Daddy's Home Quotes

Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark ... In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed." [Still in Melbourne January 1987]

No kid in the world, no woman in the world should ever raise a hand against a no-good daddy. That's already been taken care of: A Man Who Destroys His Own Home Shall Inherit the Wind.

I’m pretty sure she’s got an angel job now where she plucks a large handful of flowers and carries them up to God where they will bloom even brighter than on earth.”   Can we ask God to bring her back home?” You know what, she’s already home.” Starla patted her chest. “She’ll always be right here in our hearts.” But I can’t give her a hug.”   Yes, you can . . . if you hug yourself or me or Willa or Daddy or Big Pop or GoGo you’re hugging her because she’s a part of us.

crawling up into daddy's lap when dad was still DADDY nodding my head against his chest soaking in the comfort of his heart LISTENING to the thump...thump somewhere beneath muscle and breastbone I remember his arms their sublime ENCIRCLING and the shawdow of his voice "I love you, little girl. Put away your bad dreams. Daddy's here" I put them away, Until Daddy became my nightmare that one that came HOME from work everyday and instead of picking me up, chased me far far away

Meltdown when we get home. Mom keeps chocolate for meltdowns. Daddy always has them when Uncle Jonas visits." -David Lyons from Tanner's Scheme-

It's always the mother's fault, ain't it?" she said softly, collecting her coat. "That boy turn out bad cause his mama a drunk, or she a junkie. She let him run wild, she don't teach him right from wrong. She never home when he back from school. Nobody ever say his daddy a drunk, or his daddy not home after school. And nobody ever say they some kids just damned mean. ...

Don't be an asshole" Rhage summed up the regurgitation with two words: "Kettle.Black." Fucking hell. "Did you guys plan that out?" "Yeah and if you don't fight us"- Hollywood bit down on the grape Tootsie Pop-"we'll do it again- only with the dance moves this time" "Spare me." "Fine.Unless you agree to home it,we WILL rock the dance moves." To prove the point ,the moron linked his palms behind his head and started doing something obscene with his hips. Which was backed up by a series of,"Uh-huh,uh-huh,ohhhh, yeeeeeeah,who's your daddy..." The others looked at Rhage like he'd grown a horn in the middle of his forehead. Nothing unusual there. And Tohr knew that, in spite of this ridiculous diversion,if he didn't cave,the lot of them would crawl so far up his ass,he'd be coughing up shitkickers. Rhage wheeled around,shoved out his butt,and started slapping his moneymaker like it was bread dough. "For the love of the Virgin Scribe,"Z muttered "put us out of this misery, and go the fuck home" Someone else chimed in, "You know, I never thought there were advantages to being blind..." "Or deaf" "Or mute," somebody added

I’ll check on you when I get home. I love you, baby. (Kiefer) I love you too, Daddy. (Kiara) What the hell was that action? (Syn) I think it’s something called ‘paternal concern.’ (Nykyrian) What…? You sure? I thought that crap was a myth. (Syn) No, really. I watched it once in a documentary. It was fascinating. Believe it or not, there are people out there who actually have feelings for their progeny. (Nykyrian) Get the fuck out. No way. You’re screwing with my head again, aren’t you? (Syn) No, I swear. You just saw it with your own eyes. I did not make that shit up. (Nykyrian) Yeah but it’s really messing with my concept of the natural order of the universe. Paternal love? What’s next? Limb regrowth? Genetic splicing reversals? (Syn)

See? See what you can do? Never mind you can’t tell one letter from another, never mind you born a slave, never mind you lose your name, never mind your daddy dead, never mind nothing. Here, this here, is what a man can do if he puts his mind to it and his back in it. Stop sniveling,’ [the land] said. ‘Stop picking around the edges of the world. Take advantage, and if you can’t take advantage, take disadvantage. We live here. On this planet, in this nation, in this county right here. Nowhere else! We got a home in this rock, don’t you see! Nobody starving in my home; nobody crying in my home, and if I got a home you got one too! Grab it. Grab this land! Take it, hold it, my brothers, make it, my brothers, shake it, squeeze it, turn it, twist it, beat it, kick it, kiss it, whip it, stomp it, dig it, plow it, seed it, reap it, rent it, buy it, sell it, own it, build it, multiply it, and pass it on – can you hear me? Pass it on!

Darling Daddy, This is Rose. The shed needs new wires now it has blown up. Caddy is bringing home rock-bottom boyfriends to see if they will do for Mummy. Instead of you. Love, Rose.

If this book should ever roam, Box its ears and send it home.

A House of My Own Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man's house. Not a daddy's. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody's garbage to pick up after. Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem.

so your father told you once that you were his princess you won't see the castle you cannot find your prince and now you've grown a lot and your dress don't fit right your daddy's not a hero he stole your chariot so here you are in pieces trying to prove to us it's real the softness of your smile and the lies you want to feel the scales beneath your skin are showing off today there's evil in your heart and it wants out to play there's evil in your heart and it wants out to play there's evil in your heart and I have made a home here for me you'll burn it down with your fantasy

Fucking hell. "Did you guys plan that out?" "Yeah, and if you don't fight us"--Hollywood bit down on his grape Tootsie-Pop--"we'll do it again--only with dance moves this time." "Spare me." "Fine. Unless you agree to home it, we will rock the dance moves.". To prove the point, the moron linked his palms behind his head and started doing something obscene with his hips. Which was backed up by a series of, "Uh-huh, uh-huh, ohhh, yeeeeeeaaaah, who's your daddy....

I love you, Josie, and I am devoted to making your life full of happiness and accomplishments, ensuring that you thrive to your fullest potential and that while you reach for the sky, you remain grounded by the love of our family and our home.

In the back of my mind, I thought maybe I would find my Robert Redford in New Orleans. We made our way to the city by afternoon and planned to drive home when the sun rose over Lake Pontchartrain. We had no idea where else to go, except to Bourbon Street. We walked toward the bright lights and glowing colors of one strip club after another…. In 1975, Big Daddy’s was the top, topless go-go joint on Bourbon.

Listen to me, darlin’, and remember this for the rest of your life: it’s always okay to go home. Anytime you feel uncomfortable or scared, never worry about what anyone else is going to think if you call your daddy and have him come get you. Your house is a safe place, and you love being there, and that’s something to be proud of, not embarrassed about.

I didn’t like the idea of sudden thunderstorms so close to the Empire State Building – entrance to Mount Olympus, home of Zeus, aka Big Daddy Lightning Bolt.

Born on third base, my daddy always said of the well off, and they think they hit a home run.

