The Nicest Thing My Father Ever "Said" to Me

(looks like L.A., date unknown, extreme pleasure in one another's company noted)

We are better people on paper than we are in person, me and my dad. I started writing my father long, soul-searching letters when I was in high school. Every time I saw him (usually twice a year) I prayed he would not mention them. He never did.

As a girlfriend, I was the needy one who you were happy to have dated only if you loved me immediately and unconditionally.

You know the type.

I'm lucky to finally have found Steve -- particularly since he loved me immediately and unconditionally. And because he is not an unemployed artist. Finally, I am the (un-)(semi-)employed artist. Who KNEW it would take so long to build a mediation practice (well, other than Peter Robinson and everyone else I spoke to).

BOMBS AWAY!!

But I was going to tell you the nicest thing my father ever wrote to me. We were incapable of expressing these things in person. Until he was dying. At his bedside I finally said everything, all of which was loving -- the anger at the early abandonment had long before burned away to be replaced only occasionally with a small slip of sadness at the loss of him so young. We made up for it in our adulthood. We really did.

Typically, the letter is undated but he is still writing me from the Pomona Superior Court and talking about my future after law school so I assume this was before that when I was living in New York '75-'77.

I don't know where you will be but I feel great enthusiasm to start interfering in your life by looking for summer spots or political positions. I have always been happy to have daughters. to have a liberal, sensitive, educated, intelligent, beautiful lawyer daughter, who loves me, my cup ran over long ago. it is now nectar of life that spills out. How proud and pleased I am.

Your Father