106: Father’s Day ‘98
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from W.B. E.C. Chicago and Public Radio International. It's this American life from our class. And for this week's program for Father's Day, everybody on our staff said around and we talked about what it is that one really wants to hear on Father's Day or near Father's Day. And Nancy, one of the producers on the show said, "What you really want to hear is parents and kids actually having an honest moment together, talking about whatever." And so we tried it. We asked this 18-year-old named Chana Willeford from Waco, Texas, and her father. They'll be willing to have a conversation on tape in which each of them got to ask the other all the questions they had never asked before. And it's interesting, what happens when you do that? One of the first things I wanted to start with dad was like when you and mom got together, for example, I know that I think, anyway, you guys met in a bar, and then like two weeks later, you were married. Yeah, it was a very short romance. You know, what made you guys get married so quickly? Yeah, it was kind of a whirlwind thing, you know. I know from my side of it, I was looking for somebody. I needed someone in my life, you know. And I guess, you know, she basically was in the same situation. So we both just were looking for somebody and we ended up hooking up. Yeah. All through this conversation, Chana goes back and forth between being her father's daughter, his child, and being his peer. And what's so amazing to listen to is that that is the end of the long process of parenting, a process that takes decades. The biggest project most of us ever embark upon. This is how you know it all worked out okay, when you can talk to your kid as an equal. Well, what was the like the family reaction? I know Nana couldn't have been entirely pleased. I don't know, you know, I really don't know, you know, I never really asked anybody. Of course, you know, I was in the Marine Corps and I didn't really care what anybody thought about anything. Well, yeah, you were like, how you were held like 25 at the time, right? 25, yeah. Yeah, that's 25. And I had always told myself, you know, that I was gonna live hard and party till I got to be 25. And then I was gonna get married. So you stuck with it? Sure enough, that's the way it ended up. Well, today in our program, what happens when fathers and kids sit down and talk, actually talk? And what happens when they don't? It's kind of amazing little show today. We have four acts, act one, Pandora's Box, in which China and her dad, as we said, ask each other all the unasked questions they've stored up over the years. Act two, Mac Daddies, in the building in which 18-year-old San Antonio Brooks lives in the Chicago public housing projects. Most of the fathers are 125 years old, and they became fathers as teenagers. He talks to some of his friends about whether they are better fathers than their own fathers were. Act three, Bond, Dammit, Bond, in which a new dad, writer Dan Savage, laments how long it is taking him to truly bond with his baby boy. Act four, age of enchantment, writer Lawrence Weschler and his 11-year-old daughter Sarah tell a true story, a parental love, betrayal, fiction, deception, and more love that happened to the two of them. Stay with us. Act one, Pandora's Box. So, I already explained the premise for China's tape conversation with her dad. A few quick words about them before we start. China grew up in Waco, but unlike most of the people who she knows, their channel left Texas, went to college in Philadelphia where she just finished her freshman year at Temple. Her dad works with a phone company installing big switching systems, stuff like that. He and her mom have been married and divorced and remarried to each other three times. One of my original questions when when first asked to interview you basically was the first thing that just
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