The Answer to Every Dad's Prayers

This morning, I got a telephone call from my son Mitch. It's always good to talk to him, especially on Sunday mornings but we talk all the time, any time, anyway. It's my number one goal to stay in his life regardless of the physical distance. Long before Tom Friedman wrote The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century, I realized that if I was going to have a relationship with my son that meant anything in his life (unlike the relationship that I had with my own father, from whom I learned how NOT to be a father), I would need to use all the mechanisms at my disposal to facilitate it. That and it was going to take that much more work on the part of both of us. That was a conversation that we had back in 2001 when his mother pulled up stakes and moved back to Milwaukee over my vehement but sadly -- devastatingly so-- legally unsustainable objections.

Since then we have developed an amazing relationship that has been helped by the fact that we DO spend so much good time together and have a bond that no-one will ever break. He is more precious to me than my own life. Real heart-to-heart talks on everything from favorite popsicle flavors to the goings-on in Israel to the latest in Jazz, a love of which we both share but which he is doing something about are experiences that are irreplaceable and are what life is all about. It gives meaning to us both, but he will only understand that when he becomes a father himself. And what a great father he will be. But I digress.

Since he is able to to truly understand and at times when the topic of "the future" comes up, I have inculcated the idea -- which I believe in my heart with all my power -- that he should do things that make him happy, including what he selects for a profession. Unlike my parents who were products of the Great Depression (fearful of having everything taken away), I was not going to tell him that unless he went to Med School, Law School or Business School to get an MBA he was in any way unsuccessful. I have learned through my life thus far that success isn't measured FIRST by money. I have told Mitch again and again that success is really defined as being able to get up every morning and going off to do something that you LOVE and for which you are getting paid. "Mitch", I told him, "do what it is that you love, and the money will come." To do something that you are passionate about and get paid for it is everybody's idea of, well, paradise on earth, since that is the key to a happy life. And most people, as most of us know, do not get the opportunity to be truly happy, at least for very long, though everybody is chasing it. Trying to experience happiness. Even fleetingly, momentarily.

If you know me, you know Mitch. And you know that Mitch, though he is 'only' 14 years old, is an accomplished drummer. A Jazz drummer. I am working on the DVDs with my new Sony Vegas 6 program in order to show the world just what "great" means to me at 14. Last night, he had a gig at somebody's house--I am, as I write this, still not clear what it was for -- I think it was a benefit for something or other -- but he told me that after the gig was done, the woman who owned the house and who sponsored the party handed him a check for $280, to be split seven ways -- $40 for each member of the band. And then the answer to my prayers was uttered by my son:

"Dad, I totally didn't expect to get paid. I'd have done that for FREE!"

"What did it feel like?", I said.

"It felt awesome!"

"Mitch, I want you to remember how that felt, to get handed a check for doing something that you love. And keep that up. I'm so proud of you, you have no idea."

Somehow, I think he understood what I was talking about. Our trip to New York in April when we went to five clubs on five different nights, got a lesson from Joe Morello, the 87 year old former drummer for Dave Brubeck (among others), wandered around Mid-Town Manhattan at 3 a.m. looking for figs (for me), was a life-changing experience for him and for me. He began to envision himself in college at the Manhattan School of Music, or the New School in Greenwich Village and gigging at the Vanguard in another 5 or 6 years. (Why wait? I ask...Willie Jones loved him, Chas. McPherson says he's "a natural" -- calm down, Randy, OK?) And I could easily see it coming to be true. No problem. Whatever he does, as long as he loves it, will be exactly what I want for him. And he knows, now, what it feels like to get handed a check for something that we would have done for free. I have lived 45 years and I have never experienced that feeling. He's passed me already. As I hope he will in so many ways in the years to come and that I'll be there to watch and experience those times with him.

It sounds like I am bragging or that I lack humility when there are so many kids who are getting into drugs, carted off to Juvenile Hall, or who are altogether lost in this complicated, very strange world and I can say: my son is a wonderful answer to life's eternal question: "What will the future hold?" I know, I know: there is a long way to go, but the direction seems like it is a good one. Today, I have cause for muted celebration and more importantly, for hope for his future. All he needs to do is be happy. Easy.