The story sums him up best to me. He thought of the grand gesture and then did it. - Wright Thompson

What became clear in Michigan was that Julian and Sissy have become the fully realized version of themselves through success. That's actually rare. I profile famous and successful athletes for a living and almost no one understands that success is merely a currency to spend on one big purchase. Do you use it to try to get more success? To maintain the attention and bright lights? Or do you buy a life with it? The kind of life most people really want. I wanted what they have, wanted to organize the next act of my life, the one that moved finally past my youthful dreams and the rage and ambition that come shaped and fueled by my most broken and insecure self.

What’s in a Vanhattan?” I asked as he started to mix. “It’s half rye, half bourbon,” he said. When he said rye, he meant the Van Winkle rye. And when he said bourbon, he meant Pappy. The bar was on the wall near the grill. He poured from feel; he didn’t need jiggers. “Carpano Antica vermouth,” he said.

I've learned in the past three years that I did many things solely to tell Daddy about them later.