I was a major in the U.S. Air Force when children entered my household, and while I have memories of the 1990 TV show “Major Dad” featuring a Marine who tried to run his household like he ran his battalion, I was not that guy.

After all, the six months preceding the birth of my now 14-year-old were spent deployed to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where my greatest concerns were getting caught going AWOL to attend a friend’s wedding in Florida or ensuring I visited all the Smithsonian museums before it was time to go home. I’ve never required 0500 PT sessions, spit-shined shoes, or hospital corner bed sheets of my children, and I don’t plan to start — especially since I retired this spring after 23 years of military service in the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserves.

That said, spending two combat deployments in Iraq during the early 2000s has absolutely affected how I parent. It’s made me prioritize experiences over things. It motivates my almost daily exercising to try to stay healthy. It’s why I take pictures or videos every day to post on Instagram or my 1 Second Everyday compilations; it’s why I blog about each of our family trips. Hell, it’s why we take each of our family trips.

When you see persons your age and younger become badly injured or die, you realize you need to make much of time. Gather ye rosebuds (or ye Delta SkyMiles) while ye may.

My military service has also helped me parent during setbacks. Ever heard the acronym “SNAFU”? It’s from the military. Needing to change course or follow Plan B (or C) while on a military exercise is as common as foot blisters. The first time I took my family overseas, our plane to New York City diverted to Syracuse to avoid bad storms, so we missed the connection to Edinburgh. As we finally exited the plane at JFK International Airport, my children watched as grownups screamed profanity at the gate agent nearby or into their phones; they couldn’t believe people their parents’ age were having loud, public temper tantrums. Having had many flights diverted (or planes break down) during two decades in the Air Force, I told the kids to sit against the nearest wall and lie down on their backpacks while I ran to the Sky Club, anticipating that its exclusivity and distance from our gate would mean a faster process for reaching someone who could help; then, I asked for the next flight to London, figuring there’d be a much higher probability of five empty seats going there, and that I could easily get us to Edinburgh from Heathrow the next day. I was right; we took the last seats on a Delta plane across the Atlantic to the UK a few hours later while the rest of our earlier plane remained in long lines near the gate or gave up and found hotels.

Military service also taught me to be less judgmental, which I’ve tried to impart to my children. When you go to war with men and women who don’t look like you or think like you, you realize “we’re all in this together” is more than a billboard slogan during a pandemic; it’s reality. The uniform is more than a commonality in our clothing; it signifies a uniform mission and an organizational meritocracy. Is that how the real world works? No, not really. Should it be? Absolutely. And that’s a great reason for the next generation to think it can be.

Because I’m a dad, I no longer hold others’ babies as far from my body as my arms can possibly reach like I’m offering the gods a living sacrifice.

Because I’m a dad, I’m ready for Big Brother and the ubiquitous surveillance that will one day come to our society because I’ve been meticulously watched, noted, and imitated for the past 10 years.

Because I’m a dad, I know what Pixar is working on at all times.

Because I’m a dad, I’ve expanded my vocabulary to include new, obscure references to expletives or abbreviations for same (most of the time).

Because I’m a dad, I know that urine goes right through a Herman Miller Aeron desk chair.

Because I’m a dad, I feel guilty about frequently leaving my dad’s tools in the woods 30 years ago, because I now know how it feels to buy the same hammer three times.

Because I’m a dad, I fly to conferences where other dads go to learn how to be better dads. And when I travel, I often buy five plane tickets instead of one.

Because I’m a dad, I can’t ever sleep in or late. No matter what time I go to bed.

Because I’m a dad, all my old Star Wars action figures, G.I. Joe action figures, Transformers and GoBots have gotten a new lease on life. Some of my old stuffed animals, too.

Because I’m a dad, I rush to get home every night that I can so I don’t miss family dinner and bedtime reading time.

Because I’m a dad, I also drive a safer car and — even when hurrying home — drive it more safely than I used to whether I have passengers or not.

Because I’m a dad, “Bjorn” no longer means “tall Swedish dude” to me.

Because I’m a dad, I prioritize becoming a better version of myself. Or try to, anyway.

Because I’m a dad, I stop making lists like this one so I can go see what the hell that noise was coming from the den.

A version of this first appeared on Dadcation.