The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but size. Size encompasses life, and the Tower encompasses size. The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows. You see? Size defeats us. For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe where the air drowns him and the light is blue madness? Where huge bipeds with no gills stuff it into a suffocating box and cover it with wet weeds to die? Or one might take the tip of the pencil and magnify it. One reaches the point where a stunning realization strikes home: The pencil tip is not solid; it is composed of atoms which whirl and revolve like a trillion demon planets. What seems solid to us is actually only a loose net held together by gravity. Viewed at their actual size, the distances between these atoms might become league, gulfs, aeons. The atoms themselves are composed of nuclei and revolving protons and electrons. One may step down further to subatomic particles. And then to what? Tachyons? Nothing? Of course not. Everything in the universe denies nothing; to suggest an ending is the one absurdity. If you fell outward to the limit of the universe, would you find a board fence and signs reading DEAD END? No. You might find something hard and rounded, as the chick must see the egg from the inside. And if you should peck through the shell (or find a door), what great and torrential light might shine through your opening at the end of space? Might you look through and discover our entire universe is but part of one atom on a blade of grass? Might you be forced to think that by burning a twig you incinerate an eternity of eternities? That existence rises not to one infinite but to an infinity of them?

Aw, man. I’d just shot an angel in the face.I made my way into the foyer and sat down on the stairs. I glanced up at the big old grandfather clock. It was going on ten. My folks would be home soon. “How was your evening, honey?” “Killed an angel.” “Well, isn’t that nice.” That wasn’t happening. Daddy never liked guns in the first place, Mother just pretended to. I was so grounded.

Mother. Father. I have news," I announced. Dad looked up from an article about one of the Kardashians, "You've been conscripted to the war? What decade are you speaking from?" "Ugh, fine: Home-Daddy, Mama P., I got a live tweet coming at you. Better?" "Oh God, go back to World War Two, please," said Mom.

They may look grown-up,” she continued, “but it’s a disguise. It’s just the clay of time. Men and women are still children deep in their hearts. They still would like to jump and play, but that heavy clay won’t let them. They’d like to shake off every chain the world’s put on them, take off their watches and neckties and Sunday shoes and return naked to the swimming hole, if just for one day. They’d like to feel free, and know that there’s a momma and daddy at home who’ll take care of things and love them no matter what. Even behind the face of the meanest man in the world is a scared little boy trying to wedge himself into a corner where he can’t be hurt.

Abba is not Hebrew, the language of liturgy, but Aramaic, the language of home and everyday life … We need to be wary of the suggestion … that the correct translation of Abba is ‘Daddy.’ Abba is the intimate word of a family circle where that obedient reverence was at the heart of the relationship, whereas Daddy is the familiar word of a family circle from which all thoughts of reverence and obedience have largely disappeared … The best English translation of Abba is simply ‘Dear Father.

Smith shrugged and came over to Cella and Crush. Another shifter, a black bear, waited to lead them out, the security cameras conveniently and temporarily turned off. “What did you really do to him?” Cella had to ask her. “Nothin’.” “Smith,” she said, stopping by the bear. “The man shit, pissed, and vomited after spending less than thirty minutes with you. There has to be a reason.” “Got me. All I did was stare at him until he told me something I could use.” The bear looked Smith over. “Did you stare at him with those eyes of yours?” “I have my daddy’s eyes.” “Annnnd, we now have our answer,” Cella announced before they made their way out of the maximum security prison and headed home.

I’ve encountered my fair share of war reenactors over the years, but I’ve never seen a reenactment of this banal predicament: a tired woman in a dark house answering a child who is supposed to be asleep that she has no idea when Daddy’s coming home.

One of the reasons for his drinking, Henry said, was John's mama used to make the whole family get down on their knees and pray like fury everytime John's daddy--Henry's first cousin, I believe--would come home boozed, and John never quite got it straight that they weren't thanking the good Lord for his blessing same as they did at the supper table. So according to Henry booze come to be sort of holy to him and with faith like that John grew up religious as a deacon.

The house is big and sturdy and charming. I know without being told that children have been born here and couples have married here, and families have argued and loved and laughed beneath the gabled roof. It's a place to feel safe in. A home.

Behold me - a Sophomore! I came up last Friday, sorry to leave Lock Willow, but glad to see the campus again. It is a pleasant sensation to come back to something familiar. I am beginning to feel at home in college, and in command of the situation; I am beginning, in fact, to feel at home in the world - as though I really belonged to it and had not just crept in on sufferance.

Never wanna leave my Justice, my home. So I bring her with me, my baby Lonesome. Don't matter, Justice is always there, Always right there, no matter where I go. My baby Lonesome, Makin' it so I'm never missin' home.

The sense of security which she thought she had found disappeared; the bottom fell out of her world and she felt herself falling into an abyss of unbelieving despair.

[Y]ou are at the top of the energy food chain in your home. Your stress becomes manifested in your animal companions, as surely as it is manifested in your significant other, in your children. If you choose to share your life with others, you have a responsibility to check your shit at the door or others will suffer.

Joey, come home. Come home quick!” Ollie screamed down the line. “Please, come home. Daddy’s going to kill her!” “Who, Ollie?” I demanded as my legs broke into a run in the direction of my house. “Is it Mam?” My heart jackknifed in my chest. “Is he hurting Mam?” “Shannon!” Ollie screamed down the line. “He’s killing Shannon!

When Charlie arrived home from his mother's funeral, he was met at the door by two very large very enthusiastic canines, who , undistracted by keeping watch over Sophie's love hostage, were now able to visit the full measure of their affection and joy upon their returning master. It is generally agreed, and in fact stated in the bylaws of the American Kennel Club, that you have not been truly dog-humped until you have been double-dog-humped by a pair of four-hundred-pouund hounds from hell (Section 5, paragraph 7: Standards of Humping and Ass-dragging). And despite having used an extra-strength antiperspirant that very morning before leaving Sedona, Charlie found that getting poked repeatedly in the armpits by two damp devil-dog dicks was leaving him feeling less than fresh. Sophie, call them off. Call them off." The puppies are dancing with Daddy," Sophie giggled. "Dance, Daddy!

But the moon was so large and clear through the uncurtained window that it made me think instead of a story my mother had told me, about driving to horse shows with her mother and father in the back seat of their old Buick when she was little. “It was a lot of travelling—ten hours sometimes through hard country. Ferris wheels, rodeo rings with sawdust, everything smelled like popcorn and horse manure. One night we were in San Antonio, and I was having a bit of a melt-down—wanting my own room, you know, my dog, my own bed—and Daddy lifted me up on the fairgrounds and told me to look at the moon. ‘When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.’ So after he died, and I had to go to Aunt Bess—I mean, even now, in the city, when I see a full moon, it’s like he’s telling me not to look back or feel sad about things, that home is wherever I am.” She kissed me on the nose. “Or where you are, puppy. The center of my earth is you.

They had studied law, information technology and art history as part of their beauty treatment, they had let Norwegian taxpayers finance years at university just so that they could end up as overqualified, stay-at-home playthings and sit here exchanging confidences about how to keep their sugar daddies suitably happy, suitably jealous and suitably on their toes.

The daddy-at-home theory posits that concealed ovulation evolved to promote monogamy, to force the man to stay home, and thus to bolster his certainty about his paternity of his wife's children. The many-fathers theory instead posits that concealed ovulation evolved to give the women access to many sex partners and thus to leave many men uncertain as to whether they sired her children.

