Kate Fagan, ALL THE COLORS CAME OUT: A Father, a Daughter, and a Lifetime of Lessons

[1:25]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen vaccine research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write, a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram ZibbyOwens

[1:56]Kate Fagan: and my website is zibbyowens.com.

[1:58]Zibby Owens: Okay, now back to this amazing podcast.

[2:01]Kate Fagan: Welcome to memoir day of my June Book Blast. I am releasing a bunch of really powerful, amazing memoir episodes today, and I really hope you enjoy them. Memoir is, like, my favorite literary genre. I don't know what yours is, but I love memoirs. I always learn so much. And this is part one of the memoirs I have to release in this book blast. Enjoy. Kate Fagan is the author of All the Colors Came Out, A Father, A Daughter, and a Lifetime of Lessons. It's a memoir. Kate is an Emmy win win award winning journalist and the number one New York Times bestselling author of What Made Maddie Run, which was long listed for the PENESPN award. She currently writes for Sports Illustrated and previously spent seven years as a columnist and feature writer for ESPNW, espn.com, and ESPN The Magazine. She currently lives in Charleston, South Carolina with her wife, Catherine Budig, and their two dogs. Welcome, Kate. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss All the Colors Came Out, A Father, A Daughter, and A Lifetime of Lessons. Thanks for having me. Book looks good in your hands, so I'm excited. I do. I like feeling it in my hands. I have to say, as I just mentioned to you, I was crying. I was totally crying at the end of this book. I was crying for you. I was crying for like my grandmother who passed away who I hadn't thought about in like a month or something and all, like everything just like came back and I was just sitting there like sobbing. So I guess thank you for that. I hope it was a healthy, beautiful cry. That's my goal. It was. Okay. You did such a great job. I feel like I totally knew your dad. You did. You just did such a great job. I feel like, yeah, I just feel like I knew him and what a great guy he was. Oh, well, that is the best compliment I can receive because one of the reasons I wrote the book is because I thought he was awesome. And I think people should know how awesome he is and a representation of a of a dad in the in the nineties. And if you if you watch sports, you know, I think there's a lot of young girls who will see their interactions with their own dads reflected in mine in this kind of modern relationship. So that is a huge compliment that you feel like you got a glimpse of the big c as I write about him. Totally. I love, by the way, that it never even occurred to you after you became like this big athlete and basketball star and blah blah blah. It never occurred to you because he was so encouraging that women shouldn't be like basketball stars. Like, that's great. That's like what every parent wants is to give all this confidence to their kids. You know, it's a beautiful thing when you are, have to wait until you're 30 years old to realize the disparagement that women face. And in my case, women in sports, female athletes, women's sports. I really like, that was a huge gift that he gave me was I I watched the New York Knicks growing up, and I thought that the enthusiasm and joy that I felt watching them was the same that people felt watching women and female athletes. And so, yes, this this idea of growing up with that kind of confidence and instilling dreams as beautiful things and that people will receive them well, that is a legacy that he gave me. And you said you watched, like, all 83 or 86 games or whatever it was? Like, every 82. 82. 82. Okay. Sorry. Whatever. No. No. You shouldn't know that. Right? I was just impressed by the commitment for that many games. Although I'm pretty sure my husband watches, like, every single Lakers game there ever is. And I'm like, another Lakers game? Seriously? Oh my god. They're on all the time. And, Zvi, you gotta remember this. Well, not that you have to remember, but this was a different time period. Now I think I think if I was young now, I'd my attention would you'd be competing for it with, like, Amazon Prime and Netflix and Freeform and all. Back then it was like, okay, Friends was on on Thursday night and the Knicks were on three times a week and those were my options. Yep. It's very true. Yeah. ER, I mean. ER, you're right. I mean, there were other shows. There were a couple. There were a couple of others. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. That's true. Used to be like different strokes and like silver spoons, but I think I'm older than you. So, you know, you probably don't even know what I'm talking about. I've heard of them. Okay. You had this quote about your dad and his devotion to basketball. And you said his religion had been movement, sweat a daily offering. That's a beautiful way to say that. Nice job. Thank you. It's a beautiful it's a beautiful way to say we didn't go to church. Oh, well, I didn't even read it that way. No. I think it means both, that he was really committed to that kind of it's a different kind of religion, almost a movement of your body and the way you can feel inside yourself and your mind when you are moving your body in whatever way that may mean for you. And it also meant for him that he he felt that he had kind of grown up in Catholicism and he had come to this belief that there were different things that could connect you to the universe than just formal religion. So it's kind of a a both in one. So, I mean, there's just so much to talk about it. So your dad was six five. And as you document in this story, came down with ALS and you thought it was something else. And there was this false diagnosis, which by the way, like broke my heart when you were when that one doctor was like, No, he's going to be fine. And I was like, Oh, great. And then I was like, But then what's going to happen in this book? But still, just the roller coaster of diagnosis and the denial almost for those two years when it wasn't clear if that's exactly what was happening to him. And then how you lovingly took care of him and really reconnected after all this time. And you talked about how when you had come out, you would only come out to your mom and like that had been a thing, like that you felt almost guilty for not sharing that with him. And then you had this big sort of reunion moment, which I feel culminated in in the scene where you were like rubbing his feet and all that. Just feel like that was such like a turning point. Like you as complete caregiver and sitting there through the night and taking care of him and realizing you sleep in the same way. Tell me what this whole thing was like of having to go through. And I know it because I read it, but for people listening, what was it like having to go through that with this larger than life figure and coming back into this caretaking role? It was, I feel, I've used the word beautiful a number of times on this podcast, but I'll use it again because for me, it was the gift of a lifetime. I can't say that I necessarily thought that on the various nights when I was awake all night, rearranging things and making sure he's comfortable. And I must say, because my mom listened, my mom listens to every podcast I might do. My mom was the primary caretaker. I don't want to give off the false impression that he didn't have anyone and I had to step in. No, no. So That was clear. Sorry. No. Sorry, mom. Yes. He was there every minute. You were a relief effort. I get it. I'm sorry. No. But but let's focus on my relationship for a second with my dad. So but for me and I and I don't think my my dad would have said this at the time, right? He wasn't looking at this as a gift or a beautiful thing. Although at various points, I think he saw the goodness that that came from the diagnosis. But for me, it was having grown up alongside him and not even known and taken for granted the way he spent time with me, the way he showed up for me, the way the things he loved, he desperately wanted to share with me. And they became the things I loved. And as we do as humans and kids, you move on, you have grievances, you have annoyances, and you let them pile up even as there's the voice in your head saying, you got to fix that. You got to fix that, you know? And I was lucky enough to have a dad who showed up for me. So these grievances, they existed, but I knew they didn't outweigh the love and the time. And and I knew I had to get back around and fix this relationship with him even before he got sick. I knew this. It was deep. It was in me and I knew it. And so the diagnosis of of ALS, brutal diagnosis, you know, one hundred percent fatal disease. You know, there's there's a lot of people know about ALS, but then there's a lot of people who still don't understand. There's no treatment, a hundred percent fatality. You know, it's a shutting down of all your muscles, including your lungs and your heart and your swallowing mechanism. So there's the brutality of the disease. But given the fact that I had this runway with him to make decisions about my career, to make decisions to prioritize him, to make decisions to be by his side and have these conversations. That was the gift of a lifetime. And I think I hope when people read this book, a lot of us have those little voices in our head about someone that we know something happened with ten years ago, and it's still a thorn in the relationship. We all feel these things deep down. And I I hope the book encourages people to just be braver. A lot of times it is a father daughter dynamic. There's something about that, at least it was for me, that it felt it felt like there were more walls up than this is than maybe with my mom. And maybe, you know, I don't know all of the reasons for that. I'm not a sociologist, but I think it's probably something that a lot of daughters might feel with their dads that it's they have a relationship on this one plane, whatever it is, functionality, just service. For us, it was sports and service. But, ultimately, I knew that we should have been more. And in in this last year, I got to, like, be there and be present and work through my vulnerability and try to tear down those walls with him. And I hope the book feels optimistic and filled with love and not just sadness because I want it to be this