Monday, June 20, 2005

Belated Dad Post

For the Record - I missed the multi-Dad celebration at my sister's house Sunday (Old Lady Patient job duties), but there were lots of fathers there whom I admire, not least my own, and he also has my love. So temperamentally different - and I know I still perplex and confuse him - but there are few people I'd rather spend time with. The man never reads fiction, but I sat at his feet while he read dictionaries and recorded words he liked in steno pads, and I caught the language bug. He didn't go to college, but he loved Whitehead's transcribed dialogues, and Russell, and Mill...too bad he flipped a bit conservative, but that was the 60's in action, I guess. Change of rules he wasn't ready for.
His own childhood and youth is a relative mystery to me - there are clues that it wasn't happy, without much documentation. I wanted to be like him, and I think he wasn't well-prepared for that - and we are built so differently that it was a doomed ambition, but not entirely. He was in the middle of redesigning himself when I was a kid, and he planted in me the most exciting parts of that work, because he shared them with me, the child at his feet, treated as an equal. Thanks, Dad!

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