Manhood: How to Be a Better Man-or Just Live with One (33 page)

For some men, pride will never let them admit they were wrong. That’s why pride is the gift that keeps on taking. And why I’m here to tell all of the men out there, crack that shell, even just a little bit, and it will bust wide open. Once you let in real feelings, and let people get close to the real you, that’s where the good stuff is.

Rebecca has been the best example of strength I’ve ever seen. She illustrated the importance of strength founded on compassion, and I’m so grateful to her for her willingness to show me these qualities in our marriage. She had compassion for me when there was a real reason to have nothing but anger and hate. When she gave me another chance, and told me that she believed in who I am, no matter what I’d done, it broke me down in the best possible way and allowed me to rebuild a better man in the place of who I’d been before. Now, that was compassion at work.

I thank God every day that Rebecca made the choice to stay, because legally, and by every measure with which we judge a relationship, she had good reason to leave. And the truth is, even with the many joyous occasions that happened during our first twenty years of marriage, the marriage she was fighting for in the aftermath of D-day wasn’t anything as deep as the marriage
we have now. I’ve gotten so much out of this whole experience that I never even knew was possible.

When I look back at the way I was living before, it reminds me of those Godzilla movies I loved when I was a kid. It seems like all of these monsters are coming out of nowhere, destroying Japan, but the truth is, the monsters were there all along, moving around among the people, only they were small enough that everyone ignored them. It wasn’t until they became 200 feet tall, and were tearing up buildings, and nearly unstoppable, that the citizens finally had to fight them. And then they were much harder to defeat than they would have been when they were just baby monsters. That’s how I came up with the motto by which I now run my life: Destroy All Monsters. I have vowed to never again let my monsters grow so big. My mantra is:
Humble yourself. Discover what your monsters are. Be honest with yourself
.

These changes started with my wife, and they expanded to my children, and I’ve taken them outward from there into all areas of my life. My old friend Ken and I talk about it all the time. We can laugh about it now, as we recall the path I had to stumble down in order to grow, and how I once got so mad at him for refusing to help me anymore after he’d already given me so much.

“You’re going to call your production company Gold Coin Productions,” he teased me.

I very well could have, because those gold coins were a symbol of the lifeline he sent out to me, and the moment when I finally had to grow up and start doing for myself, and, really, the first humbling of many I’ve received to get where I am.

I have since built a tremendous relationship with my mother, as we laid everything out on the table and rebuilt from the ground up. It was hard. Angry words were spoken, and for a
while we found it impossible to talk to each other. As time passed I was able to put my anger aside and just love my mother for what she did do for me, rather than being angry for what she didn’t. I asked her to forgive me for my sense of entitlement and for holding on to offense, and she asked me to forgive her for any wrong she’d done. I told her I realized she’d done the best she could with what she’d been given, and I’m thankful for her and the beautiful woman she is. My mother was the only one to take care of Mama Z, my grandmother, my grandfather, Sister Estes, and many others before they died. The truth is, I could always count on her, even to this day, and my love for her has no bounds.

From there, my personal growth has expanded to one of the most challenging relationships in my life, my relationship with Big Terry. There were times after the Christmas from Hell when I couldn’t bring myself to answer his calls for months at a time. And then something would shift within me, and one day, he’d call, and I’d pick up. But we never seemed to make any real progress, no matter how much we talked.

“Terry, I never had a father to show me how to be one,” he said. “I got a lot of pain, and all I tried to do was give you guys better than what I had. I didn’t know what else to do. I knew to give you a roof.”

I could hear the truth in that. But there were other times when he deluded himself, and I couldn’t stand to let him run off at the mouth like that.

“I taught you guys everything you know,” he said.

“No, Big T, that’s not how it went down,” I said.

He paused then, and sat quietly for a minute.

“Yeah, I guess not,” he said.

After another pause, he couldn’t quietly let it go, though.

“But I did teach you to be your own man,” he said.

“Uh, I guess.”

In all of these conversations, I always felt dissatisfied. I think I was waiting for him to apologize, to really see how things had been, and talk to me about it. And then it finally hit me that if he was ever really going to get it, the moment of clarity had to start from me. I had to tell him, honestly, what was up. But this wasn’t in the way most people would think. As I made myself really look at what had happened all those years ago, I started to see him differently, and then I started to see all of the things I’d been through differently. I’d always looked at my past as this horrible experience that I had to forget, as if it was just a bad feeling that I had to move past.

But no, I needed to sit in it and take those experiences for what they really were. It had been bad, sure, but it had made me who I am. This didn’t mean that some of the things that had happened weren’t wrong, but they had truly made me stronger, and not just in the fantastical way of superheroes. Life had made me stronger only because I had learned from it. Once I saw Big Terry differently, I was able to identify the aspects of my childhood that I appreciated, which was much different than the way I’d looked back on my past before. Much like I’d done on various sets, and with various work relationships, I reframed my past, and my relationship with my father:
You knew your father. He was at home, and he cared enough about you to clothe you, to feed you. He never beat you. He never left the family. He could have cheated and run off with some girl
.

I started giving Big Terry credit for what he did do. He was a good earner. He was a good provider. I never excused what had been wrong, but also being able to see the positive finally changed my perspective. It changed my view of our story.

Big Terry always felt like he had done better than the previous generation, and I started to see him and appreciate that. I
saw that I’d gone even a bit further than he did, and I hope my son will go further than I did someday. He doesn’t have to go through all of the different hardships I went through, but he’ll have his own struggles, too.

Finally, it all became clear to me, and I called my father.

“Big Terry, I truly believe this, man,” I said. “If I could choose who my parents were, I would choose you.”

