I guess the most seminal moment going early way back was my father died when I was 3 years old. I was raised by my grandparents, and my mother went back and got a degree.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When my mother had four girls, and she could tell her marriage was falling apart, she went back to college and got her degree in music and education.
All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.
When my father passed away and then when later on I gave birth, those are sort of ground-breaking experiences that put everything else into perspective.
I got a very late start at fatherhood. I'm a late bloomer in general. It took me seven years to get through four years of college. I was five years away from 40 before I had a family, and I had never been around kids much at all. All of a sudden, I was around three boys all the time.
My father's life was so decimated by his earliest experiences. His mother died when he was 7 years old, which he always said was the worst experience in his life. When he was 8, his father disappeared and he was on his own from the age of 8.
I'd long wanted to write about that moment when a woman steps off the career track to have her first child. For me, that was a scary time.
The happiest moment of my life was probably when my daughter was born.
I was 20 when my daughter was born, and making all these plans during my wife's pregnancy. I was going to be the perfect father. Once she was born, it was suddenly, 'Oh, my God! I'm a parent!'
I turned 40, got married, got a kid, and my mother passed away. I experienced life and death, with the enjoyment of creating life and the loss, within one year.
Becoming a mother was the single defining event of my life. It felt like the whole world shifted.