Leadership and Father's Day

Today, I will share about my Father's Day with a brief story about leadership tucked in at the end. We have a lot of things going on in our lives, so we tried to keep Father's Day simple.

We had breakfast with my mom and dad at the local diner, then we drove to Charlottesville to visit Vanessa’s father. He has stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and he’s supposed to be released to hospice any day now. It was a good visit. He told stories. The kids listened and asked questions. The twins got restless at some point.

He and I are not close. Although I wish we were. It was hard for many different reasons. I can tell now that he is trying to get to know me, asking me questions and listening to what I have to say. It’s nice. I enjoy it. I wish he had shown interest earlier. And I can see in his eyes that he wishes he had, too. And somehow, that makes it both wonderful and tragic.

For dinner, I wanted to make spaghetti. It’s a dish that we make as a family a lot. I figured—it’s Father’s Day, what else should I do but father?

We got home. Oliver walked the dog. I gathered the girls, and we started dinner.

First, we gathered our ingredients. I asked the girls if they could remember what we used. This is a dish we’ve made many times, so I was trying to put the emphasis on them to act. The twins were eager to play “go find it”—listing ingredients, grabbing them from the fridge and pantry, and bringing them to the kitchen island. Then I asked if we had the tools we needed, and they started gathering those: knife, cutting board, pot, etc.

Then we got started. Eleanor opened the cans of sauce, Sadie peeled the garlic, and Julia cut the onion. By the time we got the sauce going, Oliver was back. He mixed the ground pork and beef in a bowl. We seasoned it, and it was time to roll the meatballs.

Oliver’s been making meatballs since he was the twins’ age, and the twins have been doing it for a couple of years now. Oliver was teasing them about his experience. They were fighting over who got to do what, and I could tell Oliver was getting frustrated.

I looked at him and said, “Hey Oliver, since you’ve been doing this for such a long time, maybe you should delegate who does what. How do we make meatballs? Do we all go at it, or do we form an assembly line?” I could have assigned roles myself, but this was a chance for Oliver to lead.

He took charge. He became the scooper and assigned two rollers. In no time, the meatballs were done.

When he first started making them, his thought process was, I’m going to make the best meatballs. He was competing with them. In his mind, he’d been doing it the longest, and he wanted to show how good he was. And there’s nothing really wrong with that. You should want to be good at things, try hard, and impress others.

But he quickly realized—it’s not about YOU being good. It’s about US being successful.

Oliver is a bright kid. He’s reflective and very willing to listen. Just as I could see he was getting frustrated, he knew it too. And when I gave him a tip, he embraced it.

In the end, when the girls were done, he went over each meatball and ensured they were just right. He accomplished both goals—he led and taught—and still managed to seek perfection, to take pride in the work, and to care about the results.

Before dinner, we prayed for Papi to be released from the hospital soon. Overall, it was a good day. It wasn’t always the easiest. But a difficult day is better than no day at all. I am glad I got to spend it with family.

Peace & Love,

Jeff Mayhugh