Coming Back Stronger

by Drew Brees

  Some people have asked how I would compare the Super Bowl win to the birth of my son, and I’d say the emotions were similar. I was crying as I watched Baylen come into the world, and it was such a special moment to see Brittany hold her firstborn child. Then there was the incredible feeling of holding this tiny baby in my arms for the first time, looking at Brittany and laughing and crying at the same time, saying, “We created this little guy.” It was an amazing experience. The way I saw it, that day in the hospital and that moment on the field in Miami were both dreams come true—all the waiting, all the preparation, and the feeling that God had done all this and worked it out in his own time.

  In some ways I think Baylen was the missing link in our lives. I can’t wait to get home at night because I get a chance to read him a story before he goes to sleep and maybe change a diaper or two. It doesn’t matter what we’re doing; I’m just glad I get to be with him. That prospect helps me focus throughout the day and get everything accomplished so I can make it home as soon as possible. In the past, I might have called Brittany and said, “Hey, babe, I’m going to be thirty or forty-five minutes late.” I can’t make that excuse anymore because if I don’t make it home in time, Baylen is already asleep in his bed. This little guy has been part of the process of my becoming more responsible in areas of my life I hadn’t really thought much about before.

  I can’t wait to be all-time quarterback for my kids. I’m visualizing the backyard matchups already. And the girl, when she comes along, will be right there in the middle of the game. I’m fairly sure we’ll have a girl at some point because I don’t think Brittany will stop until that happens. She loves having a little boy, but her eyes light up whenever we talk about the possibility of a Brees girl.

  The Name

  If you want to know the truth about the name Baylen, we made it up.

  Brittany and I kept the baby name book industry in business for the last five months of her pregnancy. We settled on a list of names for boys and a list for girls and then whittled them each down from there, almost like the baby name playoffs. But from the minute we discovered we were having a boy, we nixed all five of those boys’ names and started over. They just didn’t feel quite right.

  Brittany would suggest a name, and I never once said, “Oh, that’s nice. I like that.” Instead, I would say, “No, there was a kid back home named Buford who used to pick on me in second grade. We can’t name him that.” Of course we never seriously considered Buford Brees, but you get the picture. Suddenly, instead of having lots of names in the running, there were no names at all in the baby name playoffs.

  We turned to the books again. We bought every baby name book we could find, poring through them and going online to look up every name that’s ever been given to a child on the planet. But no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t find anything we liked. We were settled on the middle name Robert, after my grandfather Robert Ray Akins, the legendary Texas football coach, but we weren’t making any progress on the first name.

  It was the fourth quarter in the baby name playoffs, and time was running out. As I recall, two days before Baylen was born, Brittany looked at me, inspired. “What about Baylen?” She didn’t find it in any of the books we’d bought or on any of the Web sites. It just came out of her mouth.

  My first reaction was “It sounds like it’s missing a letter. Maybe an r somewhere in there.”

  I’d heard of Braylen before and even Daylen, but I’d never met a Baylen. At first all I could think about was a farmer balin’ hay.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I like it; it’s the one,” she said.

  I should have known right then that the playoffs were over. She called everybody she knew, asking, “What do you think about the name Baylen?”

  Everybody loved it. And I have to admit, it grew on me. Now when I look at my son, I can’t imagine him as anything but Baylen. As usual, it was a good call on Brittany’s part.

  The Hair

  In the 2008 off-season, I started growing out my hair during training camp and continued throughout the season. Because of the way 2007 had gone, I decided to be like Samson—to let my hair get long as we built up our strength to win. It grew. And grew.

  I have a picture of my dad holding me when I was a baby, and he had that classic long hair that was in style in the 1970s. The shaggy rock band look. When we discovered Baylen was on his way, I thought, I want my son to be able to look back at old pictures and say the same thing about me that I said about my own dad. Who knows what the trend will be when he’s a teenager.

  I said to Brittany, “I’m going to have long hair when he’s born.”

  I’m a pretty clean-cut, short hair kind of guy, but by then my hair was almost down to my shoulders. Baylen will always have those pictures to look back on . . . and laugh at.

  Commitment

  After experiencing the pain of my parents’ divorce, I was determined to break that cycle for my children. It’s so easy for people to be hurt by their parents and then wind up doing the same to their own kids. My parents didn’t mean to hurt my brother and me, but there’s no way around it: divorce is painful. I wanted to make sure I didn’t repeat the same dynamic for the next generation.

  Some people ask, “How can you be so sure? You can never say never, right?”

  Here’s what I believe. When I said “I do” to Brittany, I meant it. Nobody is going to tear us apart. As an added motivation, I know what it was like to deal with the impact of divorce, and I never want my child to have to experience growing up in two separate households. So when I put the ring on Brittany’s finger, I said, “For better or for worse, till death do us part.” Period. No matter how bad it could possibly get, I am committed. It’s not about my happiness. It’s not about a feeling. I committed myself to her for the rest of my life, and I promise never to walk away.

