(If you want to hear Lori read this story click) here

 

I was at a party recently with a fascinating mix of people. One of the men there was telling me about his rocky past. His parents had wrestled with addiction, mental illness, anger and cancer. 

 

Yet there was something else that stood out for him as a linchpin in the gyrating dysfunction. Neither of them did anything.

 

Of course that is a sweeping generalization. Surely there were tasks that showed up each day. But from his childhood balcony, neither one had something they loved to do. Lacking a lack of income to yank him out the door, his father stagnated. Employment was not part of their family recipe. 

 

I was wordless as I listened. 

 

There is a song I sing with children called My Old Man's a Sailor. I ask the kids what their dads or moms do, and  weave them into the verses about refrigerator repairmen and anthropologists. Each child's eyes double in luminosity when I peal out the words about their father, pride spilling into the room.

 

"That's MY dad! She's singing about my dad!"

 

There have been kids who turned my head with their assessment of parental occupation. 

 

"He sells pearls."

 

"He plays video games."

 

"She drives a lot."

 

Children watch where their folks are headed. Sometimes I have been duped by the illusion that John's relentless trek out the door to work meant only that he was going away from his kids. But now I see that he is leading them toward places they would never find by accident.