Editor’s Note: On July 16, 12 fathers completed a hike across England along Hadrian’s Wall to raise money for a nonprofit camp that helps children of adults with cancer. Atlanta Dads Group member Michael Moebes was one of them, and here he chronicles the experience.

Last week, we completed our much-anticipated walk from the Irish Sea to the North Sea along Hadrian’s Wall in northern England. It was the second life experience (the first one being going to war) I’ve had which I can now describe with the phrase, “I probably wouldn’t choose to do it again, but I wouldn’t take anything for the experience of having gone.”

Our journey began with a Friday night cookout in the backyard of our late friend Oren Miller‘s wife’s aunt, followed by a trip to the pub where he and his wife, Beth, met. Given the reason for our walk was to raise money for a Camp Kesem location at his alma mater in his honor, this seemed altogether fitting and proper. My children opened beer cans for extra pence, alternating between delighting and horrifying everyone, depending on the kids’ level of persistence (and begging).

We took a train from London to Carlisle the next morning and, after sleeping on a cot in an old gymnasium Saturday night, we shoved off for our trek from the Solway Firth at Bowness-on-Solway to Carlisle, assuming we’d stop soon for breakfast, but “soon” became 4+ hours and many miles, and I’ve never been happier to see a “Greyhound” sign (this one being a pub, not a bus depot), so we could finally sit down and have beers and food (in that order of importance).

We pressed on toward Carlisle, across pastures full of sheep, over gates, through tall grass, and finally into the city where we’d get nice beds to sleep in at the Ibis hotel on Sunday night. My Fitbit Blaze showed 40,000 steps for the day – over 17 miles. We gathered at The Griffin for dinner and some European football (interrupted by the drunken rants of a local woman, who insisted I should have “been there for her” in 1952 – this delighted my companions but mortified your storyteller).

The next morning (Monday), we bought foot care supplies, stopped by Carlisle Cathedral, and continued along the path.

Day 2 concluded at Sandysike farm, run by a nice couple who fed us and offered me whisky for my tired, post-30,000-steps-that-day feet, and I loved him for it.

Only the next day did I learn every shot cost £4.  My love dwindled a bit.

Finally seeing Hadrian’s Wall

Day 3 (Tuesday) promised to finally allow us to see remains of the Hadrian’s Wall, as so far, we walked the of path, but the stones themselves had been taken to build homes and cathedrals or whatever else the English wanted to do with Roman wall stones once they were no longer under Roman rule. I was excited.

Each day, we wore wooden name tags like the kids at Camp Kesem wear, and on the tags, we honored persons selected by donors of $100 or more of sponsorship.  The start of the wall seemed a good place for a lunch break and photographs, so we took advantage of it.

It was 30,000+ steps and was my favorite day of hiking thus far, since we had wall to look at and rolling hills to climb with the start of some great views from atop (little did I know how much this would improve on subsequent days). We stopped at our B&B/bunk house, and I was one of the lucky few to have a room with an attached shower (and, even better, the innkeeper did laundry for us!).  The next morning would be the first day of new topography–crags.

Beautiful but rainy

I loved hiking on day 4 (Wednesday). The scenery was the best we’d seen so far along Hadrian’s Wall, and it was our lowest day of mileage – under 10 miles (just over 21,000 steps), which seemed comparatively easy. Perhaps even lazy!

But then it started to rain. We were used to rain showers, but this day’s rain wasn’t a shower–it was torrential.  Because it was also our first day of significant hills, the group started to fracture into smaller groups after a bit, with a few folks electing to walk to the side of the steep inclines later in the day. This meant the water rushed at them from atop the rolling hills in the crags.  This photo only captures a portion of the misery:

I pulled up my hood, pulled the rain cover over my backpack, and continued along the wall in utter misery, as I quickly learned my “water resistant” hiking pants were not very resistant, and sheets of water poured down my legs and filled my socks and boots. I saw hikers coming toward me slip and fall down the crags I had to climb; I was glad I sprung for the hiking poles that were on sale at REI right before I left.

Eventually, the rain let up, and we broke off the wall path and headed south, completely fortuitously ending up at bunkhouse where we were slated to sleep. Everyone was drenched and miserable, but we made our way just up the street to the Twice Brewed Inn pub for some dinner and spirits, and when we walked outside, a double rainbow greeted us.

