Charles Bock, I WILL DO BETTER: A Father's Memoir of Heartbreak, Parenting, and Love

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[0:38]Thanks for listening. Charles Bach is the author of I Will Do Better, a father's memoir of heartbreak, parenting, and love.

[0:47]Charles is the New York Times best-selling author of the novel's Beautiful Children, and Alice and Oliver, and a creative writing professor at New York University.

[0:56]The father of two daughters, he lives in New York City. And oh my gosh, I just realized that I read Beautiful Children and we didn't even talk about it.

[1:03]But that's okay. We had so much to discuss.

[1:04]Enjoy. Welcome Charles. Thank you so much for coming on Moms. Don't have time to read books to discuss.

[1:09]I will do Better, a father's memoir of heartbreak, parenting, and love. Thank you.

[1:16]Oh my god. I'm so thrilled to be part of the Zibiverse and happy to be here.

[1:22]Yeah.

[1:22]Well, your story and the way you wrote it and everything that happened, my heart just broke for you over and over again.

[1:29]And I'm so honored that you shared your story with the world. You easily could have not

[1:35]right. You could have decided to keep this to yourself. So I'm curious about your decision to

[1:39]write a book about it and put it all out there. But first, I just want to extend my deepest sympathies.

[1:44]So I'm so sorry for everything that you've gone through.

[1:47]Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. It's much appreciated. It really is. Thank you.

[1:52]We're doing pretty well right now. So, you know, knock on wood.

[1:57]Well, I'm glad to hear that and I appreciated your epilogue and everything and all the updates.

[2:01]Can you tell listeners so they know what we're talking about? What your book is about,

[2:06]what has happened in your life and all of that?

[2:09]Absolutely. A place to start is I never wanted to be a dad.

[2:14]Chunks of my 20s and 30s were really focused on literary success.

[2:19]I was married. My wife wanted a kid. And my idea of parenting was strap up the baby

[2:25]Bjorn on weekends. Use the plural. Tell people we are parenting. Great.

[2:33]Lily was six months old when her mom was diagnosed with advanced leukemia.

[2:38]And Diana passed three days before Lily's third birthday.

[2:44]So I'm 40, whatever years old, alone grieving, money's running out.

[2:50]And I have this wonderful little girl utterly dependent on me.

[2:56]I will do better is the story of our next two years from the ages three to five.

[3:01]It's a phrase I will do better that this parent and I'm sure so many of your listeners,

[3:07]I promise myself however many times a day, you know, I tried to write a love story and I tried

[3:14]to write a fairy tale. I think the best of them both they take you to an edge.

[3:19]And in the book I wrote Lily and I we do we go through fire together. Chunks of the book are

[3:27]very funny. But a lot of it is it's a very emotional book and I tried to make the writing

[3:34]do justice to the story. And I think that's a good starting place. Yeah, to introduce your many

[3:42]fine listeners. Well, you take us through your whole relationship with Diana and meeting her and

[3:48]dating and falling in love and marriage. And then by the time we get to the illness, we are so

[3:54]in it with you, right? We are rooting for you and your marriage and everything. And then we are

[4:00]equally not equally of course nothing could compare. But we go through your own devastation because

[4:04]you just open up your heart like you open your veins to sort of bleed it out on the page. And so

[4:09]we can see it and also see it from how you are trying to hold it together for Lily, which of

[4:16]course even when nothing is going wrong some days it's hard to hold it together. And here you have

[4:20]the weight of the staggering illness and loss and everything on you. How at the time were you

[4:27]getting through the day to day in the illness part? Well, when Diana was ill, I mean we got through one day

[4:35]at a time and there was no other way. But like what's in front of us, we were fortunate in some ways

[4:44]in that we had people in New York and people knew other people. And this was also at a point where

[4:54]the internet was allowing us to set up schedules for people who want to stop by with food for people

[5:03]who kind of stop by Wednesday night and give me a break with the baby. I was sleeping when

[5:09]Diana was going through her various bone marrow transplants which she went through two of them.

[5:16]I would sleep at the hospital with her. So we were able to navigate like Diana's mother took the

[5:22]baby for a while. But it was it was piecemeal. It was it was whatever you need to do that day.

[5:34]Someone had told me very early in fact a doctor told me very early that the people who get through

[5:41]this stuff learn how to live with uncertainty. And I remember thinking I can do that because I've

[5:50]written a novel. I know I know what uncertainty is because I spent 10 years living underwater

[5:59]not knowing if I would ever finish or if it would ever be published or what would happen.