He called her on the road From a lonely cold hotel room Just to hear her say I love you one more time But when he heard the sound Of the kids laughing in the background He had to wipe away a tear from his eye A little voice came on the phone Said "Daddy when you coming home" He said the first thing that came to his mind I'm already there Take a look around I'm the sunshine in your hair I'm the shadow on the ground I'm the whisper in the wind I'm your imaginary friend And I know I'm in your prayers Oh I'm already there She got back on the phone Said I really miss you darling Don't worry about the kids they'll be alright Wish I was in your arms Lying right there beside you But I know that I'll be in your dreams tonight And I'll gently kiss your lips Touch you with my fingertips So turn out the light and close your eyes I'm already there Don't make a sound I'm the beat in your heart I'm the moonlight shining down I'm the whisper in the wind And I'll be there until the end Can you feel the love that we share Oh I'm already there We may be a thousand miles apart But I'll be with you wherever you are I'm already there Take a look around I'm the sunshine in your hair I'm the shadow on the ground I'm the whisper in the wind And I'll be there until the end Can you feel the love that we share Oh I'm already there Oh I'm already There

She thought she must be ill, though she had no idea what was wrong with her. All she knew was that the world had become a frightening place.

I don’t care how loved they were. I don’t give a shit if they had families and if they had wives and little kids at home, eagerly awaiting their arrival. Daddy’s gone, kids.

Jerusha leaned forward watching with curiosity - and a touch of wistfulness - the stream of carriages and automobiles that rolled out of the asylum gates. In imagination she followed first one equipage, then another, to the big houses dotted along the hillside. She pictured herself in a fur coat and a velvet hat trimmed with feathers leaning back in the seat and nonchalantly murmuring "Home" to the driver. But on the door-sill of her home the picture grew blurred.

Tristan’s Mom: What are these? Tristan: Your granddaughters. Tristan’s Dad: Don’t worry honey, you don’t look old enough to be a mother let alone a grandmother. Tristan’s Mom: Again with the flattery, thank you dear. Where did they come from? Tristan: Camie gave birth last night. Jeff: I didn’t know she was pregnant. Tristan: She wasn’t. It was a miracle. Tristan’s Mom: Do they have names? Tristan: Phineas and Ferb. Jeff: From the cartoon? Tristan’s Dad: That figures, he named the dog Scooby. Tristan’s Mom: They sound like boy names. Tristan: Mom! Shhh, you’ll give them a complex. Jeff: If that Ferb one climbs my legs again I’m drop kicking it. Tristan: That’s child abuse and I’ll press charges. Besides, they just miss their mom. Jeff: I’m calling CPS (cat protective services)… Tristan: What for? Jeff: Because you’re making your kids live in a broken home unnecessarily. Tristan: I’m not talking to you anymore. Jeff: Fine, as long as you to talk to her. Tristan: Back off. Jeff: Nope, not gonna do it. Tristan: I’m warning you man. Jeff: You miss her too. Tristan: Yeah, so? Jeff: So do something about it. Tristan: Happy? Last night was miserable and I think it’s too late. Jeff: You still have a 12 year old ace in the hole. Tristan: Saving it as a last resort. Tristan’s Dad: Honey, do you have a clue as to what they’re talking about? Tristan’s Mom: No and I don’t want one. Jeff: I’m just helping my nieces get their parents back together. Dude, it’s time. Make the call. Tristan: Alright, I did it. But I get the feeling I’m about to do business with the mob. I hope I don’t wake up with the head of my horse in bed with me tonight. Jeff: Well, a good father will do anything he can to protect his family, even if that means he runs the risk of sleeping with the fishes. Tristan: Okay girls, your aunt helped Daddy come up with a plan and if it works you should get to see Mommy today. Cross your paws, or claws, or whatever…just cross something for luck.

Father of the fatherless daughter, do not be the lost soul in your daughter’s life. Play a major role in your daughter’s life. She should always be her daddy’s little princess, even when she is old and gray. She deserves to be happy! She deserves to be loved! She deserves joy! And she deserves you!

She spoke throught her teeth. "Almost, dear. What were the real words you used? The bad words. It's okay to say them again, just this once." I shrugged, "fine. I said'. . . just 'cause Daddy wants you to suck on his ding-a-ling.

Tell you what we'll do," she said. "We'll drive to town and get some pickles, and some bread, and we'll eat the pickles in the car, and then we'll go to the station and get Daddy, and then we'll bring Daddy home and make him take us for a ride in the boat. You'll have to help him carry the sails down. O.K.?

I suddenly miss the smells and tight quarters of my house. Burning sage, roasting rosemary, and Daddy’s aftershave. I even miss sharing a room with Shea. But I can’t go back home. Parents probably wouldn’t let me through the front door. The only place left for me is with Korey. Plus, he loves me. He needs me. Love is complicated.

Hilmar owns many books, even by Icelandic standards. The other day, when he came home with a wheelbarrowful, his five-year-old daughter looked him in the eye and implored, “Please, Daddy, please, no more books!” Hilmar has a stock answer to those who criticize his excessive book buying. “It is never a waste of time to study how other people wasted time.

The dead are home before us, daddy, she said. But we have work to do.

Why do you want to go so high?' 'So I can kick God in the bum until he sends Daddy home.

Oh, daddy, by what witchcraft have you coaxed that sulky rose-bush into bloom?' 'No witchcraft at all - it just bloomed because you were coming home, baby,' said her father.

O ódio lesa a pessoa que o sente (...) o seu alvo nunca sente o seu efeito.

We need a country literally full of cat guys and cat girls, bikers, politicians, clergy, and everyone in between, in order to keep millions from dying without homes.

You were in business making meth? Do you have any idea what that drug does to people?" We weren't givin' it away," Concise snaps. "If someone was fool enough to mess himself up, that was his problem." I shake my head, disgusted. "If you build it, they will come." If you build it," Concise says, "you cover your rent. If you build it, you pay off the loan sharks. If you build it, you put shoes on your kid's feet and food in his belly and maybe even show up every now and then with a toy that every other goddamn kid in the school already has." He looks up at me. "If you build it, maybe your son don't have to, when he grow up." It is amazing -- the secrets you can keep, even when you are living in close quarters. "You didn't tell me." Concise gets up and braces his hands against the upper bunk. "His mama OD'd. He lives with her sister, who can't always be bothered to take care of him. I try to send money so that I know he's eatin' breakfast and gettin' school lunch tickets. I got a little bank account for him, too. Jus' in case he don't want to be part of a street gang, you know? Jus' in case he want to be an astronaut or a football player or somethin'." He digs out a small notebook from his bunk. "I'm writin' him. A diary, like. So he know who his daddy is, by the time he learn to read." It is always easier to judge someone than to figure out what might have pushed him to the point where he might do something illegal or morally reprehensible, because he honestly believes he'll be better off. The police will dismiss Wilton Reynolds as a drug dealer and celebrate one more criminal permanently removed from society. A middle-class father who meets Concise on the street, with his tough talk and his shaved head, will steer clear of him, never guessing that he, to, has a little boy waiting for him at home. The people who read about me in the paper, stealing my daughter during a custody visit, will assume I am the worst sort of nightmare.

