Made, Not Found

How many more times will you actually see your parents? Do the math. The number is smaller than you think.

This one starts with a barber who turns out to be closer to our boys' age than Chris's. Then it gets honest about getting older: the cosmetic procedure Chris told everyone about (and who admitted they'd done it too), why Mel refuses to go down without a fight, and why 18 summers with your kids is really far fewer.

Then Mel shares something she told her mom on the back steps at 17. It's the part of this conversation we'll remember most.

Pull up a chair.

The question we leave on the table: If you did the math on the people you love most, what would you change?

We have more tools, more information and more knowledge about health than any generation before us. So why are we sicker than ever?

This one’s Mel’s world, with Chris asking the questions. And the thing we kept coming back to is simple: what’s common isn’t the same as what’s normal. Most of us stopped noticing the difference a long time ago.

There’s the doctor’s visit that sent a brand-new mom out of the office in tears, and the afternoon our son looked at his own dad like a stranger — and the doctor who decided it was Dad’s fault for traveling. What a food executive admitted happens to ketchup a little more every single year. And why the “health freak” of the family still keeps chips in the pantry and never misses pizza Friday.

We don’t have it all figured out. One of us thought gluten-free was nonsense right up until a Chipotle wrap proved otherwise.

Pull up a chair.

The question we leave on the table: What’s something everyone around you treats as normal that you’ve quietly stopped accepting?

How has your community changed over the years?

If you’ve ever moved somewhere new, drifted from friends you thought you’d have forever, or tried to make friends as a couple (with kids in the mix!), this one’s for you. And if you’re the friend who quietly slips out of the party early, we see you too. Mel’s right there with you.

This week we’re sharing how our own community has grown and shifted: the close friendships that fill us up, the padel crew, the little moments at the coffee shop that make a day feel brighter, and the courage it takes to show up somewhere new. We hope it leaves you feeling a little more connected, and maybe inspired to reach out to someone you’ve been missing.

We don’t have the answers, just starting the conversation.

This week’s question: How do you intentionally build community?

How do you change your expectations when your head already knows you need to, but your heart isn’t there yet?

Mel is grieving a little. Their oldest son, 14, is at a new school, playing football, and answers every question with “fine,” and the closeness she’s always had with him suddenly feels out of reach. She knows it’s normal. It still hurts. Chris says she may be missing what’s still there, like the fact that the boys still fight over who gets to sit next to her. From there, the conversation turns back on them: “on my way home,” meaning two hours later, coming home from a work week wanting completely different things, love languages that don’t match, and the expectations each of them never said out loud.

This episode is about the gap between what we expect and what’s real, and about how expectations can bring people closer once they’re actually communicated.

So we’ll leave you with this: What expectations do you have of others, or of yourself, that you’re not communicating, and how are they leading to frustration?

We don’t have the answers. We’re sharing our conversation in hopes it sparks yours.

What did faith mean to you growing up, and how has it changed?

Chris was a "holiday Catholic" who prayed every night but never felt at home in church. Mel grew up in the pew every Sunday and has always known God is love, even as she wrestled with parts of religion that didn't match it. In this episode, they get honest about the moments that shaped their faith: a grandmother's near-death experience, a hand he didn't raise at a Christmas play, a stranger who prayed over him at a trade show, and a quiet church in New York that set up a dinner that changed everything.

This episode is about the difference between religion and relationship. It's also about noticing the moments that seem random, and how faith shows up in a family without anyone preaching it.

We don't have the answers. We're sharing our conversation in hopes it sparks yours.

Pull up a chair. 

Here's the strange math of parenting: you pour everything you have into a person, and success looks like them leaving you.

We started this one after a day of one-on-one dates with our three boys, asking the most basic question there is — what does it actually mean to be a good parent? Turns out we don't answer it the same way. One of us sees the rule. The other sees every feeling underneath it, on both sides, all at once. Guess which one the boys listen to?

There's the one time one of us spanked our two-year-old, and why it never happened again. The four words that quietly offended a grandmother. The business-class flight where a crying baby felt like a verdict on us. And how "good dad" went from the Youngstown steel-mill version to whatever it is we're trying to be now.

We don't have the answer. We get it wrong every single day — and we apologize to our kids more than our parents ever would have.

Pull up a chair.

The question we leave on the table: What makes a good parent — and would your kids answer it the same way you would?

There's a sentence one of us can't say without flinching first: we took Molly on our anniversary trip.

Not because we're ashamed. Because we know the face some of you are making right now.

So this one is about drugs, and it isn't about drugs at all. It's about what we inherited. Two completely different educations. Same conclusion, twenty-five years later: we were taught to be afraid of the wrong things.

We're not going to tell you what to put in your body. We're asking something quieter than that. Whoever taught you what was good and what was bad — did you ever revisit that? And does it still hold true? 

Pull up a chair.

You don't always know when you're lost.

That's what makes the hard seasons hard. You don't wake up one morning missing pieces of yourself — it happens slowly, quietly, while you're busy holding everything else together. And you can go a long time before anyone says it out loud.

For him, it was three nights in a row on the couch with a full bottle of wine, laughing at nothing. He thought he was just tired. She'd been watching a lot longer than he knew. Four months later, he was fired from the company he built, and that's where the way back started.

For her, there was nothing to point at. No bottle, no email, no single thing that went wrong. Just three boys who needed her, a husband everyone in the room wanted to talk to, and the quiet discovery that nobody asks a stay-at-home mom a second question.

This one is about the seasons that take pieces of you without asking — and what it really takes to put yourself back together.

Pull up a chair.

The question we leave on the table: Is there a piece of yourself you set down in a hard season — and have you ever gone back for it?

Here's the part that still doesn't make sense to us. One of us grew up with no real trauma in it at all — and grew up afraid of almost everything. The other one lived through the trauma and grew up fearless.

So that's where this one starts. And then it goes somewhere we weren't expecting, because nobody warns you about this part: fear doesn't shrink as your life gets better. It grows. More to love, more to lose.

We talk about the afternoon fear made one of us freeze at exactly the wrong moment, and the guilt that's still sitting there years later. The night we shut the bedroom door, ignored everyone's advice, and asked each other how we actually wanted to live. And the people we've watched make their lives smaller and smaller to stay safe — who turned out to be every bit as afraid, just about smaller things.

We're not going to talk you out of your fear. We still have plenty of ours.

Pull up a chair.

The question we leave on the table: How is fear showing up in your life right now — and how are you responding to it?

His entire sex education was two words: wrap it up.

Hers was her mom begging her not to, and a stack of terrifying articles left out on the kitchen island.

Twenty-five years later, over an anniversary dinner, one of us asked the other: is it better now than it was in our 20s?

The answer came before the question was finished.

He took it to a room full of his friends afterward. They were baffled. They wanted to know how — and the reason they guessed wasn't it.

Pull up a chair.