  Because of that promise, there are certain things my wife and I have promised to each other about the way we interact. For example, when we argue—and we do have disagreements—she knows I will never tell her to shut up. Ever. I will say, “Sweetie, please, could you be quiet for a second? Can I make my point?” That has happened a few times. But I will never tell her to shut up or disrespect her, because we see that as one of the ways people close the lines of communication. Also, I will never call her ugly names or use profanity when we’re arguing. I want her to feel safe to come to me and tell me what’s on her heart so we can grow closer in our relationship. If I shut her down, nothing gets settled, and whatever we were fighting about will just fester and get bigger.

  I feel like God has given us each other for a purpose, and if God gives you someone to work with that closely, you need to listen and learn. There’s no excuse for acting in ways that lead to broken hearts or a fracturing of the relationship. I don’t want to push my wife down; I want to see her reach her full potential. I want to enrich her. I want to love her and give myself up for her, just like the Bible commands husbands to do.

  Brittany and I have had some difficult times in our marriage—I think everyone does. The adversity can either pull you together or pull you apart. Some of the most trying circumstances we’ve been through together have created a lasting bond that’s growing tighter every day. But it takes work, and it takes commitment. It’s not about being the perfect husband or the perfect wife, because you’re going to fail. I fail all the time. It’s about forgiving each other, listening to each other, learning from each other, and allowing God to cement your relationship through the hard times.

  The thing God requires from us in that equation is commitment. If you give yourself an out, eventually you will take that out. If you say, “I promise to stay as long as we both shall love,” then there will come a point where you don’t feel love. I guarantee it. What has to happen, instead, is that when you’re in, you’re all the way in. There’s no backing out. Quitting can’t be an option. If you allow yourself to say, “Well, if it gets bad enough, I’ll leave,” how are you going to know when y
ou’ve reached that point? Brittany and I have vowed to stick it out, no matter what, and will never even consider leaving. My hope is that this kind of commitment will provide Baylen with a strong family and also give him a good role model for his own relationships down the road.

  Whose Son Is He?

  Our extended families try to see which of us Baylen takes after most. My family will say, “I can’t believe how much he looks like you!” Brittany’s side of the family says, “I can’t believe how much he looks like Brittany.”

  There’s no question he has my blue eyes and my ears. But he has her nose and mouth. As he grows, there are times when I’ll look at him at just the right angle or in a photo and it’s scary how much he looks like me. Then the other day we saw a picture of Brittany as a kid, and if you took away her long, blonde hair, they would be identical.

  Brittany thinks he has my personality because he is all over the place. He’s a ball of nonstop energy who can’t sit still, and that’s very much the way I am. He loves being outside and being around people. He likes constant stimulation and wants to be part of whatever’s going on. It’s no wonder he loved it when I held him up after the Super Bowl with all the confetti coming down, the lights glaring, the fireworks flashing, and the people celebrating. He didn’t know what was going on, but he loved being in the middle of the action. When he’s older, I’ll be able to explain to him exactly what he was part of that night.

  I do worry sometimes about the expectations he might feel being the son of an NFL quarterback. I saw that pressure in my little brother as we were growing up. Since we’re so close in age, he had to follow in my footsteps as we went to high school. People asked why he wasn’t a quarterback like I was. I don’t want that to happen with my son. I would love to give him every opportunity to do whatever he wants in life. If he wants to play sports, we’ll give him that chance. If he wants to be an artist or fly airplanes or build houses—I don’t care. Whatever talents he’s given by God, that’s what I want him to do because I know that’s what will make him most fulfilled and happy—following the path that was set out for him.

  Baylen was the best thing that happened to me in 2009. But there was also a tremendous loss that year, a few weeks before the 2009 season began. It’s one of those things that’s difficult to talk about, but there’s no way to truly understand my story without that piece. As I looked into the stands after the Super Bowl win and picked out many of my family, friends, and mentors who have been instrumental over the years, there was one face missing.

  My Darkest Valley

  There are some trials in life that you wonder how you’ll ever get through. My mother’s death was one of those. The news came on August 7, 2009, and I left training camp immediately to be with my family. I can honestly say that was one of the toughest experiences of my life.

  My mom was an outstanding athlete from a sports-minded family, as well as a successful attorney in Austin, Texas, and at one time the president of the Austin Bar Association. But I didn’t know her as an attorney or a political figure in town. I just knew her as my mom, the one who took care of my bumps and bruises. She gave me opportunities to play the sports I loved and get the best education I could. She was the one who sat beside me and helped me decide to continue with football when I was ready to quit in high school. She helped foster a vision of who I could be and encouraged me to go after my dreams. I owe a lot to my mother for these things.

