Latest / Dear Son, / I Waited For My Dad to Die | A Father's Fight with Diabetes | Ep 213 | The Dear Son, Show

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I Waited For My Dad to Die | A Father's Fight with Diabetes | Ep 213 | The Dear Son, Show · Dear Son,

0:00
[SPEAKER_01]: You said that four times, I waited for him to die.
0:05
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you saying when you say that?
0:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine the anxiety of his doctors told him that he wouldn't live past like 40.
0:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Because of the condition, he had lost double amputee.
0:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, I saw, I used to change his dressings, 19 year old, change his dressings,
0:28
[SPEAKER_00]: When his toes got cut off, it went from toes to half the foot to, all right, right below the calf to all we at the knee.
0:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So in my head, and he was in his preparation, especially with me in his preparation, he was preparing me for the time that he was gone.
0:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Was something that your son would never have to wish you told him, I love you.
0:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, my dad never told me for real that he loved me, but every time I left the house, he would say, be careful son.
1:07
[SPEAKER_00]: They one day he asked me, he's like, you know when I tell you be careful.
1:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm saying I love you.
1:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And he, I said, I know that.
1:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I took those words as I love you, right?
1:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it was big bill, he was strong.
1:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, don't say it, I was saying it's back the end of his time.
1:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure he probably never heard his daddy say it.
1:30
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, guys, let's get one to the next show.
1:36
[SPEAKER_01]: We had meaningful conversations about life through the lens of fatherhood.
1:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It is four fathers, those with fathers, and the father lesson nobody's left out.
1:46
[SPEAKER_01]: These are the conversations I want my sons to access as they grow through life and the men who are some of those topics are all for limits today.
1:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm your only host so you're welcome.
1:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Got an amazing guess.
1:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Rob, we were welcome to the dance and show how you're my brother.
1:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm excited to be here, man.
2:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad to be here.
2:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for the work for the opportunity.
2:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
2:04
[SPEAKER_00]: But we want to sit down with you anyway just to vibe with you and see everything that's in your brain.
2:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, man.
2:11
[SPEAKER_01]: We are.
2:12
[SPEAKER_01]: We conducted through the good brother Marquis.
2:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how we connect with.
2:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess we just and I'm looking at him for those.
2:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all camera.
2:19
[SPEAKER_00]: He's in the building.
2:20
[SPEAKER_01]: The good that tribe is in the building also representation.
2:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what percentage of the tribe is.
2:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know about 40% but he's 20.
2:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, 20% what percentage of the good that tribe is here.
2:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Go follow them.
2:32
[SPEAKER_01]: You've seen us collaborate on some things.
2:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but just a good group of men.
2:39
[SPEAKER_01]: that are figuring life out and I can always appreciate and identify with that.
2:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So we, we've had some more conversations on camera.
2:48
[SPEAKER_01]: You came to the live and you're input at the live, stuck out or stood out.
2:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I forgot what I said.
2:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know.
2:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's I know you're being genuine.
3:01
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got it.
3:01
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't rehearsed.
3:02
[SPEAKER_01]: When we were talking about identity and that's not the point of this show.
3:05
[SPEAKER_01]: But the way you frames something,
3:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just sitting here today and we're going to rotate the rest of the tribe and as we can schedule them.
3:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
3:16
[SPEAKER_02]: So, uh, right with you, um,
3:22
[SPEAKER_00]: What do people know you from?
3:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's an interesting question.
3:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I'm from three places.
3:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I like to say I'm from three places.
3:31
[SPEAKER_00]: But a lot of Dallas calls me Shaitan Rob.
3:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Shaitan Rob?
3:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
3:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I moved here from Chicago in 2010.
3:39
[SPEAKER_00]: OK. Born and raised St. Louis right after high school with the college, right after college, left to Chicago.
3:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I came in, I was still very Chicago.
3:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, um, the way I call it out is I was born and raised in St. Louis and became a man in Chicago became a dad in Dallas.
4:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So they all super significant places to me.
4:03
[SPEAKER_00]: For most people in Dallas know me as if I came from Chicago.
4:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Which place taught you the most about you?
4:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Chicago.
4:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Chicago is a mix of Chicago and Dallas.
4:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Mostly Chicago though.
4:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's where I grew the most in terms of my confidence.
4:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
4:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I've faked a lot of confidence in St. Louis.
4:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I've faked a lot of confidence through college.
4:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually turned into tangible confidence in Chicago because of the network that community, the trials and areas that we went through.
4:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So it kind of built me, like I said, into a man who was willing to do stuff like take his whole family, move to Dallas, and then subsequently bring all of his immediate family to Texas.
5:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So mama got a com so this has got a com brother got a com and more importantly I wanted them out of that same lose environment because same lose Ruh village is important.
5:11
[SPEAKER_00]: What are your earliest memories of your village who was in the house?
5:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm blessed to have my have had my father and my house to pet
5:22
[SPEAKER_00]: post college okay my dad died in 2006 so i was lucky enough to have mom dad brothers and sisters two two older sisters older brother in the house yeah so when i think family that's first right and then we got of course the extensions but my dad's side of family is um
5:44
[SPEAKER_00]: based out of, of, of, of, arm and now Atlanta.
5:47
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom right out of Kenlock, Missouri.
5:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
5:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, some history, if you ever want to know about like history of St. Louis, go to Goats find out what Kenlock got going on, especially Black History because it's, it's a story similar to anywhere else.
6:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Mecha at one time, for a lot of different reasons, dilapidated buildings, empty blocks, but still strong
6:14
[SPEAKER_00]: But truly who I became, how I became who I am today was because of my Chicago experience.
6:23
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny because a lot of the people who know me from high school, look at me as
6:42
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the, that's the, that's the, that's the interesting guy there.
6:44
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to glad you framed it that way because you already introduced a period of faking it.
6:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
6:51
[SPEAKER_00]: What influence that phase of your life was that something from childhood you brought into early adulthood or I was the only reason people knew me in high school because I was just starting point guard for the basketball team.
7:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I was taking on honest classes, I played cello until I was a sophomore in college.
7:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So you might electives one of the months, the people, right?
7:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's all they affiliated with me.
7:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't get to get a lot of opportunities to build all the social skills that you would probably get if you were doing other stuff through high school, right?
7:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I went to college and college is all social in America, at least it's all social in college in Chicago.
7:35
[SPEAKER_00]: You went to Chicago, you went to Chicago, I have a college after college.
7:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, about our 20 minutes away from St. Louis right in the middle of the state right between Kansas City and St. Louis.
7:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when you go to, I went to a small school first play a little ball.
7:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Realizing I wasn't going to the NBA enough.
7:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to go anywhere close to it Oh, say you might want to go get your NBA instead Right, so let's roll out and get this NBA at the University of Missouri But when you're in a college social setting in in the States
8:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Social capital is how you get, no, it doesn't matter where you look, what you're doing in a classroom, it doesn't matter, what extra curricula as you have is social capital.
8:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had to flip that switch to be relevant to experience into survive in that place.
8:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had to grow a bigger personality intentionally instead of just being my reserved child.
8:34
[SPEAKER_00]: How much of that personality shows up today, still?
8:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, a ton of it.
8:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I think some of it was really, it was real.
8:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It was present.
8:44
[SPEAKER_00]: It was there.
8:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
8:46
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some of the things that I've always been able to do even during those shower times.
8:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I just wasn't willing to expose it to people.
8:52
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some of that me was there the whole time, but only few of a couple people would feel it because I wasn't comfortable in my own cell.
9:01
[SPEAKER_00]: but college kind of level set me.
9:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I played ball, I was in some ultimate shape.
9:09
[SPEAKER_00]: You know how to wrex in a could get live on a D1 campus, right?
9:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of my notoriety came from playing basketball in the wrex in a, okay, right?
9:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good shot wrong, right?
9:23
[SPEAKER_00]: As I was confident on the court,
9:26
[SPEAKER_00]: wasn't so confident off the court.
9:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So on the court, I was good shot raw.
9:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you know, make a basket.
9:33
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all you heard.
9:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Good shot raw.
9:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Good shot raw.
9:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was my jersey.
9:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm on the back of my good shot in a mirror joint.
9:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So the, the, that's the fine of faking it was was the on court persona, the fake or the off court.
9:53
[SPEAKER_00]: the off court.
9:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the off court persona, the shy reserve persona was what was comfortable because St. Louis.
10:04
[SPEAKER_00]: We do, we have something called desegh in St. Louis.
10:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're on the same way they were saying.
10:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But you, and you have a desegh program is basically segregation.
10:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I had never carried the word all the way out when I was in school, but it was a DC.
10:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I was getting bus 45 minutes to county schools from my neighborhood From the city.
10:24
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you?
10:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm 48.
10:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay?
10:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Makes more I had you picked at a different age.
10:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I just look like this man.
10:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been yeah Okay, so I'm gonna be sensitive.
10:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I was less about Bill and Liz I thought I was older than you.
10:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Um
10:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I really believe that until right now a club, Bill and Liz hurts my parents, who are you as it relates to them?
10:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Which one are you more of than the other?
11:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's a great question.
11:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I am the blend, Rubin.
11:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I am the blend.
11:05
[SPEAKER_00]: My, I'm the youngest of four siblings.
11:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
11:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Two older sisters got older brother who's four years above me, right?
11:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So some people who describe me as being the mistake,
11:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
11:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I would describe myself as being the final version.
11:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It's finally got it right.
11:24
[SPEAKER_01]: That was part of your commentary at the live about not being the mistake that you made.
11:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
11:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And so my dad was big bill.
11:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Big bill was six foot three, boarded 300 pounds on a regular consistent basis.
11:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Liz is
11:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Super creative, super intelligent, but life, and probably the strength of who I am.
11:53
[SPEAKER_00]: My strength comes from my mother.
11:55
[SPEAKER_00]: My smarts come from my dad.
11:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So, my dad was a guy who can read a thousand page book in two days.
12:05
[SPEAKER_00]: But my mom did not graduate high school.
12:10
[SPEAKER_00]: She just recently got her GD in the last 12 years, 12 15 years.
12:16
[SPEAKER_00]: She was very important for her to go back and get her GD.
12:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So she got her GD post 50 years old.
12:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, I can't I don't know the exact time.
12:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So I am to blend them of them.
12:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a true blend of them.
12:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I got my dad fire.
12:32
[SPEAKER_00]: and my mom's love and sensibility, and depend on how they give mix, right?
12:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes all in water sometimes it's explosive, sometimes it's calm, but I am the blend of them.
12:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Did, how early did you know that your mom had not graduated high school?
12:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm asking,
12:54
[SPEAKER_01]: for no other reason, other than leading into how does she carry that, right?
12:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that's a period of time for something to be important to you and to still do it this late in life.
13:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder how.
13:07
[SPEAKER_01]: that impacted who she saw herself as and how that showed up in the house.
13:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's interesting.
13:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew about it, but I didn't know about it because it was indicated by who how she lived her life.
13:18
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I'm getting that right there.
13:20
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom was a seamstress in a sweatshop for many years.
13:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Like my mom could throw down with that needle and thread.
13:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I used to have, I used to call back home and like my mom
13:36
[SPEAKER_00]: and she had thought that they'd together on Tuesday and I haven't been in the mailbox variety.
13:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So she was super creative, super resourceful.
13:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Life happened, she got pregnant young, right?
13:48
[SPEAKER_00]: She was the oldest of five sisters, so a lot of the care taken responsibility was hers.
13:53
[SPEAKER_00]: She got married young, so her dreams got deferred.
13:56
[SPEAKER_00]: But I never saw her as being like uneducated.
14:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I never saw her as being incapable.
14:04
[SPEAKER_00]: mostly because she showed I remember my dad died from diabetes so it was a long diabetic thing we were I was waiting for him to pass for a very very long time which is if we get into talking about faith that you know shape how I saw faith for a long time there's probably still do
14:26
[SPEAKER_00]: But the woman was working at a seamstress eight, nine hours a day.
