Zibby chats with bestselling author Tom Seeman about ANIMALS I WANT TO SEE, a lyrical, tender, and insightful memoir about a boy who grew up in a family of fourteen in the projects of Toledo, Ohio, and journeyed from child janitor with big dreams to teenage petty criminal to student at Yale and Harvard. Tom describes his wonderful mother, whose resilience and kindness shaped his life and shielded him from his alcoholic father’s abuse. He also touches on his life-changing scholarship to a private high school and the small act of kindness that transformed his life. Finally, he reflects on the role of luck, nature vs. nurture, and the power of persistence and positive thinking.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Tom. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Animals I Want to See, a memoir of growing up in the projects and defying the odds.

What a book. Oh my gosh. Congratulations. 

Tom: Well, thank you so much for having me. I've enjoyed your podcast as well. 

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. Honestly, your story, I read every word. I could not put this book down. I can't believe I just, it's so inspiring and so amazing. I want to see what's on your list of things to do today and like the projects that you still have coming because I'm sure you have some sort of list, but wow.

Can you tell listeners about your whole backstory and turning it into a book? Just what is the book about? 

Tom: Well, sure. So I grew up in a family of 14. In the projects in Toledo, Ohio, you know, on welfare, food stamps, the whole lot in a primarily black neighborhood, you know, we were one of the few white families there.

So there's a lot of interest there, I think, and things that happened. I had a fantastic mother and a very difficult father. My father was alcoholic. But on top of that, I think he was a mean guy who I think hated his life and took it out on his family. You know, the people that would put up with it but my mother was like a saint.

You know, my mother just Not only was incredibly hard working, just thinking about, you know, I have four kids taking care of those four kids with even with help and my great wife and all that. My mother, you know, doing it all alone with no help other than from her brothers and maybe her mother while she was still alive.

But my mother doing all that work. But then in addition to that, she would go the extra mile, you know, which is modeling great behavior for me and her other kids. I think she would not just make a dessert, but she would, you know, she would make an elaborate dessert, right? She would make pinwheel cookies instead of just chocolate chip cookies where she has to roll out the dough and then roll the chocolate and the vanilla together and then cut them.

And then as soon as she made these dozens of cookies, They would disappear, right? Because these 12 children would eat them up right away. So her artistry would just disappear and she would sew and she would make dress Easter dresses for my sisters. And she would make, you know, Christmas presents that, you know, we thought were new, but she had made them.

She would make stuffed animals and stuff them with her old nylons. We, you know, discovered later when they would open up what was inside. Just a tremendous example of going the extra mile. Which I think I've emulated in my life just naturally, right? By the example that she showed. So it's a great story of a boy, myself, who was very driven, obviously, if you had the book, who was a lister made lists.

And always believed he could change his ending, you know, and that's, I think, the great hope. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Well, first of all, to the point about your mother and going the extra mile, the fact that every scene you have her in, she is calm. She, you know, she just doesn't get ruffled, it seems, except maybe once or twice she got upset.

But throughout, just whatever happens, the good, the bad, she is this, like, steady presence of, you know, support. But not indulgence, you know, it's just amazing. Like what a role model this woman. Oh my gosh. 

Tom: Yeah. Yeah. She, you know, my father was somewhat abusive and she would just stay calm through it all. You know, there's a scene in the, where the, you know, at night these, the boys would throw the beer bottles or bottles or whatever onto this concrete next to our house.

She would go out and clean it up and just say, well, they just have nothing better to do. Or they, you know, this is what they need to do or whatever. And yeah, she was just a sea of calm, as I say in the book, I think, and she was amazing that way. But on the other hand, you know, she was also, if there, I wouldn't say a weakness, but if there's any shortcoming, it was that, you know, that praise side.

And so I think I sought praise, which ended up being a good thing for me, maybe because I sought praise from my teachers. I sought praise from many outsiders. You know, I became this very reliable, hardworking kid who would go the extra mile myself. You know, when I was a janitor, a boy janitor, I would clean behind the toilet, you know, where no one would see just naturally when no one was watching, I would do these things because I think of the example of my mother and my own drive.

And then eventually, of course, as you grow older, people notice that about you, they notice, they don't notice everything you do, but they notice some of the things you do and they start to say, Oh my God, this is a special boy. He's doing this extra stuff. This is the kind of kid we need to get behind and so the book is, you know, in addition to being about my family, it's about, I think, a collection of the small kindnesses that were done for me over the course of my life.

