Are you aware of the most profound thing you ever told someone else?
I wasn’t.
Until my son told me.
When I married Virgile’s mother and became a dad to him and his sister Pauline, I had to acquire a new set of skills at age 42. They had a father, but he was 6,000 miles away and the visitation wasn’t all that complicated. They spent six or seven weeks in France with him every summer and that was it.
As far as the everyday school year stuff, I was the dad.
Pauline was 12 and things were more complex. She knew her father better than Virgile did. He had been two when his parents divorced and Nicole brought her children to California.
He was seven when we met and he was an amazing little kid. He was a phenomenal soccer player for his age. He had taught himself to dribble and pass with either foot, something that most kids can’t do.
There wasn’t anything I could teach him about soccer, but the next spring I spent the first of four seasons coaching him in baseball. It was one of the real joys of middle age for me. I had a different coaching philosophy than everyone else in the league.
Winning was nice, but every kid on the team sat out the same number of innings and anyone who wanted to play in the infield got to do it for at least one inning every game.
In three of the four years, we won more games than we lost. But the third year I wound up with the best two pitchers in the league and we only went 9-5. We finished third, although we beat the team that won the championship.
We lost every game the last year, and Mr. Laid Back Coach lost it briefly in the last game. There was a bases-loaded hit to center field, and our outfielder froze and didn’t throw it in until all four runners scored.
“What are you, brain dead?” I yelled. “Throw the ball!”
When the inning ended and our guys came to the bench, I apologized.
“Sorry I yelled,” I said.
“That’s OK, Dad,” my son replied.
We had one year of basketball at the YMCA, and I spent a year as assistant scoutmaster of his Boy Scout troop. I even got to halfway enjoy camping out.
In junior high and high school, his main interest turned to music. With talent and hard work, he became a wonderful saxophone player. I had never been more than an adequate musician in high school, but Virgile was good enough to be named to the all-state band in the biggest state of them all.
He went to Cal State Northridge as a music major, and it was then that the one profundity I had in me came out. I told him how poorly I had done in college when I was his age, how I had cut classes and eventually stopped showing up for classes at all.
I told him there was a great quote from film director Woody Allen that was basically the secret of life.
“Eighty percent of life is just showing up.”
I mistakenly said at the time it was 90 percent, but the point is the same. When you’re where you’re supposed to be all the time, life becomes a lot easier. I told him if he didn’t cut any classes, he would do very well.
He switched majors to English in his third year and got all A’s except for one A-minus from there until graduation. He wrote such a wonderful senior thesis he won a cash prize for being the best.
He has never looked back. My son is happily married, 11 years into a stellar career as a Foreign Service officer, and just for fun he achieved world-class status as an ironman triathlete.
His first evaluation in his career was exceptional. His boss called him the “best young Foreign Service officer I have seen in 20 years.”
At 35, he’s on his way to the top of his field. I am as proud of him ads I am of his sister, who is essentially doing the same thing without the triathlons. Of course, Pauline is raising six kids.
But I will never forget the night in 2009, the evening before Virgile and his wife Sterling’s wedding, when he told me the best advice anyone had ever given him was when I quoted Woody Allen about the value of showing up.
I was blessed.
He did what I said, not what I did.