About Laura

Four years ago, we published a Father’s Day episode called “About Bob,” about a woman named Laura and her dad named – you guessed it – Bob. It ended with father and daughter trying to navigate their complex (but hopeful!) relationship. In this episode, Nora sits back down with Laura to find out if things with her dad are still as complicated as they were back in 2018.

—

Support our new independent production (and get bonus content galore!) by joining TTFA Premium. We now offer tiers as low as $4.99 / month. Sign up.

Our email subscribers get first dibs on ticket sales, new merch, show announcements and more. Join our mailing list here.

Did you know we’re on TikTok? Yep, it’s true. Follow Nora. You can catch up with TTFA on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook using @ttfapodcast. Nora's Instagram is @noraborealis.

—

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

I’m Nora McInerny, and this is “Terrible, Thanks for Asking.”

I have no problem saying this: Father’s Day is a made-up holiday. Technically, all holidays are made up, but Father’s Day isn’t even an old made-up holiday. It was only made a national holiday in 1972. That’s just not that old! That’s relatively recent. 

(I will concede that it has a sweet origin story, though. It was first celebrated by a woman whose widowed father raised her alongside her five siblings, and we love that.)

But after making an episode about another made-up holiday, Mother’s Day, we got questions from listeners asking if we had any episodes about complicated dad relationships.

My initial reaction, as always, when somebody asks if we’ve done an episode about something, is … I don’t know. [laughs] We’ve made over 200 episodes. I would like to think we’ve covered off on anything but, I checked. 

And yeah, we have a lot of episodes about complicated father relationships.

We have “Birthright,” about a woman whose dad died by suicide when she was just a kid – and who learned as an adult that the man who died was not her biological father.

There’s “The Truth We Live,” about a woman who was sexually abused by her father.

There’s “Untying Knots.”

There’s “Lacuna.”

There’s “Heather.”

We did two episodes about my own complicated relationship with my dad. How could I forget those?

And one episode about dads, about one complicated relationship with one specifically complicated dad, that has stuck with me, that I still think about, is called “About Bob.” It’s about a man named, you guessed it, Bob, and his daughter, Laura. 

We made that episode with Laura and her dad Bob back in 2018. It’s been four years since I talked to her, and when I thought about making a Father’s Day episode, I immediately thought about Bob. And I reached out to Laura, I sent her an email, and I said, “Look, it’s been a while! [laughs] Been a while! Wondering how you’re doing, and how’s your relationship with your dad?” 

So, in today’s episode, you’ll hear what happened with Laura and Bob after we stopped recording back in 2018. 

But first, we need to reintroduce you to Laura and Bob.

One day, Laura was at work, and her phone rang, which is something that tends to happen when you’re at work. And she ignored it, because that’s what we do when we’re working.

Laura: Got this random voicemail from a woman who says in this kind of, like, thick Boston accent, "If you’re Robert Gracey's daughter, Laura Gracey, please call me back at Mass Gen." And I'm like, well I am that person, so … She basically tells me, “Your dad fell asleep in the snow and has severe frostbite.” And I'm just like, you know, in total shock, kind of sat there stunned for a minute ... hung up, because I told her I'd call her back. I hung up and I just start crying.

The shock here was not *just* that her dad had severe frostbite … though yeah, duh, that’s very shocking. It’s that her dad was ALIVE to get frostbite. When Laura got that phone call, she hadn’t seen her dad in several years. She had actually assumed he was dead. But now, suddenly, in the middle of just a regular workday … he wasn’t dead. He was alive, and really hurt. 

Laura pulled herself together and called back. A nurse answered, and caught her all up on what was going on with her not-dead dad. Which is that because of the frostbite on his hands and his feet, the doctors needed to figure out whether or not to amputate his hands and feet. They tell Laura that if they DON’T amputate ...

Laura: “He'll die, because he'll get an infection and die, or we amputate it and he'll survive but, you know, obviously that's devastating, because he’ll have no hands or feet at this point. So do you think he'd want to live that way?”

