$1.83

I spent the last week in California. Let me share with you what $1.83 means to me as a father.

While in California, I was working remote from my mother-in-law's house. From the big window in the dining room, you can see the front yard, the driveway and the street in front of the home, a single-story place built sometime in the sixties. I opened the slider and let the breeze blow in (and the pet dander from "Micky" hopefully out) and was treated to one of the most touching experiences of my life.

There at the end of the driveway, a street that basically is a really long cul-de-sac with only one outlet, stood my seven year-old daughter, with a card table, a tambourine and a hand-drawn sign on a piece of 8 1/2 x 11-inch paper: Please Donate Money to the Homeless. She stood outside for about an hour calling to anyone and no one to donate money "for the homeless."

After an hour, she came inside and told me, "Dad, I got a $1.83." She seemed a little disappointed but she was happy that she would be able to "donate $1.83 to the homeless." I think the most wonderful thing about the whole experience was that we didn't ask her to do it...we didn't encourage it. She chose to spend this hour of her vacation doing that.

I love my daughter. I love being a Dad. I love $1.83 and what it means to me.