You know, Daddy, I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people's places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding. It ought to be cultivated in children. But the John Grier Home instantly stamped out the slightest flicker that appeared. Duty was the one quality that was encouraged. I don't think children ought to know the meaning of the word; it's odious, detestable. They ought to do everything from love.

Now this girl was about twenty-one years old. A sweet little coed. Spends a night with a married man. Goes home the next day and tells her mama and daddy. Don’t ask me why. Maybe just to rub their faces in it. They decide she needs a lesson. Whole family drives out into the desert, right out to that spot we just passed. All three of them plus the girl’s pet dog. Papa tells the girl to dig a shallow grave. Mama gets down on her hands and knees and holds the dog by the collar. When the girl is all through digging, papa gives her a .22 caliber revolver and tells her to shoot the dog. A real touching family scene. Make a good calendar for some religious group to give away. The girl puts the weapon to her temple and kills herself. Now isn’t that a heartwarming story? Restores my faith in just about everything.

I throw my arms around her without even thinking first, the way I used to with Daddy when he came home from a trip. "Thank you," I say into her waist. Her clothes smell so good. I feel her hand resting on my head, and for that second I feel like nothing could ever go wrong. Not when there's Miss Mary to hug.

Because,” I whispered over his mouth. “Because I want to be your girl.” He circled my waist with both arms like a steel band, stopping me. “And you remember what that means?” I gazed down at him, trying to hide my smile as I remembered everything he wanted. Me, coming home to him every night. Me, at his table and warming his bed. Me, making him a daddy. I nodded. “Say it,” he ordered. I swallowed, the excitement coursing through my veins as I whispered, “It means you come inside me.” We didn’t have condoms here.

Even if she had realized that she had a problem, she would not have cared. All she knew was that with each sip she took, the better she felt: her fear receded, her misery disappeared and her confidence grew.

The gangs filled a void in society, and the void was the absence of family life. The gang became a family. For some of those guys in the gang that was the only family they knew, because when their mothers had them they were too busy having children for other men. Some of them never knew their daddies. Their daddies never look back after they got their mothers pregnant, and those guys just grew up and they couldn’t relate to nobody. When they had their problems, who could they have talked to? Nobody would listen, so they gravitated together and form a gang. George Mackey, the former representative for the historic Fox Hill community in The Bahamas.

I'm the kind of girl who wants to get married in a big, white dress, wearing my grandma's pearls. I want a husband who loves me and is faithful to me. I want him to come home to me every night, and I don't want to have to worry if he's doing his secretary, because he's the kind of man who has too much honor to do that. I want to wait a year and then I want to start trying for the two kids that we'll eventually have, a girl and a boy. And when we have those kids, I do not want, one day, to have to look in their little faces and explain why their daddy is on the internet having relations with everyone from College Honeys to Cougars Gone Wild for money. I want to throw a cartoon themed birthday party at a jump house for my six year old, not mark the occasion by explaining what a "money shot" is. I have a feeling your life goals are somewhat different than mine. And by 'somewhat,' I mean, utterly and completely. Does that explain why it would be a waste of time for both of us to continue being in each other's presence?

In all my longing for a family and a home, I'd never quite been able to decide what they should have looked like. But this house looks and feels so right, so perfect, it seems impossible any other place would suit me half so well.

Daddy leaned toward us and told us rather conspiratorially that this box held our newest pet. This is the same man who once brought home a baby bobcat, let it loose in the house, and forgot to mention it because he “didn’t think it was important,” so for him to be excited I assumed the box had to contain something truly amazing, like a two-headed lizard, or a baby chupacabra. He opened the box and whispered excitedly, “Come out and meet your new owners, Pickle.

Darling Daddy, This is Rose. Very good news. Caddy is going to marry Micheal. In case you have forgotten because you have not been home for so long he is the one with the ponytail and the earring that you do not like. And Caddy says she will have a white lace dress and three bridesmaids, Saffron and Sarah and me, and a big party for everyone, all her old boyfriends too. Fireworks. A band. A big tent called a marquee. But where will we put it? Carriages with white horses for us all to go to the church. Afterward Caddy and Micheal will go for a holiday to Australia to visit the Great Barrier Reef. Caddy has it all worked out and Mummy says Yes She Can Of Course You Can Darling Of Course You Must Do That. Saffron said That Will Cost a Few Weeks Housekeeping and Mummy said Yes But We Do Not Need to Worry About That. DADDY WILL PAY. Love, Rose.

Ruby and Aaron are both crazy patient; they’re good parents.” “I could be a good dad,” Ivan whispered, still feeding Jess. I could have told him he’d be good at anything he wanted to be good at, but nah. “Do you want to have kids?” he asked me out of the blue. I handed Benny another block. “A long time from now, maybe.” “A long time… like how long?” That had me glancing at Ivan over my shoulder. He had his entire attention on Jessie, and I was pretty sure he was smiling down at her. Huh. “My early thirties, maybe? I don’t know. I might be okay with not having any either. I haven’t really thought about it much, except for knowing I don’t want to have them any time soon, you know what I mean?” “Because of figure skating?” “Why else? I barely have enough time now. I couldn’t imagine trying to train and have kids. My baby daddy would have to be a rich, stay-at-home dad for that to work.” Ivan wrinkled his nose at my niece. “There are at least ten skaters I know with kids.” I rolled my eyes and poked Benny in the side when he held out his little hand for another block. That got me a toothy grin. “I’m not saying it’s impossible. I just wouldn’t want to do it any time soon. I don’t want to half-ass or regret it. If they ever exist, I’d want them to be my priority. I wouldn’t want them to think they were second best.” Because I knew what that felt like. And I’d already screwed up enough with making grown adults I loved think they weren’t important. If I was going to do something, I wanted to do my best and give it everything. All he said was, “Hmm.” A thought came into my head and made my stomach churn. “Why? Are you planning on having kids any time soon?” “I wasn’t,” he answered immediately. “I like this baby though, and that one. Maybe I need to think about it.” I frowned, the feeling in my stomach getting more intense. He kept blabbing. “I could start training my kids really young…. I could coach them. Hmm.” It was my turn to wrinkle my nose. “Three hours with two kids and now you want them?” Ivan glanced down at me with a smirk. “With the right person. I’m not going to have them with just anybody and dilute my blood.” I rolled my eyes at this idiot, still ignoring that weird feeling in my belly that I wasn’t going to acknowledge now or ever. “God forbid, you have kids with someone that’s not perfect. Dumbass.” “Right?” He snorted, looking down at the baby before glancing back at me with a smile I wasn’t a fan of. “They might come out short, with mean, squinty, little eyes, a big mouth, heavy bones, and a bad attitude.” I blinked. “I hope you get abducted by aliens.” Ivan laughed, and the sound of it made me smile. “You would miss me.” All I said, while shrugging was, “Meh. I know I’d get to see you again someday—” He smiled. “—in hell.” That wiped the look right off his face. “I’m a good person. People like me.” “Because they don’t know you. If they did, somebody would have kicked your ass already.” “They’d try,” he countered, and I couldn’t help but laugh. There was something wrong with us. And I didn’t hate it. Not even a little bit.