They are asking Laura to make the call for a man that a few hours ago, she didn’t even know was alive. Let him die, or cut off his hands and feet and save his life. 

This is one helluva question EVEN IF you’re close to your dad. Even if the two of you have by chance happened to discuss hypotheticals exactly like this, or if your dad has a VERY specific health care directive. 

But Laura has no idea what her dad would want. Would she want to live without hands and feet? 

We’ll be right back.

—

As you can tell … Laura has a complicated dad story. When Laura got that phone call she was a successful, professional woman, trying to decide if her estranged father should live or die. But this father-daughter story has been complicated for a while.

Laura was nine years old when her dad disappeared for the first time. It wasn’t a sudden disappearance, either, it was more of a slow fade – a ghosting, but by a parent instead of a Tinder date.

Laura’s mom and dad were divorced, and Laura and her mother had recently moved away from Laura’s dad. They were about six hours apart by car. 

Laura: And he had been kind of avoiding me. The visitation that I had, he had canceled a number of times, and I just hadn't seen him in a while. So he sent me Christmas gifts in a box. And then he was gone. 

Bob: I remember I got her a motorized car – like a little red Ferrari that, you know, you could drive around. Remote control type thing. Yeah, I do remember that.

That’s Bob, Laura’s dad. When Bob disappeared and headed out to California, he had been struggling for some time with alcoholism.

Bob: My disease had really gotten bad. And I decided to go out West. I'd been out there before, loved it, thought if I'm going to become homeless, that's the place to do it. You don't do that in Texas. If that's my fate, then I should do it there, where the weather is decent. It turned out I wasn't really homeless that much but ... some.

Bob didn’t end up homeless, at least not right away. He ended up at a Salvation Army out in California, and eventually lucked into a job managing an apartment complex.

Bob: I hadn't really evolved to the binge thing yet, but I was still drinking pretty much every day. I'd drink at night and get up and, you know, be functional as long as I could. And then that caught up with me, and I ended up going into a rehab. I did that a couple of times out there.

Bob went to rehab and got sober. But he and Laura didn’t reconnect right away.

He didn’t write to her.

He didn’t call her.

Bob waited nine years. And a lot happens in nine years. Laura had a stepfather in her life, but over those nine years she had still wondered about Bob. Where was he? What was he doing? Was he okay? 

In other words: “What About Bob?” That’s the only time we’ll say that in this podcast. It’s been a struggle not to. [laughs]

When Bob was ready to be in touch with Laura, it was hard to find her. Through the smallish town friends of friends, Bob finally tracked down and called Laura’s mom at work.

Laura: And so she spoke to him first, probably read him the riot act. I mean, she's an attorney, so she's probably really scary, I imagine. And wanted to vet what his intentions were, I suspect. She allowed him to email me. And that was the very first contact we had. I still have the email. Initially, I was just relieved that he was alive. For a long time I just, I had gotten to a place where I just decided he was dead, and was, like, buried in a pauper's grave because no one identified him. Initially my reaction was relief that he was not dead. And then kind of like ... huh, what does this mean? 

What DOES it mean? Bob had been gone for nine years. When he wrote that email, he had no idea what, if any, response he’d get from Laura. He was a stranger to her at this point. But Laura did reply. And that initial email eventually led to a phone call. 

Bob: That was the most difficult phone conversation I ever had. I was scared to death. Scared to death. Because I'd missed all the time with her. And she could have easily just said, “You know what? Thanks but no thanks, you know, I'm all set.” And I couldn't have blamed her. I couldn't have argued with her about it. I couldn't have said a word. 

Laura: I mean, from an early age I kind of forgave him, really, because I knew about his alcoholism. I was an only child for a long time. And so you become a really intuitive kid when you spend a lot of time around adults, because you kind of ... you're mirroring after other adults instead of other kids. So I knew he was an alcoholic. I don't know that I knew what to call it. But I knew that he had a problem. And my mom was married. She'd remarried when I was probably six years old. And so I had a stepfather. So I wasn't completely without, like, a male figure in the house. You know? But I just kind of decided that he was doing whatever he needed to do. I was never really angry with him for having a disease.

