Father's Day

I think it was at Uncle Tim's house, the old one, that there was a little thing in the bathroom that said "Any man can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad." And even if that wasn't at Uncle Tim's, it may as well have been, because he's one of the best dads I know, and he's one of the first people I think of whenever I see that saying. 

In fact, there are a lot of best dads I know, starting with my own dad, who worked, and works, tirelessly to provide, past exhaustion, past any reasonable limits, and provides guidance, love, and more love. Katie's dad, who is the most unflappable human being I know. My brother in law, Aaron. I think of both of my grandfathers; I think of my uncles. I think of Uncle Harvey - FATHER Harvey, who was a dad to hundreds of boys in Monroeville and Norwalk over his decades of service to the Church. Uncle Paul, another dad to me from beyond the grave. My cousins, especially Danny, who is the single best dad I know, or can even imagine. I think of so many of my pals from high school, old dads and new (REALLY new, Patrick Kennedy, Josh Kaufmann, Neil McElroy, Colin McGinnis!!!) who are great dads. Colleagues, neighbors, friends. Guys I see teaching their kids how to hit their woods at the country club (sorry, Ellie, Joey, and Mark, you got the wrong dad for that). JD, doting over the dance shows, dads of students I've had. And I have a sneaking suspicion that all of them have the same little nagging thing in the back of their heads that I do:

Dear Lord; PLEASE do not let me be completely $%&ing this up. 

I take the role of dad more seriously than anything else, be it with my three biologic kids, or with some of the incredible kids that have come through my classroom and into my heart over the years. But I know that I get it wrong more often than I get it right. Sneaking them pop. Stealth missions for a small vanilla cone with rainbow sprinkles. Teaching them colorful new vocabulary words while working on the car. Or the plumbing. Or with a hammer. Or the TV. Or shelving books. Or cutting onions. Um, yeah, you get the idea. 

So, it's not with just with the humility of knowing damn well that I fail more often than I succeed as a dad, but with absolute shock and bewilderment that the following series of events went down the way they did over the past 96 hours or so. 

Last December, when I decided to run the Mohican 50 as a fundraiser for Dr. Rini's research at Cleveland Clinic, I got put in touch with Chelsea, in the Foundation's giving office, and Katrina, in communications. Chelsea helped with the back-end organizing part of the ultra fundraiser, and was the brains of reaching out to larger donors to find a way to really generate some substantial money for the mission of beating kidney cancer, maybe not in my lifetime, but laying a foundation for down the road. Katrina was trying to get the story to media outlets to consider as a feature, and drive the mission a little further. Well, of course there were the unpleasant (unpleasant enough that I still don't want to talk about them) problems I had that sidelined me from running throughout March and most of April, and then two weeks after I started running again to get training back up to speed, I had the stress fracture in my left tibia. I told Chelsea and Katrina, well, you know, ballgame. It's over. Maybe I'll try for an Olympic Triathlon in the late summer or something, but the Mohican 50 isn't happening. So the event was off, stories were off. No big deal.

Except they weren't.

Monday, just before the end of my summer school day, I had a text message from Katrina to call ASAP. NBC's Today Show wants to do a story on you for Fathers' Day, comic-book-nerd-dad-with-cancer-angle. I texted back, "ARE YOU SERIOUS?" 

The speed with which this moved after that was breakneck. On Tuesday, I had a phone interview with a producer named Caroline, who is just awesome. Talked to her for an hour or so, and then she flew in and spent all of Wednesday night at the house with us, shooting interviews with me, Katie, and the kids, and then filming us being normal. And if you know my boys, you can just take a wild guess at how THAT went!!! Thursday, she followed me in to work at Scott High's STRIVE summer program and then followed me,  JD Pooley, and Ingrid out to Cleveland for treatment.

(One of the funny parts here is that, about two weeks ago, JD said, "Hey, can I follow you out to Cleveland to do a video on what this routine is like for you?" and I was all, "Yeah, man, that'd be fun!" and we were talking about it being all guerilla-style with an iPhone and totally under the radar. That video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm4BD2QUjP4&feature=youtu.be , and it's really cool - it really captures the vibe of my days, and I hope, maybe demystifies this and makes it a little less scary!)

So, long story longer, we are all flying out to New York next Saturday to be on the Sunday morning show live. It airs from 0800-0900, and I have no idea where in that hour we'll be. We're planning on cramming as much New York into the 30 hours or so we're in town as we can; heading down to WTC and Battery Park so they can see Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, hopefully the East Coast Memorial Tablets (I mean, c'mon, it's me, you know I'm gonna lobby to see something WWII related), head back up to where we're staying in Midtown, and get them to Times Square at dusk, do the show Sunday morning, and then...

Wait a minute. Did I just use the phrase "Do the show?" Do people really say that? Sure as hell, people like ME don't say that!!!! 

... and then poke around Midtown, maybe go up to Top of the Rock or Empire State Bldg to get them a real 'big city' experience before we fly back! 

All of this is why I've been kind of social media silent the past three days. Number one, we were busy as hell. Tuesday, we busted butt to get this place clean enough for the cameras, and then Wednesday and Thursday we were on the crazy schedule with Caroline here with us. I'm sorry if I have been sort of out of touch during this time! Number two, we were sure how long we needed to keep this secret or anything, but I got the all-clear yesterday, and we just wanted to sort of take a day to pinch ourselves and make sure, this is really happening, right?

We are so incredibly excited about this whole thing. More so, because of something that, at the time, seemed insignificant last weekend. Ever since we cut cable, we've had an Apple TV that streams old pictures to our TV when we're not watching stuff. Some pictures of the last trip Katie and I took to NYC, when she was about four months pregnant with Joey, were cycling through, and the kids were asking this and that about New York, and one of them asked, "Can we go to New York City sometime?" and Katie and I just laughed it off. Yeah! Right! No way, Jose! And then, here we are. Totally surreal. And, I think, totally not an accident.