Or, rather, we tried to. I hunted long and hard to find an African American architect to build our dream home. His work was great, but he kept extending the deadline—an occupational hazard, it seems. When it became clear the builders wouldn’t be able to finish our house in time, we put a trailer on our property and lived there, with four people and two dogs stuffed into two bedrooms. What was supposed to be a four-week stay stretched to seven months, straight through the winter, which often resulted in frozen toilets. The experience gave me flashbacks to my teen years when our father was usually gone, we lived in a cramped apartment, and I resented every minute of it.
I didn’t fare much better as an adult living in a similarly cramped space. I felt like I wasn’t taking care of my wife and daughters. I still feared becoming my father—just like my mother warned me I would.
My dark moods made me retreat from family and friends. Sometimes when I closed the door of the trailer I sat as far away from the girls as I could and just sobbed. Wanda had grown accustomed to the roller-coaster ride that was her husband, but the girls hadn’t. One day I heard Aleah call to Wanda, “Mommy, he’s doing it again!” I felt horrible affecting them that way, but I couldn’t pretend to be happy or explain what was wrong.
I didn’t answer the phone very often either, or talk much when I did. So when Gail called one day in the spring of 2000 sounding incoherent, I had no patience. I asked what was wrong, and she stumbled and slurred on her answer as if she’d been drinking. My sister didn’t drink or do drugs, so I knew she was probably overmedicated. I barked, “Call me later when you feel better!”
Not long after I received that call, my mother called to tell me Gail was in the hospital, and she didn’t think she would get out. When I pressed her for more information she said Gail had taken too much of her medication. She added that Gail had been staying with her, which made me wonder how such a thing could have happened.
Gail had been in the hospital a few times, and you could never be sure if Mom was exaggerating, so I admit I didn’t understand the gravity of the situation until Gail’s daughter Stephanie told Bernie and me that we really needed to get to Canada as soon as possible. Bernie felt we should call our father, who was now living near Bernie, and ask him to come with us, so I booked three tickets to fly from Newark to Toronto that night. On the way to the airport the rain came down in buckets. After we had waited a few hours at our gate, our flight was canceled, so we returned to my house in complete silence.
The next morning, May 10, 2000, when we were preparing to return to the airport, my mother called to tell me Gail had died. She was gone. I couldn’t believe it. I cried all the way to the airport and during the entire flight to Toronto. Bernie and I tried to figure out what could have happened, while our father sat in silence.
When we reached my sister’s house in Oshawa, a Toronto suburb, my mother answered the door. My grief was quickly ambushed by anger. There stood my mother with a brand-new hairdo and fresh makeup. She had just returned from the beauty salon, as if she were preparing to entertain guests.
Later that night, after we’d finalized plans for the funeral, Gail’s oldest daughter, Stephanie, passed on to me what my mother had just told her. Apparently about a month earlier Paul was concerned that Gail’s behavior was affecting their kids, so Gail checked herself into Oshawa General Hospital. A few days later she checked herself out and took the bus to my mother’s apartment in Guelph, ninety minutes away.
According to my mom’s account to Stephanie, Gail lived with our mom for three weeks or so. One morning she asked mom for a cup of tea and waited at the kitchen table. She had a few bottles of antidepressants with her and began to drop the pills into her mouth, one after the other—certainly not the way they’d been prescribed. My mother questioned why she was doing that, but apparently accepted Gail’s answer, whatever it was. Before long Gail passed out and remained that way most of the day, while my mother decided to run some errands.
Only when Mom returned did my she realize she needed to call the paramedics. By the time they arrived, Gail’s organs had failed. A few hours later she died at the hospital.
The day of Gail’s funeral Bernie and I tried our best to help Paul with their five kids who’d just lost their mom. At the same time, I tried to avoid my parents. I had nothing to say to them.
I didn’t want to see Gail, but when Bernie headed upstairs to see her open casket, I couldn’t let him go alone. So I grabbed his hand and climbed the stairs to say goodbye to our sister. When we first saw Gail, looking much older than her forty-one years, I’d wished I hadn’t. But I was glad Bernie and I were there for each other. Looking at my sister in her casket, I promised her I would do everything I could to make sure her children never suffered as she had.
During my sister’s burial I couldn’t believe it when my mother draped herself over Gail’s casket and screamed, “Oh, my God, she was my best friend!”
Gail’s death only deepened my depression. When we returned to our temporary trailer, there was no hiding my condition from the girls. This was especially hard for me, because after our marriage and the birth of our beautiful daughters, I naively thought nothing could get to me anymore. This downturn brought with it the cruel realization that nothing—not wealth, fame, nor even a loving family—could protect me from depression.
I thought about Gail’s tragedy almost every day. I avoided seeing my mother except at holiday gatherings, when my dutiful brother would bring her along. I waited until the spring of 2000, almost ten years after Gail had died, before I told my mother I wanted to see her. I wanted to get some answers.
When I was preparing to go, Wanda sensed my apprehension, so she and the girls packed and hopped into the car with me, and we all headed to Guelph. It was a good thing she did, because after we sat down in my mom’s apartment I suddenly had nothing to say, so Wanda carried the conversation with small talk.