Bob: And, you know, she gave me the chance to try to rebuild a relationship with her, and I'll tell you what, I'll never be more grateful in my life for that. I don't know if I'd be here today if it wasn't for her. I can honestly tell you that.

The phone call helped re-establish a sort of long-distance father-daughter relationship. Laura was starting college, and she decided to take a trip to California with a friend so that she could actually see her dad in real life. 

Laura: He paid for me to come out. I didn't tell my mom. I was afraid I would hurt her feelings, I guess. 

Bob: I was ... God, the emotions. Anxious. Incredibly grateful that she agreed to come out. Nervous. I didn't know what she was going to look like. You know? I was hoping she would recognize me, and she did. I remember her coming down the escalator when I went out to pick them up and recognized her instantly. And I hugged and it was great. We did the tourist things and then went to Disney World and, you know, had a lot of dinners and a lot of time to talk. I can remember it like it happened yesterday. Just as clear as anything in my life. Now, I was sober, also, and had been for a few years. I'm sure that had a bearing on how that whole thing went.

Laura: I mean, I remember him saying, “I don't have anything here in California for me.” Like, “Everything I care about is back in Texas so ... that's what I'm going to do.” And at the time I'm like, “OK, well, good deal. Come on down.” And he did, and it didn't take long.

Bob: Well, I had been in contact with a friend of mine that I had known for about 20 years. And she had become one of my best friends. I mean, we just always had this chemistry. Things progressed, and I'd always loved this woman. I always have, as a friend. And now it was different. And I wanted to be with her. So I convinced her that we needed to be together, and I quit my job, sold everything that I owned and flew back and moved in. I had been sober for over four years when I moved back, thinking that I could just continue my sobriety when I got here. What I didn't know was I was moving in with a woman who was an alcoholic. I knew she drank some, but I didn't know that she drank every day, like ... you know, some alcoholics do.

Nora: So you thought you were going to move there, have like this marriage you'd been dreaming about, be closer to your daughter. And instead get there and ... you get married, and when do you start to realize that things are not what they seem?

Bob: Within about six months. But again I'm thinking, you know, I can handle this. I can handle this. I did everything wrong that you- as a recovering alcoholic they tell you, “Don't do these three things: Don't move, get into a relationship, or change your job.” And I did all three on the same day. Which ... that was just a recipe for disaster. And it turned out to be exactly that.

Nora: Do you remember your first drink?

Bob: Yes absolutely. Clear as a bell. It was ... Dewars scotch. I remember going to the store to buy it. I remember bringing it in and getting the glass, putting an ice cube in it. Yeah. I remember clear as a bell. The first taste, the first feeling of the alcohol in my system. And I remember thinking, "Yeah that's what I remember." And still thinking it's going to be OK.

Nora: How did you know that things had gone bad for you dad again?

Laura: The last time I saw him, he just didn't look good. And he kind of started to isolate himself. It was funny. It was like reliving my childhood in a way. I remember when I was younger and he would cancel. Or he'd make up excuses. “I threw out my back. Hey, I have to do something.” He always had an excuse. And so he was kind of a similar thing. So the last time I saw him, he had bought me a Christmas present, and he wanted me to come over and get it. And it was a tea kettle, which I still have. Which I now don't use, because after he disappeared I was like, “It's the only thing I have left from our relationship,” so I just, like, stopped using it and put it in, like, some weird place. Like, he gave me the gift, and he just had like glassy eyes. He just didn't look well. And I didn't have the courage ... it's kind of one of my regrets ... I didn't have the courage to say, like, “What's happening?” You know, when I was 9, I didn't really know what was happening. And as an adult I did and I ... I have a lot of regret for not going, “Are you drinking again? Do you need help? What's going on?” A couple days later I find out he's on his way to California. And that's when he was gone again.

Bob: I don't remember a tea kettle. No I don't. Huh.

After about a year of living and working at the Salvation Army, and not talking with his daughter, Bob decided to pick up and move again.

