Tiger!

by Roy S. Johnson

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Just how hard, Woods confesses, he hasn’t a clue. He says he can deal with the sleep deprivation because he currently doesn’t sleep much anyway. “Five [hours] would be great, if I ever got five,” he says. “It’s usually less than that. Ever since college, when I used to have to pull two all-nighters in a row because I was so far behind, my body just became accustomed to not getting much sleep, and I haven’t slept much since.”

And he probably won’t again for quite a while. “I know, it’s scary isn’t it?” Woods says with a quiet smile. When he speaks about the kind of father he hopes to be, Earl creeps into the room again, and the son indeed sounds as if he’d be pleased to emulate the man who shaped him. “I just hope to be a parent that would raise a child to make the proper decisions,” he says. “Instill in them the knowledge to make the right choices, the core values, things you don’t understand as a kid but when you get to the fork in the road and start reflecting, it gets pretty easy to make those decisions. And [raise them to be] someone who’ll make a positive difference in the lives of others.

Woods pauses, then asks his own question. “They say [parenting’s] the most rewarding thing and the most difficult thing you’ll ever do. That true?”

I tell him it’s all that, and scary, too. I tell him it’s scary because all of a sudden you realize you’re responsible for a life, for their very survival. And that’s frightening. I also tell him it’s a feeling you’ll never have with anything else in life. I tell him being a father is the best thing we’ll ever do.

He smiles. “I’m looking forward to that.”

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