A hundred or so years ago, when I was courting this gorgeous and beautiful woman and we were contemplating spending the rest of our days together, she asked me, one day, “Would you be able to handle being married to someone who made a lot more money than you?”

What I heard at the time was something like, “Would you be alright having unbelievable sex for the rest of your life and never having to work another day?”

So, wait, let me think about this - yes. I said yes.

And it came true.

And there were consequences to the sex: children. A boy and two girls. My youngest daughter, when she was a lot younger, came home from school one day after taking “Growth and Development” (aka sex education). She was frowning at me - more than frowning. She radiated disgust. Finally she said to me, “Ew, Daddy. You and Mom? Three times?”

If she only knew.

And the consequence to having children is that they grow up and move out. My son left - wow, already it’s been four years. My youngest left last weekend. The middle one is around for a few more months, but only because she chose to do a “victory lap” at high school: she has already graduated. The end is near.

When our son moved out, my partner said to me, “You know, it’s a good thing that I like you.”

The house is getting progressively quieter. I’m hoping that she still likes me.

So I am at work, seeing clients and distracting myself with business exercises. I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell people what I do when I meet them for the first time at cocktail parties. I’ve settled on this:

“Hi, my name is Carl. I am a family therapist.

“I help people predict the future. I really enjoy helping people make meaning out of their lives. If their lives make sense, you see, then they know not only how they got to the present, but they can extrapolate from what they know so that they can predict - to some extent - what will happen in their future. That’s why meaning-making is so important to people: a life that makes sense is a life that is relatively safe and predictable. So I’m like a fortune teller.”

A fortune teller once sent a couple to me for therapy. I used to think that fortune tellers were - well, “fringe” would be a polite way of putting it. Now I am a fortune teller. Life is more than a little ironic.