Steeper and steeper

Day 5 (Thursday) was physically harder, but it was my favorite day of the hike so far (and favorite of the entire hike, now that I have the benefit of hindsight). We climbed the steepest crags (even seeing an obelisk marking the highest point of the entire Hadrian’s Wall path), saw numerous milecastles and an old Roman temple, and stopped for pictures in the most photographed area of the path – Sycamore Gap (where scenes from Kevin Costner’s “Robin Hood” were shot).

The day ended at just under 14 miles (31,000 steps), and we stayed at Greencarts Farm for the night. After dinner, I won all the English equivalent of Chex mix that any of my opponents had in a very intense poker match.

Day 6 (Friday) was to be the longest and most difficult day of the Hadrian’s Wall walk. We left the crags fairly early in the day, and we crossed fields and pastures as we paralleled the old Military Road leading to Newcastle.

We started early, encountered some rain, and stopped just after noon at Errington Arms pub for a meal (and whisky shots) before pressing on toward the Robin Hood pub, built in 1752 from stones “borrowed” from Hadrian’s Wall, and eventually The Three Tuns for dinner and more whisky before we reached our quarters for the evening at Houghton North Farm at Heddon-on-the-Wall. When I sat down at the Three Tuns about 6:30pm, my legs, hips, and ankles were in agony. I had no desire to walk any further. We’d gone more than 20 miles–almost 44,000 steps. The next day would be our last day of the Hadrian’s Wall walk.

The final 40,000 steps

The final day (Saturday) meant more walking east along Military Road, but at some point, we were supposed to get into Newcastle upon Tyne, and that would mean we were near the end.

Seeing the river was the first sign of progress toward the end, and a few miles later, we entered the city, stopping for a meal about 1 p.m. More whisky was involved; my feet and legs were screaming.

We continued along the city sidewalks, and then Emperor Hadrian himself greeted us to tell us we were close.

We paused and regrouped for the last mile to the Segedunum fort – the end point. It was obviously going to be another 40,000+ step day.

Finally, we came to the fort and the stone that marked the eastern edge of Hadrian’s Wall. Jeff broadcast our walk’s conclusion live on Facebook. Brent placed Oren’s hat on the chunk of wall marking the end point (he’d carried it with him every day of the walk), and a couple guys placed wooden name tags bearing his name next to the cap:

I’ve seen on TV sometimes when people finish a marathon or an Iron Man competition, they shed tears from joy or relief or something, but I’ve never experienced it personally as either a viewer or a participant. But after walking 100 miles over seven days – nearly 40 of them the last 2 days – and seeing that chunk of stone with Oren’s cap on it, I’m pretty sure all of us wept; some, inconsolably. We were almost at our goal of $40,000 raised; we were all 12 together after having a few days where one or more of us was too injured to participate; we’d finished a quest that we’d discussed and planned and anticipated for over a year. Now it was over.

At almost midnight that night, we reached $40,000–the amount needed to finance a Camp Kesem at the University of Maryland. We met our goal in both distance and dollars. The quest truly was finished.

And all of us are better men for having participated.

+ + +

If you supported us during this walk, we greatly and sincerely appreciate it!  If you didn’t, it’s not too late – every $500 given above the $40,000 to set up the camp will go toward sending a child to camp there, so let the philanthropy continue! Here’s the link: dads4kesem.org.

A version of this first appeared on Dadcation.

Among the photographs from my 2003 deployment to Iraq is one that sticks out. There’s a woman in uniform, not unlike every other picture I have of persons I served with there. But then there’s this guy.

He has no BDU t-shirt or DCU pants; he’s in a white cotton button-up with rolled sleeves and blue jeans. He’s sitting on a dusty cot next to our tent, his arms out, his lips pursed mid-sentence, and he’s smiling. He’s holding a shawarma wrapped in plastic he’s brought from his home to give us a break from the MREs we shared at lunch every day under our camouflage netting-covered “porch.” His name is Muhammad.

Muhammad was our translator. His father and uncle had been killed by the defeated regime, and he was supporting his siblings and cousins with the $10 a day and MREs the U.S. Army gave him in exchange for helping us communicate with the guys making $1 a day who filled sandbags and cleaned our outhouse or those other guys stuffing canisters with mortars trying to kill us. Muhammad was important.