When Wanda and the girls left to pick up lunch I was finally alone with my mother. I was sitting at the same table where my sister had started popping her pills. I felt Gail’s presence, which gave me the strength to ask our mother the question I came to ask: “What happened?”
I was prepared for her to deny the story my niece had told me ten years earlier and make up a new one. So before she could start spinning a different version, I began recounting the events exactly as I had heard them from Stephanie: how Gail had arrived from the hospital in Oshawa, sat at my mother’s table, and started popping pill after pill until she passed out. Then I told her I had heard that she’d left my sister unconscious while she ran errands, and called 911 only after she had returned.
As I laid out Stephanie’s account of my mom’s confession, more calmly than I thought I could, my mother’s face didn’t reveal anything, so I expected her to repudiate everything I said. But when I finished, her reply shocked me: she told me that’s what happened.
I was speechless. I leaned back in my chair, overwhelmed by what I’d just heard. I felt the life slip out of me.
When Wanda and the girls returned I could only sit silently as the small talk started up. When we finished our lunch I stood up and said, “Well, it’s time for us to leave.”
On the drive home I told Wanda what had happened. She was as amazed as I was, but she told me she knew I was not going to get the answers I’d ached for. Wanda thought I was still hoping there would be an answer to all this that made sense, that would allow me to think of my mother as a loving, caring person. I realized Wanda was right: that’s what I had secretly wanted. Instead, I’d received confirmation of the opposite. But at least I knew the truth, and there was some cold comfort in that.
It’s sad for anyone to lose a little sister, of course, but to lose her that way—with five kids counting on her—it’s more than I can describe.
Much to our relief the builder finally finished our home in the summer of 2000. The wait had been tough, but ultimately worth it. We now live in the home I’d always dreamed of.
My home
is so important to me. It has nothing to do with how big it is, or how much it cost, or the neighborhood we live in. It’s about finally having the security, the stability, and the safe place that I longed for growing up.
My attachment to this home was underscored a few years ago when Jenna was sitting in the living room with Wanda, watching me walk around the driveway picking up some paper scraps that had blown out of our trash cans.
Jenna asked, “Why is the house so important to Daddy?”
“Because,” Wanda told her, “he never had one.”
CHAPTER 22
Livin’ in America
FROM THE TIME I SIGNED ON AT ESPN JUST ABOUT EVERY aspect of my life was about to change dramatically, but one transition was already well underway: re-adapting to America. Raised in Canada but living in the United States, I feel more acutely than most how radically different the two countries can be.
When I moved to Baltimore I was shocked when I first saw American police officers. In Canada the police keep their guns holstered, with a large leather flap covering the handle, making it look less like a holster and more like a gun purse. The idea is to downplay it, though no one seems too worried that a Canadian officer couldn’t get to his weapon quickly enough. It was much less likely that a Canadian police officer would actually need his gun than an American officer because Canadian citizens need a special permit to carry a handgun, and very few receive it.
The police officers I saw in Baltimore had their guns holstered, but with the butt end exposed. To me they looked like Wild West gunslingers, and it sent another message: American police had a greater fear of armed criminals because that’s the reality here. Unfortunately, the need to respond faster sometimes means that someone who is perfectly innocent gets shot. That is extremely rare in Canada—and when you’re black and you move to the States, you have to think about such things.
I was rarely a victim of racism in Canada, and what I did experience—usually in a hockey rink—wasn’t much. But when I arrived in the United States I quickly learned that many people saw me as a threat simply because I was a black man. As every New Yorker knows, it’s not easy for a black man in Manhattan to get a taxi to stop for him. I’ve even proved it to some of my white friends by having them stand a hundred feet behind me and watch me try to wave down a cab while wearing the same business suits I wear on the ESPN set. The taxi invariably passes me by and picks them up. Then they understand.
Sometimes it can get ugly. One time in New York my cabbie was of Middle Eastern descent. When I asked him to open his trunk so I could put my suitcase in, he started yelling at me. When I told him he went to the wrong address, he called me a liar. I was so irate that I copied his license number down. When he saw me doing this, he grabbed me by the arm.
“Get your hands off me,” I said, and jumped out of the cab. After retrieving my belongings from the trunk, I left it open to make him get out to close it—which he would have done for most customers. He leaped from the cab to shut the trunk, then yelled at me as I walked toward ABC’s studio: “You may have a suit and tie, but you’re still just a fucking NIGGER!”
I turned to confront him—this is where my hockey background might have come in handy, for better or worse—but he jumped back into his cab and peeled off. Walking into the studio, my anger turned to sorrow. To a lot of people it didn’t matter how I was dressed, how much money I earned, or how big my house was. I would always be “just a nigger.”
The cabbies can be a problem, but they only have so much power. That’s why the police can be much scarier. When Wanda and I were driving from her mother’s home in Baltimore to our new home in Connecticut one Sunday afternoon, a New Jersey State Trooper pulled us over. Wanda was asleep, but I quickly dismissed the fear that I might have been speeding because we were rolling calmly along with the flow of traffic, which barely reached the speed limit.
