The Crazy Thing My Parents Did That Changed My Life Forever

Life Lessons I Learned from the Experiences They Gave Me and the Wisdom They Shared

When I was almost nine years old, we lived in a two-family home in Lynbrook, New York, on Long Island.

One evening, my parents sat me and my two younger brothers down to share something that would change our lives forever.

My father was a real estate attorney and investor. My mother stayed home to take care of us.

They both came from Irish American working-class families in New York City, my mother from Brooklyn, my father from the Bronx.

They both spoke very fondly of their childhoods. Neither of them had traveled far growing up. Their first flight was on their honeymoon to Miami.

My father once said about his childhood, “We never had any money, but I always felt rich.”

That night, it was his idea that kicked off the conversation: we were going to sell the house, both our cars, and store all of our belongings at my grandparents’ house in the Bronx.

My parents were pulling us out of school and would homeschool us while we traveled around the world for ten months.

We lived in a nice middle-class neighborhood, but I didn’t think of ourselves as rich.

My dad had a small walk-up apartment building in Brooklyn for some income, but otherwise, he would leave his law practice behind. This wasn’t a luxurious escape. It was an intentional, bold life decision.

Knowing it was probably my father’s idea, and with my mother being the more conservative one, I turned to her and asked, “You went along with this?”

She said, “Yes, Michael, I think this will be a wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

And my father added, “Life is short. There’s a great big world out there, and we can start over when we get back.”

I didn’t have a say in the matter, but deep down, I knew it might be pretty great.

It would require us to develop a whole new level of social skills with a wide variety of people, that I would have to learn.

Back then, there was no internet.

Phone service in many places was non-existent or spotty at best, and long-distance calls expensive.

Our only communication with friends and family outside our immediate family, would come from letters sent through the mail, which could take weeks.

We left the day after my ninth birthday, flying first to Los Angeles. It was only my second time on a plane, but many more flights would follow.

We learned to surf in Hawaii. Then we flew to Japan, our first foreign country. Tokyo felt overwhelming even for a kid from just outside New York City.

We went to Expo 70 in Osaka, but one of the more memorable stops was Shodoshima Island, where we were the only non-Japanese people.

An elderly woman tugged at my blond hair, and looked at me as if I were from another planet.

A local teacher heard Americans were visiting and asked if my parents could help his student prepare for an English-speaking contest.

My father, without hesitation, volunteered my mother. “You’re going to be the only kid in the contest with a Brooklyn accent,” he joked.

From there, it was Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, and Malaysia. The places were new, the people different, the poverty eye-opening.

We spent three months in Australia, making lifelong friends. At Thanksgiving time in 1970, we met a family in Surfer’s Paradise and invited them over for Thanksgiving dinner.

Later, we visited their ranch in Stanthorpe, where I rode a horse for the first time and saw kangaroos in the wild. My father and uncle even went on to invest in racehorses with them in later years and did quite well. We are still close friends to this day.

From Australia, we visited Mauritius, then South Africa where apartheid was still in effect. It was hard to believe that segregation was the law.

I remember being in a park and seeing two benches: one marked Europeans Only, the other Coloureds Only. I asked my mother, “We’re Americans. Where do we sit?”

We traveled through Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia.

From Addis Ababa, my father arranged flights to remote villages. The poverty was heartbreaking, but the kindness of the people was unforgettable. A boy I met made me a slingshot, that I still have today.

We visited Israel, staying in a kibbutz and touring the religious sites of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. As a Catholic, walking where Jesus once walked was moving.

We continued to Cyprus, Greece, Mykonos (which I loved), and then to Dubrovnik, in what was then Yugoslavia (now Croatia).

Italy, Munich, Vienna, Switzerland, Paris, London, and Ireland followed. I loved Europe and all its history.

When we landed at JFK, our extended family was there to greet us. This kind of travel wasn’t common back then. It felt good to be home.

We stayed with my grandparents in the Bronx, then rented an apartment in Lynbrook. My father went back to work and rebuilt his law practice.