[6:06]So we that was something and Diana had two bone marrow transplants. She was in remission.

[6:13]She almost made it to that year marker where they feel that the first one was a success

[6:19]and then the cancer returned. The second time was really crazy and intense. It was an experimental

[6:29]and then when it came back you know it's like you're just digging deeper deeper into a hole.

[6:35]And you know you never in our case I never really could imagine her not being around.

[6:44]We had this little baby. It was the joy of her life. It was she was something she wanted so much

[6:51]was to be a mother and she was living for that baby. If she if it was not for the chance to raise

[6:58]the child she would have went off to a yoga retreat and just meditated the cancer away.

[7:05]You know that was her idea. But because there was the baby she put it subjected herself to everything

[7:14]to everything medical science could throw at her. And so we just dedicated ourselves to that

[7:19]with and I never really discussed even towards the end and what do we do or what happens if this

[7:28]goes the other way even as it was you know pretty clearly going the other way. But you just don't

[7:34]you don't want to accept it. You don't accept it. You can't believe that that's what's going to happen.

[7:39]So yeah that was how we could have that was that part.

[7:44]And then of course you kept having all these obstacles thrown in your way. Tell the story that

[7:48]you read about in the book when you were sliding around on your lobby floor and got injured yourself.

[7:54]Oh absolutely. Yeah probably not even three weeks after she passed during Christmas week.

[8:02]So everyone is out of town and each night you know we play me and the toddler is three.

[8:10]She's just three years old. She's just out of third birthday and each night we play games in the

[8:15]lobby. We play hide and seek and chase each other and sometimes I'll go into the elevator

[8:20]go down the floor and then ride up and surprise her. And we've gone through the night.

[8:26]I just want to get her to bed. It's been an easy night and she wants to play hallway and run around

[8:36]and she runs into the elevator and goes all the way downstairs. And I was wearing my socks

[8:47]and I followed her. We're playing chase and when the elevator hits the lobby I go bolting out

[8:56]and I thought oh I'll do Tom Cruise risky business you know. I had pants on little different than him

[9:05]but I'm in my socks and after about five seconds of running when I start the slide

[9:12]uh you know I asked over tea kettle pardon my French and I landed super hard right in the middle

[9:21]of that on that stone floor. I fractured my my hip. I totally destroyed my elbow like I this is

[9:31]it like the surgical reconstruction of the elbow and you know landing right next to a Christmas tree

[9:39]the the management company Christmas tree and the baby is the toddler she's right there

[9:47]and she thought it was the funniest thing in the world. She thought it was so funny daddy and his

[9:53]funny falls and that that really did. That's not even three weeks after

[10:00]after she passed, and I was stuck on the floor with the toddler and, you know, like I had to,

[10:10]and the book does not spend time documenting like how we got back up to the apartment.

[10:18]Who I call, what do I do, but that in itself was an ordeal.

[10:24]One of the things I did try to do in the book was to concentrate on the things that mattered most and not get caught down these alleys that are really interesting and could be an episode in a mini series.

[10:39]You know, like where they stopped time and it's just all going to be, it's going to be the bare Christmas dinner only in a lobby.

[10:48]You know, I tried not to do that, but yeah, that was like welcomed, you know, I already was.

[10:56]Breathing and so worried.

[10:59]But that did that sent me out of my mind in terms of grief and what the hell am I going to do and the whole nine yeah and that's that starts the book then literally you know that's within tip eight ten of the book. Yeah.

[11:12]It gives, gives new meaning to being shattered by loss right you literally were crumbling shattered.

[11:20]But I think it is in moments like that where you see the complexity of being a single father and what do you do when you are the only person right you're her person but now you're hurt and what happens and even the logistics of that and how do you deal with your own grief and then note have to deal with your own body and whatever issues that brings.

[11:39]just get to stop time to grieve right it's in the it just has to get folded into the rest of life and all of the terrible and good things that happen next right.

[11:51]You're so right and you have so many points into what you just said one is like I didn't carry the baby in my body for nine months I did not have that the motherly pre natural connection that is so important.

[12:13]And such a deep part of it's such a deep part of you know motherhood defines motherhood in some ways, but there are things you're what the the podcast is called books for moms who don't have fun to read like being a parent and being the primary parent.

[12:33]is all consuming it is everything there are probably people who are going to listen to this while they're folding laundry and preparing a lunch and figuring out the whatever their job situation and this and that and.

