Because I Said So

In the years that I have been writing this column, I have spent a great deal of time focusing on the good things, the sweet things, the fundaments of family life that make waking up easy even when there isn’t much sleep in the tank and makes every day seem like an adventure.

Writing first as a single parent of twins and then as a married man with another daughter in the mix, I always made a point to keep it light and end every column in a hug.

But before there was a column, before there was Erin and Meagan, there was another life, one filled with darkness and mayhem. Like many people, I had issues with substances and they led to a lot of unfortunate choices. Unlike a lot of even those people, I sunk to depths that seem unfathomable in retrospect.

I mention all that not to bring down what is a generally a breezy read in a family-friendly paper, but because I have spent the past three years looking into that history and published a book –The Night of the Gun: A reporter investigates the darkest story of his life. His own – that came out in August on Simon & Schuster.

And in the process of doing the book, I realized that families have a power unlike any other social construct in our culture. The love of a good family can comfort the afflicted – and in some cases heal them – while finding a way to support members even when they don’t seem to be doing themselves any favors.

Our families love us no matter what. I can remember a long time ago riding in a car with my mother Joan, telling her that I had screwed up again, that I was in deep trouble. She stopped the car and looked at me: “You are ours. You are mine. We chose you. We love you no matter what.”

My mother is now gone, but those words linger. I tested that “no matter what” time and time again and the response of my family was to love me harder, to not let me go.

That steadiness, a kind of chronicity if you will, can wear down even the most implacable foe and resistant pathology. When others feel almost forced to walk away – friends, colleagues, bosses – a family will stick, not out of foolishness, but because that’s what families do.

Which is not to say that my family was willing to stand by all manner of foolishness. My parents and my siblings let me know when I was out in the tall waves that there was another way, and that when I was ready to take certain steps, they would be there to love and support me. The love took some tough turns on occasion – I can vividly remember one breakfast with my father at Perkins in Edina where he told me in plainest terms what he thought of my choices – but it never went away.

“Your mother and I had a different agenda for you,” he told me these many years later. He suggested that I could make every effort to push them away, but there would still be the prayers, the hopefulness, the expectation that the things that they had taught me from when I was little child would take hold.

My abasement followed by a glorious life by any objective definition is a reminder that there is no such thing as hopeless. Yes, I was an addict and an alcoholic, but eventually I took custody of my own life, and in the fullness of time, custody of Erin and Meagan. In baby steps, I walked back to who I once was and the promises that recovery brings washed over me in abundance.

It has not been clear sailing since – far from it, actually – but in the main, the fruits of normalcy, the kind of feeling that you get when your daughter scratches out a single in softball after getting a few strikes against her, won out over the negative impulses.

As I sit here today, Erin and Meagan are excelling at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Michigan – Go Big Ten – and Madeline is nursing a growing interest in field hockey while demonstrating that math and science skills only skipped a generation, they did not go away. Jill has a wonderful job  that she loves, the kind of gig that lets her use all her muscles every single day. And the only boy in the family has a good job for a reputable organization and now a book that goes to some lengths to explain how someone who you would quicken your step to get by on the street has become a worthy member of society.

So the story about that life, and the column about it, ends in a hug. Not some gooey little perfect picture, but a full-on embrace of the power of families, the one I grew up in and the one I came to be part of.

Visit www.familytimesinc.com to hear more from David Carr on his book and thoughts on families.

return to top