Every morning growing up, the house smelled the same: breakfast cooking, Old Spice in the hallway.

My dad was an IRS auditor. Before that, he'd served in the Army, stationed in Alaska. By the time I came along, he had a routine that never broke — up early, clean shaven, out the door to catch the bus into the city. Us three kids were barely awake before he was gone, most weekdays, mornings.

I didn't see much of him. But I knew he was there.

I think about that discipline now and wonder how much of it he built on purpose — Alaska, the Army, whatever he learned about order and showing up before he ever had a family to show up for. Some men come home from something and let it go. He seems to have turned his into a rhythm he could hand to us without ever explaining it.

Hundreds of mornings, same smell, same quiet certainty: someone is holding this together. That's how a kid learns to trust a parent — sometimes almost entirely secondhand, built out of routine instead of conversation.

It took me 60 years to understand how lucky that childhood was. And that gap — not knowing what you had while you had it — carries its own quiet shame. Until you find the name for it.

That's what Soul Search, The Root, is for.

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