  My mother was there for me during a lot of crucial points in my childhood, yet there were also many times I needed her and she wasn’t there. She had a pattern of unhealthy relationships, and as I progressed through high school, I gradually gained the maturity to see that ours was headed in the same direction. She was consumed with getting her own way, even if it wasn’t in the best interest of her children. This caused some tense moments between us. But starting in my junior year of college through my first year in the NFL, the relationship with my mom really started to deteriorate. There were a variety of factors that created even more turmoil, and soon the divide between us became so wide that we spent the next eight years barely speaking to one another. It seemed like we could never get on the same page, and whenever we did get together, it resulted in emotionally charged confrontations. These issues took a toll on both of us, and it wasn’t until after her death that I found out the reasons for many of these problems.

  Brittany and I turned to the church and our faith more than ever during that time. For our premarital counseling, we met with a psychologist who volunteered at the church, and we were able to talk about the issues with my mom. The psychologist recognized immediately that the problems that existed between us were not normal in a parent-child relationship, and there could be something else going on. It was the first time someone had opened my eyes to the fact that my mom could be suffering from mental illness. As a kid, I never thought that my parent would have a problem like that. I was so accustomed to the extreme highs and the depressed lows that her behavior seemed normal to me. Had I only known then what I know now, I could have handled the situation differently. I ask myself the question often: Could I have saved her?

  By the time I moved to New Orleans in the spring of 2006, Mom and I weren’t communicating for long stretches. I felt like I was losing out on time with the family I used to be so close with. I tried to compartmentalize the situation with my mom so I could focus on all the positive things going on in my life. We were having a great season as a Saints team that year, and it was an unbelievable experience to be part of the resurgence of this city. But I couldn’t shut out the effects of the separation from my mom. There was a piece of me that was always hurting for her because of the strain we had experienced. I had no idea what the future of our relationship would be—or even if there was a future for us. The only way I knew how to cope with it was to pray every night for her and for our relationship and to throw myself into every other aspect of my life, hoping that would make up for her absence.

  When we found out Brittany was pregnant in 2008, a big thought looming in the back of our minds was my mom. When and how were we going to tell her? What kind of relationship would she have with our child? Would she do the same kinds of hurtful things to my child that she had done to me? How would Brittany and I handle it when she hit one of her dark periods like she so often did? As a parent, I knew I would give my life for my child, but I never thought I’d have to protect my child from my own parent. I had long since forgiven my mother and hoped she had forgiven me. But what you can forgive, you sometimes shouldn’t forget. You have to remember if you’re going to learn from those mistakes.

  During her pregnancy, Brittany e-mailed back and forth often with my mom. She kept her up-to-date on her doctor visits, her due date, and the baby’s progress. For quite some time my mom had been looking forward to a teaching trip to Ukraine. She would be gone for six months on a Fulbright teaching scholarship, working as an instructor at the University of Kiev. Things seemed to be looking up. She left in January, a few days after Baylen’s birth. During that time, Brittany e-mailed pictures of Baylen and corresponded with my mom while she was in Ukraine. Mom and Brittany seemed to be getting closer through the communication. They also found common ground in talking about Ukraine, since Brittany is 50 percent Ukrainian. Mom even sent some small gifts to us from the country, and that meant a lot to Brittany. “I think things are getting better,” she said to me once. There was an encouraging sign that spring when Mom e-mailed me from Ukraine: “Oh, I can’t wait to meet my little grandson.” I read those words and felt a flicker of hope for the future. We weren’t there yet, but we were at least moving forward.

  Mom was due back in the United States in the summer, and we were trying to figure out a time for her to visit that would work around her schedule and the start of the 2009 season. As I looked forward to the possibility of her visit, I had really mixed feelings. On one hand, after our communications while she was in Ukraine, I felt very eager to reconnect. On the other hand, the last face-to-face meet
ing between us had not gone well. Plus, Brittany and I were still unsure as to the role my mom would play in Baylen’s life. I was hoping to begin a new chapter in the relationship with my mom, but there is no way to candy-coat history. The full truth is that my mom and I had a toxic relationship. When we were together, I felt like I was a different person. The negativity turned me into someone I did not want to be. I prayed about it constantly. I asked God to help us communicate and have a relationship. I searched for Bible verses that would help. I asked family members and friends for advice. But no matter how much I prayed and searched, I couldn’t get past Mom’s destructive attitude and how low I felt whenever we talked. After eight years of trying to salvage things, I was discouraged by how little progress had been made.

  I loved my mother very much, and I always will. I never intended to hurt her, although I know I did. And now I don’t want to hurt anyone who knew her and respected her by telling my side of our story. After all, she was my mother. But our relationship was a consistently difficult one. It was always on my mind, no matter what was happening around me. A lot has been written over the years speculating about what really happened between us. I’m hoping that others with strained relationships will find a little comfort and direction from my experiences, and maybe even learn from our mistakes. I truly believe people are brought into our lives for many reasons. Whatever those relationships are like, they teach us lessons. It’s what you learn from those situations that makes you who you are. I made many mistakes with my mother and our relationship. There are so many things that now I wish I could change or would do differently. I learned that there are many things she did that I will never do as a parent. I have also learned that a lot of the best of my mom lives in me. At this point I have to forgive myself and learn my lessons.