"My father: sturdy, disliking fuss, dutiful, determined, and more than a bit obsessive. He believed that money was the root of all evil, and that stealing a penny was no more pardonable than stealing a million dollars. Even the Catholic Church’s teachings were more lenient, dividing sins, as they did, into venial and mortal!"
When I got home from that humiliating party, my mother wasn’t there, and, possibly for the first time in my life, it was my father who could take me into his arms to comfort and reassure me.
Grieving has spawned hundreds of religious rituals and thousands of self-help books. I think there should also be a what-to-watch list to cut into the mourning fog. For someone my age, there is nothing so helpful as the Minister of Silly Walks, a dead parrot, and the Spanish Inquisition.
When I was a little girl, I had the most handsome father in the world. Now, a lot of women probably remember their dad this way, but I was completely certain. After all, I had official, third-party, expert opinion on my side. My father was a Broadway actor.
For Father's Day, a naturalist shares a memory of an afternoon with her father years ago, by a stream just outside Philadelphia.