The Call
“When you’re done with the excuses, Dad… make the call.”
Meredith didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to.
She had just stepped off stage, the last notes of a Janis Joplin song still hanging in the room. She sang the way she always does—as though the song belongs to her.
I was standing there, doing what fathers do—taking it in, holding it close. I’ve felt that kind of pride before. Watching Holly learn to fly. Watching both of them find their way.
But this was different.
This time, something in me slipped out.
“I wish I had learned to play.”
It wasn’t dramatic. Just true.
I had tried once—8th grade, guitar. A few lessons. My friend Scott Bradley made it look easy. I didn’t. I moved on. Motorcycles. Football. Girls. Life filled up fast.
And that was that.
Until it wasn’t.
Forty years later, I was still standing on the edge of music. Close enough to feel it. Not close enough to claim it.
Meredith had nudged me before. Try bass, Dad. It’s not too late.
I had answers ready.
“I’m 55.”
“I travel.”
“My left hand…”—a nod toward Parkinson’s.
She listened. Let me finish.
Then, steady and simple:
“Dad… when you’re done with the excuses, call Travis.”
The Teacher
I made the call.
Travis Foster didn’t try to impress me. He didn’t need to.
He just met me where I was.
At first, that meant a middle-aged beginner with stiff fingers and a long list of reasons things might not work. He didn’t argue with any of it. He just kept going. Note by note. Week by week.
He had done that before—with Meredith.
He hadn’t just taught her music. He had stayed with her through the hard parts—the doubt, the missed notes, the stretches where progress feels invisible. He believed in her until she learned how to believe in herself.
Over time, he did the same for me.
I learned to play bass. A little. Then more.
I started to sing. Not well. Then better.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped standing outside the music.
Parkinson’s didn’t go away. But it shifted. It became something to work with, not just around. Something that forced attention. Patience. Presence.
Travis never made a speech about that. He just kept showing up.
So did I.
The Work
Next week, Travis, our friends Dustie, Ian, and several others who are in their own ways gifts to the world, will open a music school in Austin.
Every Body Jams.
It didn’t start as a business plan. It started with a moment—after a song, in the quiet that follows, when something honest gets said.
We’ll teach the basics—voice, guitar, bass, drums, keys. Maybe even a harmonica.
We’ll build bands. Write songs. Get people on stage.
But that’s not the point.
The point is the room.
A place where people show up as they are and make something together.
Kids. Adults. People with and without disabilities. Beginners. Lifelong musicians.
No special track. No separate lane.
Just music.
Because music doesn’t sort people. It gathers them.
The Jam
Parkinson’s has been with me for nearly a decade.
It takes things. It will keep taking them.
But it has also narrowed the distance between thinking about something and doing it.
Less delay. Less bargaining. Fewer excuses. More yes.
Some things wait for you. For a while.
Then they don’t.
If there’s something still sitting there—quiet, unfinished, easy to explain away—you probably already know it.
“When you’re done with the excuses…”
Meredith was right.
Make the call.
Let’s jam.
__________.
Allan Cole is Dean of the School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin, where he also serves as the Robert Lee Sutherland Chair in Mental Health and Social Policy, the Bert Kruger Smith Centennial Professor in Social Work, and as Deputy for Medical Humanities and Technology and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Dell Medical School.
Diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2016 at the age of 48, he is the author or editor of 15 books on a range of topics related to chronic illness, bereavement, anxiety, and spirituality. His latest books include Lyrical: Poems that Could Become Songs (Resource Publications), co-authored with his daughter, Meredith C. Cole, Jumping to the Skies: Additional Lessons from Parkinson’s Disease (Cascade), and Riding the Wave: Poems (Resource Publications). Other recent books include Discerning the Way: Lessons from Parkinson’s Disease (Cascade), In the Care of Plenty: Poems (Resource Publications), and Counseling Persons with Parkinson’s Disease (Oxford University Press). With filmmaker and his creative partner Vanessa Reiser, his documentary “The Only Day We Have” aired in April of 2024 on PBS. You may watch it here.