My husband sat down with our college-aged children, who were home for the summer, for a serious talk.

“I want to quash some rumors that might be going around about me,” he said. This got their attention.

“Contrary to what you may have heard, I do not enjoy doing nearly all the cleaning and dishes at home,” he deadpanned. They rolled their eyes, smiled and went back to their phones. When he relayed this conversation to me, I laughed and admired his Midwest Dad energy.

This phrase would not have come to mind three weeks prior. But ever since presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, the Midwest Dad has become a part of the political discourse and a social media meme.

Many of the articles published about Walz’s Midwest Dad vibes are in publications based on the coasts. These stories include personal details about Walz to establish his Midwest Dad bona fides: He grew up in a rural town in Nebraska, is the father of a 23-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son, loves animals, offers tips on car maintenance, tells dad jokes, makes corny videos with his kids, appreciates classic rock on vinyl, goes to Bruce Springsteen concerts, coached football, served in the military and enjoys ice fishing, camping and hunting.

This kind of dad may be familiar to many of us. I am married to someone who shares some of these characteristics.

But the vibes aren't about what Walz does, so much as how he does it. He comes across as a reliable, helpful and straight-talking man. He’s the sort of person who seems like he’d be a thoughtful neighbor, great teacher and fun dad.

Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse describes the trope of the Midwestern father figure as oversized in both competence and kindness. I don’t think these traits are unique to fathers from any specific geographic location. I grew up in the South, and the vibes in our house were the Immigrant Dad variety -- far more authoritarian and strict, likely due to generational and cultural differences.

Hesse argues that what captured people’s attention about Walz isn’t about fatherhood, it’s about celebrating a different version of masculinity: confident and decent, rather than controlling and belittling.

The truth about Midwest dads is much more complicated than likable social media posts. For example, Missouri has one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the country. It also has the highest percentage of deadbeat fathers, according to one study. Perhaps Walz’s public persona highlights traits many of us wish our fathers also embraced -- being open-minded, accepting, positive and involved.

Hearing a politician tie his journey to fatherhood, which required fertility treatments for his wife, to his support for reproductive freedom makes it feel like the issue is personal to him.

Yes, he shops at Menards, tinkers under the hood of a car and makes dad jokes about vegetarians. But he’s also able to talk about his ideas in a simple and down-to-earth way. Take his support for free meals at school: Kids should have full bellies so they can learn.

Some men have a hard time admitting when they might have been wrong. But after a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 students and staff in 2018, Walz -- a longtime gun owner, hunter and supporter of the Second Amendment -- said he would support a ban on assault weapons. His rating from the NRA went from an A to an F.

In a speech that year, he said that he changed his mind after his daughter came to him and said, "Dad, you’re the only person I know who’s in elected office. You need to stop what’s happening with this."

He told the crowd, “My job today is to be dad to a 17-year-old daughter.”

That desire to protect one’s children speaks to something bigger than a geographic region or politics.

It’s an American Dad vibe.

The first time I heard an Indigo Girls folk-rock anthem, I was a 19-year-old college student volunteering at an early childhood center in Durango, Colorado.

A group of us spent our spring break working with children served by the Head Start program, many of whom were part of the Southern Ute Indian tribe. Among our group there was a student who played the guitar and two others with vocal ranges that harmonized beautifully. We were in that phase of life when young people are trying to figure out who they are and what they are meant to do.

It was just a matter of time before we were singing along to the melody and countermelody of what would become Amy Ray and Emily Saliers’ biggest commercial hit: "Closer to Fine." Back then, as a person of deep faith wrestling with the big questions in life, I felt those lyrics in a spiritual way, especially when sung by my peers. They spoke to my own search for meaning. At that age, music feels so vital and personal that it imprints upon your experiences, becoming the soundtrack to your memories.

I recently had the chance to talk to Saliers, now 61, who wrote the 1989 hit song. I asked her what, decades later, has brought her closer to fine.

“Sobriety and not feeling like I have to stick to a doctrine to be a person of faith,” she said. She reflected on how much her faith has formed her and the ways it intersects with her intellectual understanding and personal growth.

The groundbreaking Indigo Girls have spent their careers and lives as artist-activists, supporting causes including gay rights, reproductive rights, the environment and the rights of Indigenous peoples. I was curious about how the journey had changed Saliers, and even more so about how she has managed to stay so earnest, engaged and hopeful despite the painfully slow pace of change.

She said she gets away from the doom and despair rampant on social media and seeks the company of those in the trenches, doing the hardest work. She talked about working with people like Camille Bennett, founder and executive director of Project Say Something, a nonprofit working for reproductive justice and to dismantle white supremacist narratives in Alabama.

“She’s trying to help women in their real lives in rural Alabama,” Saliers said. “I want to hang out with people like her.”

I called Bennett to find out how their friendship began. She said the Indigo Girls reached out to her organization in 2020, when the nonprofit had been protesting for months to relocate Confederate monuments in Florence, Alabama.

As a Gen X, Southern Black woman, Bennett had had friends in high school who were Indigo Girls fans, but she wasn’t familiar with their music. Well aware of the disconnect between Black feminism and mainstream feminism, she said she wondered what these white women were really about.

