My Word Is My Bond” ad campaign that made people think I was like them — and that I was just another average person like them, a regular schmuck. I had never thought of myself as a schmuck in my life, but of course that’s how they characterized me in that commercial. I found myself thinking of the late Rod Serling on that little couch, trying to think of something to tell his son, that there’s more going on, much more, in the world and in life than he thinks. I began thinking about my family back in the Deep South, my mother with her stories and her songs and that singing voice. I got homesick and felt like I was going to the edge of the universe, as if I was going to go over the abyss and there would be no bottom to it. Sometimes I like to walk around my backyard and think about what all I’ve seen in my short life, like an anthropologist. The night before I moved here to Pennsylvania I went to a party in my honor and met my future wife. I’d say that was the biggest event of my life, at least since becoming a father. It was a party in Lancaster, so there were a lot of people there from out of state. The only reason I attended was to see my friend Nancy, the one who was supposed to drive me. I thought this could be the woman who could save my life. My father was a man who was never home, and when he was home he was a heavy drinker. He often beat us. My mother had no hope of living like that. My father’s family never wanted anything to do with me, and I never understood it. I guess you always wonder, “What’s going on with the people who made me? Why did they make me? Was I always this way?” Well, no, I wasn’t. My mother, on the other hand, was always giving me that look. It’s that look we give a child when we think he is a grown man, so he doesn’t need us to protect him from anything. For some reason, even though I didn’t understand it, my mother’s face kept popping up in my head and distracting me from thinking about my father. I just kept thinking of the way she looked at me, giving me that look. And then it came to me that there was nothing wrong with that look — that maybe it was just a look of love. I started thinking of that look I got when my mother took me for my first haircut in my very early twenties. I was 19 years old, and I was standing there looking at myself in the mirror, and she started smiling at me. It was such a strange smile. She was smiling in a way that seemed like she was about to cry, and she kept saying over and over, “My god. It’s so much better. It’s so much better.” I realized that it wasn’t really her looking at me, but it was me looking at myself, seeing myself in that way. I realized that every time I’d see her face, it would be like a movie. I’d see her smile, and I’d remember what she’d done for me. That was the day that I realized what the expression “the look” meant to me. I remember thinking about her smile that night on the little couch, and I tried to think about the way she smiled when she was looking at me in my barber chair. She taught me to love myself by showing me how much love I could be filled with, by telling me to never take no for an answer and by showing me that not all men are my father, but there are men who can show you a good time, just like my father never showed me. I had never heard anything like that before. But she told me about what her father did for her, and all the pain he put her through as a child, so that I wouldn’t have to go through that. I began to feel that if I had not had a father who taught me everything I should have learned, then there was nothing stopping me from being that kind of father to my son. I couldn’t ever do to her what my father had done to her, but I had to show him the love she had shown me. I could never replace him, but I could try to show my son what love is. I don’t know if anyone reading this, especially the men reading it, knows what love really is. It’s not this feeling you get when you hear your son’s voice or see a beautiful sunset or realize you’ve found the girl of your dreams. It’s not this kind of love. It’s much bigger than that. It is the kind of love that has to work to survive, and has to fight not to be lost, just like how my mother tried to survive her childhood and all of her troubles. It’s a love that doesn’t give up. I don’t know that there’s a word for it. Maybe I’m trying to make one up. My father loved me when I was a child. He taught me to play sports and took me fishing and camping. He played sports with me, so that I understood what it is to be a part of a team. He knew I was never going to make it as an athlete, so he played with me. My mother made sure that I always knew how important family was, and how I needed to learn the value of having strong roots in the community. My father’s family wasn’t the type of family who would help someone in need, but she taught me not to take that for granted, and to take pride in who I was. She was my first teacher of what it was to be a woman. She taught me that a woman’s place was in the home, and that’s how you honored her. That woman was like a mother to me. She was like my own mother, because I never had one. I’d like to be as good a father to my son as my mother was to me. But it’s not going to be easy. I am not going to be as successful as my mother was because I didn’t grow up in her conditions. If I can get to where I am now, which is the middle of my life and not at the end, I can do it for my son. I have to set an example for him that is so good that if he sees me walk through life with grace and confidence, and if I have worked hard at whatever I have done in my life, then he can do it too. My son may not ever have what I’ve been given. He may not be born into the same kinds of circumstances I was born into. His life may not be as comfortable as mine. He will have to work hard to get ahead, the way my mother had to work hard to get ahead. The way she put herself through college to be a nurse, while I was enjoying myself with my friends. That’s the kind of example I try to set for my son — not because it’s what I want, but because it’s who I am. It’s a way I try to honor my mother. I can’t see myself as one of the lucky ones. I’ve had some luck along the way, but not a lot, not what some people have. There are so many people who don’t have a good home or education. If you don’t have money, or a roof over your head, you have a certain type of struggle in this life. So much is involved in whether you get ahead, and so many factors are in your favor when you’re born. Or not in your favor, when you’re born. My mother could be the hardest person in the world. You would never know it. She was always making excuses for me, always putting herself down. But she was tough. I have never forgotten how it was to tell her she couldn’t do this or that, and her response was always, “I’m doing it, and I don’t care what you say. You’re not my mother. I am the mother of my child.” My mother had that kind of strength. People don’t really understand that. You don’t see a lot of families that can be that strong. I wanted to be there for my son, but I am not there now because I have just taken up where I left off. I am only 32 years old, so I am much younger than most of the other men out there who have become fathers. I guess my wife is young. She has had to be the mother of our son. I am lucky that I still have the chance to be a father to my son, but you have to do your part, and you can’t walk away when you’re not on top of things. And I’m not there yet. I think about my child and how I will be a good father to him or her, and how I have