But Bob didn’t expect Boston to be quite as expensive as it is. And he quickly found himself homeless in that cold weather that was looking forward to experiencing. He was a good cook, so another Salvation Army took him in. He lived there for the next year … struggling again with his sobriety. And still not having any contact with Laura, who still thought he might be in California?

And the next February, he was losing that struggle.

If you’ve ever lived somewhere cold, you know you have these sort of winter fake out days, where you wake up, you think it’s kinda warm, you're getting a break from the brutality of living in a near-arctic tundra? 

On a day like this, Bob started drinking early in the afternoon. It was unseasonably warm for winter in Boston.

Bob: At least when I started out. And then it got really cold. And I wasn't prepared for it. I wasn't ... I didn't have gloves. I had shoes I thought were good shoes, and I passed out. I thought I passed out on a bus stop bench, that's where I remember being, and coming to and realizing I'm in serious trouble. My hands are now in two fists about the size each of grapefruits and hard as a table. 

Laura: And he said they clacked like ice cubes. They just clacked together.

Bob: And some people were walking by and I ... I ask them to call 911. And they did. And this I will never forget. The ambulance driver got out and walked up and said, "What can I do for you?" And I said, "My hands are frozen." And he looked at them and I held one out to him and he touched it and pulled back and said, "Oh my God." I guess he'd never seen anything quite like it. I don't remember anything again until they brought me out of a coma.

Laura: I think I talked to the doctor later on in the afternoon, and that's when I kind of got the better- a better lay of his medical landscape. And I remember going to sleep, waking up and having a follow-up conversation like sometime the next day. At the time, I just thought, "I don't, I can't make this decision for him." I had no idea. And I basically told the doctor, "Well, you need to wake him up and ask him, because I'm not prepared to make that decision." 

Bob: And that's when things got real. I remember coming out of the coma. I have no idea how much time has passed, but it'd been about three days. Evidently the ... when you have frostbite, the thawing out part is so painful it can kill you, so they put you in a drug-induced coma, so you don't have to feel that. And I remember coming out of it and looking at my hand, and I could move it. I’m thinking, “Wow, it thawed out.” There was a doctor sitting in a chair at the end of the bed, and he said, "Do you know what's happened?" And I said, "Yeah, I have a vague idea … my hands got frozen." He says, "It's more than that. Both your hands and both your feet have been severely frostbite." And he says, "You have two choices right now. You can do nothing, and in about three days you'll die. Or we can amputate both hands and both feet, and you might survive." 

So, in the end, Bob made the call, and the doctors performed the amputation of both hands and both feet. 

Laura: I- you know ... the, like, really stoic horrible side of my personality says, "You did this to yourself. You have to live with the consequences. And you need to figure out how- you chose to live, and you're going to have to figure out how to do that. And I'll be here if you need me, but I'm not going to, like, figure out your life for you." 

She talks pretty tough, but … Laura still grabbed the only reasonably warm coat she had, jumped on a plane, and got to the hospital right after the surgery. 

So this trip, this is the first time Laura had even seen her father since that day when he glassy-eyed handed her a tea kettle and then secretly moved to California a few years earlier.

Laura: Um … I mean, he just looked ... sad. And kind of bloated. And I mean my dad's kind of ... he's a funny guy, and he cracks jokes. So he was immediately, like, trying to make the situation light. He'd start telling me these, like, horrible jokes that are like, “What do you call a man with no arms and legs in a swimming pool? Bob.” And I'm like, ha … okay. [laughs] “That's funny. And your name is Bob. Holy shit.”

They can take your hands. They can take your feet. But they cannot surgically remove your dad jokes. Remember that.

Laura: I mean it was pretty intense to see, because they had to clean the ... like the stumps periodically. And I remember him describing it as being extremely painful.  

It’s very, very painful, but Bob is moved to a nursing home, where he is given amazing physical therapy that made this new life seem livable.

Bob: I remember the first time I stood up on prosthetics and literally I broke down in tears, because it was not something I thought I would be able to do – stand, for one thing, and then actually walk ... it was amazing. 

Nora: Did you ever get a sense of how your dad really felt about his current situation?