“They just kept showing up,” she said. They wanted to learn and support the movement she was building. “They protested with us. They did a Zoom with us. They did a concert for us,” she said.

In the process, Bennett discovered songs that resonated deeply with her. In “Look Long,” the lyrics call out the forces she is fighting against -- fascism, racism, sexism, inequality and poverty.

“But then, they ask us to cling to faith and hope,” Bennett said. “I was bawling my eyes out.”

I had a few moments like that when I attended their recent concert in St. Louis, part of their current nationwide tour. At the show, thousands of fans, mostly women, traveled back in time to when they first heard many of these songs.

Amy and Emily rocked out in front of a backdrop screen of bookshelves filled with banned books. They never called out any politicians by name, although Emily mentioned that a woman would be on the ballot for president -- to a roar of approval from the audience. They let their lyrics offer whatever political commentary the listeners wanted to hear.

For those of us in midlife, they showed us that your bodies, your faces, even your voices will change as your power, wisdom and strength grow. I remembered the idealistic young woman I was when I was introduced to their music. They were as humble and fierce as I might have imagined decades ago.

I finally realized that we aren’t trying to get to a destination of ultimately being "fine." It’s OK to struggle to figure out how you can make the community around you better -- for everyone.

It’s that journey that brings you closer.

Someone was knocking urgently on the window of Brad Hermann’s car, shouting at him to wake up.

Hermann, 42, opened his eyes. He looked down at his legs pinned inside his crushed 2012 Hyundai Sonata. He felt an intense pain around his pelvis.

He could hear sirens blaring. Loud machinery that sounded like a chainsaw.

Fire trucks, ambulances and police cars swarmed the area.

“It felt like I was in a war zone,” said Hermann. As soon as he realized he was alone in the car, he started yelling out his wife’s phone number.

“Call my wife!” he begged.

He had been driving to pick up his 9-year-old son, Lucas, from a summer camp about a mile away. He was driving through a busy intersection when a cement truck T-boned the driver's side of his car.

His family’s life changed at that moment.

Hermann has no memory of the impact. Trapped in his demolished car and unsure if his legs could move, he panicked about his son waiting to be picked up from camp.

He kept pleading with first responders to call his wife.

His wife, Amanda, had invited a couple of friends over to swim at their pool when she got the call from an EMT.

“Your husband has been involved in a serious car accident,” he said. They were taking him to Mercy Hospital, where Amanda works as a registered dietitian. Hermann needed to be rushed into surgery.

Their neighbor left to pick up Lucas, and a friend drove Amanda to the hospital. She called his parents and her parents. The route to the hospital passed by the site of the accident, where Amanda caught a glimpse of their car -- the roof peeled off by the Jaws of Life to extract her husband.

She had to look away.

During the ambulance ride, Hermann kept repeating her phone number.

“We will call your wife,” an EMT reassured him. “We promise. We have to save your life first,” she said. The last thing he remembers is hearing an officer talking to Amanda on the phone.

His bladder was torn apart. His pelvis was broken in three places. Spleen crushed. Left shoulder and 10 ribs broken. He was in the ICU for 11 days in June while doctors performed several surgeries.

He was on a ventilator for five days. When he started waking up, he went through a phase of delirium. He was able to move from the ICU to a regular hospital room, and eventually, to in-patient rehab.

He came home on July 18 -- 34 days after the accident. His wife has been helping care for him around the clock.

“We’re not really toward the end of this roller coaster,” Amanda said. “There’s lots of ups, downs, sharp turns, good moments and bad moments.”

Hermann still suffers from extreme nerve pain and blood clots in his leg. Some days it hurts to breathe. He can’t use his left leg yet, and has an external metal fixation device holding his broken pelvis in place. He will have to learn to walk again -- after running the Big Sur marathon earlier this year.

“I’ve cried myself to sleep several times at night,” he said. But he refuses to stay in those low moments, wondering why this happened to him. Not many people survive getting run over by a cement truck.

“God saved me for a reason,” he said. “It’s my job to figure out what that reason is.”

He said he believes part of it may be showing his children and others what it looks like to come back after getting knocked down so hard: “I want to show my children that life can deal you a bad hand, and you can only control how you respond to it.”

He connected with the firefighter who kept him calm and helped rescue him from the car. Hermann sent him an email, thanking him. He has also thanked the neighbors, co-workers, church members, friends and relatives who have rallied around his family to support them since the accident. He talks about how his wife’s devotion to his care has taught him what love and commitment in marriage look like.

He knows it will be a long time before he can coach his kids' sports again. He hasn’t been able to swim or play catch with them, but they have been watching the Olympics together. He and his daughter, Layla, 12, have cheered for swimmers, pole vaulters, beach volleyball players and track and field athletes.

Perhaps one of the most inspiring comebacks has been that of legendary gymnast Simone Biles, who has won 11 Olympic medals -- more than any other U.S. gymnast. She had withdrawn from most of her events at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 after suffering from the "twisties" and mental stress.

Biles fought back -- against doubters and haters and her own fears.

Each time she stands on the podium now, she embodies the same message Hermann wants to send: that no matter how hard the fall, you can rise again.