What's Wrong, Papa
The data they're collecting on you is being collected now.
He asked the question in the middle of a pick up sticks game.
We were on the throw rug in the family room, sitting in a circle, taking turns dropping the sticks. Same spot we always play. Same rug. Same circle.
I was there. But I wasn’t.
And I knew it.
Enough to notice it.
Not enough to stop.
My mind was already gone. Running the 9-5 checklist. Cycling through the build. The things that got done. The things that didn’t. The things that need to happen next. The loop doesn’t stop. Weekend doesn’t matter.
He looked up from the sticks.
“What’s wrong, Papa?”
Nothing. Just thinking.
Close enough to the truth to say it out loud.
Not close enough to be honest.
“About what?”
About what I’m going to write next.
He accepted that and went back to the game.
I didn’t.
My grandsons spend the night on weekends regularly. I’m up at five, same as always. Two hours alone before the house comes alive. Coffee. The cursor. The work.
Around six-thirty or seven, I hear them.
They don’t come looking for me to play. They come looking for me.
And most mornings, they find me.
Not always fully there.
They drag their beanbag chairs down the hall and set them up behind my office chair. Both of them. Just there. Behind me.
“What are you writing about, Papa?”
I tell them.
“Oh.”
Then they pull out their maps.
They love maps. Study them. I wonder where they got that.
They giggle at something only they understand. Ask me questions I have to stop and actually think about.
They stay a while.
Then they go find the kitties.
I’ve thought about why that scene stays with me.
It’s because I’ve lived it before. From the other side.
My grandfather was an early riser. I’d find him in the recliner in the quiet hours, already in his world. A book. National Geographic. The newspaper. Whatever he was working through that day. I’d settle in near him without being invited and without needing to be. Just close to a man who was already in motion.
I didn’t know what I was picking up.
I just knew it felt like something.
My grandsons are doing the same thing. They drag those beanbags in and park themselves behind my chair and sit in the orbit of a man who is already deep in his work. They ask one question. They get one answer. Then they pull out their maps.
They don’t know what they’re filing away.
They’re filing it anyway.
Here’s what I know about legacy after watching my grandfather live it without ever calling it that.
He didn’t give me a speech. He didn’t sit me down and explain what he was modeling. He just kept showing up as a man still in motion. Still learning. Still curious. Still building something at 70 that he didn’t need to build.
I was 22 and drifting and I watched that and something clicked into place that I couldn’t have named then.
The data he was giving me wasn’t intentional.
It was just who he was.
Which means the data I’m giving my grandsons right now isn’t theoretical either. It’s not what I’ll leave them someday. It’s what they’re collecting today. In the pick up sticks circle on the throw rug. In the beanbag chairs behind my office chair. In the quiet of a Saturday morning when Papa is physically there and somewhere else at the same time.
A six-year-old doesn’t have language for a man whose mind is racing.
He just looks up from the sticks and asks what’s wrong.
And files the answer.
I am trying harder to be physically present with these boys than I was with my kids.
That sentence tells the truth more than I want it to.
I was there then too.
Same house. Same rooms. Same version of me that thought providing was enough.
But I know the difference now.
And knowing it late doesn’t make it lighter.
And I don’t get to rewrite what that felt like for them.
A dad sitting right there.
But somewhere else.
Answers that sounded right.
Attention that wasn’t all the way there.
They learned to keep it short.
Ask once.
Not push if I didn’t fully engage.
I told myself I was doing it for them.
They didn’t experience it that way.
Mentally present is still a work in progress. The racing mind doesn’t go quiet because it’s the weekend. The 9-5 doesn’t release its grip just because I’m sitting on the floor. The build is always running. The checklists are always there.
Here’s what I know when I’m honest.
The answer I gave him, about what I’m going to write next, that wasn’t deflection. Not entirely.
The build is how I tell myself I’ll get that bandwidth back.
Maybe it’s true.
Maybe it’s the story that lets me stay in it longer.
Not to escape.
To arrive.
To be the man on the floor who is actually on the floor.
We lost a kitten last year. Hemi.
He was with us for two months. Ridiculous bundle of energy, separated from his mother too soon, no social skills whatsoever. The boys had spent a weekend with him while my wife and I were away. They bonded hard. Then in July, we took him in for a routine procedure, and he didn’t come home.
It devastated all of us.
From that day until Christmas week, every time we saw the boys, they asked. Every time. When are you getting another kitten. Every visit. Every call.
They weren’t being difficult.
They were grieving in the only language they had.
We made them wait anyway.
Because loss has a timeline and rushing it doesn’t honor what you lost.
In December, with the boys staying with us for Christmas break, we went looking. The SPCA. The Humane Society. Two sister kittens from the same litter, obviously bonded, obviously right.
The boys picked them out.
Luna and Stella.
I didn’t frame that as a legacy moment. It just was one.
They filed that too.
They just don’t know it yet.
My grandfather didn’t know he was changing my life the night he walked into that Novell certification course and sat down two rows ahead of me.
He was just being who he was.
A man still in motion. Still learning. Still showing up before he was asked to.
I’m not finished. The exit isn’t here yet. The build is still messy and the 9-5 is still loud and the throw rug circle still catches me somewhere else more often than I want to admit.
I know what the grandsons are watching.
They’re watching a man who gets up at five and does the work before the house comes alive.
They’re watching a man who lets them drag beanbags into his office and ask questions he actually answers.
They’re watching a man who taught them pick up sticks and plays it on the same rug every time.
They’re watching a man who grieved a cat properly and waited and then let them choose.
And they’re not watching the version I’m trying to become.
They’re watching the one that shows up.
They don’t need me to be finished.
They need me to be in motion.
Where it counts.
Where they can see it.
That’s the debt. Not what I leave them someday. Who I’m becoming while they’re still young enough to watch.
What are the people around you filing away about you right now, while you assume it doesn’t count?
CTRL is not what you leave behind.
It is what your presence teaches them to accept.
—
If you see yourself in this, the deeper work is in the CTRL Vault.
That’s where I break down the patterns and give you the constraints to actually change them.
Unlock the CTRL Vault.
—
Thanks for reading.
~ JP
Related:
CTRL Signals by JP Bristol
Clarity. Tenacity. Reinvention. Legacy
Really enjoyed reading this, and it's such a nice reminder how presence is never just about 'being in the room.'
Children are rarely asking for the improved version of us. They ask for the present one. And it's not just children. Nobody's waiting for the finished you. The whole self is what gives anything its value.