hopeful book about how we can come back around for people when they need us. No, it definitely did that. And it also because you woven so much about your career and how that relates to the people in your life who you love so much and putting career first and whatever, you talked about being on this ESPN bandwagon and trying to constantly achieve, even though you're not even sure why, and that you were just sort of swept up in it. And I think that's also a great message for people to remember that, are you even pursuing the right goals in your career? Why are you achieving this? Is this actually deep down what you want? Do you have another choice out there? Like, is it time to rethink all of this? Tell me a little bit more about that. Even like what's happened now, right now that you've had this sort of reckoning with your career aspirations? Yeah. So so for listeners, when when my dad was diagnosed, I was at ESPN and I had gotten to the place where I was doing a lot of TV for ESPN. And that may sound and it was at times cool. It wasn't what I intended to do. I wanted to write. I didn't. There was a lot of anxiety that came along with TV. And so I I was on this career path that I'd kind of chosen, but then it veered off and it was it was taking up a lot of time and mental space like careers do. And I'd made numerous decisions over the course of, like, my seven years at ESPN on Christmases and Thanksgivings. Like, sports don't stop. You know, the NBA plays on Christmas Day because that's when everyone else is home. But there's gotta be that you know, for TV coverage, people working on Christmas Day. And so I'd made all these decisions almost out of default. I just kinda said to myself when I first started, like, career's the thing. And yes to that Christmas, yes to that Thanksgiving, yes, yes, yes, and missing out on so much family and just telling myself, well, that'll always be there. And as we often come to learn, your my priorities weren't aligned right, and I knew this deep down. But I think we get caught in this belief system that if we're on a career trajectory that you can't ever hit pause, that you can't ever step off for some time, that if you get off, you'll never get back on. There won't be room for you. How how could you have committed whatever x years of your life and then taken a step back? It it would feel like, quote, unquote, wasted time. All of this obsession with achievement and productivity. And it wasn't it wasn't as if my dad got diagnosed with ALS and boom, like, all of this made sense to me. It was a very it was two years between him being diagnosed and me finally saying, what am I doing? How is it that if you look at the pillars of your life and it's your family, your friends, your career, your partnership, how is it that I'm giving to my career and taking from my family? Like, just started to feel, especially with the, you know, the ticking clock of of my dad's diagnosis, I I I have to shift my belief system. And certainly not everyone is is lucky enough to be able to say, I can pull back from my career. And I was in a position where that was a choice that I had to make. And it was scary. I spent a lot of time once I left ESPN thinking I'd never be able to do anything ever again at that level, but it it didn't matter because the joy I feel knowing that I fix things with my dad, that is a regret I would have carried with me my whole life. And not carrying that and knowing I didn't do everything right, but my heart was in the right place leaves me in a place where I know if I look at all of my decisions with with the right priorities in mind, I'll be Okay wherever that ends up because I've rearranged those priorities and I have to trust that that whatever decisions I make with that kind of line up in my mind will get me to a place where I'm closer to people rather than closer to some bank account or closer to some public relevance that we think we need. I love that. And that you were just like, okay, well, now I got this three year contract and forget it. You know? I'm good. That was I mean, it takes a lot of confidence and, you know, I'm just so glad that that whole thing happened the way it did and that you took the time and that you have no regrets. I mean, that's great. There aren't a lot of people who can always say that. You know? Yeah. And I and that's why I like the the gratitude I feel knowing because if my dad had died suddenly from anything, I would have lived with the shame and regret that I knew that I should have had conversations with him and done things differently. And the fact that I was given that time and I and in this book, I think there's a lot of messages, I hope, right? The little lessons he taught me along the way, the lessons I learned that last year. And I just I talk to people all frequently now. We're in similar positions, you know, whether it's different diagnosis, sometimes it is ALS, and they're in the same place that I was three years ago where it feels impossible. How could I rearrange my life? How could I leave here? How could I move here? And it's like a lot of things in life where when you make the commitment, all of a sudden you're like, the walls weren't that big to doing that. The hurdle wasn't that big. And then you get to and you're like, this is absolutely what I need to be doing. And you know it in your heart all along. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince. Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just feel good the moment you put them on and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high quality essentials. Think breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk, but without the luxury markup. It's that rare balance where everything feels elevated but still easy. Quince has beautiful everyday pieces like 100% European linen pants, dresses, and tops with styles starting at $32. Their denim is soft and easy to wear. I wear my jean jacket all the time. 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[19:56]Kate Fagan: And ALS is just so brutal. I have a very close friend who has had it for years, and she doesn't like me to talk about it, so I'm not gonna, like, go into it. But watching it, I mean, very up close. It's so and communicating through machinery essentially with letter. I mean, it's amazing what they've been able to come up with. It's to get people past this sort of locked in syndrome. I think about what people must have gone through before. But oh my gosh. Anyway, well, what if I can add one quick thing to that, because I think you bring up I guess that's why I'm here to add things. Can add whatever you want. I think what I learned once we had ALS as the center of our life was that one thing the disease of ALS faces is that many people who are diagnosed with it and live with it don't want to be the public face of it. Even even if public, I don't necessarily mean in a in a commercial. I mean, even within their own lives, they become very reclusive. Many people because they no longer look, sound, feel like themselves. And my dad battled that. You know, there's a chapter in the book where he he's like, I feel like a loser now because everything had been taken from him. Ways even though he didn't define himself through some high level career achievement, he defined himself through small things, even those small things got taken away. And so ALS at times does have a a public awareness problem because it's such a brutal disease that if you mention it, it's not in your life and you hear it, you don't wanna think about that. You know, it it doesn't it looks like something you wanna look away from. And if you don't have someone in your life and it and it hasn't touched you and you're lucky enough to be able to look away like I did for many years, you look away because life is hard enough already. And so ALS in terms of, like, raising money for a cure, fundraising, public awareness of what it is, all of that still has a ways to go. And there are hurdles because people die so quickly. So you don't have like that long term, like, quote unquote ambassador. And then also because it's so brutal. So that's kind of one of my little soapboxes now is trying to get people to see the hurdles ALS faces and the people within the ALS community will say repeatedly, ALS is not like an incurable disease. It's an underfunded disease. Interesting. Yeah. It's so true. All of that. Because the only thing that's untouched is your mind, which is just as sharp as ever. And so I think people, like you're saying, are reluctant to put themselves in those shoes, right? The empathy is like, Well, no, no, no, no, I couldn't even imagine. And you're like, Well, no, you should imagine because And it happens so slowly, right? That the person going through it has so much time to think about it and to know and have nothing they can do about it. It's the worst. I mean, anyway, not to make this depressing, but it's really if anything deserves funding, for sure should be this terrible. And especially the end, like when your dad was saying that there's the choice too of how long you want to live with it. Do you want the trach? Do you not want it? And at the end, he was like, I don't want to leave my people. Oh my gosh. Kate, I don't know how you go to sleep at night. I mean, is just like the emotion and, my gosh, that's a lot to have to take with you, you know? Yeah. It really is the specifics of ALS. Can we swear on your podcast? Go for it. Okay. It is a mind fuck on all of these levels because you get to the place as a person, a caretaker, my mom, the primary one. Hi, mom. Then me and my me and my sister, like supplemental and being present where in I I hate to think of it this way, but like the the cost on our lives to keep his life alive, even at a quality of life that is so incredibly low. It's not an equation. Like, it's a hard equation to balance. And there are certain families out there when they get help from other places, they can balance that. But it was like these layers upon layers that we were dealing with. Of course, we want to keep our dad alive, right? And if it was certain other diseases, you're just fighting because there's hope. And maybe maybe something will happen with the the certain drug you're on. You never know. Whereas with ALS, yes, things can go slower or faster, but there is no cure. Therefore, you're battling. Okay. So this is costing me this amount of energy in my life, but I adore you. And I and how