14:32
[SPEAKER_00]: What leave that job, go work at a piece of place till nine o'clock in night.
14:37
[SPEAKER_00]: We ate pizza a lot, which is great as a kid, but now you look it back on it like, probably shouldn't have been eating pizza every day.
14:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But two birds want some, smart, right?
14:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I can go feed my family and get some extra money.
14:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Dad got sick with diabetes.
14:51
[SPEAKER_00]: He's on dialysis three days a week.
14:56
[SPEAKER_00]: She about being there for her family and her man.
14:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So she was sit at the dialysis three, four hours, three days a week with him.
15:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So he wouldn't have to be alone.
15:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Hold on, though.
15:07
[SPEAKER_00]: She was watching everything to the degree that she got so good at it and they gave her a job.
15:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So now she's a dialysis technician without a high school diploma.
15:19
[SPEAKER_00]: She's taking needles and peep.
15:22
[SPEAKER_00]: being responsible for the health without a high school diploma.
15:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I say, I knew she didn't have it, but it never felt like she did.
15:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And everything that she could do was demonstrative of the fact that she was as educated as anyone else.
15:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
15:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you say if your father growing up, how did you view him?
15:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, Big Bill Bill was a neighborhood that is probably kind of shapes who I am today.
15:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, he was a neighborhood dad.
15:50
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a dad who was always with us as kids.
15:54
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a dad who was full-time pitcher for the softball games in the school yard across the street.
16:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Kickball games.
16:01
[SPEAKER_00]: He was very revered in the community because, you know, you don't mess with Big Bill family.
16:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Big Bill, don't come get you.
16:09
[SPEAKER_00]: but he was also the Boy Scout master for the hood, true, right?
16:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny seeing him transition between being a super big build to be in a man who had to be in a wheelchair and carried up the stairs, like part of my workout journey when I was young, so I could be strong enough to carry my dad up the stairs because we didn't
16:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So I watched that break him in a way that that that saddens me still today.
16:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I watched it break him because when you're dominant, big bill to all the same rules and now you depend on everybody for everything.
16:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, everything.
16:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
16:56
[SPEAKER_02]: It broke his psyche.
17:00
[SPEAKER_02]: What age were you when his decline started?
17:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It was early.
17:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I waited a long time as you say that I waited a long time for my dad to die.
17:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So I remember giving him insulin shots in his belly when I was nine.
17:17
[SPEAKER_00]: That's too cut you all because I hate when people say that in cut you all.
17:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm intended to cut you all.
17:24
[SPEAKER_01]: You said that four times.
17:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I waited for him to die.
17:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Were you saying when you say that?
17:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine anxiety of his doctor's told him that he wouldn't live past like 40 because of the condition.
17:45
[SPEAKER_00]: He had lost double amputee, right?
17:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw I would I used to change his dressings 19 year old, change his dressings from when his toes got cut off.
17:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And it went from toes to half the foot to, all right, right below the calf to all we at the knee.
18:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So in my head, and he was in his preparation, especially with me in his preparation, he was preparing me for the time that he was gone.
18:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Just so happened, through the grace of God, through the, through my mom's care, through his fortitude, he was here until he's about 56, and I'm so grateful for that, right?
18:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Because, um, that it, the anxiety that's associated with knowing that you're that ing on be here.
18:42
[SPEAKER_00]: and actually being able to watch it because of his health decline and actually have to be participatory in it, right?
18:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a change in room.
18:49
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom was working two jobs.
18:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was cooking for him.
18:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I was changing his dressings.
18:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I was given him insulin shots, right?
18:56
[SPEAKER_00]: At 19, 11 years old.
18:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And so watching that really created an anxiety me that I didn't even knew I
19:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I watch my parents, be caretakers, my mom's mom, live with them.
19:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to say the last eight years of her life and I saw what that did to them but specifically my mom to wait for somebody and hope that it doesn't and want it to be over quicker and
19:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And now I am a participant in care taking from my father-in-law who lives mile-and-a-half down the road.
19:51
[SPEAKER_01]: They came here because of that because we were here and her mom was needed to help.
19:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So I have an appreciation for
20:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I've only seen adult parents caretaking elderly parents so I can't even imagine what the no point in like, did you feel robbed of your father?
20:28
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't, I didn't, I relationship with so robust that I didn't feel robbed of it.
20:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
20:36
[SPEAKER_00]: These say right so I've got a 45 minute ride to school every morning you for 48 yes Wild times so 45 minutes to the to the school
20:50
[SPEAKER_00]: But I would be up on the front porch because we had no AC.
20:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It was hot.
20:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Me and my dad was sitting on the front porch and he gets a breeze about one and a more.
20:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But we would be talking the whole time, development relationships the whole time.
21:02
[SPEAKER_00]: The way I learned how to drive and it's funny because now I have to think about it and probably shouldn't have been doing this.
21:08
[SPEAKER_00]: We should probably shouldn't have been driving.
21:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Teach me how to drive by going to a dunk and dunk in donuts when you are diabetic.
21:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
21:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't understand what was going on.
21:18
[SPEAKER_00]: But on that drive, we have these really, really deep conversations.
21:22
[SPEAKER_00]: We will build relationship and I didn't understand what he was doing.
21:28
[SPEAKER_00]: That was his, his time to teach me because he knew he was on his way out.
21:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So we would go to the donut shop.
21:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And the donut shop was literally eight minutes away from the school.
21:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's
21:44
[SPEAKER_00]: to the city.
21:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sneak in in a house because mom getting up at six and she wasn't supposed to know who one is.
21:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it'd be I getting donuts.
21:51
[SPEAKER_00]: But we were buildings of profound relationship and he was teaching me things.
21:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm quite sure I know things about my daddy, my mom would don't.
22:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a hundred percent sure of it.
22:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know what his relationship with what access he had to his father?
