Nothing Is Impossible (5 page)

W
hen I was born in September 1952, my father, Franklin, was only twenty-four. Although our relationship was always complex—and became increasingly complicated as I moved into adulthood—as a youngster I delighted in the fact that he was young too. Because he was a college professor, first at Columbia, then at Wesleyan and Yale, his vacations generally coincided with ours. My brother, Ben, and I, my half-brothers Brock and Mark, and my half-sister, Alison, all cherished his attention and the activities we shared with him when we were very young.

During the Christmas holidays he taught us to ski. He and my stepmother, Helen, bought a tiny cottage in Ludlow, Vermont, close to several ski areas. All five children were on the slopes by age three and skiing on our own by four or five. Once we were on top of the mountain
we waited together as my father stationed himself a hundred yards below. When he was ready we skied down to him one at a time until we were all assembled for his review. Then he would go another hundred yards down the slope and we would repeat the process until we reached the bottom.

He had a special talent for communicating with each child based on age and skill. I was the oldest and Mark was the youngest, a difference of nearly ten years, with the others spaced fairly evenly in between. For all of us, a word of praise could make our day. On the other hand, because he thought the lift tickets (about $10) were outrageously expensive, we had to be the first ones on the mountain and the last to leave, which could make for a miserable day. Once the tickets were bought we
skied
, weather and snow conditions notwithstanding, with a thirty-minute break for the bathroom and lunch. (I don’t recall any of us ever complaining about the cold or asking to go in early for a cup of hot chocolate.) But we all became expert skiers; Alison qualified to be an instructor when she was only fifteen. Today, in our forties, we are still avid skiers (except me) and have passed our enthusiasm on to our children.

In the springs and summers of our childhood, Pa taught us to swim, sail, play tennis, and paddle a canoe properly—at around nine we all learned to execute a
proper J-stroke, which enables one person to keep the canoe going forward in a straight line. Some of these skills were acquired at my grandmother’s lakeshore house in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, others on the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound. As we grew older, we developed special interests in addition to learning the basics. Somehow Pa found time to work and play with each of us individually. Ben was fascinated by all things mechanical and electrical, so he and my father spent hours maintaining the car, an old secondhand Peugeot. As far as I remember, it never went to the shop: they repaired faulty wiring, adjusted the brakes, replaced worn shock absorbers, and gave it routine tune-ups as needed.

Mark liked baseball and beachcombing. He and Pa used to sneak up into the attic, where the old black-and-white rabbit-eared television lived in exile, to watch the Yankees. (The TV was not allowed in the living room as a precaution against bad habits.) Down in the basement the two of them created a museum where the most interesting rocks and seashells collected on cruises from Connecticut to Maine were on display.

Alison (always called Alya) and Brock were very musical. Both played the piano, and Alya played the flute as well. Pa played the recorder. Visitors who dropped by in the late afternoon or after dinner were often drawn into
the house by the sound of them playing together. Brock and Alya both took riding lessons when they were still quite young. Alya eventually lost interest, but Brock carried on and still rides today. Although he wasn’t a rider himself, my father used to drive them to the stables, where he watched with a critical eye at ringside as they worked with their instructor. When Alya dropped out and Brock progressed into show jumping, riding became a unique part of his relationship with our father.

My special interest was the theater. As a youngster I did well in skiing, sailing, and tennis. But by the time I was fourteen, I spent my summers first in acting workshops, then as a theater apprentice, and before long, on tour in a play or performing as a member of a repertory company. Pa generally liked my work. His critique after a show was usually kind and constructive: he was the first to point out that I often stood onstage with my knees hyperextended, which made me look tense and inhibited natural movement. After a performance of
The Complaisant Lover
, an obscure English drawing-room comedy in which I attempted to play an upper-class gentleman in his forties (I was seventeen at the time), he approved of my accent but pointed out that I obviously had no idea how to smoke a cigarette, which would be second nature for my character. However, my comic timing received high marks.

No one in our family had ever been an actor, which made me feel truly unique. Pa particularly enjoyed productions in theaters not too far from the water so he could get there on
Pandion
, our twenty-six-foot Pearson sloop. That worked out pretty well: one summer I worked in Boston, another in Boothbay, Maine, and one tour played in four theaters on Cape Cod. It wasn’t until I left postgraduate studies at Juilliard and entered the commercial world of film and television that acting became a source of contention between us. As a pure academic, he cherished the theater as a place for language and ideas. He was never very interested in film, even as an art form, and had nothing but contempt for television (except as an outlet for the Yankees).

I’m very grateful that he supported me as I began to learn my trade, and that, for a time, we shared something unique. Without his encouragement in the early years I don’t know if I would have developed the self-confidence to attempt such a challenging career.

MY OLDER SON, MATTHEW, WAS BORN IN 1979, WHEN
I was twenty-seven. I wanted to be a father while I was still young so that I could be actively and physically involved with my children for a long time. I wanted to teach them things firsthand and introduce them to a
wide variety of activities and subjects, and then give them the freedom to pick and choose as they grew up. Alexandra came along when I was thirty-one. Then there was a long gap until Will made his entrance in 1992, just a few months before my fortieth birthday, when I still considered myself to be a relatively young dad.

