"Ba, when did you get old?"
“Letterman, Clooney, and Stern: profiles in changing masculinity. Kids are many things but not trivial. My grandchildren ask frankly about things grownups don’t. ‘Ba, when did you get old?’ Jack asked out of the blue one afternoon when he was nine. He was staring at my face as if noticing for the first time the sun spots and wrinkles, white eyebrows, and all of the rest of the mortality one-way signposts written on my face. ‘Last Thursday at three fifteen in the afternoon,’ I answered. I laughed at Jack’s surprised expression and then explained that sixty-seven ‘isn’t old.’ Then I admitted it was “sort of old.” This exchange was a reminder that childcare keeps me realistically connected to life’s passage in ways nothing else does. And I’m not the only person to notice this. Talk-show host David Letterman has taken the quality of pair-bonding, childcare, relationships, and parenthood rather more seriously than he once did. Maybe it’s because he’s a father. Letterman has used his latest show, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, to confess that he’s somewhat unexpectedly found joy, meaning, and heartache in caring for his son Harry. Letterman has made his show a forum for similar confessions. Letterman’s guests have included the once notorious shock-radio host Howard Stern, and the “I’ll never marry” movie star George Clooney, who’s now married and extolling marriage as a great thing and who loves mothering his twins.”
A pre-order purchase of the paperback right now really will help the book far more than buying it later. And if you decide to give away copies of my book as gifts to family and friends or to those you work with - say to everyone you know :) - please pre-order those extra copies today. This is when you can really help out most. In today's nutty book world pre-orders are "where it's at."
Fall in Love, Have Children, Stay Put, Save the Planet, Be Happy
is Available for Pre-Order Now.
To be published November 2 by HCI Books • Distributed by Simon & Schuster
