It’s a story as old as parenthood itself. The child tries and tries to win the approval of their parent, which never seems to come. There is pain, resentment, bewilderment. Only at the end, after much pain and resentment, is it revealed: The child had the thing they wanted all along. They just never knew.
This was the story of Claudia Williams, the daughter of Ted Williams. Only buried in a pile of memorabilia did she find a note left by her impossible-to-please father.
“To my beautiful daughter,” it said. “I love you. Dad.”
It’s the story of the brilliant publisher Sonny Mehta. In Mehta’s obituary, Roger Cohen wrote: When Mehta’s father, a diplomat, died in Vienna, Mehta found in his desk a folder with every article ever published about him. The pride of his father, who had never complimented his son, was evident.
It breaks your heart. Why couldn’t they have expressed this when they were alive? Was it a generational thing? Did they think it was helping to make their kids better, tougher? Why couldn’t they have been more like Jim Valvano’s father and given their kids the gift of being a fan? We’ll never know the answer to those questions. What we do know is we can’t do this with our own kids. We can’t wait to be proud. We can’t keep our feelings for them hidden under piles of paper or in a drawer in our desk. We have to tell them now. We have to show them now. That we’re rooting
for them. That we love them. That we believe in them. That we’re proud of them. Because we are. And they deserve to know it—before it’s too late.