A father teaches his children that the battle is not determined by the enemy that stands around them, but by the God Who stands within them. And that lesson can only be driven home as they watch their father stand around them, while God stands within their father.

WHEN MARK WAS SHOT I was shattered. Shifted. Never the same again. Like shards of my own heart shivving me on the inside, just like your mama told you. You and Shawn were little and I couldn't just come home and be a daddy and a husband when I couldn't be a brother no more.

The teacher was asking her students what their parents did for a living, and Timmy stood up and said, “My daddy’s a doctor and my mommy’s a doctor too.” And little Sarah stood up and said, “My mommy’s an engineer and my daddy’s an accountant.” And then little Billy stands up and says, “My mommy’s a writer and my daddy plays the piano in a whorehouse.” The teacher was horrified and later she called Billy’s father, and said, “Why would you ever tell your child a thing like that?” And the father said, “Well, actually I’m a defense lawyer. But how do you explain a thing like that to a seven-year-old?

The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows.

When Mr. Jackson had to leave the kids behind at the house for a business meeting, they would always come to the door as a group to see him off. They’d follow him right to the car and they’d each say, “I love you, Daddy.” And he’d say, “I love you more.” That was their little ritual every time he left the house. And when he got home, didn’t matter if he was gone for two hours or twenty minutes, they’d run to meet him, screaming, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Should you tell your mother something if it is important when she is talking to company? I am six. GENTLE READER: Yes, you should (after saying "Excuse me"). Here are some of the things that are important to tell your mother, even though she is talking to company: "Mommy, the kitchen is full of smoke." "Daddy's calling from Tokyo." "Kristen fell out of her crib and I can't put her back." "There's a policeman at the door and he says he wants to talk to you." "I was just reaching for my ball, and the goldfish bowl fell over." Now, here are some things that are not important, so they can wait until your mother's company has gone home: "Mommy, I'm tired of playing blocks. What do I do now?" "The ice-cream truck is coming down the street." "Can I give Kristen the rest of my applesauce?" "I can't find my crayons." "When are we going to have lunch? I'm hungry.

The Womeldorf family loved music, and one of Daddy’s happiest memories was of the day his father came home from town bearing a morning glory horn Edison phonograph with round cylinder records. “How on earth could that contraption sing and play lovely music?” he remembered marveling. The family considered it the wonder of the age and loved listening to it.

Girls with Sharp Sticks” Men are full of rage Unable to control themselves. That’s what women were told How they were raised What they believed. So women learned to make do Achieving more as men did less And for that, men despised them Despised their accomplishments. Over time The men wanted to dissolve women’s rights All so they could feel needed. But when they couldn’t control women The men found a group they didn’t disdain— At least not yet. Their daughters, pretty little girls A picture of femininity for them to mold To train To control To make precious and obedient. She would make a good wife someday, he thought Not like the useless one he had already. The little girls attended school Where the rules had changed. The girls were taught untruths, Ignorance the only subject. When math was pushed aside for myth The little girls adapted. They gathered sticks to count them learning their own math. And then they sharpened their sticks. It was these same little girls Who came home one day And pushed their daddies down the stairs. They bashed in their heads with hammers while they slept. They set the houses on fire with their daddies inside. And then those little girls with sharp sticks Flooded the schools. They rid the buildings of false ideas. The little girls took everything over Including teaching their male peers how to be “Good Little Boys.” And so it was for a generation The little girls became the predators.

A home that had a space for me, and all my broken brittle pieces. Where I was important. Where I was loved. Where I was needed. Me. Irreplaceable, in a way I'd never been before.

Yes. Absolutely, I wanted that part. No other little girl was going to spend that time with my daddy while I stayed home! I was going to be an actress.

When Daddy isn’t home, Seven acts like he’s the man of the house by default. Momma always has to break his name down and put him in his place.

Law school was, for the most part, full of overindulged kids looking to become lawyers either to please daddy or to bring home the big paycheck.

My daddy was gone. My daddy was in heaven. He was never, ever coming back.

I grin broadly and spread out my arms in either direction. “Daddy’s home, bitches.

You come home, Daddy," she told him. "I love my mother, but if I have to live with her for very long, one of us will commit a homicide. And you bring Mercy and the pip-squeak back.

Dear Judy: Your letter is here. I have read it twice, and with amazement. Do I understand that Jervis has given you, for a Christmas present, the making over of the John Grier Home into a model institution, and that you have chosen me to disburse the money? Me - I, Sallie McBride, the head of an orphan asylum! My poor people, have you lost your senses, or have you become addicted to the use of opium, and is the raving of two fevered imaginations? I am exactly as well fitted to take care of one hundred children as to become the curator of a zoo.

Just Wait Until Your Daddy Gets Home – Wheeled Bomb. Type: High Yield Thermobaric Explosive. Also imbues Fear within blast radius. Effect: I hope you’re paid up on your homeowner’s insurance.

I am beginning to feel at home in college, and in command of the situation; I am beginning, in fact, to feel at home in the world--as though I really belonged to it and had not just crept in on sufferance.

I used to scream, “Daddy!” and hug him when he came home, Until one day I got scared hugging a father I didn’t know. Who is daddy except for that one man in my house at night To eat dinner, sleep, and go away again?

I was sorting stamps in the slotted drawer at the post office when Garnelle Fielding came in to send a little package to Wilbur. She said she’d gone and signed up for the WAFS, and her mother and daddy drove her down to Sweetwater to take a test at Avenger Field, where the government was training hundreds and hundreds of women to be pilots. Trouble was, she didn’t pass her physical because they said she was too short and too thin for the service. Her mother rushed her to a doctor in Toullange the next day and tried to get him to write her a letter so she could join the navy instead, but he wouldn’t do it. He told her the service was no place for a girl, and she’d be better off to wait home for someone brave to come marry her. Garnelle hung around until four o’clock when my hours were up, then walked with me to my house. “You should have seen my mother,” she said. “Better yet, you should have heard her. She fussed and fumed the whole way home about how women in her family had fought in every war this country has ever had, right up from loading muskets in the Revolution to she herself driving a staff car in North Carolina during the Great War. I tell you, she would have made a better recruiter than any of those movie star speeches I’ve ever heard. My mother doesn’t sell kisses in a low-cut basque. She preaches pure patriotism like an evangelist in a tent revival. If she’d had a tambourine, we could have stopped the car and held a meeting.” We laughed. “I’m still mad, though,” she said.

No one ever grows up. They may look grown-up, but it's a disguise. It's just the clay of time. Men and women are still children deep in their hearts. They still would like to jump and play, but that heavy clay won't let them. They'd like to shake off every chain the world's put on them, take off their watches and neckties and Sunday shoes and return naked to the swimming hole, if just for one day. They'd like to feel free, and know that there's a momma and daddy at home who'll take care of things and love them no matter what. Even behind the face of the meanest man in the world is a scared little boy trying to wedge himself into a corner where he can't be hurt.