Laura: Not at the time. We didn't come to terms with his alcoholism. Like, he told me his recollection of events. He was very, very calculating and not really talking about what led to him being in the snow. 

Nora: Before you woke up from your coma, when was the last time that you and Laura had spoken? 

Bob: I honestly couldn't tell you that. I was in California I think. I'm pretty sure. I called her from out there. But then when I moved to Boston, I didn't call. I was ashamed. I was again afraid that this was it. She would rightfully say, "You know what? I'm done." And I was afraid that that would happen.

That’s not an unfounded fear, either. I think that most of us know what it’s like to fear that we’ve used up all our goodwill with the people we love, or that we’ve worn out our welcome or are dangerously close to doing so. And most of us haven’t even lived half as hard as Bob has! It’s not an unfounded fear, except that one of my theories around love seems to be reinforced over and over by the stories we get here at TTFA. 

That theory is this: none of us parents deserve the love we get from our kids. None of us! Me included. Our kids love us more deeply than we deserve, and give us more chances than they should. Our kids see the best in us, even when the rest of the world needs to squint reallllly hard and use a magnifying glass just to see even a smidge of good in us.

And it’s not like Laura always sees the best in Bob, but she does see Bob.

Laura: I mean to me it's just ... it's sad. Sad for me but sad for him. Like, alcoholism's a really brutal thing. And I remember my dad warning me when he came back the first time, when I went to go see him in California he was like, “It's genetic. It's- you have to watch out. Like, be careful and, like, don't let it take over your life. This is how I react to alcohol.” It's like he wanted me to be OK, which, you know, on some level I think that's kind of why he disappeared. I think he knew he wasn't OK. And I think for a long time that's why I was OK with him having not been around. Because I know that he wouldn't have been the dad that I needed him to be. He would have been this, like, grossly dysfunctional alcoholic. Who knows what he would have done, or what influence he would have had. So I don't really fault him for making those decisions. It's just ... for me, it's sad and bittersweet because I think of what could have been if this hadn't taken control of his life.

Does that NOT reinforce my theory? Our kids, right? Our kids will show up for us even when we don’t deserve it, even when we’re afraid and ashamed. Even if we’re unrepentant. Even if they’re exhausted by us. They show up. 

Laura: As much as I was willing to be there and, like, wanted him to know that I cared about him and wanted to know that he was OK, a part of me was like, “You're my dad. I shouldn't have to take care of you. Like, I'm 26 years old. I'm trying to, like, find my place in this universe. And have a job and have friends and be in a relationship and have all of the things that I'm supposed to have.” And I remember being afraid that he would want to come back, because I remember thinking, like, “I can't deal with this.” 

Bob didn’t want to come back to Texas. He wanted to stay in Boston.

He found another place to stay, and he moved out of the nursing home. And Laura went back to Texas.

Now, nothing says “you’ve hit rock bottom and the only place to go is up” like having your hands and feet frozen while you’re in a drunken stupor. But it turns out up is NOT the only place to go. Bob can still go totally sideways.

About five years after the incident, Bob and Laura’s relationship was still mostly long distance. Since he lost his hands and feet, she’d even gone to see him a few times. In February, when she was back at work, her phone rang again.

Laura: Like a 617 number. And I know that's Boston, but it's not coming up as my dad so it's like a different Boston number. And immediately like my heart sinks because I'm like ... somebody who's calling me from Boston that isn't my dad. It's about my dad, but it's not him, so it can't be good. Like immediately I'm like, this is bad. So I answer the phone, and they're like, “Your dad's had an incident. He's at the burn unit. He was trying to light a cigarette and he set his hair on fire. And he's got, like, second degree burns on his scalp. And he's OK. But we just wanted to let you know, because you're his, like, next of kin on the contact card.” And I immediately thought: How? How was he trying to light it? What was he doing? 

So Laura chalked that lighter burn up to bad luck. Things are hard for her dad. Accidents happen.

Bob had started to do that slow ghosting he did when Laura was 9. His phone calls were fewer and further between. But aside from the fact that he lit himself on fire, Laura didn’t really think she really had to worry about him. I mean, he had a place to live. Someone must be watching over him.