Most of the soldiers assigned to the area stayed away from the young Iraqi, but I found him fascinating. I learned how he was taken by henchmen for being too sick to stand when one of Saddam Hussein’s sons passed on the street, but they felt sorry for him and, a few minutes later, tossed him out of the back seat just down the road. I’d ask him the questions I was sure I wasn’t supposed to ask, like about Islam, terrorism, and the chemical weapons drums we’d found not far away.

During one of our many shared meals, I asked him this:

Me: Are you glad we’re here? I mean. Look at your country. It’s practically destroyed.
Him: Yes, but is good.
Me: How?
Him: Once we were afraid.  Now we have courage.  Once we were weak, but now we are strong.

That conversation helped me keep my head up for the months that followed while serving in country in ’03, the years that followed when everyone on TV spoke of the invasion having been in vain, and the months comprising my second trip to Iraq in ’07.  An Emancipation Proclamation it was not, but it was the motivation I needed to feel good about the time I spent away from home, a family, and the semblance of normalcy a life here gives in comparison.

* * *

A few summers ago, I went to Washington, D.C., for a week of annual training in the form of eight hours a day of briefings and PowerPoint slides. At one of the morning breaks, I approached a veteran major who had mentioned during one of the talks that he’d been to Camp Anaconda in 2003.

Me: You were there in ’03?
Him: Yeah. You been there too?
Me: I have … got there in May ’03 after a couple months in Kuwait. When did you arrive?
Him: Summer … late July or early August.
Me: Holy shit … are you from Texas?
Him: Yeah, were you part of the team from Tennessee?
Me: You relieved me!  Wow … I’ve never been happier to see someone as I was to see you get off the plane to signal my getting to go home.
Him: You look really different …
Me: I was 27. I had a shaved head, hadn’t started practicing law yet, and didn’t have children …. Hey, was there a translator there named Muhammad?  Young guy … looked sorta like a tanned Tom Cruise?
Him: Yeah, I remember Muhammad. Smart kid! They, uh … they actually … killed him.
Me: What? Who?
Him: The insurgents … they found out he was helping us and …
Me: …
Him:  Were you …
Me:  I … gotta take … (pretended cellphone was vibrating and walked outside).

And then I realized I’d never thanked him.

Not for his tolerance of my nosiness; not for his sharing his food and culture with us; not for his service to our side; not for his friendship.

Thank you to every veteran for your brave service to our country and especially to you, Muhammad. Happy Veterans Day.

A version of Veteran to Remember first appeared on Dadcation.

Before I was born, my parents lived in Charleston, S.C. Dad flew C-141s there, and they had a boat and several sets of wooden water skis. Dad would go waterskiing, doing slalom. Mom would drive the boat. Then, they’d switch places, and he’d pull her on a pair of skis.

A few years later, I came along, and two years after that, my little brother. We never got to live in Charleston, but every summer, we’d get together for a week with two other couples my folks knew from the Air Force, and we’d spend a week on a lake in South Carolina or Alabama skiing and fishing. I was always amazed to watch the process of my enormous dad (he’s 6’3” and over 200 pounds) getting up on one ski. As soon as my folks felt like I was old enough, I tried their sport, too.

I started by holding onto an oar held between my dad’s knees while he held the back of my life preserver with one hand and the tips of my miniature skis with the other. I’d ride alongside the boat in this manner until my old man grew tired of holding me up. I think I was 3 or 4.

A couple years later, dad screwed some brackets into the tips and ends of a pair of wooden Bronco Combo skis that were painted white and had pictures of bucking broncos in front of each shoe fitting. He connected the tips and ends with short ropes. Then he tied a ski rope handle to the rope that bound the tips, and he ran the rest of the ski rope from the tips of my skis to the boat.  That way, the boat pulled my skis, and I pulled up my tips. This was how I skied as a young boy, about the age my son is now.

A couple years later, I started waterskiing using a regular ski rope and handle, and shortly after that, I ditched the Bronco Combo all together, and I used a set of Dick Pope, Jr. Cypress Garden wooden skis that weren’t roped together at all. After that, I was itching to try and slalom like my dad. I was 10 years old.

Dad gave me his grooved El Diablo slalom and asked the question one asks a kid who wishes to start slalom water skiing:  “Don’t you want to try and drop one first? Getting up on one is hard.”