It took a lot to say it, but it was the absolute truth. I realized if I had Bill Cosby as a parent I could have ended up in a whole different place, and not necessarily a good one, either. I’ve seen great kids come from terrible parents, and I’ve seen awful kids come from the best parents. And for me, Big Terry and Trish are how I got here.

“I would choose you all over again if I could pick my parents,” I said. “I would pick you.”

He cried and he cried. And talk about a breakthrough, as soon as those words came out of my mouth, everything changed. He was suddenly humble.

“Terry, I’m sorry for what I did to you and Marcelle,” he said. “I was wrong.”

WOW. As much as I had longed for an apology from my father for all of those years, I had never really thought it was possible. But by finding my own compassion for him, I had broken down everything that needed to be broken within him. Before that, I’d always hoped that when he got himself together, he’d come to me. I’d always been waiting for him. When, really, he was just waiting for that from me.

“Terry, I want to be better,” he said. “I love you, son. I’m proud of you. You did good.”

Just those few words from him were exactly what I’d needed to hear to break something open inside of me, and we were able to finally heal. I’m so grateful for that moment. And I really
think much of it was only possible because of how I’d witnessed Rebecca handle our marriage. My anger toward Big Terry was perfectly justifiable, just like her anger toward me, but if I’d just stayed in that anger, and in my pride, there would have been no way for the relationship to move forward and to deepen and grow. Once I’d humbled myself, and once I’d had the courage to lead with compassion rather than anger, as I’d seen Rebecca do, I realized that everything is not about good or bad. It’s about what you can learn from it.

I don’t get the chance to go back home that often, but when I traveled back to Flint in the fall of 2013, I went out to breakfast with my mother, father, and sister. We talked some things out that we hadn’t talked about in a long time, and it wasn’t acrimonious at all. It was healing, and we were all at peace.

This is what it is
, I thought,
never denying things, but just acknowledging them and learning from them, and then leaving them behind to move on with our lives
.

After breakfast, we were out in the parking lot. I hugged Big Terry, and then, as my arms were around him, I wouldn’t let him go. I hugged him like I had when I was four years old, really squeezing him tight. For a minute, I felt him tense up, like
okay
, and then he just let go, and I kept holding him, and he let me. I never could have imagined hugging him like that before, and if I’d stayed in my manly sense of my pride, I never would have been able to, either. I think he realized this, too.

He called me the next week.

“That hug you gave me,” he said. “That was a good hug. It was wonderful.”

RIGHT NOW, I’M ALL ABOUT REVERSING AS MUCH OF THE
damage of the past as I can—pain that was caused to me,
and pain that I’ve caused to others. And I’ve discovered something really amazing along the way, too. As long as it takes to mess something up, it doesn’t take nearly as long to fix it. It takes a while to do it right, sure, it definitely takes a while. But I’ve seen it with my father, and I’ve seen it with my wife: You can make up twenty-five years of mistakes in five years. If you start healing today, you will gain momentum much more quickly than you think, and even before you’re all the way there, you’ll feel so much better along the way.

I don’t ever want to go back, with Big Terry, or anyone else in my life. I don’t ever want to go back to feeling resentful toward people. And I don’t want to create any more damage in the future. When I see my kids struggling with the growing pains we all have as we go through life, I try to model compassion and patience.

“Your father’s been through a lot of therapy,” I say to them. “Your father is not perfect. There were times when I totally blew up. And I’m telling you that I’m not perfect. So how can I expect you to be?”

I’m especially mindful with my son because I know from my own experience how stupid men can be, and how many limiting ideas of masculinity we take on, and the damage they can do in our relationships and in our lives. I know the day is coming when it will be time to talk to him about what it means to be a man. And right now, I’m just working on creating trust and really building our relationship, so he knows he can say anything to me.

I don’t want his experience to be like mine was. When I was a young man, I could never get any questions answered. And I want him to know that no question is off-limits or wrong. I want to be able to explain sex and love and life to him without
shock or shame. This is how it works. This is what people feel. And this is how women should be treated. You have sisters. You wouldn’t like your sister being treated badly, or even looked at like she’s an object. Let’s talk about what that means for the women you encounter in the world, because that’s someone’s sister. That’s someone’s mom. Someone loves them. You have to respect who women are and treat them like human beings, not objects to be ogled and used. Women have feelings, and you do, too, and to deny their feelings is just going to make you feel bad about the man you’re becoming.

Well, he’s only eight right now. But I’m really looking forward to those talks.

It’s funny because my whole life was dedicated to the pursuit of being a superhero, of being stronger, faster, harder, larger than life. For years, I dedicated myself to this, on the football field, and in Hollywood, and I’ve actually accomplished much of what I set out to do, and so much more. But, as I look back on everything, there is no greater accomplishment for me than this: being present enough to fully enjoy moments like this one.

During the summer of 2013, Rebecca sang the National Anthem at a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game. And, truly, that experience was better than anything else I’ve ever done. I was there as a spectator, with all of our kids, all together, and to watch her sing and kill it, and to watch the crowd go nuts, that was literally the best feeling I’ve had, ever.

I looked over at the kids Rebecca and I have created and loved together.

“Your mommy’s living her dream,” I said.

I looked out at the field. The sun was setting, and the palm trees were dark against the golden sky where the sun was going down. Rebecca did such a great job, and she was so happy. And
being there for her was better than anything else I’d ever done on my own. My blessings were never for me. They were for her, my kids, and anyone else this story of my life touches. And that’s the real secret to manhood: having the courage to be man enough to support the ones who make you great.