But then there’s another phone call. About eight months later.

Laura: I was on my first international business trip. And I'm in London, and I'm walking down the street. And I get a 617 call again. And I'm like ... shit. So I answer it. And it's the director of this, like, place where he's living. And she's like, “I just want to let you know that your dad has had an incident. He came downstairs naked and drunk and he urinated all over the common area. And we're going to evict him.” And I'm like, “Well how long has this been going on?” And she proceeded to divulge that, “Well, it's been an ongoing issue,” and he had been panhandling for money to go buy alcohol with and had been drinking for, like, an indeterminate amount of time.

Even though Bob does disagree with the specifics of the story that Laura was told by the person who managed the place he was living, Bob does not dispute that he had started drinking again. Heavily.

Bob: I had quite a bit of freedom to get around that area of town, and it was a liquor store down the street. And I thought ya know, what the heck. I remember buying it, I remember drinking, and I remember think-- feeling like an idiot because I'd done it, and feeling shameful and guilty and all those emotions that come with that.

Nora: Did you feel like you had sort of crossed a line that you couldn't go back from, or did you feel like, “It's just this one time”?

Bob: Well, that's never the way it feels the first time after a relapse. It's always, “Yeah I'm just going to- this time, and then I'm done." And, you know, it may be another week before I do it again. But eventually over the course of time it just becomes the habit where you kind of need it every day. And that's when the real misery begins.

By the time Laura’s phone rang in London, Bob was deep into the misery of his disease. For many reasons, he couldn’t keep living where he was living. So he called the nursing home he was first in, when he was learning how to use his new prosthetics, and they happened to have a bed, and he took it. 

So … Bob is sober now. It’s a requirement for living in his nursing home, and it’s a different living environment. But still! There’s no alcohol. And NO alcohol means no temptation. No drinking (duh). It means that Bob can just be. And turns out, Bob is actually a really interesting person.

Laura still lives in Texas. She and Bob have their long-distance relationship. Skype calls, Facebook Messenger, photos sent back and forth.

And one day last fall, they get on Skype.

Bob: Alright can you hear me now?

Laura: Yeah. I can see you, too. [laughing]. So, I’m going to send you an email… because I was going to show this to you, but I’ll just send you this email first.

Bob: Okay. [pause] Wait a minute no … okay … there it is. [long pause] Okay. Is this what I think it means?

Laura: [laughing] What do you think it means?

Bob: Does this mean you’re having a baby?

Laura: Yes. [laughing]

Bob: Oh, my God. OH, MY GOD. Wow. 

Laura: [laughing]

Bob: Wow … congratulations!

You know who we also don’t deserve? Our grandchildren. I don’t have any yet, but I know I don’t deserve them. That baby of Laura’s is also going to love Bob unconditionally. Because babies are magical. They have this innate ability to bring to the surface all the best feelings a family can have: love, support, excitement, pure anticipation … and with that, they also help surface the less pleasant things in a family, too. Our anxieties, our resentments, our worries.

Laura: I mean, I worry about how often he'll see his grandchild. I struggle with, like, going up there. It's really hard emotionally for me to go. It's hard just to be there in general, because of all of the things that have happened to him. When I'm there, he wants to project as much normality as he can. It's just a lot. And I worry. Like, the times I've gone, it's been in the winter time and it's, like, slippery and I'm, like, constantly like, “I'm going to catch him if he falls.” It's, like, stressful. And I'm sure he's gonna hate hearing that. But I find myself, like, avoiding going. And today, right now, I haven't been there in several years, and I've just been avoiding it. Because I was mad at him. I was not sure, like, I just wasn't sure how to, how to deal with it. 

Nora: Would you consider yourself close to your dad?

Laura: No.

Nora: Do you want to be?