So, I tried getting up on two and dropping a ski without falling. I tried several times and fell.  Time after time … failure.

“Can’t I just try and get up on one ski, Daddy?”

“You can try, but we only have a few more days of vacation, and it took me all summer to learn how to get up on one!”

A few tries later, I was doing it. A few weeks later, a friend gave dad an EP slalom – it was black, was composite instead of wooden, and it had a concave bottom. It was too small for my 6’3” father, so he handed it to me.

“Think you can handle this?”

“Absolutely!”

It was a man’s ski. I loved it.

For the first time in my life, I was able to do something that was athletically better than any of my peers. Birthday parties, spend-the-night parties, and summer outings became waterskiing parties (we’d moved to a house on Old Hickory Lake when I was 8). I loved the chance to show my peers what I could do on the water since I was always upstaged on the field or the court. I got a subscription to “Waterski” magazine; I watched competitions on TV.

When my folks got into their mid-40s, they pretty much stopped skiing (especially after dad had back surgery), but my father was still willing to pull my brother and me if it wasn’t too hot out. I continued to love the sport into high school, though outings became less frequent.

The last time I remember waterskiing with friends was the day after I graduated from college in 1997. A bunch of us went to my friend’s house on Lake Weiss, Alabama for the weekend, and it was like I’d never stopped. I still had it.

After that, I moved to Atlanta and was nowhere near water. There were a couple outings with the Air National Guard at Tims Ford State Park on a lake, but to the best of my recollection, I didn’t ski at all in my 30s.

Two weekends ago, we visited my parents to celebrate my dad’s 70th birthday on Lake Guntersville, Alabama.  A few days before, I’d turned 39.

“Dad, think your boat could pull me up?”

“Sure!”

“Do you know where my old EP is?”

“Absolutely!”

“I think I need to wet a board, then!”

An hour later, I found myself 75 feet behind a 175hp motor attached to a Triton as my 5-year-old son looked on from the passenger seat, and my 70-year-old dad idled. My 7-year-old and 4-year-old daughters sat watching with my mother and wife in the pontoon boat toward the shore.

I gave the “thumbs up.” I pushed hard against the water with my back leg and tried to let the boat pull me up, but I’m 25 pounds heavier than I was the last time I skied, and my hands aren’t as strong. The rope jerked out of my hands.

Three more attempts at waterskiing got similar results, so I changed my grip on the rope handle to a baseball bat grip – left palm down, right palm up.

And on my fifth attempt at waterskiing, I got up.

And I stayed up.

I crossed the right wake toward the pontoon boat where the girls were. I crossed back.

After a few minutes, we turned around and returned to the area where the pontoon boat was (and my wife’s camera).  My back was killing me; my hamstrings were aching, and my hands were barely able to continue clutching the handle, so I tossed it into the air.

And it felt wonderful.

I was sore for a full week afterward, but I can’t wait to try it again when I’m in my 40s. And, if he’s willing, I’d love to watch my dad teach my children to ski like he did for me and several of my childhood friends. It’s a 2.5 hour drive to Lake Guntersville, but it’d be worth every minute if it makes them half as happy as it did me at their ages.

Editor’s Note: A version of this post first appeared on Dadcation.

The oldest child in our house is turning 8. This shouldn’t seem like that big of a deal.

It’s still single digits. Our state and federal governments confer no additional privileges upon 8-year-olds. She won’t change schools. It should just be another number signifying that she’s still a decade away from moving out (i.e., not soon).  Right?

Not to me.

In 1983 – the year I turned 8 – was huge. In a way, it was the beginning of my childhood.

That fall, we moved to Hendersonville, Tenn., after six previous moves. Up until that time, I’d made friends and lost friends. I’d started schools and left them. I’d learned  addresses and phone numbers and forgotten them. But when I was in the third grade, we moved from Birmingham to just outside of Nashville, and we stayed there until I left for college.  The children I met when I was 8 – while riding the school bus, playing backyard football games, competing on the soccer field, or attending Indian Lake Elementary School – became the friends I had in junior high, high school, college, and into adulthood today. This is despite going out of state for undergrad and moving again for graduate school and the start of my career.

My little girl will be turning 8 tomorrow.  She’ll start third grade in a few weeks. And it’s a big deal.

Editor’s Note: A version of this post first appeared on Dadcation.