Friendly Advice Yields Golden Memory
“When the student is ready,” a Buddhist proverb states, “the teacher will appear.”
Or, as I happily experienced the other day, sometimes the wise friend appears.
In this case, he showed up at happy hour. While the chips, salsa, guacamole and micro-brew were enjoyable, most appetizing of all – as usual with Scott – was the conversation. Scott belongs on a mountain peak, sitting cross-legged.
My wise friend and Renaissance man, Scott.
My friend is Renaissance man. He runs his own highly successful business yet favors flip-flops to wingtips. His interests include literature (he reads more than 100 books a year) and music (plays a killer harmonica) and travel (he is well on the way towards his goal of visiting every national park).
But what I most admire about Scott is he is a role model of a family man. Happily married for three decades he has helped raise two amazing children. Importantly, Scott remains as close to his adult son and daughter now as when they were learning to ride two-wheelers.
Our conversation turning to fatherhood, I asked Scott to share his magic formula. His parenting mission statement: “I made my kids my priority and always made time for them.”
My remarkable friend then remarkably noted, matter-of-factly without a trace of conceit, that he only missed one of his daughter’s equestrian events when she was a national-class youth competitor and of more than 1,000 baseball games his son played in was absent from a mere two. That’s a hall-of-fame batting average.
I felt a kinship for although my son did not run in 1,000 meets, from youth track and cross-country through four years of college competition I similarly missed only two races.
And my track record for my daughter’s sports and drama events was spotless – but only for another 24 hours, I confided to Scott.
I shared how my daughter played Dorothy in an elementary school play and despite attending the dress rehearsal I skipped covering two Lakers playoff games during the Magic Johnson Showtime Era to be at Opening and Closing Nights for “The Lizard of Ahhs.” In all, I saw all four performances and continued this streak through every production of two high school plays she wrote and a handful more in college and beyond.
Now my daughter was giving a reading of one of her published short stories at San Jose State’s Center for Steinbeck Studies and my proud run was about to end.
I had attended her first reading as a Steinbeck Fellow six months earlier but this time my wife would be on hand (and also visiting her mother for a milestone birthday) while I stayed home dog-sitting as our boxer does not fare well in the kennel.
I rationalized to Scott that I was just thankful to have not missed any big events when my daughter was young because it mattered more then.
“It matters even when they are grown,” Scott replied, wisely. After a brief pause he added in command: “You have to go.”
Robert Louis Stevenson was wrong when he wrote, “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.” Arriving the next evening was a far better thing than hopefully anticipating my daughter’s surprised delight during my 330-mile drive.
As expected, she teared up at seeing me – and I did likewise during her reading of an emotional story. Indeed, the 11 hours of travel sandwiched around a much-too-brief three-hour visit was well worth it. As Mark Twain observed, “To get the full value of joy you must have somebody to share it with.”
I had to share it with her in person.
I encourage you to similarly heed Scott’s sagacity with your own children, be they young or old. But, as my friend believes, does it truly matter as much when they are grown?
Here’s my answer: “Daddy, I’ll remember this for the rest of my life,” my daughter whispered in my ear during our goodbye hug.
But even that sweetness wasn’t the evening’s pinnacle for me. Trumping that is when my daughter saw me walk into the room she says she wasn’t really surprised.
*
Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.
Check out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”
- Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com
- Unsigned paperbacks or Kindle ebook can be purchased here at Amazon