My wife sends me a text right before I get on the plane. She says, “It’s our daughter’s birthday today. I think she’d appreciate a call from you.” I said, “Okay, but it’s early now, and I was just on the phone. So I said, ‘I’ll do it when I land.’”
So now the flight was at 10 o’clock. You land, let’s say—I forgot what it is. Let’s say one o’clock, 1230 Eastern, 1230 or 130, actually, California time, which is really 430 our time. By the time the person picked me up, I got to the house and went into the place that I was staying for the few hours I was going to be there that afternoon. Finally, I sit on the couch at six o’clock Eastern—three o’clock, whatever, what’s it called, Pacific? No, three o’clock Pacific, six o’clock Eastern. And I said, “Ooh, I have to call my daughter.” So I call my daughter. I call my wife, she gets on the phone, and she’s crying. “Dad, you took till six o’clock to call me?” So I said, “No, you don’t understand. I was getting on the plane, it’s 10 o’clock. I’m on the plane for five and a half, six hours. I can’t really talk. I can’t talk on the plane. Then I get in the car, I can’t talk.” “I’m sorry,” she says, “I don’t care about the plane.” I said, “But I’m...” And then all of a sudden, in the middle of the conversation, I realized, everything I do with explanation.
I said, “You’re sick, right?” She says, “Yeah.” I said, “It’s such a bummer that you’re sick on your birthday, right? You feel frustrated?” She says, “Yes.” I said, “You feel sad?” She says, “Yes.” I said, “Like, you’re supposed to have, like, a fun night last night, and you have to cancel it because you aren’t feeling well, and your friends are making plans, and it’s supposed to be your birthday, and it’s supposed to be your most exciting day, and it didn’t happen.” She says, “Yeah, exactly.” I said, “Maybe we’ll make next Sunday your birthday.” She says, “But it’s not the same.” And we had a conversation. I said, “You know what, let me just give you a...” And I gave her this long two, three minute a future, a marriage, all the things that I hope she has. And she got off the phone a completely different person. She did not need an explanation for why I called at six o’clock. She didn’t need to hear about planes and airports and runways. She needed to hear that I was with her, even on the icky-feeling day.
In fact, a day after I got home—I got home Monday morning, the day after I got home, maybe that night—I said, “We had a good call yesterday, right?” She says, “It was great.” You know why it was great? Because I accepted her. I was with her. Now she’s going to kill me because some of her friends’ parents are going to listen to this class and say something to her. And she’s going to say, “Dad, I can’t believe you said it in the speech,” but hopefully I’ll survive. But that’s what it means: I am with you no matter what.
A lot of people, when they get married, that’s not the implication. In fact, when it comes to children, when I was in LA, I was speaking for a school, and the principal of the school is a rabbi named Rabbi Goldberg. And he had what I think is fantastic. He says, “You want to know what a healthy home looks like? A healthy home has a floor of unconditional love. It has walls of discipline. It has an air of encouragement and a roof of Yirat Shamayim (fear of Heaven).” That’s good, no? A floor of unconditional love, walls of discipline, an air of encouragement, and a roof of Yirat Shamayim. That’s what our children need. And it’s also what our spouses need. And in many cases, it’s not what they feel. In many cases, they feel like, “Well, I’m a disappointment in this way. And I didn’t live up to it this way. And you can’t believe I talk that way. And you’re down on me because of that way. And you don’t feel accepted.” People say, “Accept me for who I am.” I don’t even know what it means. But this is what it means. It means even if, even if I’m a mess, to you, I’m still beautiful.