“License, registration, and insurance,” the trooper asked. I gave him the items. He returned to his squad car, where he spent about twenty minutes, probably running every check possible to find something to ticket me for. He finally walked back to my car.
“You’re free to go,” he said, then he tossed my cards and papers in my face. “Know why I stopped you?”
I shrugged.
“Because you’re a nigger in a Porsche.”
He turned and walked back to his car. I felt completely helpless, but I was grateful Wanda was still asleep.
Being a black man in this country keeps me on edge in ways that aren’t always easy to explain or understand. There’s a veiled layer of institutional racism that can affect us every day—something I don’t feel when I’m in Canada. My suspicions of racism are not always accurate—it’s worth remembering the Baltimore police officer who refused to give me a ticket when I richly deserved one—but those suspicions are correct often enough that I feel I always need to be vigilant, and this takes a toll.
When you grow up feeling as insecure as I did, always wondering if you’re worth anything, throwing racism on top of it doesn’t help. Anxiety over racism is one thing I’m grateful I wasn’t burdened with growing up.
At ESPN I soon found I was able to use my new position to show my support of the black community and my belief in lifting each other up. (You’ll notice that I refer to my race as “black” and not “African American.” Being Canadian, I never felt the latter term applied to me.)
I can’t separate my passionate belief in racial equality from my work, and I don’t try. In one of my ESPN/ABC contracts I was asked to be a spokesman on racial issues. In another I was named a diversity recruiter to help increase the black profile at both networks. You may see many black faces on the screen, but you’ll find far fewer working behind the scenes, holding positions of power.
I have spoken out many times on racial issues, on camera and off, taking advantage of the pulpit that comes with national TV. Yes, I occasionally get some backlash, but I figure, if I can’t speak up, who can?
For everything I’ve been given, it is a very small price to pay, and one I pay happily.
PART THREE
The Façade Cracks
CHAPTER 23
The Psych Ward
DR. SANDY, MY FIRST THERAPIST, HAD BEEN GREAT, GIVING me a crucial, welcoming introduction to therapy. If she had been cold, indifferent, or ineffective, I would not have come back for a second visit, let alone become a convert.
But in 1999, in the midst of our “trailer winter,” I decided I needed deeper, more comprehensive help, so I started seeing a psychiatrist named Diana Horne. Her approach included medications like Wellbutrin and cognitive therapy, which is based on logical reasoning. For example, although most people would consider it absurd that a child would be responsible for his father’s abuse, I had believed all my life that I was at fault for the beatings my father had given me, thanks to my big mouth and drug use. Cognitive therapy makes the patient aware of his irrational beliefs, and then you start revising them.
I responded so well, in fact, that by 2006 I felt like I’d learned all that therapy had to teach me. That spring I walked into Dr. Horne’s office, beaming, and said half-joking, “You’ve cured me!” Thinking I was finally good to go, I stopped seeing any therapists for three years.
On the outside everything seemed like it was getting better and better. In addition to a great family, my career was booming. In 2006 USA Today reported that the Davie-Brown Index ranked me as the nation’s most likeable sportscaster.
At last I seemed to have reconciled the two sides of my personality: the part of me that was prone to risk taking, violence, and fleeing at the first sign of trouble, and the part that was safe, stable, and successful. I still had a few drinks each day, but I was responsible and hard working. I never felt any impulse to hurt my wife or my daughters, and I could never imagine abandoning them. So I was defying my greatest fear: I wasn’t my father after all.
My emotional state, however, was eroding. I have an intense fear of losing my daughters—eith
er suddenly, through a tragic accident, or slowly, as they grow up and go away, leaving me behind. I could cry right now just thinking about it. They both know I suffer from depression and that they need to hold me up sometimes. Every Father’s Day my daughters buy me the same thing: beer mugs with a personal engraving. Recently Jenna gave me one that reads, I will love my daddy for always and always and always. You can guess what that means to me. When we hug, it’s for me as much as for them.
My love for them has often helped keep me going, so it’s ironic that my fear of losing them sometimes can replace my happiness with sadness. Even our best moments can turn into dread because I fear losing those moments.
In 2007 my father was diagnosed with colon cancer. We put him into a nursing home in upstate New York, then moved him to a hospital in Ossining, New York, where his condition worsened. Some friends, who knew about our relationship with him, asked why we paid for his care. As for Bernie, he knew our father’s childhood probably wasn’t any easier than mine, and he loved him despite his flaws. As for me, I think I secretly hoped that at the eleventh hour he’d become the man I had pretended he was when I was growing up.
In May of 2009 the doctors told us he was near the end, so Bernie and I went to see him. I’m not sure what I was hoping for—a final reconciliation, perhaps, or a simple apology, or an unconditional expression of love—but none of that happened. By then he was too sick to communicate much. I shouldn’t have expected it, of course, but the heart can be stubbornly irrational.
After Dad died, Bernie and I arranged to have him cremated. We weren’t sure how many people might attend a funeral for him, so Bernie and I decided we would simply get together, raise a glass and pour out a little liquor, as the Tupac song states, which is the custom in the black community.
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