#26 Andy Johnson: Farmering Up A Marriage

02/20/19 • 29 min

Andy Johnson has spent much of his life fixing things. As a 35-year-old farmer growing corn and hay in Colorado, Johnson is a model of resourcefulness, spending the days on his 1,000 acres of farmland as an agronomist, a car mechanic, or a welder. Every year the summer storms come and go, crops thrive and die. But his farmer’s ingenuity has always persisted through the seasons, a trait passed down through five generations of men making their living off the land.

But when his wife, Sarah, was involved in a serious car accident just days after Thanksgiving, he began to ask himself one question: How do I fix this?

On the latest episode of Paternal, Johnson recounts the moment he learned of his wife’s injuries, but also what happened in the months that followed. As his wife slowly recovered from a traumatic brain injury, Johnson found himself balancing the responsibilities of caregiver and husband, and playing a larger role in the life of his young daughter. A task as simple as doing his daughter’s hair for a dance recital made Johnson realize his shortcomings as a dad, and how he needed to reach out to community for help, advice, and counsel.

“You wake up thinking you have an idea, and then life throws you a curveball, and you just get the job done,” Johnson says. “How do we get through this? How can we keep going?”

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But when his wife, Sarah, was involved in a serious car accident just days after Thanksgiving, he began to ask himself one question: How do I fix this?

“You wake up thinking you have an idea, and then life throws you a curveball, and you just get the job done,” Johnson says. “How do we get through this? How can we keep going?”

Previous Episode

#25 John Vanek: Finding My Biological Father

What if you spent the first three decades of your life building a relationship with your father, and then one day, you found out he wasn’t the only father you had?

There are two guests on this episode of Paternal - one is 33-year-old John Vanek, a husband and father of two young girls living in the suburbs of Minneapolis. And the other is his biological father, Dr. Bruce A. Olmscheid, a physician who lives nearly 2,000 miles away in Southern California. Neither man knew the other one existed for almost 30 years.

But a shocking reveal from his parents and a persistent interest in science, history and genealogy led John down a path that led him to the truth about his family, his own origin story, and the man who is his father.

Well, he’s still working on that last part.

Next Episode

#27 Mark Eckhardt: How Fatherhood F*cked Me Up

How would you describe the feeling when you first became a parent? California businessman Mark Eckhardt never seriously thought of starting a family before the birth of his first daughter. And when she finally arrived he was overcome with joy, but also with the feeling that his entire life had been forever disrupted.

In a conversation that echoes many of the candid complaints from both mothers and fathers, Eckhardt outlines his experience as a somewhat reluctant dad - a lack of natural emotional connection, a loss of identity, the loneliness - and connects the dots back to his own upbringing, his father’s coming out and his parents’ divorce.

“All of a sudden you’re home 24/7, taking care of a kid,” Eckhardt says of the early days of fatherhood. “And you’re doing the same thing over, and over, and over again? And you’re doing the same thing over, and over, and over again, while you’re sleep deprived?

“And you’re trying to take care of your wife, the mother of your children, and you don’t know how to do that because her whole life has changed too? Excuse the language, but it fucked me up.”