My dad passed on his cricketing talent. My mum has enabled me to use it.
Jonny Bairstow
You only have to see the rate of divorce in cricket. You're away so much and then 18 months later, you're around all the time and not sure what to do with the rest of your life. You go from being at the peak of your powers to being at the bottom of the food chain.
When you're going through difficult times, like I was after the 2013-14 Ashes, you start thinking about different bits. Rugby is a huge passion of mine, a lot of my friends play.
I played fly-half in rugby, so I could influence the game, and midfield in hockey too. So it is part of my sporting DNA to want to be in the game at all times, to affect what is going on. That's down to genetics and being ginger, I reckon. We're special specimens.
As a young kid you stay up late to watch the Ashes, getting told off for not being in bed, and dream of making a hundred against Australia.
The less you worry about things the more you just do it naturally.
Everything goes out of the window when you start an Ashes series. It's about grabbing the moment.
If someone who doesn't know anything about wicketkeeping finds a reason to criticise, you have to sift it out. It's about working out how to deal with the criticism while improving your game.
I was a fortnight away from my 16th birthday when the fabled 2005 Ashes series ended. My hero-worship throughout it belonged to Ian Bell - though I don't think I've ever made that abundantly clear to him.
I don't like intensely complicated coaching. I prefer to work things out by myself. A gentle hint is all I need, otherwise it's like finishing a crossword after someone has given me the answers.
I've learnt a lot about Dad from going around the world and listening to other people. Whether I've been in Australia, the Caribbean, Leeds, Scarborough or London there's always someone who's got a story about him.
I've always tried to honour my dad and what he did for Yorkshire, which for him frequently meant putting the county's cause before his own. But my late boyhood, my early teens and my adolescence were full of net sessions and practice drills he never witnessed, ups and downs he never knew about and matches he never saw.
If you're constantly striving for questions that are never going to be answered, then you're only being detrimental to your own mental health.
When Dad passed away, grandpa took on that mantle of teaching me how to tackle at football or taking me and mum to cricket.
But having gone through two bouts of breast cancer and all the operations and treatments it's fair to say mum's a special human being - especially as she had to deal with the tragedy and heartache that went with Dad's death.
We're a special family and it's just that Dad's life was taken away from us far too early. Everywhere you go around the world he had an effect on people - in the Caribbean, Australia, South Africa or England. I've never heard a bad word said about him.
Even with Yorkshire I had 19 fifties before I got my first hundred.
A hundred for England is special and there's a lot of emotion and a lot of hard work involved in getting back on the field. No one sees the hard work and all the time with the ice machines in rehab.
I don't think there have been many dull celebrations after any of my hundreds for England. It's been an emotional time for me over the last few weeks. Interpret them as you wish.
I've been involved in a couple of atrocious World Cups.
Look how successful Eddie Jones was, then all of a sudden a training camp is wrong and it's his fault. The same with Stuart Lancaster.
If you suddenly go striving for different things from what have stood you in good stead over a period of time then you're searching for something that you are probably not going to find.
Well, I grew up in a certain way, through the experiences that I had, so I don't know how I would have turned out had things been different.
All sportsmen have superstitions, or at least they have routines. You look at Rafa Nadal and the way he organises his water bottles. Me, I always put my left pad and left shoe on first.
I think it's something you learn over a period of time; you learn to be more comfortable within yourself, appreciative of what you've got and what you haven't, you realise the talents you have and what you can do and you take on the chin the things that you have to. It's part and parcel of growing up.
Anyone who has been born in Yorkshire is very proud of it. It's something that's embedded in your character.
Who says we can't win the World Cup and the Ashes in the same year? Oh yes we can. It all goes back to my motto in life: Be proud of how far you've come - and have faith in how far you can still go.
People don't actually see what's gone on behind the scenes - the hard work, when you're doing your rehab, when you're sleeping on an ice machine - and yet they have an opinion on it.
It's all well and good when it's going good and people have an opinion on how well you're playing, but it's the hidden things they don't see.
You look at the challenges that have been put in front of me as a cricketer over a period of time. There have been quite a few. I'd like to think I've come through most of them.
I've not given up my keeping, I want to make that very, very clear. I'm still working hard on my keeping and it's something I still want to do.
Most people believe their family is special. I know mine is.
I'm a bit taller too because I've got Mum's legs and Dad was a bit more squat and well-built than me. My brother Andrew is a bit more like Dad.
If you can't motivate yourself to get up and play in front of 30,000-40,000 people, then you're not in the right job.
You're able to learn different things from different coaches and different players.
Mum never made an excuse, even when she had cancer and had a lot on her plate. You have to have huge admiration for the way she brought us up.
You think of what might have been different if dad had been around, or how I might have turned out as a person. You just don't know. I might not even be playing cricket.
You go out onto the playing field every time to win and you will do all you can to do that, but not at all costs and especially not to cheat.
If your game is to take everything on then you have to stick with that and if it's your game to get out of the way of the short ball then that's what you do.
I do enjoy fielding in the deep and I enjoy engaging with the crowd.
It's important to have a smile with spectators but it's not always possible.
In an Ashes series you have to adapt quickly to the conditions and your rivals. If you don't, you get found out.
The 20th anniversary of my dad David's death coincided with my 50th Test cap and for it to be my mum Janet's birthday, too, made it an emotional few days. It was not an easy week, being the Pink Test and my mum having had breast cancer twice.
Get picked for an Ashes Test at Lord's and you know you're going to meet the Queen. She arrived before the start of our game against Australia in 2013 and we lined up for inspection like the household cavalry on Horse Guards Parade.
I've been through practices during which I've felt as though medieval torture would have been easier.
When I came into the England team I was always being asked whether I 'really' wanted to be a wicketkeeper. It was as though no one had noticed the work I'd already put in to make myself one.
In my head I'm talking all the time.
You know when you've hit a good shot. I use a bat that weighs two pounds and nine ounces, and it makes a reassuringly solid sound when I connect properly. The ball pings off the middle.
When my dad died, I was eight. Becky was seven. My mum had cancer, the first of two bouts that she's fought and beaten.
The place closest to my dad's heart, unequivocally his favourite, was Scarborough. To him it was the epitome of the English coast, postcard perfect.
