As the Carpenter’s sang, “long ago & oh so far away”, I informed my dad some 40 years ago that I was leaving school for a job on the team sales side of the sporting goods industry. He begged me not to but I, being 21 & knowing more than him, did so & went my way in spite of his urging that I could write & my love of athletics would be better served teaching PE or
History or English & coaching. I promised to return to the path if it didn’t work out

    Forty years down the path & here I am. Him right & me wrong with a blog that’s followed by humans as far away as Scandinavia & though I’ve unofficially started, in August a faculty member teaching PE & athletic director.

     My Dad never gave up on me. Whether life dealt me a 2-8 off suit or I designed the desert I wandered, he always believed.

      Believed that I would endure. Believed that his prayers to his Maker would be heard. Prayers often uttered with a Tootsie Pop, his favorite candy, his sword as a prayer warrior for his family, between his cheek & gum.

      This is my 12th Father’s Day without him & the most present he’s been since he passed. He’s been present as I stood before a blank whiteboard struggling with if I have what this new venture requires & plan lessons that will build a culture so students entering class saying “I can’t”, drop the apostrophe t before leaving.

     I wish I could ask him questions. I wish I could hear the sound of “I told you so” every time someone subscribes to my blog. I wished he was available last week to talk to as I stared at that whiteboard. I wish I could hear his voice tell me “it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

      But, akin to Mav & Goose & dog tags, I do hear that voice’s sound when I pass my granddaughter’s new school & I pray for it & when I pray for a pool, a day care, a facility’s dementia wing & workplaces & other mailboxes with my last name, lesson plans, budgets & a culture involving someone else’s grandchild & in the sound of an unwrapping Tootsie Pop & placing what is now my prayer sword between my cheek & gum. It’s the sound of the Promised Land…