Another milestone this week. All of the edits to the book chapters were completed and off to the proofreader it went. That is a big deal. I have decided to put a sample chapter out there now that we have come this far.
Week Minded: 52 Reflections on Leading and Living
Week 4: Take the road less traveled.
“My Way”
— Frank Sinatra
Life Lesson
It was around 2003, and I was doing what fathers do best: building a future for my kids. My younger son, Keaton, had a brilliant SAT score. He could’ve gone to college anywhere. And having spent much of his life in Texas, he chose Texas A&M—a solid, respectable, choice. His first semester went fine. Everything about his college lifestyle looked normal from the outside. By the second semester and into the third, it began to go sideways.
He picked up the guitar when he was very young. His older brother played. I played. His maternal grandfather played, and his maternal great grandmother played. In high school he formed a band, Antinothing, and he was hooked. He’s a smart guy, so no telling how little he studied in high school, but he had the SAT score to get to a legit college.
Turns out, he was falling in love with music and out of love with schoolwork about that time, playing live in Northgate, A&M’s high energy district packed with bars, stages, and the kind of adrenaline that no eight a.m. lecture could compete with. Eventually, the truth became clear: He wasn’t going to class. He was gigging. Living for the stage. So I made the call I thought was necessary. “Pack up. You’re coming home.” I tried to steer him back to the “right” path. I laid out the plan: education, then a job, then a life. But the more I pushed, the more he drifted toward something else, something I couldn’t quite understand.
So finally, like many parents, I had to let go and let God. What I didn’t admit out loud back then was that I was secretly tailing him around Houston on weekends, watching him light up rooms with bands like the Sunset Strippers, the Foo Fakers, and Life as Lions. While I knew he was good, seeing him on stage made me realize just how good.
And he was happy.
And somehow, through it all, he found steady work, first at Apple, then at Microsoft. He wasn’t just playing music. He was building something. He helped bring creative energy into the retail space, connecting with his community, and earned his way into solid benefits, stock plans, and career growth. I started thinking, “Okay, this isn’t what I pictured, and maybe it’s going to work out.” Then he called with news that stopped my heart. “Dad, the band wants to move to Los Angeles. And I want to go.” To be clear, he wasn’t asking permission. He was informing me.
Here we go again. “What will you do for work?” I asked, trying not to sound panicked. He said calmly, “I’m talking to some companies out there.” In the meantime, Microsoft had an assistant manager opening at their only store in LA, in Beverly Hills. Despite a sea of local candidates, my son, musician, non-degree-holder, got the job. He proceeded to use his relocation allowance to move the entire band from Houston to Glendale, California, and filmed a music video about the journey. They played the House of Blues on Sunset, got on Spotify, and never once paid to play. It was magic. Until it wasn’t. He lived the relatively poor musician life with all his band members living in one house in LA. That went as planned for a few years.
As life happens, the bassist got married and moved back to Houston. The other band members hit their thirties, and dreams gave way to adult decisions. The band broke up. Another fork in the road for Keaton. But then . . . another door opened. Microsoft called Keaton, this time from headquarters. They wanted him to move to Seattle to do international training. He said yes. He moved to Seattle, and for his first assignment—London. A month abroad, helping new employees get their footing while he lived like a king in a foreign land. From Northgate to Notting Hill, he was living large.
And then, as if the story wasn’t remarkable enough, he met and married Dr. Kate, a doctor of occupational therapy in Seattle. Kate is an only child. Her mom and dad were only children too. There were no brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, or cousins. When he brought her to Houston for the first Christmas with this band of crazies, we were afraid we would scare her off. Our Christmas consists of rented bus pub crawls, Lotteria, which we call Mexican Bingo, a late night with champagne (“Shamps” as known at Maison Branche du Lac), eggnog (lactose-free for Keaton), and Christmas Vacation in the Theater Room, then a huge breakfast cooked outside on the outdoor kitchen griddle and an all-day marathon of each person opening one present at a time. Going from an only child and humming “Silent Night” in front of a crackling fire to a backslapping, yuletide, icicle-slinging, nog-slurping, rocking around the Christmas tree, Cousin Eddy “Shitter’s full,” rowdy hangover-riddled holiday is a bit of a culture shift. She survived just fine. The COVID wedding was a brilliant white affair in a glassed-in atrium on the roof of an old hotel in Ballard, Washington. It was officiated by our family friend and my number one trivia partner, Olya! I was a proud papa. And Kate became daughter number three. Today, they live outside Seattle, raising our only Branch heir, in a home they own—him, a man working at one of the world’s largest tech companies, and her, “Dr. Kate,” enough said.
At their rehearsal dinner, I read part of Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken”: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Keaton took the road I didn’t recognize, couldn’t predict, and wouldn’t have chosen for him. But that road took him somewhere extraordinary. And it taught me something I didn’t see coming either: Sometimes the best thing a father can do is get out of the way and cheer from the sidelines. Because the view from the stands is amazing—watching your kid win his game, his way? Sometimes you have to let go and let the road less traveled be the way.