I started activities with all three at an early age just as my father had done. Matthew and Al were out on the slopes learning to snowplow by four or five. Will started playing hockey in the living room with the cap of an apple juice jar and a little plastic golf club when he was two. Over time they developed unique talents and interests that both set them apart and bound us together. Matthew loved tennis, fishing, and movies. Alexandra learned to ride. During the filming of
The Remains of the Day
in 1992, she and I used to gallop across the English countryside on magnificent hunters, courtesy of the Duke of Beaufort. She learned to play the bassoon when the instrument was almost bigger than she was. We used to play duets, with me at the piano. When we were satisfied with the sound of a piece we would perform it for the family and add it to our repertoire.

One of the reasons I enjoyed being a young father so much was that I had plenty of energy and great enthusiasm. I loved suggesting activities on the spur of the moment. I might challenge Matthew to a game of chess
or announce that it was time to put on boots and go for a hike. If the wind dropped to nothing when we were sailing offshore, I used to dive overboard and try to coax everyone else to jump in. Matthew and Al always worried that an unknown creature from the deep would come up to the surface and get them. It was very hard to convince them otherwise, especially after the day an enormous basking shark rose to sunbathe just as I was climbing aboard for another dive.

The list of activities we shared was long and I tried to make our interaction a two-way street; they might approach me or I might approach them with ideas. And we could touch. There were always lots of hugs, pats on the back, rides on my shoulders, pillow fights, and games of tag. The rituals of baths and curling up together to read at bedtime, putting Band-Aids on both real and imaginary wounds—all these and more helped to give them a foundation of security, which every child needs.

And then, in an instant, the moment my head hit the hard ground in Culpeper, Virginia, everything changed. Or so I believed. As I lay in bed in the ICU, I concluded that I could no longer be a real father to my three children. I assumed that my new life as a quadriplegic would not only mark the end of the life we had known, but cause enormous psychological and emotional damage to them as well. How could I relate to them if we couldn’t
do things together? How would we adjust to the loss of spontaneity? What kind of a father would I be if I literally couldn’t reach out to them, if I was always going back to the hospital, if a nurse had to be on duty 24/7?

The answers started to come within weeks of the accident, in the summer of ’95. Matthew and Al stayed in a local hotel and visited me every day. (Will came with Dana or our nanny almost every day as well.) I kept telling them that I was okay, and that they should go enjoy the summer instead of hanging around a depressing rehab center. But they wanted to be with me. Even if they could only see me two or three hours each visit, they wanted to be nearby.

We spent most of the time talking. I quickly realized that we’d never really done that before. When Matthew and Al flew over from England to be with Dana and me for at least a part of every vacation, I usually picked them up at the airport in Boston. Then it was a three-hour drive across Massachusetts to our home in the Berkshires. I remember listening to the radio together on one of those trips when they were about nine and five. We tuned in to a variety of stations that played classical music, rock ‘n’ roll, contemporary top forty, and oldies. I asked them to identify the meter: Was the piece in 1/2, 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, or something else? How would they describe the tempo of the classical pieces:
adagio, andante, allegro, or something else? In the rock ‘n’ roll and contemporary pop selections could they distinguish between the main melody and the bridge, also known as the middle eight? Somewhere along the Mass Pike, Al piped up in her chirpy English accent. “Do you know, Daddy,” she said, “this is the first time in such a long time that we’ve had a real conversation about something?” I realized that she was right. Not that we didn’t talk, but usually it was while doing something else. Now I gave them my full attention, and I soon learned to listen more than talk. That began a process of discovering that, in bringing up children and relating to others, sometimes
being
is more important than
doing
. I was also to learn that even if you can’t move, you can have a powerful effect with what you say.

One special day in Will’s life is a good example. When he was six, he was still afraid to ride by himself without the training wheels on his bike. Dana spent hours killing her back as she bent over to hold his seat as he pedaled around timidly in front of our garage. I decided to see if I could help. I told him to start with his left foot on the ground and to set the right pedal in the fully raised position. I told him to grab the handlebars, push hard on the right pedal, and then put his left foot on the other pedal and keep going, being careful not to oversteer. I said if he kept his hands steady the bike wouldn’t
wobble so much. He listened carefully and got into the ready position. Then he froze, afraid to make that first push. I told him to take his time, but added that I was prepared to sit in the driveway all afternoon until he did it. I reminded him that I would never ask him to do anything too scary or too difficult. He didn’t complain; he just sat there for quite a long time assessing the situation. Then I announced that on the count of three he should start. I made it a long count, but after three I said, “Go,” and he did it. He pushed down, the bike moved forward, he got his other foot on the pedal, and off he went. On his first run he made a complete circle around the driveway. As he came past my chair the first time, his face was a study in fierce concentration. The second time he came by, he was smiling. For the next fifteen minutes he kept riding around our circular drive, gradually picking up speed. After that he wanted to go down the steep hill toward our mailbox, but we saved that for another day.