Thoughts from the Side of the House…

If you are not a Christian, you may not have heard of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Holy Trinity, our God who gives life and guides Christian believers. The Holy Spirit is the power source of my life. The more I am welcoming and obedient to the Holy Spirit, the better my life goes. The more I ignore or disobey the Holy Spirit, the more unhappy and lonely I become. The following story is an improbable true life account of what really happened one day in 2023 when I listened to the Holy Spirit in a way that was almost illogical.

On Tuesday, March 28th, 2023, I was on a business trip to California. I had just finished a meeting in Monterey and drove down the coast to Carmel-by-the-Sea — one of those places that seems almost unfairly beautiful. Carmel’s downtown is really just a small rectangle, maybe six city blocks by four city blocks, but it is absolutely packed with art galleries, fashion boutiques, and outstanding restaurants. I was strolling around, enjoying the rare luxury of having no schedule and only one decision to make: where to eat in this magnificent little enclave! I had flown into San Diego a few days before and drove up the coast visiting Catholic dioceses with whom my employer, Notre Dame Federal Credit Union, had a relationship, — when my phone rang.

It was my son, Nicholas.

Nicholas had graduated from Notre Dame a year earlier (2022 to be exact) with a degree in Film, Television, and Theater. He had spent nearly the entire subsequent year living at home in South Bend, urgently trying to move to New York or Los Angeles in order to break into the industry where he most desperately wanted to work as a writer. After nearly an entire year of frustration and last minute disappointments, out of nowhere, he had just received a job offer. Like, a real one! A dream job!

It was a position in a writers’ room for a major Hollywood producer who was launching a new show for Netflix. In the previous twelve months, Nicholas had interviewed for many promising jobs, sometimes completing up to five separate interviews for a single position only to lose out at the last moment. Being a young man who is accustomed to success, this was eating at him. Then suddenly and unexpectedly, this dream position was offered to him without any kind of formal interview. The producer was already familiar with him and his abilities from previous interactions. It was the answer to prayers.

The offer came from one of the most respected and accomplished producers in the tv / streaming industry. This gentleman was so accomplished that according to widely circulated press reports, he had inked a nine-figure “overall deal” with a prominent production studio. I’ve looked around online and I am not aware of any person in Hollywood who had a better deal than that. This guy was at the top of his profession. In addition, he was widely known as a great human being – a man who valued people and treated them really well. There was just one complication. To accept this job, Nicholas needed to report to work on-site and in person, one week from Thursday – exactly 9 days from the day he called me.

Instead of excitement, the voice I heard on the phone was filled with anxiety bordering on panic. How could he possibly get to Los Angeles and get his affairs in order in time to accept this offer?

At the time, he had several part-time side jobs he needed to properly disengage, including a dog-sitting commitment. That sounds relatively trivial, but when someone is traveling and you are their dog sitter, you can’t just up and leave. You have to find an acceptable alternative and communicate with the traveling person while they are traveling. Not easy.

He didn’t have any savings and his student loans were going into repayment mode. He didn’t have a car. He didn’t have a place to live in Los Angeles. He wasn’t even sure he had a closet of clothes to wear to work. And to top it all off, he was all alone. My wife Margy and our daughters had already left town for Spring Break to visit our other son, Michael, who had recently moved to Houston.

Nicholas felt overwhelmed, and genuinely afraid that he was not going to be able to accept this position. Contrary to his normally guarded and calm demeanor, he immediately shared all this with me. I remember the phone call vividly. He went on and on and on in a breathless rant. Normally, he is cool as a cucumber, but in this moment of intense pressure, he admitted that after all his relentless efforts to pursue his dream job, it was being offered to him on terms that looked absolutely impossible to meet. Move to California in nine days? Wind up all his various current commitments in a few days? Find a place to live in California in a week without any money or deep knowledge of the city? Buy a car without a job – just a future job – and have the vehicle in Los Angeles within 9 days? Supplement his wardrobe with some appropriate work clothes?

I have to say, it looked very intimidating and overwhelming to me too. But I just let him talk. As he talked, I listened, and prayed, and listened some more. Honestly, I too became quite anxious at the seemingly insurmountable barriers facing him.

As I walked the sidewalks of downtown Carmel in a repetitive loop, I prayed to the Holy Spirit. Gradually, clarity came over me. It became apparent to me that I was born to help this kid in this moment of his life and I could not fail him. His success at this critical juncture became more important than anything else in the world. He had a once in a lifetime opportunity and somehow, he had to make it work. I was all in.