[12:52]In some ways that's a chosen part in some ways it's biological but it still it sucks it's really hard.

[13:01]I was a little different in that I got conscripted into it and they're still this beautiful wonderful child who doesn't know where mommy is doesn't understand that mommy's not coming back as for mommy.

[13:15]Each day after I explained where you mommy's in the clouds mommy's you know I don't know when she's coming back.

[13:24]This and then ask but when when when we're going to do when she comes back etc etc and that is grounding in some ways because you know there's a crappy action movie from the 80s where where someone says Donald Schwarzenegger I ain't got time to bleed.

[13:44]Well, you don't have time because the the baby need the child needs what she needs and I don't know what I would have done honestly after.

[13:57]If I was married and did not have a child I don't not know how untethered my grief would have been.

[14:04]But in this case I had to I had to take care of that little girl and.

[14:10]I didn't.

[14:12]That didn't mean I wanted to it didn't mean I was I think part of the book is the fact that.

[14:18]I'm a flawed selfish guy taking on the most foreign thing that's the book you know I'm sure there's readers and listeners out there who have a partner they wish was doing more who thinks they're doing a lot.

[14:33]I was that guy you know I was who makes his what reasons and excuses.

[14:41]I was that person in a big part of this book is learning to take is learning not just to physically be present, but the emotional truth of having to accept.

[14:53]This is the journey and this is a beautiful journey and even when the child is destroying you and making you nuts.

[15:01]That's kind of beautiful that there's a humor and a beauty to it that you have to embrace.

[15:08]And I tried to write about that I spent a lot of time trying to figure out that I needed to write about that and then.

[15:14]How to do it and then how to do it in a way that keeps the pages turning and and and prescribed all the things that we really love in a good book.

[15:24]Tell me more about that process and how you did that and I have to say I feel like you were quite hard on yourself throughout the book I mean your description of yourself is the selfish dad or whatever.

[15:35]I mean you detail throughout like your shortcomings and you know the failures and what you wish you to accomplish and sort of comparisons to others and all that stuff was I feel like mixed in and scattered throughout.

[15:51]I was raised in a Jewish household in Las Vegas to two pond brokers so that comes like being hard on myself is like a daily like a daily minutely occurrence so that comes and that was pretty that's organic and I think also it's fear that there's a deep was a deep fear that I couldn't do it.

[16:15]And each day I still probably have that I still wrestle with that of am I a good enough am I able to do this I don't know what I'm doing and whatever guilt about the fact that that I in some ways dragged along for the ride.

[16:35]And so that does eat at me and it comes out it comes out but it's very nice of you to to say that that maybe it's unnecessary might be so unnecessary but I think.

[16:47]There's probably a lot of parents and a lot of people out there who feel you can't be you you're not good enough I myself it came out in.

[16:58]Watching the other moms in the court yard at pre k pickup and they always had way better food than my little sad cheese stick you know and and picking up seaweed snacks but then showing up with the wasabi snacks instead of ones that three year old can eat.

[17:19]I would look at them and and just marvel and and be jealous.

[17:25]And then also in the book there's a moment where I overhear them talking going having the same discussions with one another that are running through my head so.

[17:36]So hopefully that self flagellation is something that people will recognize and and as opposed to someone who's this is crazy or someone unnecessarily.

[17:49]Making a mold and making a mountain out of out of nothing you know I don't think it's ladies who lunch in the rosies.

[17:59]And go back to the process and even your own writing career prior to the book what you said earlier that you knew you could survive anything that's certainly because you're not there that's like one of the best quotes ever.

[18:12]Like if it involves long term and like planning and not getting reward you know.

[18:19]Like the calm before the nothing and all that.

[18:22]I can live I know what that is like I can I that's something that that is identical to learning how to write a book and then.

[18:32]moving through these processes even even I find writers who've been to really excellent MFA programs.

[18:40]They have no why you can't know what you're getting into there you just you can't you know just what that and there's no exit strategy because there's.

[18:51]I spent 10 years writing my first know my first novel beautiful children which is about Las Vegas and teen runaways and the very adult sides of Las Vegas.

[19:03]Took me a very long time to write and I for probably four years of it.

[19:09]I'm just telling myself I'll be done in three months I'll be nine and five months it would reach the point where no one ever believed I would be done my friends my family stopped asking about it I was a crazy person.