And I think I realized that more by writing the book, because you think, you know, you, you know, that people did good things for you in your life, but when you're writing them all down and creating a book out of it, they began to add up, you know, and you see that this collection of small kindnesses. became a life, you know, my life.

And I think writing the book made me a kinder person because of that deep realization. 

Zibby: Wow. I love when, well, not love cause it was sad, but also great when your dad doesn't pick you up from the art class and the policeman has to give you, the policeman tells you how to get home on the buses and gives you the money and says that you know, he'll give you the money, but you have to promise to sort of pay it forward to the next, to somebody else.

And how you wove that in the story and even towards the end, when you're like, this is what I've been doing with my life is paying it forward. 

Tom: Right, right. Yeah. That scene, I was given free art classes in one of the many remarkable things that happened to me. You know, I have this belief also that in order to know what to hope for, you have to be exposed to the outside world.

And so my world was very much. And all the kids in my neighborhood was very much closed in in the projects. And so I began to get these opportunities to go outside and see what the world had. And one of those was these free art classes. at the Toledo Museum of Art. And so I would go every Saturday and my father, you know, would go off and drink or whatever and not pick me up sometimes.

And this one scene where I'm standing outside of the museum, seeing all the kids get picked up and I'm counting how many are left and I'm getting more and more scared as a little boy that I'm not going to get picked up. And the policeman sees me crying when everybody else is gone. And he helps me take the bus home, which for me was very liberating because then I learned how to take the bus.

I was scared that first time, but not only was he kind, but the bus driver was kind about it. I had to change buses downtown and change to the stick me bus, which took me kind of close to my house. And then I walked down the street and then I realized, Hey, I can do this. And yeah, the kindness of that policeman, he could have just, of course, ignored it or let me go.

But it's just another in the, in the long list, the long litany of kindness is done for me. Yes. 

Zibby: Wow. You also make it clear that some of the things that end up being life changing could so easily have gone another way. You know, the biggest thing being when you just Checked the box off when you took the entrance exam, and you just checked the box for, I guess, Catholic Central or one of the schools in that area, and you end up getting this full scholarship and everything, but you're like, what if I hadn't checked the box to send them my scores?

What if? 

Tom: Absolutely. The checking of the box story lives in infamy in my life. I often tear up when I tell the story, which was, you know, when I was in grade school, all the siblings before me had gone to public public high schools, which in our area were not that good. And I had this vision that the best school for me would be one of the Catholic schools in Ohio and Toledo.

In particular, I think, you know, the Catholic schools are really the only private high schools there. There isn't that set up like in the east coast here where I live now, where there's all these private high school. So when you think about going to a good school, you think about a Catholic school and I thought I could afford central Catholic because I had a paper route and I did odd jobs like shoveling snow and I thought I could get a job at the school and I and I added it all up and I said, Oh, I can afford to go to the least expensive school central. And so I went to take the Catholic schools admissions test and I saw on the list, I checked the box for central and then I saw on the list, St. Francis to sales, which is the college prep in my neighborhood. It was the sissy school cause you had to wear a coat and tie. It was all boys. And I was aware of the school because we played our football games near there. It was across town. And, uh, so I checked the box for St. Francis, not thinking much of it.

And then about a month later, you know, I get called to the principal's office, sister Anne's office. And she says, there's someone here to see you. I thought I was in trouble. And it was father McManaman from St. Francis. And he said, tell me, Tom, why did you check the box for central? First of all? And I said, well, I could afford it.

And I explained my calculations. And of course that impressed him. And these calculations, by the way, were done solely by me. I didn't pass them by my parents. I didn't pass them by my teachers. I was very self driven, self sufficient kind of kid. And he was very impressed and he said, why did you check St. Francis? And I said, well, I'm sorry. I can't afford St. Francis. So I'm sorry. I checked the box and then you came all this way. And he said, no, I can tell you can afford St. Francis because I can give you a full scholarships. I'm tearing up right now. Um, it was sorry. It was a life changing moment in my life.

No. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. So amazing. 

