The small things are the whole of it.

This was the great correction of my life, and I want to set it down plainly, because I spent forty-four years believing the opposite.

I had built an empire on the conviction that what matters is the big thing — the deal, the opening, the closing, the moment on the stage.

I had organized my whole existence around being present for the important events and letting a paid staff handle everything in between, and I had assumed, without ever examining it, that fatherhood would work the same way: that I would show up for the graduations and the milestones, the photographable moments, and that this would make me a father.

It was Mason and Lucas who taught me how wrong that was.

A child does not bond with you at the milestones.