“I don’t know, Dad. You spent ten years dismissing me. You can’t fix that with one apology.”
“What do you need from me?”
“I need you to understand that your approval isn’t what makes me valuable. I’m successful whether you acknowledge it or not. I built something meaningful whether you understand it or not. And I’m going to keep building it whether you’re proud of me or not.”
“I am proud of you. I see that now.”
“You’re proud of my net worth and my property and my Forbes feature. But are you proud of me? The person who built those things. The son who kept trying to connect with you for years while you dismissed him.”
He didn’t have an answer.
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “When you can answer that question honestly, call me back.”
I ended the call.
Thanksgiving was the first family holiday since the party. My mother called two weeks before.
“Will you come to Thanksgiving dinner, please? Your father wants to see you.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Daniel, it’s been three months. This has gone on long enough.”
“Has it? Has Dad actually changed? Or does he just want things to go back to normal?”
“He’s been different. He asks about you. He’s been reading articles about your company.”
“That’s nice, but reading articles isn’t the same as understanding who I am.”
I didn’t commit to Thanksgiving. I let the question hang.
Two days before the holiday, my father showed up at my office in Seattle. Not my home office, my actual office, the headquarters of Zenith Solutions.
My assistant called me. “Daniel, there’s a Thomas Richardson in the lobby asking to see you.”
“Send him up.”
My father walked into my office and stopped. He looked around at the open floor plan, the developers at their workstations, the conference rooms with whiteboards covered in code, the walls with our company values and our client logos.
“This is impressive,” he said quietly.
“Thank you.”
“I didn’t realize it was this substantial.”
“No one in the family did. That was the point.”
He sat down across from my desk.
“I came to ask you personally to come to Thanksgiving. But I also came to see this, to understand what you’ve built.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think I’ve been an idiot. I think I spent ten years dismissing something I didn’t understand, and I missed out on knowing my own son.”
I leaned back in my chair. “What changed?”
“I had lunch with Robert Chen last week, the CEO I met at my party. He spent thirty minutes telling me about your company’s technology, your leadership, your reputation in the industry. And I realized he knew more about what you had accomplished than I did.”
“Your father knew less about you than a stranger at a party. That must have been uncomfortable.”
“It was humiliating. But I deserved it.”
He paused.
“Daniel, I’m not asking you to forget the past. I’m asking for a chance to do better in the future.”
I studied my father. He looked older somehow. Tired.
“I’ll come to Thanksgiving,” I said. “But things are different now. I’m not going to perform success for you. I’m not going to prove myself. I’m just going to be myself. And if that’s not enough, then we’ll know where we stand.”