Tom: And I got those when I get to St. Francis, you know, I start hanging around with very different kids. I was doing some really bad things in my neighborhood. I was starting to do things that if you got caught, you know, you could get arrested. And when I went to St. Francis, I started hanging.

I was placed in the highest class based on my test result. So I was hanging around with the nerd guys. Even though I was also a big football player, I sort of chose this group as my guys and, you know, we spent four years together. We have this group of five, we're still close. We just had a, we just had a reunion and at our house, we have a house in Maine and we had a reunion at our house in Maine, um, just like six months ago, we were all there and, uh, well, you know, we talked about things that we didn't talk about at home or among my friends in the neighborhood, you know, religion and the future of the world and.

Why are we here on earth? Why did God make us? And all these big questions and I immediately dove right into this and would write things down and run home and look in the encyclopedia as my mother had gotten us to look things up that I didn't understand and it was just an opening of my life. 

Zibby: Well, you know, your book raises so many big questions.

Your life becomes sort of a conversation point, if you will. Because it's about what is it about the individual that makes some people able to sort of overcome whatever obstacles are set in their way, right? You and you show us in great detail what it was like, even just growing up with this many siblings, but also, you know, where you were and how you had to sort of make do with everything and your determination to like, get through it.

And also luck. I mean, even all the injuries you had, I'm like, What? He, like, got something, like, into your, the bone of your foot, and your mom's like, here, just, like, wrap it up. And I'm like, what if, what if this had happened? What if you'd gotten an infection this time? You know, what about all these times with your head when you were getting it banged against the sidewalk?

And I'm like, oh my god. So, it so easily all could have gone another way. And I'm curious, I know in the end you were just like, my siblings have all been great too, but I'm sort of wondering, like, what happened and to what do you attribute, obviously you're incredibly bright, but like, what is it that makes some people able to overcome and others not so much?

Tom: Right. Well, I think at the core, it goes to the whole question of nature versus nurture. You know, how much of it was inside of me when I was born versus how much of it did I pick up along the way? And people say, well, you were raised in the same household with all these siblings, so you had all the same influences.

And that's not completely true because, you know, maybe my mother treated me differently, or maybe my father was meaner to me, which in the end maybe was a good thing, or maybe I had different friends and I had, you know, the teachers, I was the teacher's pet and maybe my brother wasn't or whatever, who knows all the influences that made me into what I am.

But I think what helped me in my darkest times. was that I believed I could change the ending, you know, and I don't know if all my siblings believe that or not. I mean, we've all gotten out of the projects. Nobody's on welfare. Nobody has a substance abuse problem. So we have all good outcomes. But we have a vast array of socioeconomic outcomes.

You know how successful it depends on how you define success, of course. But how successful is each of the Children and, of course, all the other kids in the neighborhood, how successful or not were they in getting out. But I was driven by this belief that I could change the ending and you know, I think that people believe the stories they tell themselves.

And if you tell yourself that you're helpless and I went, some situations are helpless, I understand that. But many times we tell ourselves we're helpless. One, if we tell ourselves the story that we have some hope, if we just take action, you know, we might believe that story. So that's what I had inside of me.

That drove me. I had a, you know, I had a way of looking at the world with wonder. Uh, if you, you know, if you read the book, you'll see how many times I look at the world with wonder and see things in a positive way rather than a negative way. The great example being the early scene where we go out into the field behind our house and we turn over, you know, junk and there's a snake and I'm so thrilled by this.

Or by the Queen Anne's Lace or whatever in the field. And really, the field, when you grow up, you realize the field is a dumping ground of trash, you know, that people were throwing there. You know, an old refrigerator door, a piece of plywood, all these things in the field. But for me, it was a field of wonder.

Zibby: My gosh and even just all the, the things you decided you wanted to see, right? Like that it was possible, whether it was, and then at the end when you saw, not to give things away, it was like the scene where you actually saw the tiger, like it brought tears to my eyes. I mean, this book was so moving. I know you said in, in the book that it was President Bill Clinton who encouraged you to do it.

And there's a big jump because we don't really find out how you're even doing it. Friendly with President Clinton and how it came to be that he suggested you do the book, but could you fill in the dots there? 

Tom: Sure, sure. So I had been thinking about the book for a while because I'd be You know, I'd be at a dinner party or something and then and people would say, so, you know what, you know, how will you raise or something?