[19:22]You know building a cityscape out of mashed potatoes in the basement you know like like sure yeah that's going absolutely you you know go go get some more gravy.

[19:37]Except I did somehow finish it and.

[19:41]It came out in 2008 which is a while ago now but.

[19:47]It had a moment and it looked and then I thought I was going to have a you know a chance at kind of a.

[19:55]Serious writing career and I and my wife.

[20:00]Our baby was born in December of that year.

[20:04]And we used the option money from the movie studio

[20:09]to place the first payment along with my parents

[20:14]helping me on a little house on the border of New Hampshire

[20:19]and Vermont.

[20:21]And that's actually where Diana was when she got sick

[20:26]and was diagnosed with with with her cancer.

[20:30]And we so had and I immediately knew like there's no way

[20:34]that we can pay for all that's going on and the house.

[20:39]So we sold the house at a loss within within months.

[20:43]I don't think it was within this first year.

[20:45]I think we sold it and lost lost a good chunk for it.

[20:51]And and then everything just went sideways.

[20:54]Everything went sideways.

[20:56]And that was that was like my lead up to to what was going on.

[21:02]And now you guys.

[21:07]So why did you not stop writing the novel?

[21:11]Like when everybody was doubting you

[21:13]and it was taking forever.

[21:15]What was it that kept calling you back to that story?

[21:18]It's such a good question.

[21:19]That's such a good question is there's a lot of answers to that.

[21:24]One, I had nothing of going for me.

[21:27]I wasn't going to go to my career as an advertising executive.

[21:33]I wasn't I had zero going on.

[21:35]I was like third shift legal proof reader type guy who took jobs

[21:41]so that I didn't have to take any more jobs than necessary

[21:44]so I could write the book.

[21:48]I was convinced that I was going to get it right.

[21:52]And I was convinced like whether that's what it took,

[21:57]that that's just how it worked for for people

[22:01]or for that's how it was going to work for me.

[22:04]And there's a point where, you know,

[22:05]I did go to grad school for this.

[22:07]And every now and then I would check in with a professor

[22:09]or check in with someone.

[22:11]And I had someone a wonderful, wonderful teacher,

[22:16]a Ukrainian man named Ospolden.

[22:18]I'm on the Chuck told me at some point, you know, it's just time.

[22:24]Like what's another year?

[22:25]If it takes another year, what's another year?

[22:27]And so I was like, yeah, sure.

[22:32]But there were large forces saying that everything suggested

[22:38]I would never finish that book.

[22:39]And I just knew I had to get to the end

[22:43]to see what would happen, that if I stop,

[22:46]I tell this to writing students.

[22:48]If you stop, you know what happens, you know?

[22:51]And I had a, there was a point where I finished an early draft

[22:56]and I thought I was done.

[22:58]And I went looking for an agent.

[22:59]And I had saved chits and I had had some friends

[23:02]who had done pretty well, who were going to open doors for me.

[23:06]And I used every card and it went to the agents.

[23:10]And it was some it went to a certain point

[23:13]and it seemed like it was going well.

[23:14]But none of them wanted it.

[23:17]And I had a long talk with a wonderful writer,

[23:22]a woman named Mary Beth Hughes.

[23:24]And she said, this is just the process.

[23:27]This is just what it takes.

[23:29]This is a draft.

[23:30]This isn't finished unless it's, unless you're done,

[23:34]unless you want to try something else,

[23:36]unless you want to start a new book.

[23:38]And I didn't want to start a new book.

[23:40]So I was like, okay, all right.

[23:42]Either, either I'm done and I have nothing,

[23:46]or I'm going to figure out how to write this book.

[23:49]I'm going to find my way through.

[23:51]And I built from a flawed draft.

[23:55]And it took however long it took,

[23:58]but I was able to do that.

[24:00]I was younger now my 20s and my 30s did get burned doing this.

[24:05]Like there was a cost.

[24:06]There's a time where friends would like

[24:08]have their pictures from Jamaica.

[24:11]And they went to, they went to see where Kafka,

[24:15]you know, this is where Kafka bangs his head against the wall,

[24:19]you know, in Prague.

[24:22]And I have, well, I have chapter three.

[24:28]Well, I have a French full of,

[24:31]French full of moly food and take out.

[24:34]I have a dog that needs to be walked

[24:35]and I have chapter three.

[24:36]That's what I have to show for my summer.

[24:40]You know, and it is, it's a gamble.

[24:42]I was a gamble, but I also ended up with a book that I look at.

