Happiness, Regret, and Miracles: A Conversation with My Father
Two weeks ago, as the leaves began to turn orange-brown and the temperature dropped ten degrees, I sat down to record an interview with my father, Sene Grant. The original purpose of the conversation was to provide content for a college assignment by interviewing a family member or friend, but as the interview progressed, I found myself realising that this was a conversation that I would appreciate and want to look back on in the future. I set up my computer in my dorm room, video called my father on Facebook, and briefly talked over which questions he had selected from the 20 provided the week before. As someone who has been one of my greatest inspirations, I was excited to hear what he had to say.
"I'm speaking with my dad, Sene Grant, and we are recording over Facebook," I begin, with a laugh. It is a habit now, my father and I conversing online, since I moved to America by myself three and a half years ago. I laugh because it seems hard to believe this May will be four years since I was in my home country of New Zealand. "He lives in New Zealand right now, so we have to do this via video call." I continue, asking my father the first question: "What is your proudest accomplishment thus far?"
"If you had asked me ten years ago, it would have revolved around physical accomplishments, or academics, or work. But now, when I was thinking about your question, to try to sum it up, it would be holding a family together, or being a part of a family and doing my part to hold it together for the last twenty years. Holding it together financially, emotionally, and just being a dad. Running a business that supports the family," my dad replies. He can't see it through the screen, but I'm nodding along in agreement that he has been the glue keeping our family together. He continues, "I'm very proud of that. The main reason is not to brag - it's just to say there is a lot about myself that is not functional, and so to be able to hold it together, reasonably successfully, is what I am most proud of."
I reflect on my childhood full of travel, homeschooled freedom, and incredible opportunities: all made possible by my father doing the hard yards with the family business. It feels gratifying as his daughter to hear him validate the fact that he has kept us together.
"Does life get any easier as you get older?" I ask him. He laughs before replying with a straightforward "No." He explains that in his experience, it doesn't just get harder; it becomes more complicated. His life was hard as a young child, as a teenager, and in his early adulthood, and now, in his older years, it's still hard. "You have brief periods where things ease off, and you think that's it! You have this optimism - or I do anyway - that things will get better as we get older, but no. Life throws up struggles all the time." My dad mentions a couple of personal family challenges we have had come up within the last six months, and I understand his logic. But his reasoning takes a positive route, as he says, "I think my ability to deal with it has gotten better. I am nearly sixty now; I have been through a lot of different things, and now I kind of have this attitude that it will all work out." He tells me that, for him, life is more enjoyable because of that, but it is not because life has gotten any easier: he has just learned to deal with it.
I say into the recorder how I didn't even realise that my dad was pushing sixty, because for the last decade, he has had an ongoing joke that he chooses not to age a day over 37. Although we laugh about it in the interview, I feel a little wistful. Through the years, he has remained young in my eyes, and I have lost track of the fact that he is aging. This poignant fact will rear its head again in a later question, when I ask how he feels about becoming a grandfather one day. His insights on how life does not get easier, just more complicated, strike a chord with me, as I reflect on how I am learning that life is not simple. Encountering several car maintenance issues within the last week, booking a much-needed dentist appointment, and deciding to quit a job I had once really wanted have all made me realise that life is not something that is handed to an individual on a silver platter. It feels reassuring to hear it from my dad - someone who, to me, since childhood, has seemed to be someone who has life all figured out.
"What makes you happy now, and how does that differ from when you were younger?" I ask him. He says that he has thought about this question a lot. "When I was younger, I was always trying to seek happiness," he explains. "I was always going out and doing things, trying to achieve, to have experiences, to go on holiday, or to be with people who made me feel happy. When I look at myself now, I don't really do any of those things. There has been a shift in my belief system, in some way. I think what makes me happy now is my family. You kids, Courtney [my mother] - my family unit. I gain my happiness through the self-esteem I have from being a part of a family. I am not seeking it outside myself." He pauses, then summarises for me. "So, what makes me happy now? Family, stability, my family being happy, and making sure everyone gets what they need."
His answer makes me wonder if I will feel this way when I am older. I am unsure of where the future will take me, but his answer makes me acutely aware of the fact that the things he mentioned that brought him happiness when he was younger - holidays, experiences, and being with people who made him feel happy - do currently bring me joy. I wonder if my answer will be different when I am almost sixty.
I move on to the next question. "What do you value most, and why do you value it?" My father cites his last answer: family. I knew he would say that. He explains that he has only had this epiphany within the last ten or fifteen years and that it is still developing. His second answer is physical health. "It is important to me, at my age, that I want to keep my health high." This answer about health perfectly aligns with my next question.
