“Reasons”

An NFL career dashed, my father never blinked; just moved on to plan B. But it ate at his soul a little bit, to watch her walk around the house all day, laughing on the phone, a scotch in her hand; talking to her girls about upcoming galas and executive trips, plotting their itinerary. He’d risen slowly from the ranks of the pro bono, state appointed lawyer; defending junkies and hookers and petty thieves and marijuana dealers. My father spent a lot of nights actually working to help those he’d been appointed to. And was barely making enough money to keep his Denali’s gas tank full.

As a teenager, I was able to identify this struggle within my father. A man raised in a single-parent home, by his mother. A sister was his lone sibling, and he earned money for the home at an early age. His mother did all she could to pay the bills, but men are men – even as boys. His first job was delivering newspapers during the summer in the late night-early morning hours. Ten dollars per shift, driving around in a white box truck with a hippie white guy, whose life seemed to have paused when James Dean, Buddy Holly and Richie Valens died. His very first two-hundred dollars went to his mother and her then-boyfriend, for the purchase of their new mattress. The promised IOU was promptly met on payday with a not so subtle reminder of who provided roof and clothing for whom. Sometimes my father would be in the kitchen, cooking up breakfast; or we would…