And people would go around the table and I would tell my story and people were not expecting that, of course, because they were looking at me and probably creating in their mind a back story for how I grew up. You know, I grew up, you know, in upper middle class or something. And instead, I'm telling them I grew up in this giant family in the projects.

And so as people were showing more and more interest in it, I got the idea. And then I was at an event, I've met president Bill Clinton a few times, and he's famous for really focusing on the person he's speaking with and he was doing this with me the second time I met him at an event and he was, he had, he was talking to me and really listening to the story.

And of course he grew up poor too. So he said, you have to write this book. And so I wrote the book and then I recontacted him and I said, Hey, I wrote that book. Do you remember? You told me to write it a number of years ago. Will you give me some support? So he gave me a blurb for the book, which appears on the cover of the book.

Yeah. Yeah. 

Zibby: Wow. 

Tom: Yeah. 

Zibby: Well, even without a blurb from him, the book would be wonderful and, um, but that's, uh, that's great. I mean, some of the scenes I can't stop thinking about, some of the things like, you know, the cat, the scene with the cat when you were growing up and the mean things that happened, you know, in the neighborhood and getting your, you know, Halloween candy stolen, and I know that that happens in all these sitcoms and whatever, the, you know, the Halloween candy getting stolen, but.

I mean, the, the, the way you wrote it and the devastation and even not being able to sleep on a pillowcase that night, I mean, it's, I know in the grand scheme of things that was one minor thing, but it's just something so universal, right? That everybody is getting their candy and has a right to eat it and you don't even get that.

Tom: Right. It was, it was actually kind of a violent event, you know, cause you're a little kid and you get pushed down and you're and your pillowcase of candy gets stolen. You know, we used our pillowcases, as you said, to collect candy. So that night, because my pillowcase was stolen, I didn't have a pillowcase on my pillow.

There are, what people don't realize about those environments is that even when you have like a wonderful mother, like we had, and we had a safe place to go home, and good food that my mother was able to pull together with food stamps and all these programs that were given to us. There's a lot of bad things in the environment that are happening around you.

I won't talk about the cat scene because it's kind of a bad scene. But yeah, these things are happening around you and you're seeing things that other Children just aren't seeing. So the disadvantages of those kinds of neighborhoods are very real. You know, there's a lot of violence. I give a few instances of that, like where the guys are Yeah.

Fighting out in front of our house with two by fours hitting each other and you know, you just don't see that in a normal upbringing. My children aren't seeing that for sure. 

Zibby: So I know you say at the end of the book how obviously a very film not obviously but you say how philanthropic you are now and all of that, but is there anything that you think haven't grown up this way?

Systemically there can be changes or what we can all do or what you can do or we all should do like what what is the take away. 

Tom: I think a couple things. I think that thing I said earlier about giving Children exposures to things so they know what to hope for. You know, I'm involved in the boys and girls clubs quite extensively here in Boston.

It's a lot of different clubs together in one large organization. I think that does that. I think an act of kindness to a stranger every day. Going back to my theme of Mhm. How my life is a collection of small kindness is that I added up to something really big. I think trying to do an act of kindness for a stranger every day, you don't know when that's going to make a difference.

You know, the guy across the street, you know, black guy across the street took us fishing one day. And he didn't think that was going to change a life. You know, he probably just wanted to go fishing with some kids. But, you know, when you add that to all the other kindnesses that were done, eventually it, you know, sort of breaks the band and it makes a big difference in someone's life.

And it has the added benefit of making you a happier person, by the way, because when you do acts of kindness to actually make you a happier person and gradually a kinder person. Yeah. 

Zibby: And how did your dad's behavior growing up affect your own parenting? 

Tom: Yeah. So there's that scene in the fourth grade when all the students in the class are asked to say what each of their, what is the greatest thing each of your parents has given you?

And I say, well, my mom, the greatest thing she gives me is that she's always there for me. And the greatest thing my dad has given me as an example of what I don't want to be. And this, you know, my teacher gasped because all the children before me had said all these glowing things about their parents.

And And I come out with this thing, it shows, I think, first of all, how I was thinking at a very young age, but also how his negativity maybe affected my life in a positive way, because I saw what I did want to be, maybe, and I saw what I don't want to be. So, yeah, my father, how has he affected my own parenting?

