The Free Press:  I Was a Bad Dad. Then My Son Gave Me a Second Chance., by Joe Nocera:

It’s Father’s Day, and at 10:00 a.m. this morning I’ll be getting on a plane and heading to South Florida, where I’ll join my 14-year-old son. As I’ve mentioned before, Macklin is a serious junior tennis player, and South Florida is the place where serious junior tennis players go to get better.

He’s currently with his grandfather, who will leave after I arrive, so it will just be my son and I hanging out till the end of the month. We’ve been doing this, my son and I, since he was 10, so we have our routine. Most mornings, I’ll either meet him at IHOP after his drills are done or make him scrambled eggs and bacon at the apartment we’re renting. Then I’ll head back to the tennis academy with him to watch his lesson. When he gets back in the late afternoon, he’ll chill while I work, and then we’ll go out to dinner. I’ll take him and his buddies to Benihana one night. We’ll go visit one of my brothers who lives nearby. On Sundays, I’ll take Macklin to church. He has a deep Christian faith, which I don’t share but have come to respect. He will play in a tournament while we’re there, and when he’s playing, I’ll be focused on him—not my email or my work. Most nights we’ll watch a movie before bed.

I realize that this sounds awfully mundane—just your basic father-son bonding experience—and I guess it is. For me, though, at the age of 73, it will inevitably cause me to reflect on the father I’ve become, as opposed to the father I used to be when I was much younger and raising three children who are now grown and have children of their own. I’ll be blunt: I wasn’t the best dad the first time round. Maybe I needed to gain the wisdom that comes with old age to get it right; or maybe I needed to be more secure about my place in the world; or maybe I just needed to wake up to the mistakes I made, and tell myself I would do a better job if I were given a second chance. When Macklin came along 14 years ago, there he was staring me in the face: my second chance.

It’s an overstatement to say that I raised my three older children; my ex-wife did almost all the heavy lifting. We lived in Northampton, Massachusetts, a lovely place to bring up a family but a four-hour train ride from New York, where my work was. I was an editor and columnist, first at Fortune magazine and then at The New York Times. Most weeks, I would leave for Manhattan early Tuesday morning and return Friday night. During the weekends, I just wanted to relax—read, take naps, maybe go out to dinner with my wife and some friends. More than once she took the kids on vacation and left me behind because I was in the middle of some big story I couldn’t abandon—or, more precisely, didn’t want to abandon. My work—my ambition, really—came before everything else, including my children. …

I do think that it helps that I don’t worry anymore about whether the world will notice this or that story I’ve written, or how I’m going to keep climbing the greasy pole. To be older means, almost inevitably, to be more accepting of your place in this world.

I’ve also learned to listen. I mentioned earlier that Macklin is a practicing Christian. He brings the Bible to his tennis matches and as we approach a tournament site, he always asks to turn the radio down so he can pray. Early on, this was hard for me to accept because I hated Catholic school; by the time I was Macklin’s age I knew I didn’t believe in anything the Church taught.

At first, when Macklin would attribute his success to Jesus, I would respond by telling him he should give himself credit for all his hard work. But now, I think of his faith as an important force in his life, and I’m proud that he’s so open about it. When he says he hopes he does well in a tournament “if it’s God’s will,” I nod my assent. Sometimes I even use my old religious education to discuss some of the stories in the Gospels with him.

There is a school of thought that says that you have to be selfish to accomplish great things in the world, meaning you have to give short shrift to the people who love you and whom you love. I suppose that may be true if you're writing Moby-Dick or building the world’s first electric vehicle. But what most of us accomplish in this life hardly ranks with monuments the world will remember forever after. Our children are what we will leave behind when we are gone. I’m lucky that my ex-wife did such an exceptional job in raising our three children. I shudder to think how they would have turned out if their upbringing had been more dependent on me.

I was in my 70s when I joined The Free Press. I was excited about the prospect, but I made it plain when I was hired that I wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of being a good father to my son. The hours here are long, and the work is absorbing, but I try to pick Macklin up from tennis practice a few times a week so he can tell me about his day while we’re in the car. I make a point of popping into his room if I get home late, just to check in. I want him to always know that I’m available when he needs me. I’m the classic old dog who has learned a new trick. But it’s for the most important of reasons. Avoiding the mistakes I made earlier in life has become supremely important to me. I want to leave this earth knowing that I did right by my son.

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