One of the first things I did when I started my company was make a business card. I didn't really know what to put underneath my name. There were only two of us, doing everything. But I figured I went to a legitimate business school, so dammit, I'm a legitimate businessman.
And as a legitimate businessman, a CEO, people tended to ask me questions about all sorts of things, even parenting. I'd respond quickly, firmly, so they would believe me. I thought I had answers. But then, my wife got real sick, and I learned a whole bunch more. But let me back up.
I come from a pretty traditional family, and I used that as a blueprint when it was time to start my own. My wife Liz and I got married in 2001, and we had three healthy kids in rapid succession, with me in the office and her at home. I know not all families look like this, but ours did. And for about eight years, it was a dream.
Shortly after she turned 40 -- the kids were two, four and six -- she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Suddenly, our focus was split between the kids and the cancer. Unstructured playtime. Surgery. Healthy snacks. Chemo. Somebody's got to book the bounce house for the birthday party. Clinical trial research. For about four years, it felt like we had the upper hand. But then, a bad scan. I quit my job to help, which was not a hard decision.
Recurrent metastasized ovarian cancer has a very, very low survival rate, but we fully believed that if we tried hard enough, we could be the outlier. And we weren't. Liz died just over nine years ago. Margo was 12, Gwen was 10 and Druh was eight. At this point, my business card would have said “single parent.”
Now before Liz died, I thought of all the things that parents did as a complete alphabet, A to Z. And the way it worked in our family was I did A through M, kind of the blunt stuff: the job, paycheck, the tire pressure and the minivan. Liz did N through Z -- more nuanced. Making sure that the kids, the dog and me were looked after and happy. After she died, I figured my job would simply be the sum of the two. You know, the full A to Z. Well first of all, I completely underestimated how hard Liz's end of the alphabet was, that N through Z. I mean, six days after she died, all three kids got sent home from school with head lice. We'd been sleeping in the same room together, so it was a total mess.
Things got more routine, but they didn't get easier. Three kids, two schools, five after-school activities. Just getting everybody to where they needed to be. Permission slip. Sunscreen. Water bottle. Both shoes.
(Laughter)
I don't know how people did it. But past the literal nitpicking and the logistics, was the emotional dimension. I mean, I knew my kids, but I didn’t know them like Liz knew them. I mean, how do you get to know a kid when they're changing so quickly? You know, I tried to keep current. I knew that Margo liked long sleeves, Gwen does not like surprises, and Dru doesn’t always understand why underwear is necessary.
(Laughter)
But they kept evolving, and so I finally just threw that away and adopted a "new shoe, new kid" program. "Oh, I see you've grown out of your shoes. Nice to meet you. Tell me everything I need to know about you."
(Laughter)
So we got there, mostly, enough, only to realize this -- it's not just A to Z. There's a whole world beyond Z, a world I didn't know existed. Doing the routines, keeping up with the emotional evolutions only gets me into a position to discover this world beyond language. And I got there with all my kids. I'll give you an example.
10:30 at night, middle-of-nowhere Vermont, drugstore. Margo and I are staring at the wall of feminine products, the first time she needed them. Dumbfounded. Completely confused. And then we decided just to buy one of everything, and cracked up laughing at the number of sizes and shapes and ... approaches.
(Laughter)
Or the time with Gwen. It looked like she was about to break down, so I jump into mama bear mode, thinking something went terribly wrong. But then she burst into these tears of joy and told me about something went unbelievably right. Or the after-school pickup with Dru. I'd done after-school pickups close to 3,000 times. So he hops in the minivan, grabs his pretzels. I noticed that his lips were getting chapped, so I hand him the ChapStick, the stuff that doesn't sting him, and he puts it on, he's comforted, he's home. After a few minutes of quiet driving, we come to a red light. Dru goes, “Dad, what’s your deepest desire?”
(Laughter)
Yeah. (Laughs) They weren't doing poems on deepest desire at school. He just, like, came up with it. I lock eyes with him, my brain racing. "Quick, what's my deepest desire? What a great learning moment. Something I can say to change this kid's life." I punted. “I don’t know, Dru. What’s yours?”
(Laughter)
And at a red light on El Camino Real, he said, "I want to feel love my entire life." We stared at each other in silence until the light turned green. My job was to pick up my kid from school. My role on Earth was to prove myself worthy for an invitation into that inner life -- not the life I saw snowboarding or talking Pokémon -- and know that kid well enough to say the right-enough thing. You know, I wonder, if I didn't do pickups all those times, if he wasn't convinced that I would be there, if I knew him and his needs, would he have asked me that? Who would have he asked?
All these times, my kids were in this space, like nervous system to nervous system. It was beyond language. We laughed or we cried, or we stared at each other in silence, not needing words to be together. It was, like, fused in a neurological sense. Experiencing, thinking, feeling one thing as two people.
Now maybe some of you have experienced this. I hadn't, and I was trying. But I learned a bunch, and maybe there's some lessons there, too, for others. For current A-through-M parents, you know, if you find yourself tempted to daydream past or maybe outsource some seemingly mindless task with your kid, remember the routine can be the ticket to the transcendent. For CEOs and technologists, or anybody that's going to ask me now, how can you support parenting? I'll let you know. It’s not about an easier path for logistics or some quicker path through the emotional evolutions. You want to solve a hard problem? Figure out how to enable more people to spend time in this world beyond letters and language. You need some help? Ask those N-through-Z people, the people who have felt it. They'll be your guide. They'll let you know when you get it right. So involve them in your process.
For me ... the times that my kids and I spent in this empathy-rich space, you know, cemented the idea for our family that bad things happen. Pain, suffering, life's unfairnesses will happen. But we are not alone. Time, in this space, the connection feels so good, so whole, I would do anything to be in the heart of it with my kids. And I hope, in time, my kids will do anything to be in the heart of it with their kids. Because once you know, you know.
In other words, I'll remember, I'm looking forward to the birthdays and graduations, but what will I treasure in my final days? A locked-in stare at a red light. Tears of good news. And buying 150 dollars' worth of feminine products in an East Cow Path, Vermont.
(Laughter)
Liz suspected I didn't understand all this when she died. And she was right. Her fear was I’d never find it and the kids would forever lose access to these sublime interactions that she had with them. Those interactions, the last thing she could bear to give up in her final days. It was her greatest sadness ... but also a giant gift for me, paid for at the highest price, that I will not squander. This shared world beyond Z that I can now experience with my kids, it's real, it's pure, and I know, when we're there, they continue to feel their mother's love.
Thank you.
(Cheers and applause)
