Canzano: Leave a message after the beep
A daughter. A father. A run at a relationship.
Today’s message is a simple one — leave a voicemail.
I’m not a voicemail guy. But I spoke with a woman on Friday who has me reconsidering. Lex Helgerson is a former walk-on Cal women’s basketball player who chased a career after college as an actress, singer, and filmmaker.
“Age Group Winner” is a documentary about her father.
Helgerson grew up in Portland. The movie is billed as “a former college basketball player turned artist who tries to reconcile her relationship with her insufferable, world-record-setting, marathon-running father.”
Jay Helgerson — her dad — didn’t just run marathons. The former Marine became the first person to run a weekly marathon for a year in 1980. He completed each of them in less than three hours.
Was he running toward something?
Or maybe away?
More questions: Is running a marathon a week much different than doing a three-hour daily radio show and writing a sports column? Asking for a friend. How about your job? Do you travel? Work long hours? What’s the sacrifice? What toll does it take on your family?
Children are keen observers. I try to get down on the carpet with my kids and play LEGOs sometimes. But I often realize that, like Lex Helgerson and her father, my kids are desperate to find me where I spend my time.
I have three daughters. I have a deep desire to connect with each of them. Our youngest, 8, is a hugger. She also likes to kick the soccer ball or play volleyball in the backyard. The middle daughter, 10, would rather tell me about a school project she’s doing or slide onto the sofa beside me and watch a football game.
My oldest, a college senior this year, was in the stadium for the Civil War football game last Saturday. She watched Oregon’s 49-14 win over Oregon State alongside her friends. A couple of times during the game, I looked down from the press box, scanning the crowd for her. After the game, I got lost in writing and reporting.
“Hey, Dad!” she texted as I finished. “What’s your plan this afternoon?”
I’d just filed my column.
I picked her up, and we ate tacos together.
What about you? How did you (or do you) connect with your own dad? Lex Helgerson’s documentary is a quest to connect with her father. She wasn’t sure where it would lead but started filming him nine years ago.
“I didn’t know how to hold a camera when I first started,” she told me.
Lex didn’t sit her father down for a 1-on-1 interview. Instead, she used his voicemails to help us understand their relationship. He left lots of them, too. Including one in which he reminded her: “Run. Floss. Pray.”
It’s sound advice. More significantly, it captures the distance between a dad-daughter and the staccato-like pacing of his communications.
Her 70-minute film will be screened at Cinema 21 in Portland on Oct. 5. Lex did a magnificent job sewing together the narrative of their strained relationship using years of film footage and her father’s voicemail messages. He watched the movie for the first time with family, friends, and his daughter.
He got choked up.
“I’m reluctant to say I wanted a pat on the back from him,” Lex told me, “but it’s nice to have your parent’s approval. I think he could objectively see that it’s a story that holds up on its own.”
Jay Helgerson is still running marathons. He’ll turn 70 next February and is excited to compete in a new age category (Men 70-75) in the Boston Marathon. That daughter of his, Lex, discovered a tumor in her thigh last year. She emerged from surgery and chemotherapy with a desire to run a little herself. The daddy-daughter duo is running a 10k race this weekend together — a first for them.
So remember to play with your children if they’re still young enough. Read a book with them. Tell them a story. Shoot baskets. Kick the ball around. Ask them who their best friend at school is. And put an arm around your child if they happen to slide beside you on the sofa during a college football game this Saturday.
Let’s be real — I’m writing this column for myself as much as anyone. I’ve had empty nesters tell me how lucky I am to still hear the laughter of children in the hallways of our home. It doesn’t last forever, they say.
Oh, and don’t just hang up if nobody answers — leave a voicemail message.
They’re time capsules for your children.
It’s like Lex told me on Friday: “We’re all impermanent.”
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My dad, who was ambidextrous, taught all three of his sons to bat left-handed, even though two of us were right-handed. We definitely connected that way.
My dad and I went to minor-league baseball games at old War Memorial Stadium together, in the days when crowds averaged about 1500 or so. We went to minor-league hockey games, and Division I basketball doubleheaders together, at the old Memorial Auditorium. We also bonded on the ride to and from the venues, which took about 45-60 minutes in the pre-NY 400 expressway days.
My dad was a lifelong Cubs fan, and fortunately was still alive when they finally won in 2016.
He was the ultimate example of what a father should be. If I have been/am half the dad to my son that he was to me, it will be my greatest achievement in life. He died in 2018, and I think about him/miss him every single day.
If only more men looked at DadLife as the ultimate joy and responsibility…imagine how much better our world would be
Great column, Mr. C
GO DAWGS 😎