When the Applause Fades

For much of my life, I knew how to speak to an audience.

I worked in radio, hosted programs, acted and performed. My profession required energy, timing and the ability to make people feel comfortable. When the microphone was on or the camera was rolling, I understood what was expected of me.

But life eventually brought me something for which there was no script.

My wife, Xu Shuyuan, and I had married rather suddenly. Looking back, she sometimes describes our marriage as a kind of gamble. Perhaps every marriage contains some of that. Two people decide to trust a future they cannot yet see.

She had been an actress and came to America carrying her own experiences and expectations. We were different in temperament. I was often more emotional; she had an ability to step back from a difficult situation and look at it with surprising calm. Over the years, I came to understand how valuable that difference was.

We built a family and continued with our lives. Like most parents, we wanted our child to grow up safely and find his own direction.

Then, during our son's adolescence, things began to change.

At first there were signs that were difficult to interpret. Every parent knows that children eventually begin moving into a world that no longer belongs entirely to the family. You cannot watch everything they do. You cannot choose every friend or prevent every mistake.

But gradually our concerns became more serious.

Eventually our son became involved in problems that brought consequences far beyond what we had imagined. Suddenly this was no longer an ordinary disagreement between parents and a growing child. We were confronting a genuine family crisis.

For me, the pain was complicated by the fact that I had spent so much of my life in public.

People knew my face and my voice. They knew the entertainer, the host, the person who could make conversation flow. But behind that familiar public identity was a father trying to understand what had happened to his own family.

When something goes wrong with a child, parents immediately begin asking themselves questions.

There is always someone to blame if blame is what you are searching for. You can blame the child, the friends, society, the other parent, yourself.

My wife was often better at this than I was. Shuyuan could separate emotion from the immediate problem. That did not mean she loved our son less or felt less pain. She simply understood that if both parents collapsed emotionally at the same time, there would be no one left to make clear decisions.

Ivan Zhou Jiajun and I had known each other for decades. Part of our closeness came from something we shared very early in life: both of us had experienced the loss of a father when we were young. There are friendships in which people know the successful version of you, and there are friendships in which someone remembers who you were before any of that existed.

Ivan belonged to the second kind.

He did not simply tell me what I wanted to hear. When I needed encouragement, he gave it. When I needed someone to point out what I was doing wrong, he did that too.

During the most difficult period, people around us repeatedly returned to one principle: do not let the crisis destroy the family that is trying to solve it.

That was not always easy.

Pain creates pressure between husband and wife. Each person reacts differently. One wants to act; another wants to wait. One becomes angry; another withdraws. It is very easy to begin fighting each other instead of confronting the problem together.

We did not remain together because everything between us was perfect. We remained together because, at that moment, our son needed parents who could still stand beside each other.

The experience also changed my relationship with faith.

For many years I had been involved with Buddhist teachings and with the Tzu Chi community. Those experiences had given me a language for compassion and service. During our family crisis, I also began spending time around Christian friends and communities. I prayed. I listened. I watched my son become increasingly involved in Christian gatherings as well.

Religious institutions are made of human beings, and human beings bring their limitations with them. I encountered disappointments there too. That taught me to distinguish between faith itself and the imperfections of the people who practice it.

In the worst periods, I was not looking for theological arguments.

I was looking for enough strength to get through the next day without giving up on my child.

Sometimes that strength came from prayer. Sometimes it came from my wife. Sometimes from Ivan or another friend. Sometimes it came from someone simply reminding me that a person's worst moment does not have to become the definition of an entire life.

I began to understand the phrase “crisis is opportunity” differently.

I used to hear expressions like that and think they meant we should somehow turn every painful event into something positive.

It showed me where my family was fragile. It showed me how quickly pride becomes useless when someone you love is in trouble. It showed me the limits of control. Most of all, it showed me that loving a child does not mean protecting him from every consequence, nor does discipline mean withdrawing love when he disappoints you.

For years, professional achievement had given me satisfaction. I enjoyed entertaining people. I enjoyed being recognized for doing my work well.

But when you have sat at home worrying about whether your family will survive something, applause occupies a different place in your life.

As I grew older, I became more accepting of transitions I once might have resisted. Careers change. Bodies change. Public attention moves somewhere else. Children grow into lives parents cannot control.

You can spend enormous energy trying to preserve an earlier version of yourself, or you can ask what the next version might still have to offer.

I wanted to continue creating. I wanted to remain healthy. I wanted to keep learning rather than settle into the belief that age had given me all the answers.

Our family was still learning too.

Recovery did not arrive in one dramatic moment. There was no day when we woke up and everything that had happened was erased.

My wife and I discovered that we could talk about what had happened without immediately returning to anger or fear.

And the friends who remained.

I came to appreciate those people differently. Success attracts company very easily. Crisis reveals who knows how to sit beside you when there is nothing glamorous to share.

And through everything that happened, I discovered something about being a father that I wish I had understood earlier.

When our children are young, we imagine our job is to shape them. We teach, correct, protect and plan. We believe that if we do enough things correctly, perhaps we can guarantee the outcome.

A family is a group of imperfect people who sometimes hurt one another, disappoint one another, and still have to decide whether they are willing to keep trying.

I cannot rewrite what happened to us.

I would not romanticize it either. There were moments I would never willingly choose to experience again.

And faith became less about what I said I believed and more about what remained when there was nothing else to hold onto.

But some of the most important things I learned happened when there was no audience at all.

I was simply a husband, a friend and a father standing inside a family that had been hurt, trying with the people I loved to put one piece back beside another.