There’s a sweet and gentle man named Otha Day who travels the Northeast offering drumming classes meant to heal and inspire and calm. He travels with his Freestyle Djembe drums and charges $10 a person for an hour-and-a-half session. Otha suffered a series of strokes and he believes the drums helped him heal. He travels all over in his white van hoping to help others do the same. Maria has been going to his classes for a few months and has invited me, but I resisted. It seemed her thing, not mine, and I didn’t think I would get much from it.

Tonight, I decided to go. I felt like in refusing, I was just being one of those grumpy men who want to sit around at home all evening, and I wanted to share the experience with Maria as long as she really wanted me to come, and I think she did. We have often ventured out on spiritual quests and I do not want to lose my love of that. And I liked drumming, felt very comfortable there. And I could use some healing.

Otha has a nice way about him, he brought me into the drumming and never made me feel foolish or incompetent. Otha guided us and we just had conversations with one another through the drums. I played the drums when I was a kid, and loved it, although they were very different kinds of drums. Still, I felt the old rhythms coming back to me and after a few minutes, I closed my eyes and felt all kinds of things coming up through me. There were just four of us, sitting in a Studio at Hubbard Hall’s Arts Center, and after awhile we were beating the drums together, in sync and in a kind of harmony that was spiritual and healing for me.

For me, this is part of being a man. Staying open. Sharing life with my wife, my love. Breaking down the lists of things I don’t do and won’t do. Seeking ecstatic experience wherever it presents itself. Otha is a Sufi, and I thought of him as a prophet wandering small towns and struggling cities to bring his message and his drumming to people who have enough wounds to want some healing. We are a tribe, I suppose and we often gather together.

For me being a man isn’t about the things I don’t do, but the things I am willing to try. And every time I do, I am richer and better.