Heavy Lifting: Grow Up, Get a Job, Raise a Family, and Other Manly Advice (2015)

PART V

Dads Out and Proud

23

Settling Down Isn’t Settling for Less

It seems to be a given that getting married and having kids, particularly in your twenties, means that you’re missing out on something. Why on earth would you want to start a family when you could do fabulously single and childless things?

Matt and Jessica Johnson, formerly of Grand Rapids, Michigan, may be the poster couple for a life free of responsibility. The pair, now in their early thirties, have been sailing around the world since 2011 in a sailboat that they purchased after they quit their jobs and sold off almost all of their belongings. Since then they’ve lived frugally and have traveled to sixteen different countries. They don’t have any kids, but they did adopt a cat in 2012, so there’s that.

Quitting your job as a car salesman or a billing specialist in Grand Rapids and heading for the warm waters of the Caribbean sounds awesome, but there are lots of things to consider before plunging into your new life. Can you really downsize your entire life to fit into a sailboat? Can you spend twenty-four hours a day up close and personal with your partner? How do you decide who’s The Skipper and who’s Gilligan?

Not to mention the fact that selling all your stuff and living off of the savings means that at some point your money is likely to run out. It’s one thing for our government to rack up insane and unimaginable amounts of debt, but you’re not going to be able to do the same. When the money runs out, you’re going to have to figure out what happens next. Maybe you sell the boat and start over? Maybe you settle down in a beach town and find another job? Based on their website, MJSailing. com, the Johnsons seem like really nice people who are having a great time. I hope they have many years of happiness ahead of them, wherever their sailboat may take them, but I also hope they have an exit strategy.

I also understand the impulse, as Matt Johnson described it, of wanting to live your dream while you can and not put it off until retirement. I remember having similar conversations with my wife: we talked often about moving from the suburbs to a farm “one day,” without doing much to make it happen.

In that respect, you have to applaud the couple for actually turning their goal into a reality. Most people reading their story on their website will likely feel a little envious. Some folks might even think to themselves, “I’m gonna do that too!” Most of them won’t get any further than looking at sailboats online. They’ll dream about another life instead of making tangible improvements to the life they have now.

Most Americans in their twenties still want a life that includes marriage and family, according to virtually every survey out there. And yet, fewer of them are getting married, and even fewer are having kids. Some might fear the financial commitment; others the personal commitment. And some are no doubt delaying marriage and family because settling down feels like settling for less than the life you have as a single person.

But “settling down” is actually the biggest freaking adventure you could ever possibly undertake. You want to explore the unknown and push yourself further than you think possible? Get married. Maybe you want to see life in all its Technicolor glory, instead of the drab grays of the cubicle farm where you work. Have a child and you’ll start seeing the world through their eyes. Everything will be new to you again.

There is no One True Dad Life to be lived. Being a stay-at-home dad is great if you can do it, but some of the best fathers I know are guys who spent months away from home on multiple deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and places they’re not allowed to talk about. We have a lot of truck drivers who listen to NRA News’ Cam & Co every night (I call them our Road Warriors), and I know many of them are gone from their homes for weeks at a time. When they’re at home, though, they’re present. They’re involved in lives beyond their own.

I have some personal experience with this. When my wife and I decided to move from the suburbs of Washington, D.C., to central Virginia, my job didn’t move with us. We knew when we moved that I would still be working near D.C., which was about three hours away from the home we’d found. There was no way to commute daily. Instead I would have to drive home on the weekends and the rare weekday evening. For a year and a half that’s what I did, renting a 10x10 spare bedroom in a private home not too far from work. I’d drive the 150 or so miles home each Friday night, arriving around 10 p.m. We’d have all weekend to spend together, but every Monday morning after dropping the kids off at school I’d make the long drive back to northern Virginia. Every couple of weeks I’d come home on a Wednesday night, just to see my wife, sleep in my bed, and hang out with the kids for an hour in the morning. It was hard, but that time period also had a lot of great moments, and every one of them took place in those hours I spent with my family.

Consumer culture, technology, and social media have offered us an ever broadening array of “choice” in our lives, but they’ve also narrowed us as people, nurturing a culture of instant gratification and pervasive narcissism. The late writer David Foster Wallace warned us, in his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, to be careful that we don’t simply indulge what he called the “freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation.”