Well, obviously, I've tried to be the opposite kind of parent from him. I've tried to be there for my children, but I've also tried to be you know, an example of a very hardworking adult to, you know, there's this balance between being there for your kids, but also working hard so that they see, you know, not a man of leisure, but a man working all the time to do the best at whatever he does, you know, even this book is an example of that, you know, going, they see me going hard at it, you know, because I didn't write it so it sits on a shelf.

I wrote it so it would be read and I'm trying to get it out there, you know, so they see that behavior and I think it's a balance between those things. Which was not what my father was. 

Zibby: And what happened from the end of the book to now 

Tom: Yeah so the book ends sort of late Yale years and then when I'm going off to Harvard and then I jump forward in that one chapter as you said when I actually get to see one of the animals on my list I've seen many many animals in the wild around the world and my family now participates in that and they they love it, too It's kind of a fun pursuit, but then I, you know, I, I, I graduate, I start working and I ended up working at McKinsey, which is where I meet my wife in Europe, I'm in the London office and she's in the St. Petersburg, Russia office. And I meet her at a McKinsey event, and then I start a company with some McKinsey colleagues in Berlin, Germany, when I'm married with my wife and we have our second child in Germany and that's successful. And then I buy my first company in the U S when we come back and that's successful.

So I've built a life of sort of owning companies, making them better and selling them. And that's what I still do today. So it's been a successful business career. It's been a successful family life. So I've sort of, you know, realized my dreams from way back, way back when I was in the projects. Yeah.

Zibby: Amazing. How old are your kids now? 

Tom: My kids are 19 to 25, four kids. Yeah. Yeah. So the last one is going off to college. 

Zibby: Crazy. So do you ever have, I mean, it seems you're so rational about so many things and obviously occasionally you get emotional and even here, you know, but in the book occasionally as well.

What are the things that. There's a lot of trauma in the book, right? And this, I don't, it's, how do you, how do you deal with that? 

Tom: Yeah. Well, I've never been through therapy, but writing this book was very therapeutic. Actually. I realized a lot of things about my life. I realized a lot of things about my family.

I came to a lot of new realizations through this, but you're right. I'm a fairly rational, logical guy and so while I do have emotions, I think on the scale. You know, my Myers Briggs type tells me this, you know, I'm, I'm definitely more logical and rational than I am probably emotional and, um, it's actually something I work on, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. 

Zibby: And what advice would you have for someone trying to write? 

Tom: Yeah, that was difficult, you know, because, because I'm a business writer more than anything my whole life, you know, so I write in a certain way and I actually hired a writing coach for this book, which, uh, at first I tried to do it without that.

And I realized that my style just wasn't, for example, you know, my writing coach said, look, you're in business. I wouldn't just think I could jump in business and do really well at it and know all the stuff, you know. The same with writing, you know, she's written her whole life. She said, for example, you don't know how to connect scenes together.

You don't know how to keep it moving for the, for the reader and make it interesting. You know, you have all these small snippets, snippets of things that happened in your life, but you have to keep it moving, connect them, see what's important in them. You know, the old, the old thing from William Faulkner, you also have to know when to kill your darlings.

You know, you have to know when to cut some, I'm sure you've heard that you need to have to know when to cut something out, but and there were some things that I really always thought would be in this book that are not in this book, you know, because she helped me cut them out, things that didn't help the narrative along the way or whatever.

So I think that's, that was a very big move by me and I, I hired just the right person. I don't know how I was so lucky, but I hired just the right person to help me with that. And then I think you have to be ready to do a lot of promotion, which I'm not used to doing, you know, a lot of, a lot of self promotion, a lot of talking.

Um, a lot of things like this, uh, where I'm not normally doing things like this, but you know, as the book points out, also, I love new experiences and I see this as this wonderful new experience that I'm, that I'm able to go through that so many people writing books don't get to have, you know, so many people dream of writing a book and having it go somewhere and I'm sort of living that now and it's really fun to have this new experience that I probably never thought I would have.

Zibby: Amazing. Well, your story is really inspiring and the book itself is a great book and you can't help but root for you. I mean, it's amazing. 

Tom: So thank you. 

Zibby: Yeah. Congratulations. 

Tom: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me and for rooting for me. 

Zibby: My pleasure. All right. All right. Bye Tom. Take care. 

Tom: It's be great to meet 

Zibby: You too.