Just showing up

Before we talk about Jonathan Edwards again, we need to talk about Woody Allen.

One of my favorite lines from Woody turns out to be hard to trace: “90% of life is just showing up.”

I never forgot that line, but I couldn’t remember where it was from. Getting Even or Without Feathers, maybe? I read and re-read both of those books many times over years ago. Or maybe it was from one of those direct-address bits in Annie Hall?

Turns out the comment was a second-hand paraphrase — a revision of something one of his co-writers once quoted Allen as saying in an interview years ago. That morphed into several different variations — “80% of success is just showing up” is another often-quoted version. It eventually became something Allen himself repeated publicly in various forms, but never included in any of his scripts or screenplays.

I like that line. It’s probably comically exaggerated, but still expresses something true and maybe even wise.

But here’s where this gets uncomfortably weird for me. Eighteen years ago I met a wonderful woman who had two young daughters from her first marriage. She was great. They were great. But I didn’t know anything about kids that age. I wasn’t sure what to say or what to do.

But I could show up. And so I did.

That off-hand remark from Woody Allen became something like my mantra as a step-dad: “90% of life is just showing up.” I might not have any clue about what else I was doing, but I could get that part right. So I showed up at swim practice and swim meets, and softball practices, school plays, assemblies, teacher conferences, rugby games, and wherever else I needed to be.

That turned out to be some of the best advice I ever got for how to be a decent parent. I relied on that advice and it helped me. It served me well. It served my family well.

And none of that would be a problem if I hadn’t gleaned this advice from someone who was not, himself, a problem.

If a beloved, untroubling figure like Yogi Berra had said “90% of life is just showing up” then this would be a lovely story. Heck, it’d be adorable. And it kind of sounds like something Yogi would’ve said.*

I’d have no qualms even if this advice had been something I’d heard from some other legend of stand-up comedy — from Carlin, or Newhart, or Pryor. (Not Cosby, of course.)

If that were a quote from Lenny Bruce it’d still be easier to deal with. Yeah, that’d be a little odd — taking parenting advice from Lenny Bruce. But it’d still be far less odd and uncomfortably ironic than taking parenting advice from Woody freaking Allen.

I mean, if I asked you to come up with a list of Worst Step-Dads Of All Time, Woody’s gonna make that list. Probably somewhere near the top. He is an infamously bad step-parent. The most vigorous defenses of Woody Allen all concede that he is, at best, a horrifyingly creepy guy. Any defense that starts out “Well, technically she wasn’t actually his step-daughter …” isn’t heading anywhere convincing.

We all knew all of this — or most of this, or more than enough of this — long before I ever met my wife and the girls.

Part of why I couldn’t easily trace the source of that “just showing up” quote was because I’d already sold my old copies of his books and most of his DVDs.** Years before I found new meaning in that line as a fumbling step-dad, I had mocked Woody Allen and that line itself by saying, “90% of life is just showing up … but of course the other 10% includes not trying to f–k your step-children.”

And yet, after all of that and knowing all of that, I wound up taking step-parenting advice from Woody Allen.

Granted, Allen wasn’t talking about being a parent or a step-parent when he said that. He was talking about being a screenwriter (and, probably, because he was him, about being “an artist”). The guy has three Academy Awards for screenwriting, so his track record there is a lot better than his record as a step-parent.

But I took Allen’s advice for would-be screenwriters and chose to apply it to my new situation as a step-dad. Advice on that situation from — of all people — him.

And, again, it turned out to be really good advice that helped me to remember to just show up. It was advice that thus made me a better step-dad.

Quite frankly, I’m still not sure what to make of that.

I’m not sure what to make of that in very much the same way that I’m not sure what to make of the fact that I still occasionally remember and rely on insights I learned from John Howard Yoder.

I wish I could wrap this up with a neat little formula — with One Simple Trick that lets us know how to find what’s worth keeping from creepy comedians, or from theologians who were serial-rapists or enslavers. And, more importantly, with the secret key that would assure us that we were able to learn only the Good Things from Bad People, wholly distinct and compartmentalized from all the awful things they chose to do because knowing those Good Things didn’t stop them from doing them.

But I don’t know what that formula is. I suspect there isn’t one.

And, despite my benefitting from Woody’s aphorism, I suspect we all need to be far less confident than we seem to be in thinking we can learn untainted wisdom from people who were themselves extravagantly unwise.

But even if I don’t have all the answers, I’ll try to keep showing up.

* Almost. Yogi would’ve messed up the percentages somehow, as in, “Baseball is 90% physical and the other half is mental.” Or “You have to give 100% in the first half of the game. If that isn’t enough, in the second half you have to give what’s left.”

But one line from Yogi is actually pretty close to the one we’re discussing here: “Always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise they won’t go to yours.” That’s a fine reminder to just show up. (It’s also a reminder that the Golden Rule is reciprocal, but not transactional.)

Anyway, it’s important to mention Yogi here as a reminder that not all your faves are problematic. Lawrence Peter Berra lived for 90 years and the worst thing anybody ever found to say about him was that he swung at a lot of bad pitches.

** I still have Bullets Over Broadway because, in part, I see that script as an argument between Woody and co-writer Douglas McGrath about whether “an artist creates his own moral universe.” And I think Woody loses that argument.