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his encouragement in the early years I don’t know if I would have developed the self-confidence to attempt such a challenging career.
    MY OLDER SON, MATTHEW, WAS BORN IN 1979, WHEN I was twenty-seven. I wanted to be a father while I was still young so that I could be actively and physically involved with my children for a long time. I wanted to teach them things firsthand and introduce them to awide variety of activities and subjects, and then give them the freedom to pick and choose as they grew up. Alexandra came along when I was thirty-one. Then there was a long gap until Will made his entrance in 1992, just a few months before my fortieth birthday, when I still considered myself to be a relatively young dad.
    I started activities with all three at an early age just as my father had done. Matthew and Al were out on the slopes learning to snowplow by four or five. Will started playing hockey in the living room with the cap of an apple juice jar and a little plastic golf club when he was two. Over time they developed unique talents and interests that both set them apart and bound us together. Matthew loved tennis, fishing, and movies. Alexandra learned to ride. During the filming of
The Remains of the Day
in 1992, she and I used to gallop across the English countryside on magnificent hunters, courtesy of the Duke of Beaufort. She learned to play the bassoon when the instrument was almost bigger than she was. We used to play duets, with me at the piano. When we were satisfied with the sound of a piece we would perform it for the family and add it to our repertoire.
    One of the reasons I enjoyed being a young father so much was that I had plenty of energy and great enthusiasm. I loved suggesting activities on the spur of the moment. I might challenge Matthew to a game of chessor announce that it was time to put on boots and go for a hike. If the wind dropped to nothing when we were sailing offshore, I used to dive overboard and try to coax everyone else to jump in. Matthew and Al always worried that an unknown creature from the deep would come up to the surface and get them. It was very hard to convince them otherwise, especially after the day an enormous basking shark rose to sunbathe just as I was climbing aboard for another dive.
    The list of activities we shared was long and I tried to make our interaction a two-way street; they might approach me or I might approach them with ideas. And we could touch. There were always lots of hugs, pats on the back, rides on my shoulders, pillow fights, and games of tag. The rituals of baths and curling up together to read at bedtime, putting Band-Aids on both real and imaginary wounds—all these and more helped to give them a foundation of security, which every child needs.
    And then, in an instant, the moment my head hit the hard ground in Culpeper, Virginia, everything changed. Or so I believed. As I lay in bed in the ICU, I concluded that I could no longer be a real father to my three children. I assumed that my new life as a quadriplegic would not only mark the end of the life we had known, but cause enormous psychological and emotional damage to them as well. How could I relate to them if we couldn’tdo things together? How would we adjust to the loss of spontaneity? What kind of a father would I be if I literally couldn’t reach out to them, if I was always going back to the hospital, if a nurse had to be on duty 24/7?
    The answers started to come within weeks of the accident, in the summer of ’95. Matthew and Al stayed in a local hotel and visited me every day. (Will came with Dana or our nanny almost every day as well.) I kept telling them that I was okay, and that they should go enjoy the summer instead of hanging around a depressing rehab center. But they wanted to be with me. Even if they could only see me two or three hours each visit, they wanted to be nearby.
    We spent most of the time talking. I quickly realized that we’d never really done that before. When