A year and a half later, he drove with his law partner to Lloyd Harbor, in the town of Huntington, on Long Island’s North Shore, where his partner was looking at houses.

My father found a two-acre lot on Fiddlers Green Drive on Lloyd Neck for sale.

My parents decided to buy it. My father, who had built homes before, decided he would be the general contractor for his own home, and my brothers and I would help as laborers.

Weekends became construction site lessons for me and my brothers—we learned how houses were built, even at our young ages.

We moved in during the summer of 1973. The transition was tough at first. I missed my friends from Lynbrook.

But Cold Spring Harbor Jr/Sr High School turned out to be a great place, and I made a whole new group of friends.

My sister was born the next year.

Just when I thought we were settling down, my father brought up the idea of another trip around the world.

He was concerned that this would be the last chance to take a family trip like this with the whole family.

My mother reminded him our sister was just over a year old. But in typical fashion, he said, “Don’t worry. It’ll all work out.”

When I asked my father about the house, his response was “we can always get another house”.

To the astonishment of our neighbors, they sold the house. They believed that life experiences were more important than material possessions, even beautiful homes.

We spent the Bicentennial 4th of July in Fiddlers Green, then hit the road.

This time, we drove, first up to Canada, then across the U.S.

We attended the 1976 Olympics in Montreal (where we saw Sugar Ray Leonard’s first Olympic fight).

We visited the Midwest, the Grand Canyon, Mexico, and up the coast of California. In Monterrey, we ran into trouble when a rock punctured our gas tank.

A mechanic couldn’t fix it until Monday, and every hotel was booked. But he took a liking to my father and offered us his house for the weekend, while he stayed at a friend’s.

Proof again that kindness lives everywhere. My dad’s motto: It’ll all work out.

We sold the car in San Francisco and flew to Hawaii, then through the South Pacific—American Samoa (where we went deep-sea fishing), Western Samoa, Tonga (where we met the King), and New Zealand.

Sadly, we received news that my grandmother had passed away.

By the time we got the letter, all services were over. We decided to continue on, and my father came up with another idea.

We returned to Australia, met our friends again, and celebrated New Year’s at Manly Beach, near Sydney.

Then: Bali, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma, Calcutta, Nepal, New Delhi, and the Taj Mahal. I was struck by the sheer number of people in India, and how full of life the country felt despite the chaos.

We skipped Afghanistan due to unrest and returned to Greece.

My father’s plan was to invite my grandfather, who had never left the U.S., to meet us in Europe.

He met us in Madrid to finish the trip with us. He loved the bullfights and the Costa del Sol. We skied one day and hit the beach the next. The trip was an eye opener for him.

Nice, Geneva, Paris, and London followed. So many amazing moments.

Too many stories to share in one piece. My mother wanted me to write a book.

We returned home again and rented a house in Cold Spring Harbor before settling back in Lloyd Harbor, where I finished high school.

During our second trip, we were largely on our own with schoolwork.

In 10th grade, I wasn’t always the most diligent student, but that year I studied harder than ever, and got the best grades of my life.

I realized something important: you can have the best teachers in the world, but if you don’t apply yourself, it doesn’t matter.

And with focus and commitment, even the impossible is possible.

My brother and I were both recruited to play college football.

We chose Pace University, where our parents had met as freshmen.

We played together, got a great education, and had a blast. My brother held the career touchdown record for years.

Today would have been my father’s 91st birthday, which inspired me to write this story.

It’s a tribute to two parents who prioritized experiences over comfort, curiosity over certainty, and people over possessions.

My mother passed in 2023. My father in 2014. Their influence still shapes me every day.

When I gave my father’s eulogy, I closed with a quote from a famous movie:

“Every man dies, but not every man really lives.”

My father really lived. Happy birthday, Dad.

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I’ll be sharing more next week about how my parents continued to shape my journey—especially after college—as an entrepreneur. We all need mentors, and we all have the chance to be great mentors to others.

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