Laura: I mean ... I think yes but then, I don't know that I-- if I ever will be. It's ... it sucks, because I feel like he isolated himself from me for so long, that now that he's here, I don't know how to be his daughter. And I do things out of guilt, and then I feel guilty that I'm doing things out of guilt. But, it's like ... it's just a lot for me to take in. Like, I don't feel like I have a bad relationship with him. It's just a very different relationship. I probably make it harder than it needs to be in my head. But I think it's going to take a long time for me to get to a place where I'm, like, seeking out his company. Because he just wasn't there for so long, I got used to just pretending like he wasn't a real person.

Laura’s dad is a real person. And unfortunately, real people are often … real people.

To plagiarize something I wrote somewhere: We are all just a bunch of feelings in skin suits doing our best impression of capable and okay grownups. 

Bob is now sober. He’s a grandfather. He hasn’t met his granddaughter, but he’s seen her through photos and Facebook and someday, he does want to get to Texas to meet her. Or maybe Laura will bring the baby to Boston. 

Maybe Bob will become the kind of father Laura wanted, or maybe he’ll just be Bob. And that’ll be okay, too.

After the break, we’ll find out.

—

That episode with Laura and Bob was number 38 of “Terrible, Thanks for Asking.” This one is number 200-something. So I wasn’t sure if Laura would even reply to my email, but of course she did. And she said yes she would love to talk! But the topic was still … complicated.

Now, as a daughter, I read that and thought, “Aw, man. Really?” But as a podcaster, I thought, “Ohhhh, realllly?”

Nora McInerny: All right, Laura. It's been a few years since we talked.

Laura: Yeah. When we recorded, I was pregnant and breathless with my first child. And, like, I didn't know that breathlessness was a thing until, like, I started reading about symptoms. And I was like, “Okay, I'm not, like, a creepy serial killer. I'm breathing like this because I'm pregnant, and y'all are, like -- surprise! -- one of like, five people that know this information.”

The first thing I had to do was ask Laura about the little baby she was so excited to tell Bob about at the end of that original episode. That baby’s name is Coralie – they call her Cora for short. 

It took about a year for Bob to meet his first granddaughter, because obviously, travel would be tough for him, so Laura and her husband brought Cora to Boston. 

And the moment when Bob finally met his granddaughter …

Laura: It wasn't emotionally eventful. It wasn't uneventful. It was just sort of, like, somewhere in the middle. We went to a baseball game and, like, she had her little Astros gear. I made a point of going during, cause like my dad's super into baseball. So I always try to go during baseball season, so we can see a game, because he otherwise doesn't go to games. And I tried to plan it so the Astros would be playing, because he's a huge Astros fan. But I don't know. It felt to me like every other trip. These trips are such work. They’re work for me mentally and emotionally. I don’t know. I guess I was hoping for some sort of spark of something. But I don’t know, it just felt sort of mundane, I guess. And it was a lot of work to make it happen, and to feel like you weren't getting a lot out of it from an emotional perspective was disappointing. Then the guilt factor afterwards, right? Like it was always, “When are you going to come back?” I just felt like I'm going to continue to pay for the mistakes of my father through this relationship, because it's like, okay, any time I go, it's like I'm filling his cup, because he doesn't have anything else. And so then it's like, “Okay, when's the next time you're going to be here?” Considering the fact that he was not there for me for literally years, and years, and years at a time, it was very hard for me to be accepting of his expectation that I show up in ways that he didn't. It feels like there's this sort of like, “Oh, well, you're an extension of me. You are obligated to me. And as a result of that, like, I have an expectation that I get to see and be around my grandchild, because that's what you're supposed to do. And you should do that.” But it feels, like, obligatory rather than like … like there's something real behind it. I remember you asking me, like, “Do you want to have a relationship with your dad?” And I was like, “I do, but it's hard.” And I don't know that I anticipated having a child actually making that harder, but it did. I think a lot of people would assume, like, “Oh, you have a child, and it makes it easier, and it's like glue, and it's like a reason for everybody to come together, kum bah yah.” And I don't know that that's what that did for me.

Laura’s right. That is what I hoped would happen. You just listened to that original episode. I said that babies are magical and bring the best things to the surface within a family!

Sometimes, sometimes they do come around. Sometimes they do mend the broken relationships they once left behind in their destructive wake. Sometimes everyone gets to move forward.