Nicholas is not a person who rants very often. The fact that he was doing so in itself was surprising and, frankly, unsettling to me. When he finally ran out of words, I believe the Holy Spirit took center stage. I didn’t plan to say this, it just came out. Somehow, I said the only thing that mattered and I said it with confidence and absolute commitment.

“Nicholas, I will not let you fail.”

As I heard myself saying this, I surprised myself. Normally, I DO allow my kids to fail. I’m no “snowplow parent” who sets them up with all their opportunities and clears all their obstacles. Fending for themselves is actually the only way for young people to learn and grow muscles of achievement and resilience. But somehow this evening, as I paced around those beautiful Carmel streetscapes, the Holy Spirit said to me, “This is a unique situation, an exception. Be a strong Dad and do it decisively!”

That statement was the turning point. Once I said it, I could hear the anxiety slowly drain out of my son. Peace replaced panic. Together, we committed to action. We broke everything down into small, manageable steps. Nicholas worked on disengaging from his side jobs, procuring a few items of work clothes, and using his Notre Dame friend and alumni network to find a temporary place to live relatively near Universal Studios —a spare room, a couch, anything. He went immediately to the credit union to apply for an auto loan, he could do that part. But having no money and no job (yet), I would have to follow up and co-sign. There’s a million little things to do before one moves across the country. We took things one at a time: nothing impossible, just forward motion. For my part, I needed to provide the necessary documentation for another car loan, find him a decent car quickly, plan a way to get him to California on time with literally no margin for error, and find someone to care for our own dog.

After we hung up, I went to dinner. Then I returned to my hotel room and changed my flight home from the following Tuesday to the upcoming Friday morning. I had already visited five dioceses, the sixth could wait. I spent that evening planning a day by day itinerary that would check all the necessary boxes and get Nicholas to Los Angeles by Wednesday night. It all seemed to work, but it was very tight, and there was no room for any kind of unforeseen delay.

What ensued is one of the greatest adventures of my fatherhood.

I flew home to Chicago early Friday morning. Before we landed, the captain advised us that there was some inclement weather ahead. He mentioned the possibility of diverting to another airport. This would be a disaster for the plan. It literally had no margin for error. Fortunately, we were the last plane they allowed. As we landed at O’Hare, a major storm — complete with tornado warnings — hit the area. The moment we arrived at the gate, we were quickly ushered into a warm, crowded, humid, foul-smelling men’s restroom, where we stood shoulder-to-shoulder holding our bags for an hour until the storm passed. When the staff finally released us, they announced that the airport was closed until further notice and all flights were canceled. Winds were gusting up to 80 miles an hour. Come Holy Spirit.

This caused predictable anxiety at the gate, especially among the 30 to 40 people trying to get to South Bend. Already in Batman mode, I jumped up on a chair and announced that I was going to rent the largest vehicle I could find and drive anyone who needed a ride to South Bend. There was no sense in just taking care of myself. We were ALL stranded – why not drive everyone else?

I raced to the train that takes you to the rental car center and arrived at the rental desk just as the masses were converging on them. When I told the agent that I needed a one way rental, he firmly informed me that he would not rent me a car. When airports close, everyone grabs one-way rentals, and the cars never come back. It wreaks havoc on their inventory. It was now around 11:00 p.m., and the next available flight to South Bend wasn’t until 4:15 p.m. the following day. Eventually, I talked him into a round-trip rental for one day. But he was skeptical. He made me give him my word that I would return it to O’Hare, which is all he needed to do. But he also required a $500 deposit that I would lose if the car was not returned to Chicago on time. That was no problem since I had every intention of returning it as he requested. I figured I could return the car the next day and then catch my flight home.

Before I left to get the vehicle, I had hastily announced my cell phone number to the people at the gate, telling them to text me if they couldn’t find the vehicle. As I pulled up to the curb in a ten-passenger Suburban, I was inundated with a barrage of texts from numbers I did not know, some of the texts in broken English. After a bit of chaos, confusion, and loops around the terminals, we found everyone who needed a ride.

The drive to South Bend in the middle of the night was colorful and unforgettable. Among my passengers were:
– an elderly Hispanic woman who barely spoke English,
– a dejected rural Indiana businessman who had just lost his job and was considering a move to Texas,
– a young African American woman struggling with which side of her recently broken family to live with,
– an older white couple who had just spent six months traveling the world with only one bag each,
– and a Filipino Notre Dame student returning to campus after a heartbreaking family funeral. There were others, but I cannot remember the details now.

What a surreal and fascinating trip! They shared their stories to pass the time during the two-hour drive. When we stopped at a rest stop for a bathroom break, every single person attempted to buy me a snack or drink! Their gratitude was enormous. When we arrived in South Bend, I dropped each person off at their preferred location and arrived home around 4:00 a.m. (we lost an hour driving east).

