When my doctors told me in January that I had a brain tumor, I spent several hours in my hospital bed, just crying. Half for myself, and half for the hell I saw myself putting my family through. My wife Rachel and I are in our 40s. Our daughter Daniele is 14 and our son Jon is 10. We were like a happy, healthy sitcom family, and now a tumor is crimping our laugh track.

When I was in the hospital, Daniele came home from school to find a locked house. A key was hidden nearby, but she didn't know about it. She wandered through the neighborhood in January weather, until a neighbor coaxed her inside and warmed her back up.

I was too emotional the first day to give my kids any speeches. But I could see the lost look in their eyes. They didn't know what to think. I wanted to give them a briefing that was reliable, but that also gave them hope. I did not want to scare them worse.

Before lunch, it happened spontaneously, in the kitchen. I stood in the doorway and improvised a point-by-point run-through of my condition. Instinctively, I did three things: I kept it simple, and I focused on the positives without sweeping the negatives under the rug: ·

Yes, I had a brain tumor. And that was scary, especially since the kids' grandpa -- we called him Papa Dick -- died of a brain tumor seven years ago. ·

But my tumor was a different kind than Papa Dick's -- still dangerous, but not malignant. We caught it earlier. It was smaller -- I used the image of a postage stamp to put it in perspective. It's more removable, shaped more like a garlic bulb than a starfish. It's slower-growing. It's in a better location, near the skull rather than buried deep in the brain. ·

And conditions were different. Papa Dick's tumor was discovered a decade ago. Doctors have learned an awful lot about brain tumors since then. Papa Dick didn't have access to an MRI scanner until it was too late. ·

And Papa Dick and I were different. Papa was 62 -- I am younger, and healthier, and better suited to fight the disease. Papa Dick refused to go to the city, where the best specialists and equipment were. We lived right in the city, and if I had to, I'd crawl all the way to the Mayo Clinic. There was every reason to think I would do well with this -- I'm optimistic, in good humor, and have a ton of people rooting an praying for me.

The talk was going great. Daniele was looking right into my eyes, as if I were giving her information about saving her life, not mine. Jonathan looked more attentive than I'd ever seen him before.

"Now, look, you guys," I said to them. "I want you to listen real good. I wish I didn't have this thing, and I am a little bit scared about how it's going to play out.

"But my fears have limits. I swear to you that I am not worried about dying and leaving you. The truth is, I could die any day, from a thousand other causes. That's true of all of us. A can of string beans could fall from a shelf and hit me. And I will die some day. But I am not going to leave you now, not because of this stupid thing in my head.

"What we have to do now is start thinking in the healthiest way we can. That means we don't hold back. If something's on your mind, we want to hear it. No matter how morbid or scary it sounds.

"This isn't going to be a cool process. That's going to be hard, because we all try hard to be grown-up and cool. But I can't be sick and be cool at the same time, so the heck with being cool.

"And I am empowering you guys to keep me in line. Sometimes I'm going to be irritable, and sometimes I'm going to feel sorry for myself. I'm giving you the power now to call me on any baloney I slice. All you have to do is say, 'Dad, you're doing it,' and I'll know what you mean.

"The only thing you can't do is keep all your feelings to yourself. Because as long as I'm in this family, I make the rules, and rules of this family are that we share our feelings.

"And be nice to Mama, because she is going to really need our support."

Suddenly I was done and we were hugging. I couldn't have been prouder of them, or of myself. The night before, alone in the hospital, I cried for three hours straight. But I wasn't alone any more. I was home. And one way or another, things were going to be all right.

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