can I be sitting here thinking I want you to die? I mean, these are and and I tried to be as honest as I could in the book because I think these are things people think when they're going through things like this, but you're not allowed to say. But everyone's thinking these things. And even my dad knew, right, the cost on us. I don't think he understood fully because he was he was in his world had been whittled down to a very small viewpoint because, you know, he couldn't move all of those things. But in this book, I tried to be honest as possible about what we all feel when we go through things like this and not just the the the love and the yes. It's the beautiful thing to be with the person at the end, but also the the horrible things you start thinking because it happens. Even if you think of yourself as a good person, you think of these horrible things and they cross your mind. Well, it's also their life too. Like, they wanna have a certain type of life. You know, is this good for them? Is this good for you? Gosh. These decisions. It's like there's no good decision. Right? It's like None. So and tell me a little more. I mean, was so sweet how your dad at the end was like welcoming your is she your wife now? Yes. Okay. Welcoming your wife and saying like, KV is here and all of that. Tell me about that, how you were afraid to come out to him, how over time you, you know, you I mean, he knew obviously, but like, tell me just about that aspect of your relationship and coming full circle the way it did. So my dad and I, when I was growing up from, like, as early as I can remember until I left for college, we spent every afternoon and evening together playing basketball. We were really close, but it was about basketball. And and there there weren't any other dynamics at play at that time. Maybe they started to creep in in high school when, you know, you're you're coming into who you are. And so I'm not just obsessed with the Knicks and playing like I was when I was, like, 12. So we were simpatico. We were an unbreakable pair when we were younger, then things started to happen. I I realized I was gay and gay. And I just my relationship with him had been so basketball and, like, we played one on one and we joked. And I guess in retrospect, there wasn't a lot of vulnerability, which I don't think is unusual between, like, a dad and a kid. And so there were certain decisions I made along the way that set us on a different course. And one was not telling I mean, I I knew my mom had told him, so it's not like he didn't know. But there's a difference between trusting someone and saying it to them. And that really created some wall between us. I didn't know it at the time. I just I was you know, I didn't wanna be vulnerable with him. I was scared of what he'd say. I didn't want him to reject me, all of those things. And so I never actually pulled him from, like, a I mean, maybe when I was 35, I was like, you know, I mean, I don't think I ever you can't sit down and recreate that moment. This was a this was a thing between us, whatever that means. It was a I knew he was hurt by this because he would make comments about it. And there were times when I was seeing people and he didn't know how to behave And it and it built up built up a wall between us. And Catherine, my wife now, she's amazing, and that helps. But my dad was my dad loved her. And maybe, you know, you can say, well, maybe he wasn't great earlier because I wasn't with the right person. I don't think I mean, I think that that is to letting him off the hook a little too easy. But but by the time he met Catherine and even before he got sick, he met Catherine before he got sick. And he just he just started doing all of the things that make your heart melt about a dad and like someone coming out where everyone he met, he would go out of his way to talk about Catherine. And it just it just create it just melted that wall. If you can melt a wall, you break it down, whatever you do with it. And the way he let her in at the end of his life, where he he's this he's now this version of himself that he doesn't relate to, that he he's he's in a For a guy who wasn't good at being vulnerable, ALS, you have to let all of that go. You need people to help you with everything. And you need and you need to ask for, like he did, to be touched and to be loved. I mean, those are things that most men are not great at. And at the end of his life, he he wanted Catherine there. He wanted her to hold his hand just because he wanted to be a part of us and to feel what our life lives were going to be like when he was gone. And so there was there was all this coming full circle. And I say all of this also with gratitude and feeling so lucky because who gets all of this full circle in their life? Right? Yes, ALS is horrible. And yes, there was so much about it that was horrible. But everything the disease itself forced us to be very vulnerable with each other. Because if you see someone that you think of as a pillar of strength being vulnerable, you can't help but feel that's almost contagious in that way. And you wanna reciprocate what they're going through by being by breaking down your own walls. And all of that happened with all of