I went to bed.

A few hours later, I got up and got to work on the plan. To complicate matters further, around noon, we hosted the 90th birthday party of a woman whose family had lived in our house when she was born in 1933. Her family owned the home from 1930 to 1980 and she grew up in our daughter’s bedroom. They are very attached to their old family home and had asked months before if they could hold her birthday party in the pub. Of course we agreed! They came from several states away to celebrate this happy occasion, having no idea what was going on in our lives at the moment. 😉

Years earlier, we had converted our old carriage house into an Irish pub with a piano behind the bar — perfect for gatherings like this. This party was full of music, laughter, and stories. I gave them a tour of the main house, and they shared even more memories of life there. It was absolutely fantastic. Very memorable for their family and for me! One highlight was that some family members were professional singers and musicians. I have never heard such beautiful and refined operatic singing in our little pub! Originally, Nicholas was supposed to host the gathering, but this became my responsibility to free him up so he could run his errands — including finalizing paperwork for the auto loan.

Halfway through the party, I excused myself so I could drive to Chicago and catch my flight back home! This amused everyone greatly. So I drove the rental Suburban back to O’Hare, returned it on time, and took the airport train to Terminal 1 to catch my flight to South Bend.

Amazingly, I arrived back at the pub at 7:30 pm.

The next day — Sunday — Nicholas and I went to Mass, came home, packed my car with all of his belongings, made a quick visit to the Grotto, and started to drive south.

I had been working on finding a decent car for him that would hold up in LA traffic. Under the circumstances, I felt a lot of pressure not to saddle him with a lemon. Fortunately, Tony Uebelhor, a Notre Dame friend of mine, owns a Toyota dealership in Jasper, Indiana, about a five-hour drive south. I had called him sometime during the chaos of that Friday and Saturday and asked him to pick out a car for us. He’s a man of character, a guy I could totally trust. I knew he would offer it at a good price. He found something that met our criteria almost immediately. We planned to arrive at the dealership first thing Monday morning, buy the car, and start driving to California together. The schedule was very tight. Providentially, by driving to southern Indiana, we actually shaved several hours off our drive to Los Angeles. Come, Holy Spirit!

We arrived in Jasper that evening, stayed at a $65-per-night Motel 6 next door, and showed up at the dealership at 8:01 a.m. Tony’s son was running things that day. One of his guys showed us the car. We looked it over for about two minutes and said, “It looks great! We’ll buy it.” We were very antsy to get on the road, but we were going to need the credit union to transfer the money to the dealership. Because the clerk understood our situation, knowing that the credit union didn’t open until 9:00 a.m. and once the money was enroute the paperwork would take another 45 minutes, she did something remarkable, almost jaw dropping. She let us take the car without paying! She told us, “Tony vouched for you and we know you’re good for it. Just circle back with us after your trip and we’ll finish this up.” So Nicholas just got in the car and drove off. That saved us at least two hours. Small town Indiana is like that.

We immediately returned to the hotel, transferred everything into Nicholas’ brand new car, and then drove both our cars four hours west to St. Louis. This was all part of the plan. We left my car in long-term at the St. Louis airport so I could fly back there and retrieve it later. It was 81 degrees and sunny. Things got off to a great start.

For the next 30 hours, we drove nonstop, taking turns sleeping while the other person was behind the wheel.

One of the most beloved and memorable parts of this trip was when we started out and were both awake. We opened Spotify and took turns choosing songs that had some kind of meaning for us, sharing memories and stories connected to each one. It gave me a much greater appreciation for Nicholas’ friendships and social life over the past five years. He heard stories from me that I would never think to tell him otherwise. We did this for hours. It was deeply meaningful — the kind of conversation that never happens in ordinary life. As night began to fall, we shifted back to our plan to alternate driving while the other person slept.

It was in the deepest part of the night on a long and lonely highway that we stopped for a restroom break at a random rest stop in rural Kansas. Both of us are Notre Dame alumni. Somehow – improbably – this rest stop featured a bronze statue of Knute Rockne, the famous Notre Dame football coach who died in a plane crash in a nearby field in 1931. Finding Notre Dame memorabilia in the middle of nowhere, in the dead of night, definitely felt like a reassuring wink from heaven.

