Feiler, reached some milestone this week."

I didn't fully realize what he was trying to say until I, too, became a parent. The higher joy is not the light, it's the reflection. The greater pleasure is not climbing up; it's handing down.

Between the commas THE SECOND OCCURRED WHEN I was seventeen. I was covice president of my junior cla.s.s, and our chief responsibility was to throw the prom. A month before the date, we lost our venue. A deal was swiftly done to move the prom to the Savannah Yacht Club, but it discriminated against blacks and Jews. In a fit of uncharacteristic bravado, my fellow VP, Laura, and I objected. Our car-wash and bake-sale bounty would not feed their coffers. I was seventeen. I was covice president of my junior cla.s.s, and our chief responsibility was to throw the prom. A month before the date, we lost our venue. A deal was swiftly done to move the prom to the Savannah Yacht Club, but it discriminated against blacks and Jews. In a fit of uncharacteristic bravado, my fellow VP, Laura, and I objected. Our car-wash and bake-sale bounty would not feed their coffers.