The truly important freedom, the one that is most precious, Wallace said, “involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over again in myriad, petty, unsexy ways every day.”

That sounds like a pretty good definition of being a spouse and a parent, in my opinion. Caring about others and sacrificing for them means taking on responsibility, but it also means freedom from a mindless shuffle through life. Given that he was speaking at a college commencement, perhaps it’s not surprising that David Foster Wallace expounded on how education can be an escape hatch to the mindful life, but so is marriage and family. The trick is—whether it’s reading great books, building a great marriage, or raising great kids—putting in the effort. Nothing happens by itself.

Granted, it’s not easy. It’s heavy lifting. And when we’re not mindful, we can just go through the motions: get up, go to work, go home, watch TV, surf the Internet, go to bed, and then wake up and do it again. We’re all human. But a family is a constant reminder to get out of your rut and engage with the people around you.

Family life, mindfully led, is guaranteed to be rich with adventure, wonder, and infinite opportunities to better yourself, your kids, and the world around you. No, you won’t be able to avoid every hardship or tough time, but so what? Being a husband and father won’t always be easy, but life isn’t easy. At least when you’re living the Dad Life, you don’t have to do all the heavy lifting alone.

Get out there. Don’t be afraid. Sure, have fun. Backpack through Belize. Live in a yurt for a couple of years. Float on a boat if that’s what … er, floats your boat. But don’t close your mind to getting married and making lots of babies. Fatherhood isn’t boring, it’s actually pretty badass. The only way that family life is boring is if you make it that way. Settling down with a wife and kids that you love isn’t settling for less. In fact, it could be more than you ever thought possible.

What Would Ward Cleaver Do?

You know the answer to that. And Ward Cleaver was a stud.

Acknowledgments

For quite a few months, my life featured the unnerving irony of declaring, “sorry, boys, Daddy can’t play with you now. I have to finish my book on the importance of fatherhood.” The boys and my wife are spectacularly patient with me, and I doubt I’ll ever thank them enough.

Cam, I’ve known since our first talks in 2004 that you had many, many books within you, just waiting to be written. I’m honored to be your copilot on this one.

To all my friends who made cameo appearances in these pages … thank you for everything over all these years. These tales are supposed to show off my flubs and foibles, not yours.

A day job of writing at National Review is just about the best a writer can hope for; thanks to Rich Lowry, Jack Fowler, and everyone else at NR for their support and camaraderie.

It would have been impossible for me to have contributed to this book without the support of my family. My wife and kids were patient and understanding during the weekends and evenings that I spent writing, and I am forever grateful for their love and support.

Thanks as well to all my family, friends, and professional associates who’ve lent their ears, expertise, and insight throughout the writing process. Your time, energy, and friendship are greatly appreciated.

Thanks also to my colleagues at NRA News for making it possible for me to take on a book project in addition to my job as host of NRA News’ Cam & Co. I couldn’t have done this without you, and I’m lucky to work with so many outstanding individuals.

A huge debt of gratitude is owed to the many individuals who have inspired me to be a better husband, father, and man. In particular, the members of our military who deploy overseas and the families they leave behind that I have known have given me a much greater appreciation of how precious family time can be. I’ve been honored to get to know the guys behind the Duskin & Stephens Foundation, named for fallen warriors Mike Duskin and Riley Stephens. These guys were badass warriors, but they were also family men, and the mission of the foundation is to support the families of fallen Special Ops warriors and the educational needs of the children of active duty Special Operation Forces. These warriors and their families do some real heavy lifting on behalf of all of us.

I have to thank my friend Jim Geraghty for asking me to write this book with him. We’ve been friends for a long time, and I wasn’t particularly worried about our friendship being affected by the process of writing a book together. In retrospect, that was pretty foolish of me. I don’t think you can do something like this in collaboration with a friend without it impacting your relationship. In this case, luckily enough, our friendship actually grew as the project came together. Thanks for everything, Jim.

Our team at Regnery has been just the right blend of enthusiasm and veteran professionalism. Thank you Marji Ross, Harry Crocker, Maria Ruhl, and the rest of the gang. We also want to thank our agent, Mel Berger, for handling all the little details with the fine-tuned skill that is all too easy to take for granted.