When Jannie came home from school that afternoon she said that her teacher had put it into the class news that Jannie’s mommy and daddy were going to get a new house and Jannie would walk to school instead of taking the bus.

Oh, Daddy … you're home, and look who's here!” Susan and Elizabeth reached him first, and Connor swung them around. As he did he caught Michele's eyes in the back of the group. She was crying and laughing all at the same time.

I'm going to lay it out straight for you here, Carson. And the reason that I'm going to do that is because I have every confidence that it will scare you off badly enough that I can then finish my drink in peace, and we can part as acquaintances who simply have nothing in common." He raised one eyebrow and I joined my hands in my lap, tilting my head as I continued. "I'm the kind of girl who wants to get married in a big, white dress, wearing my grandma's pearls. I want a husband who love me and is faithful to me. I want him to come home me every night, and I don't want to have to worry if he's doing his secretary, because he's the kind of man who has too much honor to do that. I want to wait a year and then I want to start trying for the two kids that we'll eventually have, a girl and a boy. And when we have those kids, I do not want, one day, to have to explain why their daddy is on the internet having relations with everyone from College Honeys to Cougars Gone Wild for money. I want to throw a cartoon themed birthday party at a jump house for my six year old, not mark the occasion by explaining what a "money shot" is. I have a feeling your life goals are somewhat different than mine. And by 'somewhat,' I mean, utterly and completely. Does that explain why it would be a waste of time for both of us to continue being in each other's presence?" Chapter 1

she's got her daddy's blue eyes and her mama's pretty lips, and she'll stay on your mind with a sugar-sweet kiss, that southern girl with her wild soul will leave an imprint on your heart and make somewhere in tennessee feel something like home

Coming home from school, armed with my A+ project in hand, I’d been so excited to show my father. Ramsey Abbott was known as a Senator by most people, but to me he was just Daddy. Until that day. When he hung himself from a beam in our family room.

Angel spent another week taking lessons at home before starting at the school. I drove her in on her first day. “Mamma, I feel like Daddy’s with us in the car,” she told me. “He never missed my first day.” “You’re right,” I told her. “I’m sure he is.

The other day, someone visited me and asked, 'I wish to practice zazen under your guidance. But because I live far away, I can’t come to Antaiji very often. I’d like to practice zazen at home. What should I keep in mind to avoid doing zazen in a mistaken way?' I responded, 'If your wife and children say, "Daddy has become nicer since he began to do zazen," then your practice is on the right track.' Roshi, Kosho Uchiyama. Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo (Kindle Locations 2519-2523). Wisdom Publications. Kindle Edition.

I’m not pure,” I said, driving my point home. “There’s nothing clean and innocent about me. I might be a princess but my crown would be made of broken, dirty things, not gold and jewels. I’d never be good enough for Daddy Acrux. And that’s just the way I like it.

On our drive home, I told Dad I never wanted to go hunting again. Dad nodded. “That’s fine, Sissy Hutch,” he said. “But just so you know, warriors are not afraid to hunt. If you want to be a warrior just like Daddy, you must learn to hunt, Sissy. What you saw today is the circle of life.

Oh, wind and rain may haunt me, Look to the north and pray. Send me, please, his kisses; Send them home today. I'm begging Jesus, 'Please, Send his love to me!' Left alone in desert, This house becomes a hell, This love becomes a tether, This room becomes a cell. Mummy, Daddy, please, Send him back to me! How long must I suffer? Dear God, I've served my time. This love becomes my torture; This love, my only crime. Oh, lover, please release me. My arms too weak to grip, My eyes too dry for weeping, My lips too dry to kiss. Calling Jesus, 'Please, Send his love to me!

Antoinette felt a pain in her chest that seemed to be a lump made of all the tears she had cried over the years. Where do they come from, she wondered. Is there a sac made of a thin membrane that our grief enters and becomes water, then, once filled, it finally bursts, releasing an unstoppable torrent?

When a couple of adopting parents are choosing a daughter, I stand by with my heart in my mouth, feeling as though I were assisting in the inscrutable designs of Fate. Such a little thing turns the balance! The child smiles, and a loving home is hers for life; she sneezes, and it passes her by forever.

Inside our heads there is a space which is completely blank. It holds no memories and has no thoughts. Antoinette wanted to find that place for once there, the world no longer has the power to hurt. She wanted to curl up in the cocoon of her bedding until that time came and never have to face reality again.

You’re not giving me a hard life, Daddy,” she said. “We’re working hard together to make it. So stop feeling sorry for yourself as if our home is your responsibility alone. No one is asking you to, and, frankly, you’re not doing it on your own,” Mother retorted coldly, but she quit the weather strip job right away.

Carl’s abuse isn’t obvious. It’s not something one can even notice while it’s happening. Carl doesn’t do you the favor of punching you in the face and sending you to school with a black eye so that you have a fighting chance of being rescued. Carl doesn’t hit, scream, or molest, allowing you to know you’re being mistreated.

In 2012, I turned fifty-six. Hugh and his longtime girlfriend took me out to dinner. On the way home I remembered a bit of old folklore—probably you’ve heard it—about how to boil a frog. You put it in cold water, then start turning up the heat. If you do it gradually, the frog is too stupid to jump out. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I decided it was an excellent metaphor for growing old. When I was a teenager, I looked at over-fifties with pity and unease: they walked too slow, they talked too slow, they watched TV instead of going out to movies and concerts, their idea of a great party was hotpot with the neighbors and tucked into bed after the eleven o’clock news. But—like most other fifty-, sixty-, and seventysomethings who are in relative good health—I didn’t mind it so much when my turn came. Because the brain doesn’t age, although its ideas about the world may harden and there’s a greater tendency to run off at the mouth about how things were in the good old days. (I was spared that, at least, because most of my so-called good old days had been spent as a full-bore, straight-on-for-Texas drug addict.) I think for most people, life’s deceptive deliriums begin to fall away after fifty. The days speed up, the aches multiply, and your gait slows down, but there are compensations. In calmness comes appreciation, and—in my case—a determination to be as much of a do-right-daddy as possible in the time I had left. That meant ladling out soup once a week at a homeless shelter in Boulder, and working for three or four political candidates with the radical idea that Colorado should not be paved over.

Some kinds of hurt almost feel good, you know? Familiar. Like an ugly couch in your parents' house with the springs all bare where your daddy slapped you once for coming home late and now when you sleep on it it's like one of those Indian fellas napping on nails but it makes you feel like you come from somewhere. Hurts like home.

