Mashing in Beer Land!

She threw the apartment door open and then stopped. Rushing in after another dumb day at school, she saw him sitting on the blue leather couch, holding a letter with one hand and his head with the other. He looked up at her, tears streaming down his face. He didn’t look sad. He didn’t look happy either. She had a difficult time registering this emotion. What’s going on she asked?

Sit down, he said and patted the couch cushion next to where he was sitting. She sat down. She was super confused. A while back, he explained, he had some lawyers represent him in a tax case. He said that the letter said the lawyers had not done a good enough job of representing him. In return, the lawyers had some kind of money that they used to pay his remaining tax debt. He took a deep breath in and as he exhaled, a look of relief spread into a smile.

She was young, a freshman. She didn’t know much about the world, let alone lawyers and taxes. All she knew was that this was the first time she had ever seen her dad cry. He got beat up in judo all the time and that never made him cry. She watched him go through rehab. That never made him cry. She watched him loose his company, his house and his wife. He might have cried through that though she never saw it. But on this day, with his tax burden lifted, for the first time ever, she saw him cry.