us. Wow. And so where do you go from here? You took the time out of your life to write this beautiful book, which is fantastic. Now, where do you go from here? Are you going to write Well, first from a career perspective, are you writing more books? What are you going to do professionally? And from a personal perspective, like, do you feel some sort of closure now? Whatever closure is, and in my mind, closure is in this in this regard of my life, not my whole life, the absence of shame. I feel that when it comes to the choices I made, the relationship with my dad, I don't feel regret and shame over those. I certainly have regret and shame in other parts of my life. But what writing this book has taught me, what making the decisions I did to walk away from ESPN has taught me is that I think in our culture, we absorb this messaging that our productivity is what gives us value. And it's hard to rewire your brain to reject that. Not completely because I do think purpose is incredibly important in whatever way that purpose manifests in your life. But making these decisions and realizing I'm not sitting here two years after leaving ESPN thinking, what did I do? I'm thinking there is nothing ESPN could have offered me that matches the moments I had with my dad. And I think going forward from here, and this is more of a philosophical answer to your question, and then I'll give you a more tangible answer. But so philosophically, I approach life differently. I'm not just like, yes, I'll do that because who says no? You just you say yes whenever anybody says and asks you to do anything. I'm like, is it good for my marriage? Is it good for who I want to be in the world? Is is the time I'm going to be spent there? Is it worth it to be away from my life in whatever way that is? And then so that's shifted my outlook. And again, I will say that I think that that that I hope that's applicable to some people. I know that I'm lucky in that I don't have to. You know, it's not like I have a job, a nine to five. And if I don't do that job, you know, I I can't pay my rent. So there is that. But the second, you know, answer your question. So I started writing for Sports Illustrated again a couple of months ago, and I'm working with this new upstart media company called Meadowlark with some ex ESPN. So I guess ESPN is still a little bit in my life, but they all left ESPN. I left ESPN for one reason, plus some of the reasons they left, where we wanted to do things that in the sports world that we felt matched the moment that our society is in as opposed to just completely looking at sports as sports. We think of sports as like a metaphor in a vehicle to tell the life story. And that's what we want to do at Meadowlark. And so that's why I joined up with them. And it feels like the right place to be coming off of the story of my dad is a sports story, but it's not. Mhmm. You don't need to know sports to read it. Although sports is the through line. And I think for a lot of people, sports can be a through line of how they look at family and life. That was a great answer. Thanks, Sydney. I like I like praise. You did a great job. Thank you. But now I have, like, some basketball tips. Like, like, how you have to hit like, dribble the ball the hardest on the last one before you Yeah. Like, okay. I'm pulling that out with my kids. I'm gonna have now I have something for my basketball toolkit. So, you know, thanks. Well, if you're going to tell them to take the that make the last dribble the hardest, they're not gonna throw it. They're gonna shoot it at the rim. Right. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Just because you want your you want your whole piece of advice to make sense. Alright. Did I not say that right? So dribble and then shoot. Right? And then shoot. Not throw. Not throw. Not throw. I I okay. Whatever. I obviously, I'm not a bad I play tennis. I don't play basketball. You could I'm sure when it comes to the tennis jargon, you would slay me. I'm better at tennis jargon. This is my my basketball. I don't know. I feel like I was too short. I'm only five two, and, like, I felt like the ball was always too big for my hands. And I don't know. Basketball was Hey. It's all true. We Catherine's five two, my wife, and it's it's similar. She was a point guard in middle school, and then she was like, I don't know that this is the right Yeah. Path for I'm gonna veer off here. Anyway. Well, Kate, thank you so much. This was so nice. Thank you for your book, the beautiful sort of mitzvah, if you will, that you did for your dad by bringing him into other people's lives, which is really all we can do with the people that we've loved and lost is keep their memory alive. So thank you for sharing him with me and with everybody else and for chatting today. So I hope your mom enjoyed it. Bye, mom. Bye, mom. Thanks for sharing the book with your audience. I appreciate it. No problem. All right. Have a great day. Bye bye. All right. Bye. Thanks for listening to part of my June Book Blast. I hope you enjoy it. Come back tomorrow for more.

[34:37]Zibby Owens: Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com

[34:49]Kate Fagan: and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.