22:10
[SPEAKER_00]: is he losses that on his 18th birthday in his arms, that of a heart attack in his arms.
22:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So our story is a little bit of a line in that when we were both young we had to be way more serious.
22:28
[SPEAKER_00]: then we probably should have been just, that probably should have been expected with there.
22:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I was a very serious kid, so when you say did I, do I feel like I missed out on him?
22:39
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I feel like I probably missed out on a little bit of youth here because I, it's still hard for me to recall youth.
22:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the things weren't, they're not cemented like that.
22:52
[SPEAKER_00]: The fun parts aren't cemented like that.
22:54
[SPEAKER_00]: In my brain, the serious parts are very cemented in my brain.
22:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
22:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I was helping team care a dime in.
23:04
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you choose?
23:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Twelve and ten.
23:07
[SPEAKER_02]: They never met, you've never met your father.
23:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Never met.
23:12
[SPEAKER_01]: You never met your grandfather or your dad or on either side on either side.
23:18
[SPEAKER_01]: We said that I am in the audience.
23:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I have no what up ten times it isn't me saying that but it always strikes the core with me to think about it and it said I allow my dad has some documentation about the family tree.
23:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Going back to the mid-1850s.
23:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And he shared it with me saying,
23:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm looking, and I'm looking at dates, birth, death, birth, death.
23:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
23:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I said, man, did anybody have a grandpa?
23:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
23:51
[SPEAKER_01]: He wasn't in front of my, for him.
23:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Based on that documentation on the John's, to our knowledge, I am the first to have my father and sons alive in the same time.
24:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow.
24:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, limited information with meaningful information.
24:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
24:10
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mean, almost a couple of years of information and that slow his mind down to think about what the opportunity really is.
24:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Like this whole podcast was born out of me wanting to not duplicate.
24:29
[SPEAKER_01]: the part of our relationship that we allow to change.
24:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I had a great father, always in the house, still in my life, never not been in my life, right?
24:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And he lost his father when he was either 20 or 21.
24:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And his dad wasn't a communicator.
24:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So he,
24:53
[SPEAKER_01]: didn't learn how to be a man through communication.
24:57
[SPEAKER_01]: He saw his dad do third grade education and build a house from foundation to the roof.
25:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, that kind of thing.
25:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So that things that he picked up with their things that he didn't get right with me because he didn't have it to get right.
25:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw myself creating this allowing the same distance between me and my son that I wanted between me and my dad because he had structure.
25:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And then like, structure, I like rules, I didn't like what the limitations were on me as a child.
25:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Only becoming an adult showed me how ignorant of a child I was, but you don't, you don't know that, right?
25:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So, the condensed version of that, it that even means anything now is to show with this on what I wish my father told me will.
25:46
[SPEAKER_01]: My father wanted to tell me things, I didn't want to hear it.
25:49
[SPEAKER_01]: He wasn't going to force him, right?
25:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And now, if me being 40 and him being 31 years old didn't mean when we started, we're having his conversation.
25:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, man, that was your story at 25.
26:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, same as mine.
26:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right?
26:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So what I'm getting at is through your lens of understanding
26:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Like how does all of that, how do you turn all of that into fatherhood now?
26:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what?
26:25
[SPEAKER_00]: how to digest this a balanced man because when you when you have the limit through that experience of the young person every every decision becomes heavy right and you put a lot of tremendous pressure on yourself when you make mistakes here a tremendous amount of pressure on yourself when you make mistakes you start running it back to like when I spend $8 when I shouldn't have.
26:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, and you're 10 years later, and you over who connect in this to something that you, that is in no way of contributing to your outcomes today.
27:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
27:01
[SPEAKER_00]: But you're looking for all of these, like, where did I go wrongs?
27:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Because life seems so much shorter than you, because you lost your dad.
27:11
[SPEAKER_00]: When he was 56, I'm 40 years old.
27:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm eight years away from that.
27:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm eight years away, and I still have a tremendous anxiety.
27:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm about going out early.
27:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I'm two years beyond the age my grandfather was when he died.
27:30
[SPEAKER_01]: It's up to hit me around that time too, just knowing that, right?
27:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Because the word is, I'm just like, I look like him.
27:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, the result was my demeanor.
27:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
27:39
[SPEAKER_01]: One thing my father's always said, I mean, he's like, man, I wish you could have met my father because then you would understand me better.
27:48
[SPEAKER_00]: For my son, dude, who I have a lot of expectation on him, super expectations, he's older, younger, he's older, he's older, the two children.
28:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I absolutely wish he could have enjoyed that the version of Papa.
28:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So there is big bill, right, that the world know my dad and to be there's dad and my dad and then there's Papa.
28:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And you got to see him as Papa because I got all the siblings.
28:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So I get to see him as, I got to see him as Papa who don't in it, loved on his grandchildren away and grandchildren in a way that was softer than how he raised them.
28:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know who my dad is right now.
28:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're like, who is this chocolate chip?
28:39
[SPEAKER_00]: They was his daughter to need another iPad.
28:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like, no, they broke.
28:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Burn the head.
28:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So I used to see that, but I have, I have the advantage of having the dad who, knowing the dad who was, I got older brother.
28:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and my older brother, this is namesake.
28:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Got to.
28:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, so he's willing while we were the fourth.
29:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And my dad had a tremendous amount of like,
29:07
[SPEAKER_00]: make him in a way like that was harsh like I know my brother had a different daddy than I did totally different daddy than I did and you'll see it and how he talks about our father versus how I talk about it so the the diabetes made my dad had to shift from a variety of reasons right even a wheelchair now need
29:30
[SPEAKER_00]: He talked all that trash.
29:31
[SPEAKER_00]: He won't do five.
29:32
[SPEAKER_00]: He's still in that wheelchair.
29:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
29:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
29:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Versus when he was raising my brother, he was upright and being and powerful and strong.
29:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
29:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So he had to be able to, he had to learn how to be able to reach me without.
29:50
[SPEAKER_00]: the physical capability.
29:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So he became a communicator.
29:54
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why all our talks come from, right?
29:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Being on the porch of 2008 to a M, correct in my behavior, giving me insight that he couldn't do with our own fists, like you did with my brother.
30:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So I always tell people to think that I take away from my father relationship, the most is real men change.
30:17
[SPEAKER_00]: like real men change.
30:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And my dad was a brute.
30:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, you can, and when, in, in the, in the beginning, right, he was.
30:26
[SPEAKER_00]: for a lot of reasons, he has a father died at 18, right?
30:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So what conversations did he really have to have as about being a man, dealing with these stresses and pressures, he had three younger sisters, he had to go out there, become a worker and he had to become a dad for his younger siblings.
30:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right.
30:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So but no one was there to steer him.
30:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Saying for my father, all this before three younger sisters,
30:52
[SPEAKER_00]: He was smart, though, in that he has an uncle Ralph, shout out to Ralph Foss, and then I'm an Alabama.
30:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Uncle Ralph is like my second dad.
31:02
[SPEAKER_00]: He's in his 80s now, he's still around, thank God.
31:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But my dad made me write him letters.
31:10
[SPEAKER_00]: all the time.
31:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Write your uncle.
31:13
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to write your uncle.
31:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So he made me establish a relationship so that knowing that when he was gone, I would have another father figure.
31:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
31:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's who has been my father for since 2006.
31:27
[SPEAKER_00]: How are how intentional were you about becoming a father?
31:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when you do this podcast, it's going to be beautiful for your son to be able to watch it.
31:38
[SPEAKER_00]: The race is like, I wrote a letter to my children.
31:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Probably when I was 26.
31:49
[SPEAKER_00]: wrote this long letter about how I've dreamed of you, about how I loved you before you even thought about.
31:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Nine, ten years before you actually had a child, so I always wanted to be a father.
32:02
[SPEAKER_00]: But probably for the wrong reasons, I want to do a whole lot of things early.
32:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to get married early.
32:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to have a child early because again, my window of time was, I might have heard
32:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you come with the disappointment that none of that should have happened right you weren't Mary about 25 you got married at 30 then you got divorced like and so that's a crazy thing to go through for a person who from really from like 22 I was like I want to family and I want to be a
32:49
[SPEAKER_01]: What did you miss in high sight, like in making those decisions, understanding life through a compressed lens of time or expectation of time?
33:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you look back in?
33:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you pinpoint, yes, I look past it or no, I wouldn't have seen that anyway.
33:08
[SPEAKER_00]: You should have some kind of levity to it.
33:11
[SPEAKER_00]: One, because it's going to be the last time you allowed to have that kind of levity.
33:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, true story.
33:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know if I had that.
33:19
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad was so intent on making me a leader.
33:23
[SPEAKER_00]: right, that again, everything was serious.
33:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a super boy scout, like, until, uh, found basketball and girls, right.
33:33
[SPEAKER_00]: That would be very bad.
33:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Just go out the window when you get to first kiss.
33:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
33:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was a super boy scout.
33:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I was, boy scout up to I was saved a teen years old.
33:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I was running national camps.
33:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I was traveling for the boy scout.
33:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in, um, the order of the arrow, which is like an elite section of
33:51
[SPEAKER_00]: All as it in a means of building me as a leader, but the levity of life was missing, because everything was so serious, because this man was also trying to prepare me again for him being gone.
34:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
34:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
34:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had to know how to, I remember I used to cook him eggs in a morning and I would sometimes miss school, like, miss the bus, because I didn't get the eggs right.
34:17
[SPEAKER_00]: because I, it was important to him to teach this thing.
34:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, but he was also managing his own disappointment, some of his frustration.
34:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So he would use that as a, you gotta get this right.
34:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been teaching you, I mean, you gotta get this right.
34:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was a lot of things that he did in that way.
34:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was always looking to be perfect on the first try.
34:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Fools go.
34:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't ever happen.
34:47
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, short window of time that I have left for my father, I want to do a lot of that.
34:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think if anything I miss, I was missing the levity of youth, the lightness of youth, the carefreeness of youth.
35:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And now I try to be mindful about that with my son, from which I'm exceptionally serious about, right?
35:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Him being a leader and him being able to handle himself in Yadayada, Yadayada.
35:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I have to ease up on it and let him be young, right?
35:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's a very mature kid, super mature kid, but sometimes I want to, um, sometimes I know and they don't want to.
35:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I know I'm expecting 20 year old man out of him when he's nine, right?
35:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And he don't have the words to sit down and say, how was I supposed to know this, right?
35:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm his dad.
35:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So he don't necessarily push back either.
35:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have to be super conscious that a lot of times I'm asking this man to be somebody that I wasn't.
35:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're truly he shouldn't have to be at 12 years old.
36:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's my, my baromin.
36:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes they don't change nothing.
36:11
[SPEAKER_00]: sometimes it won't change, because I'm still raising a black boy in this world and about two years you're not going to be a boy at more, like for most people you're not going to be a boy at 14, you're going to be a man and opportunity.
36:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
36:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So, um, I wish I had a little bit more of the lighter memories.
36:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
36:32
[SPEAKER_00]: That, um, the eggs, uh, example.
36:37
[SPEAKER_01]: That, uh, that correct the feedback loop.
36:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Does that still play back in your mind?
36:44
[SPEAKER_01]: His absence, like, did it care, did that carry?
36:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that how you remembered him?
36:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that a connection to him?
36:52
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I remember it as a story.
36:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm more so remember the two in the morning conversations.
36:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And the reason I was wondering, did that become the voice of you to you?
37:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Because when you first said about the days, I wasn't sure if you were messing up and correcting it or was he sending the bag in it, it sounded like he was using an opportunity.
37:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, but did that.
37:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it is it is absolutely forms how I go about things today.
37:28
[SPEAKER_00]: One, I feel like.
37:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I should be knowledgeable and smart enough to be able to get this right on the first time.
37:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It's dangerous.
37:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Fools go here.
37:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
37:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a setup to head at my set and then when you don't get there and you're being yourself up about it.
