A Father’s Pride In His Little Girl

While it's true, that children can drive you crazy, sometimes it turns out the opposite. I have been fortunate enough to have three children, all of which have been a blessing.

As I get older, I frequently reminisce about things that happened with my kids. One of my fondest memories is with my oldest daughter, an MD specializing in Integrative Medicine in Phoenix, Arizona, and a “Top Doc” in Phoenix Magazine as elected by her peers.

She graduated from the University of Arizona Medical School in Tucson, Arizona. Many of you are aware of the expenses involved in any type of college or postgraduate education; you might have experienced this yourself. Getting accepted to a medical school in the state you reside saves a ton of money. Her first year medical school tuition was $1200 as opposed to being accepted at NYU where her tuition would've been $35,000 a year. God bless state schools.

Being a physician myself, I was thrilled when she got accepted to medical school in Arizona. As an added advantage, her clinical third and fourth years were spent in Phoenix, Arizona, at the hospitals there, enabling her to live at home and thus sparing additional expenses.

When she finished medical school, she decided to move out of our house and get her own apartment in the adjacent town of Scottsdale, just a short distance from my home.

On my first visit to her apartment, I went over to take her to lunch. While she was in the bedroom getting dressed, I happened to look at her coffee table and saw a letter addressed to Dr. Bollmann. I called out to her, “Keri, how come you're getting my mail?”

Her response was one of my proudest moments. She said, “Dad, that's not your mail. That's MY mail.”