Crossing into New Mexico, we encountered the part of the trip that gave me the most anxiety. We drove into a severe snow and ice storm. We were only able to drive 30-35 mph tops for several hours. I lost count after passing at least twelve disabled vehicles in ditches. As we passed each disabled vehicle, I was reminded about how devastating it would be for us to end up likewise. One unlucky move and our trip would be derailed. But we could not stop. It was already Tuesday morning, and Nicholas needed to report to Universal Studios at 8:00 a.m. on Thursday. I’ll be honest, Nick was driving and I was very nervous – so nervous I didn’t even take a photo of the treacherous conditions. With every fiber of my being, I wanted to offer to drive, but I didn’t want it to sound like I lacked confidence in him. So I just let it go. Come Holy Spirit.

Nicholas performed superbly and safely guided us through the storm. At a snowy rest stop in northern Arizona, we did stop long enough to help a stranded man holding a cardboard sign who had no money to fill his truck with gas. He was a cash-only type of guy who had used all his money to repair his truck. After the repairs, he thought he had enough fuel to get home. He didn’t. Why did we bother with this? Anyone can get self-absorbed and focus on achieving a goal, but it’s way more cool, way more fun to illogically take a few minutes as the clock keeps ticking to help someone else. Just makes for a more exciting and more beautiful story.

After 30 nonstop hours on the road, we arrived in Scottsdale, Arizona early Tuesday afternoon, completely exhausted. Margy and I had met there in the mid-1990s, so it felt like a homecoming. As part of our plan, some friends, Dan and Mary Minton, graciously let us impose on them and crash in a spare bedroom. On the way to their house, I was able to show Nicholas places that had been significant to his mother and me before we were even married. It was meaningful for both of us. I was so happy to share this part of our family history with him. We arrived at the Mintons and went directly to bed. Then we awoke to a wonderful surprise: a backyard cookout with old friends from Scottsdale! Nicholas heard stories about his mother and me directly from the people who lived them.

The next morning, we got up and briefly visited our Notre Dame FCU offices in Phoenix, then drove six hours through the Mojave Desert to Los Angeles. After all that we had been through, six hours felt very manageable.

The part of the plan Nicholas had worked on while I was coming home from California was a place to stay. This was no small task. He knew nobody at work, had very little money, and needed a place immediately. By the grace of God and his Notre Dame friendships, he was able to arrange temporary housing with the wonderful family of a classmate in Sierra Madre, a pretty good location for where he needed to be. It was well within striking distance of Universal Studios. Much to my amazement, we arrived at the Tupy family house only to be treated to a king’s welcome — signs, a beautifully set dining room where we ate a steak dinner, and overwhelming kindness! Probably the most daunting and difficult part of the entire plan was affordable lodging – it made my heart sing to know that Nicholas had this amazing family to support him in his transition!

After dinner, we headed to our respective bedrooms. The photo we took together in the hallway that night remains one of the great emotional moments of my life. I was filled with joy for my son and frankly a tinge of sadness for myself. Our adventure was over, the mission accomplished. My time as caretaker dad was over. Nicholas was stepping fully into adulthood and I had no doubt that he would need very little from me going forward. As I closed my bedroom door, I looked at the photo on my phone and wept. I’m still not sure whether they were tears of love or sadness or joy. Probably all three. For days afterwards, I would pull up the picture and just look at it over and over with with love and gratitude.

Nicholas successfully reported to work the next morning. Against all odds, we had done it!

Today, nearly three years later, he is thriving in his career and as I type this, he is still awaiting word whether his show, “A Man on the Inside” will be renewed for a third season.

I woke at 4:00 a.m. the next morning to catch my Holy Thursday flight to St. Louis. I nearly missed it due to a traffic accident, but thanks to a determined driver who got off the freeway, cut through alleys and drove the wrong way on a one-way street, I made it just in time. I never sat down at the gate – just walked up as the last guy to board. When the plane landed in St. Louis, I managed to find my car, met a dear old friend, Joe Griesemer, for dinner, and was able to attend the Mass of the Lord’s Supper at the exquisitely beautiful Basilica Cathedral of St. Louis. It was a memorable time of prayer and thanksgiving and sitting in that church looking at that photo.

I was still about 7 hours from home. After Mass, I drove north until I got so tired I couldn’t continue. At 2:00 am, I checked into a hotel, slept, and finished the drive home the next day. I arrived home on Good Friday, just in time to catch Stations of the Cross at Sacred Heart Basilica on campus at Notre Dame, and then walked home and collapsed in my bed where I remained for much of the next day.

Somewhere in all of it — the chaos, the exhaustion, the improbable timing — my heart surged with gratitude that the Holy Spirit was very much at work. If this were the end of the story, that would be something. But the next day I received a text, perhaps the greatest, most impactful text I have ever received. Thank you, God, for making me a father and giving me such a son. I am grateful.