Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast where we provide one lesson every day to help you

with your most important job being a dad. These are lessons inspired by ancient philosophy,

by practical wisdom, and insights from dads all over the world.

Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps.

It's never too late. We talked recently about Springsteen's choice for parents.

Will you be an ancestor or a ghost?

Haunt them or help them.

The story he tells about how he came to this understanding comes from his own struggle with his own father.

As he explained on Broadway, when he and his wife were expecting their first kid,

his father, who had always been distant and harsh, drove something like

500 miles and showed up at Bruce's door. We sit Sunday in the dining room, Bruce explains,

and we're nursing morning beers. That's his style. That's my father's breakfast of champions.

When my dad, never a talkative man, blurts out, you've been very good to us. And I nodded that I had,

you know. He says, and I wasn't very good to you. There it was, the apology. It wasn't said perfectly.

It wasn't expected. It was what Bruce had always wanted, needed, but assumed would never come.

The elephant in the room

was finally being acknowledged. Here in the last days before I was to become a father, Bruce reflected.

My own father was visiting me to warn me of the mistakes that he had made, and to warn me not to

make them with my own children, to release them from the chain of our sins, my fathers of mine and our fathers

before, that they may be free to make their own choices to live their own lives.

Better late than never, his father was making it right.

His father was trying to rise above his demons, trying to face his past, trying to help

...