WALTER (Gathering him up in his arms) You know what, Travis? In seven years you going to be seventeen years old. And things is going to be very different with us in seven years, Travis. … One day when you are seventeen I’ll come home—home from my office downtown somewhere— TRAVIS You don’t work in no office, Daddy. WALTER No—but after tonight. After what your daddy gonna do tonight, there’s going to be offices—a whole lot of offices.… TRAVIS What you gonna do tonight, Daddy? WALTER You wouldn’t understand yet, son, but your daddy’s gonna make a transaction … a business transaction that’s going to change our lives. … That’s how come one day when you ’bout seventeen years old I’ll come home and I’ll be pretty tired, you know what I mean, after a day of conferences and secretaries getting things wrong the way they do … ’cause an executive’s life is hell, man—(The more he talks the farther away he gets) And I’ll pull the car up on the driveway … just a plain black Chrysler, I think, with white walls—no—black tires. More elegant. Rich people don’t have to be flashy … though I’ll have to get something a little sportier for Ruth—maybe a Cadillac convertible to do her shopping in. … And I’ll come up the steps to the house and the gardener will be clipping away at the hedges and he’ll say, “Good evening, Mr. Younger.” And I’ll say, “Hello, Jefferson, how are you this evening?” And I’ll go inside and Ruth will come downstairs and meet me at the door and we’ll kiss each other and she’ll take my arm and we’ll go up to your room to see you sitting on the floor with the catalogues of all the great schools in America around you. … All the great schools in the world! And—and I’ll say, all right son—it’s your seventeenth birthday, what is it you’ve decided? … Just tell me where you want to go to school and you’ll go. Just tell me, what it is you want to be—and you’ll be it. … Whatever you want to be—Yessir! (He holds his arms open for TRAVIS) YOU just name it, son … (TRAVIS leaps into them) and I hand you the world!

ANOTHER CHILD CONCEIVED My mother bore me in late May, And I was peeking out the day, Or the night; she can’t recall, Daddy’s sitting home, appalled. Another child, another pain, Another mouth to feed, again. Dad ran away, did not look back, Perhaps to cut himself some slack. He couldn’t stand the dread received; Of yet another child, conceived.

I was inspired to write Countdown 'til Daddy Comes Home when I searched for books to help my 4 year daughter cope with her father deploying to Afghanistan and found nothing that quite fit our situation. My book is not only a great story for kids it has real suggestions for parents on how to keep you family connected during deployments or frequent business travel.

Daddy,” the boy said, “I don’t want to disobey you, but I have made my pledge. If you try to keep me home, I will sneak off. If you think I deserve to be punished for that, I’ll just have to take the punishment. For, you see, I’m not doing this only because I want to be free. I’m doing it also because I want freedom for you and Mama, and I want it to come before you die.

This probably would have been my exact worst nightmare of bringing a boy home to meet my parents, if I’d ever had enough creativity to imagine my father throwing a live bobcat on the boy I was trying to impress. I assumed that Daddy had accidentally left a bobcat in the house, fallen asleep, realized his terrible mistake when he woke up and heard Victor’s voice, and was now surreptitiously sneaking it out the back door so that Victor would never suspect that we were the type of family to keep live bobcats in the house. Unfortunately, that was not my father’s intent at all, and my eyes widened in horror as my father leaned over and yelled in his booming, cheerful voice, “HELLOOOO, VICTOR,” while tossing a live bobcat on him. Most people reading this will assume that this was my father’s way of making would-be suitors terrified of him so they would always treat his daughters right, but this wasn’t even vaguely a concern of his. He would just as happily have tossed the live bobcat on my mother or me, if it weren’t for the fact that we’d all become superhumanly aware of the terrifying sounds of my father trying to be quiet. In my father’s defense, it was a smallish sort of bobcat that my dad was nursing back to health so he could release it back into the wild, rather than one of the full-grown ones from the backyard. At the time, my dad had several large bobcats he was keeping, but they were seldom indoors, and if my mom found one in the house she’d shoo it into the bobcat cages outside with a broom. I

You’re good,” he said, and he smiled a little. Just then, Madison showed up. “Oh, are you two playing?” she asked. “Kind of,” I said. “Did you pick Bruce?” she asked. “I did. He’s the best one,” I told her. “The best one today,” Timothy clarified. “Daddy’s home!” Madison suddenly said, and Timothy started to vibrate with, what, happiness? Excitement? Fear? “Daddy,” he said, now smiling, and he stumbled out of the room. “Jasper’s here,” Madison said to me. “Yikes,” I said. “Okay.” I walked as close to Madison as I could without it being a three-legged race, and we found Timothy lifted into the air by Senator Roberts. There was genuine happiness on the man’s face, and this softened me temporarily, which was exactly what I needed to get through this moment.

back,” Daddy said. “It’ll work out.” He had no idea what to do about Helen. They spoke a completely different language. He was an old-timer who called school “schoolin”’ and called me “boy.” He had run off from Jim Crow in the South and felt that education, any education, was a privilege. Helen was far beyond that. Weeks passed, months, and Helen didn’t return. Finally Jack called. “I found her. She’s living with some crazy woman,” Jack said. She told Ma she didn’t know much about the lady other than that she wore a lot of scarves and used incense. Mommy got the address and went to the place herself. It was a dilapidated housing project near St. Nicholas Avenue, with junkies and winos standing out front. Mommy stepped past them and walked through a haze of reefer smoke and took the elevator to the eighth floor. She went to the apartment door and listened. There was music playing on a stereo inside, and the voice of someone on the phone. She knocked on the door. The stereo lowered. “Who is it?” someone asked. It sounded like Helen. “I’m here to see Helen,” Mommy said. Silence. “I know you’re there, Helen,” Mommy said. Silence. “Helen. I want you to come home. Whatever’s wrong we’ll fix. Just forget all of it and come on home.” From down the hallway, a doorway opened and a black woman watched in silence as the dark-haired, bowlegged white lady talked to the closed door. “Please come home, Helen.” The door had a peephole in it. The peephole slid back. A large black eye peered out. “Please come home, Helen. This is no place for you to be. Just come on home.” The peephole closed.

By my fifth sip, I am sooooo glad I splurged thirty-five delicious Euros. That’s right math whizzes, the Red Beach set me back over fifty American dollars. Who cares if I have to eat Top Ramen when I get home? I’ll gladly pilfer condiment packages from fast food restaurants to survive if it means I get to sit in ZPlage and sip Red Beaches with anorexic Russian models and their playboy sugar daddies.

Margot, can I talk to you for a minute?” Margot pretends to be busy counting out silverware. “Sure, what’s up, Daddy?” Daddy glances at me, and I look back down at the tomatoes. I am staying for moral support. “I would prefer if Ravi stayed in the guest room.” Margot bites her lip. “Why?” There’s an awkward silence before Daddy says, “I’m just not comfortable--” “But Daddy, we’re in college…You do realize we’ve shared a bed before, right?” Wryly he says, “I had my suspicions, but thank you for that confirmation.” “I’m almost twenty years old. I’ve been living away from home, thousands of miles away, for nearly two years.” Margot glances at me and I shrink down. I should’ve left when I had the chance. “Lara Jean and I aren’t little kids anymore--” “Hey, don’t bring me into this,” I say, as jokingly as I can.

When porn stars call it a day and head home with bruised and bloodied bodies, some of us attempt to have normal healthy relationships but our suitcase pimp boyfriends become jealous and physically abuse us. So instead we marry our porn directors or regress back to childhood and freeload off of 60 year old sugar daddies. I preferred sugar daddies because I desperately wanted the love and attention of my father.

