A Tale of Two Fathers

Among the many good fortunes of my life, I count the fact that while plenty of people lacked even one good father, I was blessed with two: my father, the original Hugh O’Neill, who died too young at 60, and my father-in-law, Lee Friedman, who made it to near ninety but, even so, left before I was ready to have him go. These two singular men came at fatherhood from opposite poles. And watching them play the role, I got a tutorial on the double helix at the heart of being Dad.

Hugh O’Neill and Lee Friedman

My great-spirited father, the patriarch of our rollicking Irish-American clan, was a complicated man. He was skilled at anger, and was a master of the ominous paternal silence. But more important, he was also gifted with joy, possessed of a vitality that was somehow elementally male, deriving as it did from his gratitude for a strong back, a good mind and a powerful will. I recall one Walt-Whitman-like riff on the glories of the opposable thumb. “A fella can grab a lot with this baby,” he said, flexing his thumb as though he were a TV pitchman hawking a miracle gadget.

And grab my father did.

With the sweetheart of his youth, he wrote a family romance — a sweet saga of seven children and seven billion laughs, of poetry and dogs and summer and medicine and mending walls, of baseball and algebra and cookies. Above all, there were cookies. His life didn’t just happen to him. He carved it from his passion and his hopes.

“He wasn’t buoyant because he didn’t know the harsh truths, but because they didn’t get the last word.”

He was an enthusiast, but no Pollyanna. My father was a soldier and a surgeon whose brio had been around the block a few times, had been aged in the barrel of brutality and illness. He wasn’t buoyant because he didn’t know the harsh truths, but because he wouldn’t give them the last word. He had a zest for the whole of life — the joy and the heartache, the sugar and the salt — and a kind of readiness for whatever might be next. After all, a man didn’t flinch or falter. A fella looked life in the eye.

My father shared his gusto, and left his children with a sense of their own agency, a belief that we were not only qualified to be the authors of our lives, but that we were required to be by virtue of our blessings. My father took up a lot of oxygen in the room, but that’s of little moment. It was inspiring, exciting to be his son.

To this day, whenever I think of him, I can feel the wind on my face.

At first look, my father-in-law seemed a smaller figure. But he wasn’t; he was just lower-key. A chemical engineer and professor without portfolio, he was, to my mind, the world’s leading expert on fossil fuels, military strategy, geopolitics, and loving his wife and kids. Part technophile, part sprite, he owned and operated both a keen analytical mind and a gossamer wit. And here’s the trait that made him, I think, unique among our gender: Lee Friedman was the only man I’ve ever known who subdued the anger that is, God help us, encoded in our Y chromosome. Unlike my father, Lee wasn’t in dubious battle with the world; instead, he was chatting with it.

“Unlike my father, Lee wasn’t in dubious battle with the world; instead, he was chatting with it.”

His wisdom was rabbinical. He questioned and probed, seeking symmetries and delights, and he pointed us to any and all elations he found. He didn’t need the spotlight. He was the rarest of men, master of himself — modest, competent, generous, gentle. He burbled like a brook, irrigating our lives with a kindness and mirth that were indistinguishable from heroism.

Whenever I think of him, I feel safe in harbor.

If the sketches of these men suggest that my father lacked gentleness or that my father-in-law lacked strength, I haven’t done either guy justice. I remember a wicker basket in our living room that each Christmas season would slowly fill up with cards from my father’s patients, testimonials to his loving heart, many of which hinted that his healing was as much pastoral as it was medicinal. He used to say that most people were less sick than they were discouraged, and all he had to do to make them feel better was to point them to their achievements — most often, their flourishing kids. And for all you need to know about my father-in-law’s strength, consider this resume.

He helped save civilization on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944, prevailed in the roughhouse of corporate life, was his wife’s rock for 57 years, and for the last five years of his life, endured the frailties of old age with surpassing grace.

No, both of my fathers had the whole arsenal of things we look for in a man. They just wrote their Dad symphonies for different instruments. My father was a flourish of trumpets. My father-in-law was the rhythm section that made the Friedman family song possible.

At my father’s funeral, a nurse with whom he had worked told me that whenever she spoke to him, even for a passing moment, she felt better about well, everything. “I thought that if there was a man like this in the world, maybe things would work out alright,” she said. I got the same feeling whenever I saw my father-in- law. It was tough to worry around him. His plain goodness was balm.

“…both of my fathers had the whole arsenal of things we look for in a man. They just wrote their Dad symphonies for different instruments.”

The two men barely knew each other — they met in passing at my wedding –but their legends crossed in me. Though my father wasn’t much for giving advice, he offered me one pearl just before I got married. “Never let your father-in-law-see you lying down,” went his wisdom. Sloth was the enemy, you see. No father needed to see the man to whom his daughter had hitched her wagon sacked out on the couch watching the game. It sounded right, and God knows, I didn’t want Lee to know the slacker truth about me.

So, for a few years, whenever I was at Friedmans’ house, sacked out on the couch watching the game, if I heard someone coming, I’d jump up and act as though I was just on my way to the hardware store to get some caulk to fix the shower. But slowly, it dawned on me that Lee was a different kind of father; he’d sit and watch the game with you. For him, I didn’t have to prove my worthiness. I was pre-qualified because his daughter loved me. He wasn’t passing judgment, but just honoring his daughter’s. He wasn’t the center of the universe; you were.

There were a million differences in temperament between the two men, but they also shared two chivalric traits. First, I never heard either of them complain. Not once, not through the toughest times, not about the bad break of an early illness, not about the roundhouse right of a dreadful stroke. Either suck it up or fix the problem.

And second, they both did what men do best — put themselves at the service of others. End of story. Period. I said end of story, pal. When I visited my father-in-law in the hospital shortly before his death, he was immobilized and could barely speak. And yet his first words were somehow crystal clear, “Hey, kid, how you doin’?”

If you can resemble either of these guys at all, go forth and polish up the world, my brother. But don’t even try to be both of them. After all, you’re just a man, freighted with the weakness to which flesh is heir. But remember the challenging puzzle at the heart of being Dad. Sometimes kids need a man who’s big, who can fill their sails with his hope and his joy, who can entrain them with his taste for life. Sometimes, kids need a sense that the world is open to them, that they’re worthy of happiness and big love.

But just as often, kids need a man with the courage to be small, who will defer to their ways and their worries, who will be quiet and calm and just there for them as they find their footing, gingerly work their way toward their destiny. It’s tough to know when to break out your inner Hugh O’Neill Sr. and when to showcase the Lee Friedman within, but consider this guiding idea.

Whenever it feels as though your child needs the exuberance of a man in full challenge the thought with the opposite possibility — that he only needs the serenity of a witness, a man in quiet command. And vice versa.

Your heart will find the sweet, glorious balance of being Dad.