FATHERHOOD BUT WITH QUESTION MARKS

I've always wondered if I'm a good dad. So I did something drastic: I asked my kids.

- BROOKS ATWOOD

I THINK IF parents are being honest, none of us know what we're really doing. The best that you'll get out of us, maybe, is that we're trying to protect our children from whatever wounds we may have suffered as kids. We're course correctors.

I know that I don't know what I'm doing. And my navigation map has a big cosmic hole in it. I was raised by a single mother of three, so what Dad meant to me was absence. Like most kids, I asked a lot of questions, which my mom answered if she somehow found the time. But I don't remember anyone asking me anything deep or important.