“We coveredeverythingfor those videos,” Pam raved. “Car maintenance, cooking, laundry, home maintenance, lawn care, how to register for health insurance and make doctor’s appointments. How to make sure you’re registered to vote, and what to expect when you show up at the polls. A friend of mine is a nurse practitioner, so she jumped in to help him with first aid and advice about drug store medications. We did step-by-steps on how to pick out nice gifts for every budget. Pieces on etiquette, chivalry, and date protocol. You name it, we covered it.”
“That’s incredible. Ryan mentioned the BetterYou program, but I never really looked into it.”
Pam nodded. “He’s humble about it, but I think it’s his greatest accomplishment. And he doesn’t make a dime from it. He uses his coaching fees and sponsorships to cover the overhead.”
Maybe I needed to get Amber into the BetterYou videos . . .
“People bring different strengths to relationships,” she said. “That’s the point. You’re supposed to complement each other. But you have to bringsomethingto the table. There’s no shame in learning something new. He wanted to give people the tools to learn without having to ask someone and feel embarrassed about it. Shame is a terrible motivator. But he also wanted to remind people like me who tended to settle for less than they deserved, that the resources are out there. And if someone is unwilling to learn, then they’re not a partner.”
Ryan was a partner in every sense of the word. He was a partner in the little things, like sharing the cooking and cleaning responsibilities back at the rental. He shouldered my emotional burdens as if they were his own. He had his own pursuits, but still took time to support me in mine.
Ryan was my parallel line. He wasn’t stale; a stationary dot on the map I came across while I kept going. He wasn’t an intersection, sharing my location but not the same direction.
I had been running, and he ran with me.
Then I stopped running with him and ran from him instead.
FROM SHEP
To my adventurous daughter on her thirtieth birthday,
I’m not sure what other father and daughter relationships are like. It used to be something that kept me up at night. Not anymore. Being in your life for thirty whole years has been my greatest joy and honor. You are the kind of goodness that the world desperately needs. You see the best in everyone, and that is a rare trait these days.
It can be easy to become calloused, especially as you enter this new decade. But I want to let you in on a secret: your thirties aren’t the end of the best part of your life. They’re the beginning.
Your thirties will be filled with copious amounts of confidence that you didn’t have in your twenties. They’re filled with peace and comfort as you become who you were meant to be. It’s alaunching point for you to soar to new heights because you’re no longer tethered by expectations or conventions.
I love you exactly as you are, and I love seeing you grow into who you were meant to be.
Love,
Dad
36
RYAN
EVERYONE LOVES A CLIFFHANGER
Ieyed the couch with suspicion as I padded through the kitchen, grabbing a glass of water, then retreating to my room before I had to get on the video call.
Willow’s perfume lingered on the corner of the couch like an insult, teasing me over how long it had been since I had seen her. Talked to her. Held her.
I had been trying to get in touch with her in any way I could. But the calls and texts were still blocked, and the social media messages went unanswered.
A normal guy would have taken the hint.
But I was not a normal guy.
Willow wasn’t a normal woman either. I wasn’t entirely sure what kind of mind game she was playing. All I knew was that she had, apparently, come to visit my mother but still refused to talk to me.
Willow dropped by unexpectedly, just wanting to talk and get to know her. Mom had raved about her, because, of course, she did. And then she enacted “girl code” and refused to tell me specifics of what they had talked about.
The downside of self-employment was that I called the shots. Sometimes, I wished that I had a boss who told me I had to get to work instead of wallowing in self-pity. I did not want to be a guest spot on this podcast, but I had already said yes.
I closed the door to my bedroom, dropped into my desk chair and pulled up the video call request.
I put my headphones on and tried to ignore the way that everything still smelled like Kansas. Like her. Like the room we shared in the house we lived in.
