Dad, What were you like in the 90s?

I recently realized that I was incredibly late to the social media bandwagon where you show a handful of photos of yourself from the 1990s.

With a few selected photographs, I was ready to hit send and jump on board. But the photos caught my mind, and caused me to pause long enough to ask myself a question.

These photos show what I looked like in the 1990s. But they didn’t show what I was like. For that, I had to spend some time with myself considering the arcs and valleys of my life since then.

I think if we’re all honest, though, we probably don’t get a full accounting of ourselves without meaningful conversations with some of the people in our lives at the time. The people we hurt, the people who hurt us, our families, the friends we used to have.

Here’s what I can say with relative confidence - the 90s were a time of uncertainty.

In school, I had been a pretty good saxophone player, and for a while thought I might try to land a music scholarship. Or go try to make a life of it in a city. My folks didn’t graduate high school, and for them, college seemed like the sort of thing that was for other folks’ kids.

For a time, I sort of adopted their thinking.

I had no idea what I wanted to do after graduation. I thought I’d go into the Air Force, and started to join through one of those deals that recruits wayward teenagers who seem unlikely to leave their hometown for college or work.

Then I realized that was my father’s idea for my life, not mine. He thought I lacked discipline, and structure, and wasn’t bashful about saying it.

I got a job. Made some friends. Had some fun.

By 1994, I was a father.

Exciting, but also the most terrifying time of my life. I was 20 years old, earned $250 gross a week running a restaurant, had no health insurance, drove an unreliable car. Still didn’t know what I was doing. And knew even less about how to take care of a child.

By 1995, we launched a family business. A restaurant. Everything seemed new and exciting, and it felt like our family was building something that was ours, something that would move us closer to the life we dreamed.

We worked nearly every waking hour. We didn’t make any money. Our family had to help pay some of our personal bills so we could afford to keep the business running. I saw a close friend die in front of me in an automobile accident.

By 1996, the business failed. We filed bankruptcy and came back to Hutchinson. I was embarrassed and ashamed, and I felt like my ambition had failed my family.

I took a job that I wasn’t thrilled with, but it paid just enough that I couldn’t justify going somewhere else. It felt like some sort of a hopeless trap. But I didn’t want to fail again.

When 1997 rolled around, I was a father again. Still scared, but less than before.

We bought a house. It was old and in need of repair. We didn’t know what we were doing, but didn’t have the money to pay someone who did. Over time, we did what work we could, the best that we could.

We also made good friends, built memories for our children, and had fun where and when we could.

Somewhere in there, I started taking college classes at Hutchinson Community College, and later Baker University. I would pack a book bag in the morning before work, wash the cast iron dust from my face at the end of the day, change clothes, and head off to school.

It was hard, and it seemed like it took a very long time. And it wouldn’t have been possible without a partner who believed in and supported this goal for our family.

What was I like in the 90s?

I was a kid who hadn’t yet had his heart broken. Or broken anyone else’s.

I was an emerging adult, with dreams and ideas - and no sense of how to realize them.

I was a husband and father who had no idea how to do either.

I had the sort of hope that lives in a person who hasn’t yet experienced real defeat.

I began to see the world more as it is, and less how I hoped it would be.

I was an uncomfortable mixture of doubt and hope, faith and loss, ambition and fear.

I see it again in some of these young men now.

The ones who will one day be asked what they were like today.

I hope they know it’s OK if they say that they didn’t quite know themselves yet.

But they found him.