Because it's for our children, the malleable essence of us.

I'm going to take this time to work on healing my family and be a better husband and father.

Tiger Woods was quoted as saying something to that effect recently.

Really. And it's been bugging the crap out of me ever since.

Why didn't he make the time before all this? Before the alleged affairs and his supersonic fall from grace?

We don't know for sure what specifically may or may have happened over the years in Tiger's life. Or in Mark Sanford's life. Or in John Edward's life. Or in too many others.

But we do know of their infidelities.

I know my birth father was a big womanizer when he was married to my mom, along with being an abuser.

I had my own bouts of under-the-table behavior while pretending to be the golden boy everybody loved, crashing and burning like the rest of these wretches.

We get caught. Maybe we feel pangs of guilt prior, maybe not. Maybe its the holidays that drives sentimentality to the surface.

That's the way it was with my birth father.

I'm so sorry. I'm going to stop drinking and be a better husband and father.

Merry Christmas, right? But nothing ever changed post December 25. The same behaviors resumed - the affairs, the domestic violence, the drinking.

One of my dear friends posted this quote in Facebook this morning:

"The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats."

--Theodore Roosevelt

If more fathers aspired to be better, took responsibility and made actual changes in their lives for the better - learned to trump their genes - then the thousand repulses and defeats would be worthwhile to their families, even if their marriages can't withstand it.

Because it's for our children, the malleable essence of us.

Merry Christmas Daddies. Live life like it's golden.