But not always. 

Laura: For me, in some ways, it's shone a spotlight on what I felt like I didn't have out of a parental relationship. Like, having my own child really gave me a different perspective that I didn't have before. And that's true with both my parents. Both my parents are very complicated. And it really, like, made me sort of step back and reflect on what I don't think that I had from either of them – but him in particular, but either of them. And it kind of drew me back into myself in a lot of ways. I felt like I was creating this, like, protective barrier. Like, “You're not going to do to my kids what you did to me.” And in fact, now everything that I'm feeling about our relationship is now seen from a completely different light, because now I'm thinking about everything I don't want to be as a parent. I want to live up to a model of parenting that is the polar opposite of what I have. I don't want one of my child's earliest memories to be scared in the car because their parent is drunk driving down the road. And you're saying to your dad, “I'm scared. Are we going to drive into the ditch?” That's one of my earliest memories. And so I think there was a lot of stuff that I just hadn't really dealt with or even acknowledged that really came out when I had Cora.

Laura hasn’t spoken to Bob in almost a year. And in that time, she’s had another baby …

Laura: Layne, which is actually my dad's middle name. I've just always really liked the name. And so people were like, “Ohhh, is this about your dad?” I’m like, “It's actually really not. I just like the name.” [laughs] And I really loved my grandmother, his mom, and she chose that name.

Nora McInerny: Can you imagine having a relationship with your dad again?

Laura: Relationship is a loaded word. Do I think I’ll never speak to him again? No. I don't think that's the case. I don't know what will cause us to communicate again. I don't know if I will instigate that, or if he will. I don't know when that would happen. But I think I would come into it differently. I mean, the last time I came into a relationship with him, it was under duress through, like, a major event. You know, it was the amputation of his hands and feet and not having heard from him for years. I was sort of thrown into it, and then it was like figuring it out from there. Now, I feel like I would go in with, like, “These are the ground rules.” I would set rules. I didn't set any boundaries, rules, whatever you want to call them, I didn't do that before. And it allowed him to go to a place where he was sort of setting the bar for what our relationship would look like. If we end up speaking again, and he wants for that to continue, it's going to have to be on my terms this time.

When we met Laura and Bob, their relationship was complicated. At the end of that original 2018 episode, their relationship remained complicated.

And four years later, it still is.

And that’s okay.

It’s okay, because Laura is becoming the kind of parent to her daughters that she needed when she was a kid.

And it’s okay, because her daughters have the type of father that Laura wished she had growing up. Her husband, Sergio.

Laura: He's just, like, the best dad. I don't even know what the best dad is, but it's like, he's what I imagine the best dad would be. I was not totally sure if I would even have kids when I was 25, 24, 23. I don't know if any of us really are sure of that at that time in our lives. But when I met Sergio, and we were, like, dating, that's when I was like, “Oh, maybe I could have kids,” because it was about having kids with the right person. I knew inherently that he would be a good, you know, partner to me, but a good dad. Like, I saw it in him before they ever existed.

[Sounds of baby babbling and Sergio saying “hi” and “come on” and “look at you crawling!” in person videos sent to TTFA]

Nora McInerny: What would you tell listeners who have, like, a complicated dad relationship as we sort of head into Father's Day season?

Laura: I think culturally, especially in the United States, there's a lot of expectation around like, “Well, that's the person that like, you know, biologically made you, and you should, you must be a certain way with them.” There's a lot that's put on kids around “honor your elders” and “respect your elders.” And, you know, respect is a two-way street. And just because you created me doesn't mean that I get to be your, like, emotional whipping boy my entire life. And I would say, if you have a complicated relationship with your parent, like, if they don't have the emotional bandwidth to meet you where you need to be, you are not obligated to them as much as society tells you that you are. In situations where you've got a parent who's been absent or, you know, had substance abuse issues and hasn't been the parent that they needed to be or have really just not shown up as a parent, then like it's like … “Okay, well, then they don't get to have an expectation that you have the prototypical parent child dynamic.” You have to earn it.