Hunting & Gathering

I've mentioned that I have a new job but have done little in the way of explaining what that job is and what it involves. I'm only beginning to have a clue of what is actually truly involved. But the job itself, the bare bones of it: I work for a mental health support and advocacy agency, one that has evolved over the past thirty years to include numerous specialized programs, multiple group homes, and a million other miscellaneous services geared towards a largely marginalized and underserved population. It was established initially as a sort of soft-landing place for patients who had been released from the former State (Mental) Hospital here in CT.

What isn't known by almost everybody I work with (including those who hired me), save the handful of people that I trained with, is that my father is the one who started this agency. The only reason that handful is aware of this fact is that the current director, who met with us for an informal discussion, was hired by my dad, and once he realized who I was, felt the need to embarrass me with a lengthy oratorial dedication to my father. I felt compelled to explain and make clear that my father had nothing to do with my being hired. I didn't even tell my dad until after the fact.

In truth, I was so young when he started the whole thing that I had actually forgotten the original name of the place. As uncomfortable as I felt being praised by association, it was pretty neat to hear this guy tell some of the early stories of the agency, and my dad's antics, such as "liberating" food and supplies from the State Hospital, where he was employed as a social worker, in order to meet the very real needs of the released and displaced patients from the very same place. He also waxed on about my father's calligraphy skills, how the earliest grant requests were written by him with a fountain pen in his expressive, unmistakable script.

Though he left the agency years ago, my father has been a social worker all his life, and remains one even in semi-retirement. How exactly he managed to support and raise nine children on that salary is a topic for another day, though I do remember some of those same "day-old" cast-offs that had been "liberated" from the hospital ending up in our kitchen on occasion... the peanut butter cookies weren't half bad if you put them in the toaster. I also well remember many of his clients showing up at our house in want of money, cigarettes, coffee. I know that's what they wanted because they were very vocal about it. What they ended up with I'm not entirely sure of. I do remember having to regularly go down to the corner store to pick up Chesterfield Kings (obviously way before they carded for tobacco!) for a neighbor/patient who had schizophrenia and a habit of walking around outdoors in her nightgown while cursing "Italian fascist pigs" among others.

Probably the nicest thing the director of the agency had to say about my dad is that "He planted the seeds. (The agency) is what it is today because of the spirit and intent and love your father put into it." The agency currently employs 180 people and serves hundreds of members. At this point I have met many of the employees and members and they are honestly some of the most genuine, kick-ass folks I have ever met. I feel comfortable bragging about my dad because he is, in my opinion, such a pure and quiet servant - and I mean servant in the truest, most spiritual sense. He does his work steadily, with consistency, dedication, and vision. Yet he is practically silent about it. That's the marine in him, maybe. What stuns me is how much you can learn from silent example. Never doubt the small acts of the heart. Intention and attention grows a garden. A truth so simple it hits you like a kiss.