"How does the idea of becoming a grandparent one day make you feel?" I ask him, genuinely curious about what he will say. I have not asked either of my parents this type of question before, as it is not something that I foresee happening within the next five to eight years, at least.
"A little bit scary," he says, and I laugh. "There are a few things behind that. First of all, I am excited. I feel as though, as I matured, I got better at parenting as I got older. I think I was pretty bad to start with, just because I had no idea." Inwardly, I know he is most likely talking about his experience parenting his first son, my half-brother, who was born about seven years before me. He continues.
"I feel that as a grandparent, I will be good. I will do the hard yards - clean diapers, take the babies on walks so you moms can sleep, and all that. I get great value out of that. But there are two issues: I have to keep myself healthy, because there is no guarantee that you or Rivers [my younger brother] will have children within the next ten years. If I project forward, I will be close to seventy." He emphasizes this with a humorous "Shock, horror! I have to make sure that I am physically and mentally able to contribute the way I want to. For me, that is a high motivational factor to keep myself healthy. The second issue is the fact that you live in the States, and I live in New Zealand, and there is that distance. I know that as kids grow up into young adulthood, it is important for them to have interactions with their grandparents to forge the bond that I would want to have with them. Logistically, I hope we can figure that out as a family so we can have a relationship with the grandkids."
My reply is empathetic, and I share how I have thought about this too. I don't aim to have children soon, although it has crossed my mind that I would prefer to have my parents alive and healthy when I have children. I suppose this is the melancholy aspect of having parents who were older than normal when they had my brother and me.
As I ask my father the next question, I already have an idea of what he will say in reply. "Do you believe in miracles, and have you ever seen or experienced any?" I verbally highlight how my father has told me stories of three specific miracles he has experienced, and his answer aligns with that.
"Yes, I do believe in miracles. It is interesting how when you say you believe in miracles, it can make a lot of things possible. I'm talking about micro-miracles. Things that happen in our lives that make us realise they could not have been manufactured by me, and the divine nature of it makes it otherworldly. Not macro-miracles, such as the parting of the Red Sea. I am talking about miracles that happen to an individual that change the nature of their life."
He explains how he has experienced three of these miracles and tells each one with conviction and a sense that his outlook was completely changed after them. In the hope that my father will one day publish a book about the story of his life, I will not spoil these three stories - but understand that each experience is curious, unexplainable, and seemingly orchestrated by something bigger than himself. My father explains that he views these experiences as life-changing: "There was Sene before them, and there was Sene after them." I joke with him: "You could call it B.M., before miracles, and A.M., after miracles!" We laugh.
My next question is about what lessons he has learnt about money, and what he would want me to know. He puts them into bullet points:
Invest in share groups, real estate, gold, silver, and education.
You have to view money as something that comes and goes. You cannot grip onto it - it ebbs and flows.
I paraphrase the last insight in my head: you must give abundance to receive abundance. My father says that after he realised these two things, he came to understand that paying bills, or necessary payments, should not be resented. "Don't be afraid to keep your money in movement. You only need what you need in that moment. Hoarding money is rooted in the fear of never having enough," he says, answering the question with finality.
"What is your biggest regret?"
The question is a bit sad, as I know his answer. He references the separation and difficulty of not having a current relationship with his oldest son, my half-brother. He highlights this as a regret he can't get his head around. He expresses how he wishes that he had handled the situation better, and he is unsure how to resurrect the relationship. "I regret not being able to save the relationship that I had with him," he says, and I feel the many years of unspoken words between them hang in the air. I can relate and empathise with my father, and I articulate how, even though I am on speaking terms with my older brother (the only one in our family of four who does), one of my own regrets is the fact that I have not grown up with a present older brother, especially one whom I spent many of my early years looking up to. Although I know my father is one of the most skeptical people I know, he replies, "Well, as I know, miracles happen."
My last question is one that my professor asked us to include as a bonus question in our interviews: "What is one thing that you would want people to know about you?"
"I used to want people to know all my good traits," my father begins. "Now I think that is a waste of time. It is irrelevant, all that I have achieved and done. I would want people to know how much my family means to me. There is nothing else that is important. It's just ego. At my grave, I would want people to just say, 'Well, he really valued his family.'"
The interview comes to a close. I thank my father for participating in the interview and say that his insights were interesting. As the recording stops, there is one resounding takeaway that stays with me: my father is the epitome of family-oriented. I have never come across someone so devoted to their family unit as he is. Throughout my life, and throughout this interview, one thing has remained constant: family. My father's proudest accomplishment is family; his happiness is his family; one of his greatest regrets involves a fractured family relationship; and when asked about what he wants people to know about him, he returns to family. He is our rock, stoic leader, and compassionate provider.