[24:47]And I do get to say, let's say to my daughter,

[24:49]who's now 15 and who's been told her whole life,

[24:52]she can read this filthy book when it's,

[24:55]she turns 16.

[24:57]I told her, if you want to know who I was during my 20s

[25:00]and in my 30s, beautiful children is that it lacks flaws

[25:06]overriding, but also long, beautiful, beautiful stretches.

[25:10]It has a reflection of that.

[25:12]I think that I will do better.

[25:15]I hope if the first book is like what,

[25:18]here's what I look what I can do.

[25:20]Look at me.

[25:22]This book is, this book is hopefully a more mature.

[25:26]I want to say work of art,

[25:28]but I don't think you get to call your own work of work of art.

[25:31]Attempt, attempt at telling a very, very,

[25:35]a story that couldn't be more important to me, right?

[25:39]And try to be a more mature person deep in life,

[25:44]looking at these moments that really define me

[25:49]and had to define my daughter and somehow we made it through.

[25:53]And I'm very proud of that.

[25:54]Yeah.

[25:55]I hope and think readers, you know,

[25:58]what's wonderful is the response has been that it's not a long book

[26:01]and people have been like I read it in a sitting.

[26:04]I've read it in two settings.

[26:05]You know, and I tried to make it be something that you could,

[26:09]that would be immersive and fun to read

[26:13]and do justice to what I think of as a wonderful reading

[26:17]experience, what I hope would be a wonderful reading experience.

[26:20]Well, I definitely think you accomplish that.

[26:23]I also think it's ironic that you started the conversation

[26:27]saying how, and you write about this in the book as well,

[26:29]how you didn't want children for a long time.

[26:32]And yet your book is called Beautiful Children.

[26:36]Like the whole time you're saying you don't want them.

[26:39]It's, you know, I mean, like that's what you were creating.

[26:41]No, it's absolutely, you know, it's such a good point.

[26:44]And I would never have thought of that.

[26:46]But the truth is the kid, the protagonist of the novel

[26:52]of beautiful children is a deeply, deeply hard kid to like

[26:57]and is troubled child.

[27:00]But he's still 12.

[27:02]He doesn't know any better and he's beautiful.

[27:05]And these teen runaways, same thing, beautiful,

[27:10]but also off track went sideways.

[27:13]All of us we go in these directions.

[27:17]And that was my guiding idea in writing that.

[27:22]I would have never, could have never predicted my own fatherhood

[27:28]or that I would love being of even as it drives me nuts

[27:33]every single minute of the day,

[27:36]that I would love it so much, that it would mean so much to me,

[27:40]that it's so nourishing.

[27:43]And yes, you're absolutely right.

[27:46]I could have never known, you know, man plans God laughs.

[27:50]I would have never and never thought that this was that direction.

[27:55]But I also am so glad that it is.

[27:59]You know what, Mike, the three-year-old from the book is 15 now.

[28:04]And she's an amazing, amazing person.

[28:07]She's going to be an even more amazing person.

[28:11]I'm lucky enough to have a six-year-old daughter

[28:15]who will save the race.

[28:18]She'll, you know, like we'll save the help,

[28:20]save this misbegan race and our failed planet.

[28:26]You know, like it's wonderful.

[28:29]Yeah, yeah.

[28:30]And I know I'm not alone in feeling that,

[28:32]but I also know men don't say that.

[28:34]Men don't know how to say that.

[28:37]And I thought this was an opportunity for one to try and get that down.

[28:42]Yeah.

[28:43]Thank you.

[28:44]Oh gosh, well Charles, congratulations.

[28:46]This book is beautiful.

[28:47]Everyone's going to be reading it.

[28:49]I will do better.

[28:50]Amazing.

[28:51]Thank you for writing it.

[28:52]Thank you for not giving up.

[28:54]And thanks for the time you've done with me today.

[28:56]Oh, you're in the vestibee.

[28:57]Thank you so much.

[28:58]And in all facets of your burgeoning things,

[29:04]thank you.

[29:05]Good luck.

[29:06]Thank you.

[29:07]And thank you, everyone, for listening to Me Ramble.

[29:09]I appreciate it.

[29:10]Thank you.

[29:11]Thanks for the time.

[29:12]Bye-bye.

[29:13]Bye.

[29:16]Thanks for listening to moms.

[29:17]Don't have time to read books.

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[29:20]And follow us on social at city Owens and at city readers.