37:46
[SPEAKER_00]: you again creating xiety and this is and you created before we had words for it like everybody talk about anxiety some of us talk about anxiety too much right some of us some of us using their be as a cop-out but uh... or not even using their therapy right you are narcissistic twenty-seven times on tiktok now you think you uh... got a degree
38:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna, I'm gonna send you a video about the comparison between narcissistic trees and the final line between cyclopathy.
38:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like competency.
38:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
38:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Very interesting.
38:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, no, you're a person's just in it.
38:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're not, they're not narcissistic.
38:25
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just a little bit of a jerk.
38:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
38:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
38:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So, um,
38:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I do, I still wish I can have a more light memories in my childhood.
38:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what's the dynamic today?
38:44
[SPEAKER_00]: You were married, you're not, you have children.
38:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Go parenting, okay.
38:50
[SPEAKER_00]: With the mother, my children, okay.
38:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So we've been a part since 2018.
39:01
[SPEAKER_00]: My son's remembering some of us is thick, he was five.
39:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I say, yeah, I guess, right.
39:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So he remembers it in a way, my daughter does it.
39:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So I remember the first time I tried to, I started dating someone in a way that I was willing to bring them around.
39:21
[SPEAKER_00]: My children.
39:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Woo!
39:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And man was a terror, right?
39:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt subconscious about what I was doing.
39:31
[SPEAKER_00]: He would demonstrate that I don't like this, and I don't care what this, um, I haven't remember being, I don't want a company called Bubble Bash.
39:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a bubble soccer recreation company.
39:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And we were at an event and I used to take them with me all the time to the event, because again, I'm trying to raise you to be a man at five.
39:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
39:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I almost don't have a problem with that because I was like, uh, and they need to see it, right?
39:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember him being behind me in my ear, giving me the business outside this event, because he was in a low spot about our relationship.
40:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he heard.
40:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, his mom had some discourse that was impositive and he starts going off and about you said family's most important
40:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And if that's the most important thing in the world, you need to get our family back to come.
40:29
[SPEAKER_00]: He's fine.
40:31
[SPEAKER_00]: You created that and I created it.
40:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm sitting here holding a steering wheel.
40:35
[SPEAKER_00]: He's behind me in my ear where outside the little wrecks and the reason why I'm trying.
40:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I feel like I've disappointed him.
40:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I've let my son down because
40:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
40:54
[SPEAKER_02]: He on the sand is now, of course.
40:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
40:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Hell.
40:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I understand now because at that time I not understand what I was doing either.
41:03
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was a super profound moment in my life because I was like you got to be able to talk him through a whole lot more stuff.
41:12
[SPEAKER_00]: He shouldn't have
41:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And so now I talk to them so much more about the decisions and the wise instead of waiting for them to have to just experience them.
41:29
[SPEAKER_01]: How does that work with the, and you can suggest I go to Hale, so as I say this, but, how does that work with talking them through,
41:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Finishing what they started, or working past the hard points, or
41:55
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a ball player, so not a lot of the life analogies come through basketball, right?
42:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know this being a hoop of yourself.
42:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It on me.
42:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I don't want nobody to jump in there.
42:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a tie.
42:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I heard that.
42:08
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a tie.
42:09
[SPEAKER_00]: He got basketball bones, is what he's saying.
42:11
[SPEAKER_00]: You think fractured.
42:14
[SPEAKER_00]: But so I use that as a medium to teach him a lot about stuff like son, son, listen, sometimes you're going to come out and shoot that shot.
42:24
[SPEAKER_00]: the same way, 20 times, and you go go 1 for 20.
42:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I saw, I had Joe control.
42:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So I really focused on the things that you can control, feet, form, follow through.
42:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Once it leaves your fingertips as over, you might as well control these things, right?
42:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So we use that as a means of, let them know that it's okay, that your best laid plans going always,
42:53
[SPEAKER_00]: turn into a trophy.
42:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's the reality of life, right?
42:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care how good your team is, I don't care what you're doing with respect to how many shots you get up, some days you're just going to be off.
43:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you're going to be nothing to do about it, but be proud of yourself and walking away from that situation saying I did my best.
43:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So in terms of him and his mother,
43:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I've had these conversations when I understand your disappointed.
43:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I totally get it.
43:23
[SPEAKER_00]: You should be, right?
43:25
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to understand the man your mom did what we thought was the best independent of us.
43:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the time we thought this was the best for y'all independent of us.
43:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It took years in him to accept that.
43:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Years for me.
43:38
[SPEAKER_00]: He still don't.
43:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes.
43:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes with me and his mom we're still we're co-parent we co-parent well enough bed uh hell no for two years at his school people even know we weren't together right we still get accolades and shout out to you Kim for um being that kind of co-parent look at I'm not saying it's perfect co-parent it was a lot of work
44:03
[SPEAKER_00]: But I am proud enough to have a co-parent when I look at other people's co-parenting stories and take yours.
44:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm,
44:27
[SPEAKER_00]: the the the core of us to us all mean together she was too.
44:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So it you said it took a while for him to um I'm gonna just say I understand no accepted.
44:40
[SPEAKER_01]: But focus not on him but applying that to you how how long did it take you to
44:45
[SPEAKER_00]: understand and accept it.
44:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, I wouldn't willing to look at a part because I was so disappointed and having broken on my family, I wouldn't even evaluate anybody for like the first five years.
44:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't even give them a chance to be evaluated as my partner because you are never going to be more significant than me being in my kids.
45:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I still feel that way, the space just has changed, you know, the children in the world more older, I've grown, but they're still the most important thing in my life.
45:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But for about five years, it doesn't matter how quality you were as a woman, it doesn't matter how, um,
45:28
[SPEAKER_00]: interested you weren't I would always keep you at this distance because I felt like I was I had already I had already broken my kid's heart no go I want trying to do it again and a no guarantee in the next relationship so I I was I was avoiding of that in a in a tremendous way as expected you're as interesting as I thought um the measure earlier the full title to show is this time what I wish my father told me
45:57
[SPEAKER_01]: really curious about your response to that because you had so many intentional conversations and the dynamic of, yeah, of understanding life at the A's and having intentional moments with them.
