To Hear the Sound of the Change Ringing

 Today I'm going over to my daughter's apartment to help her move. We'll take apart her bed in order to get it out of the doorway. We'll move her large monitor for her computer and maybe plants.

I'm her dad and that's what dads do.

I don't remember my dad ever help me move. I hardly lived in the same city as him as an adult.

My father didn't own a car. When I was real young in the nineteen fifties, he drove a Chevy carry-all. It was for the furniture store he was a part owner. It was used for deliveries. I remember him packing it up when we would go on vacation in the summer.

I am happy to help her. Not just because I'm her dad. I like her. She is a remarkable young woman.

I don't brag about her to other people. It seems sac-religious. Don't get me wrong. If someone asks how she is doing, I tell them about how she has become the director of development for the organization she works for.

I usually don't brag about anything. Or toot my own horn.

When I first started my professional career, I thought I was great.

Everything revolved around my work. Nothing else mattered. Yeah, I bragged.

It took about a decade when I realized that I felt empty inside.

And that I wasn't the greatest.

And that I didn't need everyone else to think that I was.

When I would watch other men, I wondered who were they? What did they do? What was important to them?

I always felt like other men were more secure than me. Especially if they had jobs that paid a lot more than what I made.

Or that they were healthy and I wasn't.

I had an uncle that told me to work with my head not my back. But I liked to work with my back. But I knew I couldn't make much of a living doing that. 

No wonder I became a therapist.

My father drove a taxi after his store went out of business.

I don't think selling furniture was who he was and maybe that's why the store didn't last.

There are dimensions of being a therapist isn't who I am.

When I see younger dads strolling their children or burying them with autumn leaves my heart smiles.

I remember throwing footballs in the back yard in the snow, a lake or swimming pool to my kids twenty years ago. 

We still do that.

When I was little, I would sometimes pitch a baseball to my dad. My sister and me sang songs with him on Sunday mornings. 

He liked that.

Diagnosing clients goes against the grain of my soul.

My father read the newspaper a lot. I never saw him read a book. We went to one movie together, Requiem for a Heavyweight, with Jackie Gleason. He loved the television show The Honeymooners.

I throw a baseball with my left hand. My dad used to call me a "southpaw."

There were times I'd be in a coffee shop, restaurant, or just hanging out with friends who knew I am a therapist. It was hard for me to act natural and not be self conscious that they would take what I said personal.

My dad and me used to watch the Friday night fights. Our favorite boxer was Benny Kid Parret. He got knocked out in the ring and died.

My kids and me were obsessed with the television show 24.

I could never talk about my work to anyone because of confidentiality reasons.

My dad told me he picked up Eleanor Roosevelt in his cab when he was much younger.

As a young boy, I could hear my dad walking on the sidewalk from my window, coming home from work, from the sound of the change ringing in his pocket.

There were many clients that I grew close to.

Yesterday I called people in rural Minnesota for the presidential election. I felt their pain about the state of affairs in our country. My body felt open talking to people who I pictured would be threatening to me.

My clients taught me how to listen and that living in joy is what matters.

When my dad retired, he moved to Florida with my mom. 

Before he got sick, he fished the canal. 

He swam in the pool. 

He went for walks. 

He watched his shows.

These days I allow the moment to bring me back home to myself. 

To see the love and joy before my eyes. 

To hear the sound of the change ringing everywhere.