46:11
[SPEAKER_01]: If there's something like what do you wish a father told you?
46:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if it's out, there's
46:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I just wish he could be able to tell me anything, right?
46:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I tell people all the time, um, most people think you need a father between one and 20.
46:39
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you need a father between 20 and 30.
46:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, and 30 to 40.
46:44
[SPEAKER_00]: 40 to 50.
46:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Because nobody teaches you how to be a 50-year-old man.
46:49
[SPEAKER_00]: right and most times for us when we get to that age, we're now caring for our elders in a way that there's different conversations that are happening.
46:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
46:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But nobody, um, nobody sets you down and said, listen, that that painting you'll left hand and then going to right, that might be a little bit arthritis.
47:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
47:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't see somebody.
47:09
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to go check to
47:21
[SPEAKER_00]: stalwart kind of strong man that you used to being as a result of being athletically trained or just young.
47:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
47:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
47:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And what happens when things start going away that you used to be able to do and how do you transition into a new person?
47:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember having a conversation and it's it stays in my mind.
47:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I was at a Concord and one of the men's group and 10 dudes around a table.
47:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I was married at the
47:50
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the 30 minutes, 33 or something like that.
47:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I found out about Kaukwa through the brotherhood.
47:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, somebody might be there.
47:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, um, where does this 10-top, they're going around.
48:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I probably two years in a marriage, but that's because how well do you know your wife?
48:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm young as stupid.
48:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I say, probably 9.6, I know it is lady.
48:17
[SPEAKER_00]: All the young brothers around the table said the same thing.
48:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Then they got to a man who had been married for 50 years, and he said about a three right now, I said, huh?
48:26
[SPEAKER_02]: How are you not 50 years?
48:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you at a three?
48:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And he said, well...
48:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And it seems so reasonable and sensible now, right?
48:38
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like that woman at 20 was not the same woman at 25.
48:43
[SPEAKER_00]: She was not the same woman at 35.
48:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And at a certain point, I stopped learning her.
48:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
48:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I started bringing home things that were green because that's our favorite color, which hasn't been her favorite color in 12 years.
48:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Clearly, right?
49:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So I wish somebody wouldn't be able to tell me about those shifts in life.
49:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Stressure when it comes to dealing with family, that you're going to constantly have to be learning.
49:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone new, in order to live with them, endure them, grow with them.
49:19
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to have to be constantly learning someone new.
49:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know if there's a specific conversation,
49:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I immediately went to that resource when he left.
49:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's been the dude who's carried me through.
49:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've had that feeling and I have those same conversations that I would have in him with my uncle.
49:45
[SPEAKER_00]: But God, do I every day, there is not a moment.
49:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm seriously saying this.
49:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not being for seizures in any way.
49:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's not a day that goes by for which I'm like, I wish I could just have one more conversation with him.
50:01
[SPEAKER_00]: one more conversation and a tremendous amount of that conversation will be grateful.
50:09
[SPEAKER_00]: There.
50:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Just thank you for those two and a more in the drives.
50:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It meant a lot to me.
50:15
[SPEAKER_00]: There.
50:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
50:17
[SPEAKER_02]: So my father the other day, that I was grateful for.
50:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And I hope that he has the opportunity to see it work.
50:32
[SPEAKER_01]: He's seen it work.
50:34
[SPEAKER_01]: He's absolutely seen it work.
50:37
[SPEAKER_00]: He's seen it as evident in the fact that you have the word with all to even share that with him.
50:43
[SPEAKER_00]: He is his return on investment has been grand as a result of you just meaning it to acknowledge that.
50:50
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of men out there who won't even who still have pain.
50:55
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the one thing I'm grateful for too is
51:03
[SPEAKER_00]: The wrongs that he had that stood out, and they present, you know, big bill was hard bill too.
51:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So the wrongs that he, I got him to see him shift through them.
51:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of men only know they, they follow us from one period of time, right?
51:22
[SPEAKER_00]: They know him as that person who was probably beaten down on him, being hard on them.
51:33
[SPEAKER_00]: when he told stories about him and his mom or him and his dad or him and his wife.
51:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm blessed in that way, and I'm very, very grateful for that, but it would be amazing to sit down and have a conversation.
51:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Or more importantly, I don't even know if you need to talk to me.
51:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I would love for him to be able to talk to my grandkids, or his grandkids.
51:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And to see the fruits of his labor passed down to the next generation as a result.
52:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, so I would love for that to happen and be able to sit back and watch that because I got to experience that with his other grandchildren here, I got to watch him be pawpaw and I will never have that we talk about them all the time.
52:19
[SPEAKER_00]: My kids, almost, they reference them either, even though they haven't, because I keep keep the name in the mouth so much, but I would love to have any conversation at this point.
52:31
[SPEAKER_01]: What's something that your son will never have to wish you told him?
52:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I love you.
52:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I say it too much.
52:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I do what I can't let you get to do.
52:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I say it's a deal.
52:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't say it's much.
52:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But I say it to embarrass him in the carpool line.
52:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
52:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, games.
52:54
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad never told me for real that he loved me.
52:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But every time I left the house, he would say, be careful, son.
53:05
[SPEAKER_00]: They one day, he asked me, he's like, you know when I tell you be careful, I'm saying, I love you.
53:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And he, I said, I know that.
53:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I took those words as I love you, right?
53:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it was big bill, he was strong.
53:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, don't say it, I was saying back then, in his time.
53:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure he probably never heard his daddy say it.
53:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's one thing he'll never have to live through, even having to change the code words.
53:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to hear it.
53:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Interpret, yeah.
53:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, you ain't got interpret it at all.
53:39
[SPEAKER_00]: You, you gon' hear it from my tongue.
53:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Love a man, rock, weaver, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to people find you if you want to be fair.
53:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find me in two places right now.
53:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Weaver underscore Robert is social media.
53:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the good that tribe, man, the good tribe is exceptionally developmental in terms of my fatherhood process, my growth process.
54:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very proud of those young men.
54:06
[SPEAKER_00]: They remind me that I am not them in terms of age on a regular basis.
54:12
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think that's also the beauty of our tribe is that you get to stay connected to the youth but also get the wisdom of the people who came before you.
54:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's where you can find me at man.
54:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Appreciate your brother.
54:28
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been worth my time.
54:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope it was worth the drive.
54:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll be a significant, you know, insignificant, it was for you.
54:33
[SPEAKER_00]: It always is, man.
54:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate you.
54:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate to do some podcast.
54:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I love what you're doing.
54:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I respect you creating this legacy.
54:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I do wish that we had this medium back then, so that we can pull up a 20-year-old conversation in the future.
54:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll just, it'd be, it'd be wild to know when my father was thinking at 45, when he was 45.
54:57
[SPEAKER_01]: When he was 45.
54:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Dude, a lens of 70, it's, it's edited.
55:02
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my backpack, man.
55:03
[SPEAKER_00]: My daddy and my backpack is funny.
55:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I always ask people this question.
55:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I say, who would be in I ask you this?
55:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Who would be your red pet?
55:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And I get you an example.
55:13
[SPEAKER_00]: You get to choose from any era, but you're all 25.
55:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So I give any example.
55:23
[SPEAKER_00]: People that I know what people that I've done, that I've he ain't got to be nobody, you know?
55:26
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd be anybody.
55:27
[SPEAKER_00]: My rat pack would be my dad.
55:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would love to hang out.
55:31
[SPEAKER_00]: If I was 25 and he was 25, I would love to hang out and see who he was.
55:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
55:37
[SPEAKER_00]: My uncle.
55:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
55:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
55:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, it's my other person and then Marvin Gaye in there for so reason man, I don't know why But Marvin Gaye is in there, but I think part of the reason Marvin Gaye is there because if you know Marvin Gaye's story There is to it's it's tumultuous when it comes to his his fatherhood journey That's that's a good good my father was your rat pack my father for sure My guy father who passed away in 2024
56:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Both of them were my heroes.
56:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I found out later in life that he was somewhat not necessarily a father to figure to my father because he's
56:24
[SPEAKER_01]: 10 or maybe 10 to 12 years older than my father.
56:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but my father saw him as an example because he was married and how he was moved to life and attached to him.
56:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
56:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So I met them.
56:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought they were the same.
56:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know that story, but my
56:47
[SPEAKER_01]: He figured out life in my eyes.
56:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know some of some we get more stories now.
56:53
[SPEAKER_01]: My Godfather was a boxer back in the day.
56:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, he would playfully throw hands and even when he got up in the age and retired, he took a karate like he was always interested in the arts.
57:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So then too for sure, probably uncle, no actual relation, but we call him uncle.
57:18
[SPEAKER_01]: him and his wife was who I used to fake being sick to go to their house.
57:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
57:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And like I missed several days on purpose.
57:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and the, how I qualified them even talking through it is those are three people that I cared about them being proud of me as an adult.
57:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It matters.
57:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
57:43
[SPEAKER_01]: My, my dad know my dad doesn't agree with everything.
57:46
[SPEAKER_01]: but him being proud of who I am as a man matters.
57:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And if for whatever reason he communicated that something was off, it wouldn't be a rebuttal.
57:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I would literally have to check myself because he's never presented anything other than wanting more for me than he wants to.
58:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, it's interest.
58:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been asking that question for years and I think it gives him insight into what you prioritize.
58:15
[SPEAKER_00]: The relationship that mattered the most to you and who you aspire to be.
58:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
58:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I've had dreams of that red pet being out.
58:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And some smoky bar and St. Louis turned it up.
58:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
58:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll tell you a funny story real quick.
58:36
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad was big bill, right?
58:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So a 17-year-old beard.
58:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have pictures of him being in the club one day.
58:45
[SPEAKER_00]: One day he was out, he was flirting with my grandma, right?
58:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Flurver with my grandma, happening with my grandma having to be his mom's friend in the nursing industry.
58:55
[SPEAKER_00]: She invited him over a week later to the house.
59:00
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how he met my mom.
59:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll have to play this back the connect though.
59:06
[SPEAKER_00]: In that crazy.
59:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
59:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So even a bar would you say it?
59:10
[SPEAKER_00]: 17 year in the bar shouldn't be.
59:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Third one, my grandma, I'm still trying to, because she, she hanging out.
59:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I, I get the day when the same place, they got to a part of you.
59:21
[SPEAKER_01]: The next week, we had to see become your grandmother.
59:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, she won the grandma in.
59:27
[SPEAKER_00]: She won my grandma in.
59:28
[SPEAKER_00]: She was just a lady at the bar at the right.
59:31
[SPEAKER_01]: You said your dad, my dad, was flirting with the lady that became your grandmother.
59:36
[SPEAKER_02]: That, it, my mom's mom.
59:41
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom's mom, so say y'all go over to this barbecue.
59:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Two and two is for.
59:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's how he ended up.
59:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, what's the, how did the, okay?
59:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And I say that to say, I mean, he was a terror out here, man.
59:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be lovely to watch.
59:55
[SPEAKER_00]: We only, we only speak highly.
59:59
[SPEAKER_01]: We only speak highly on this platform.
1:00:01
[SPEAKER_01]: We only lead that to their imagination, man.
1:00:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh.
1:00:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Part two.
1:00:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even want to say part two recurrence.
1:00:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I got some questions for you.
1:00:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna sit in that chair.
1:00:15
[SPEAKER_01]: You got the recurring guest pass.
1:00:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I just treated it.
1:00:18
[SPEAKER_01]: You got the current guest pass when life hits you Pulled up.
1:00:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate him and we'll figure it out.
1:00:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Um Ladies and gentlemen And those that identify otherwise that's gonna do for this episode with appreciate your guys God bless you, peace