In 1970, Alix Kates Shulman, a wife, mother, and writer who had joined the Women's Liberation Movement in New York, wrote a poignant account of how the initial equality and companionship of her marriage had deteriorated once she had children. "[N]ow I was restricted to the company of two demanding preschoolers and to the four walls of an apartment. It seemed unfair that while my husband's life had changed little when the children were born, domestic life had become the only life I had." His job became even more demanding, requiring late nights and travel out of town. Meanwhile it was virtually impossible for her to work at home. "I had no time for myself; the children were always there." Neither she nor her husband was happy with the situation, so they did something radical, which received considerable media coverage: they wrote up a marriage agreement... In it they asserted that "each member of the family has an equal right to his/her own time, work, values and choices... The ability to earn more money is already a privilege which must not be compounded by enabling the larger earner to buy out of his/her duties and put the burden on the one who earns less, or on someone hired from outside." The agreement insisted that domestic jobs be shared fifty-fifty and, get this girls, "If one party works overtime in any domestic job, she/he must be compensated by equal work by the other." The agreement then listed a complete job breakdown... in other worde, the agreement acknowledged the physical and the emotional/mental work involved in parenting and valued both. At the end of the article, Shulman noted how much happier she and her husband were as a result of the agreement. In the two years after its inception, Shulman wrote three children's books, a biography and a novel. But listen, too, to what it meant to her husband, who was now actually seeing his children every day. After the agreement had been in effect for four months, "our daughter said one day to my husband, 'You know, Daddy, I used to love Mommy more than you, but now I love you both the same.

My brothers’ faces haunt me. I hear their children, my nieces and nephews, asking me why I came home without their daddies. I think of their wives, imagine their questions. Our parents, forever seeing the faces of their lost sons when they look at me. They will want answers, demand to know how I survived. And what do I tell them? That I huddled like a baby inside my tent while their killer beckoned me forth for one last stand?

When Geraldine was still just a little girl, she come to our house with Louvadie… and Daddy saw all them freckles, just hundreds and hundreds of ‘em, and he named her right then and there. He said, ‘Why, she’s a speckled beauty.’ I guess he wanted to make her feel better, you know, about her being homely. And that’s what we’ll call you. But not ‘cause you’re ugly, but ‘cause of all your freckles. We’ll call you Speckled Beautry.

One of the reasons for his drinking, Henry said, was Jon's momma used to make the whole family get down on their knees and pray like fury every time Jon's daddy would come home boozed. Jon never quite got it straight that they weren't thanking the good Lord for his blessing, same as they did at the supper table. So according to Henry, booze come to be something holy to him and with faith like that Jon grew up religious as a deacon.

They were going home at last, the graveside ceremony over—actually it was held at the small Mount Hope Chapel; no grave would be dug for Norma until spring—when Ellie suddenly burst into tears. Louis glanced at her, surprised but not particularly alarmed. “Ellie, what is it?” “No more cookies,” Ellie sobbed. “She made the best oatmeal cookies I ever ate. But she won’t make them anymore because she’s dead. Daddy, why do people have to be dead?

Are you afraid of me, Kalea?” Arms akimbo, she widened her stance to eye him like a tough little mouse. “Am I supposed to be?” “No. Are you?” She twisted up her mouth and studied him carefully. “You look very strange. Are your eyes supposed to glow red like that?” “They are.” “And your teeth? Are they supposed to be so long and sharp?” “I’m Andarion. We all have those teeth.” “Dancer…” Fain said in warning. “We’ve got company. We need to go. Fast.” He held his hand up to his brother before he turned back to the girl. “I’m your father, Kalea, and I’ve come to take you home.” All the defiant fire went out of her as her jaw dropped. Her lips quivered. “I really have a daddy?” He nodded. Tears filled her eyes, making them glisten. “You definitely have a father. And both your mother and I love you very much.” “I have a mommy, too?” she breathed in disbelief. “Yes.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I hate this place, Daddy. Please take me home.” She threw herself into his arms. Closing his eyes, Hauk held her close to his chest. While he loved and adored every child his friends had, it was nothing compared to what went through him as those little arms encircled his neck and she placed her head on his shoulder. Not even what he felt for Darice compared to this. She’s my little girl. All he wanted was to hold on to her forever. But

THE GHOST OF THE AUTHOR'S MOTHER HAS A CONVERSATION WITH HIS FIANCÉE ABOUT HIGHWAYS ...and down south, honey. When the side of the road began to swell with dead and dying things, that's when us black children knew it was summer. Daddy didn't keep clocks in the house. Ain't no use when the sky round those parts always had some flames runnin' to horizon, lookin' like the sun was always out. back when I was a little girl, I swear, them white folk down south would do anything to stop another dark thing from touching the land, even the nighttime. We ain't have streetlights, or some grandmotherly voice riding through the fields on horseback tellin' us when to come inside. What we had was the stomach of a deer, split open on route 59. What we had was flies resting on the exposed insides of animals with their tongues touching the pavement. What we had was the smell of gunpowder and the promise of more to come, and, child, that'll get you home before the old folks would break out the moonshine and celebrate another day they didn't have to pull the body of someone they loved from the river. I say 'river' because I want you to always be able to look at the trees without crying. When we moved east, I learned how a night sky can cup a black girl in its hands and ask for forgiveness. My daddy sold the pistol he kept in the sock drawer and took me to the park. Those days, I used to ask him what he feared, and he always said "the bottom of a good glass." And then he stopped answering. And then he stopped coming home altogether. Something about the first day of a season, honey. Something always gotta sacrifice its blood. Everything that has its time must be lifted from the earth. My boys don't bother with seasons anymore. My sons went to sleep in the spring once and woke up to a motherless summer. All they know now is that it always be colder than it should be. I wish I could fix this for you. I'm sorry none of my children wear suits anymore. I wish ties didn't remind my boys of shovels, and dirt, and an empty living room. They all used to look so nice in ties. I'm sorry that you may come home one day to the smell of rotting meat, every calendar you own, torn off the walls, burning in a trashcan. And it will be the end of spring. And you will know.

and Daddy lifted me up on the fairgrounds and told me to look at the moon. ‘When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.’ So after he died, and I had to go to Aunt Bess—I mean, even now, in the city, when I see a full moon, it’s like he’s telling me not to look back or feel sad about things, that home is wherever I am.” She kissed me on the nose. “Or where you are, puppy. The center of my earth is you.” A

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous" i Tell me it was for the hunger & nothing less. For hunger is to give the body what it knows it cannot keep. That this amber light whittled down by another war is all that pins my hand to your chest. i You, drowning                         between my arms — stay. You, pushing your body                          into the river only to be left                          with yourself — stay. i I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after backhanding mother, then taking a chainsaw to the kitchen table, my father went to kneel in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through the walls. And so I learned that a man, in climax, was the closest thing to surrender. i Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.                    Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn. Say autumn despite the green                    in your eyes. Beauty despite daylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawn                    mounting in your throat. My thrashing beneath you                    like a sparrow stunned with falling. i Dusk: a blade of honey between our shadows, draining. i I wanted to disappear — so I opened the door to a stranger’s car. He was divorced. He was still alive. He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust). The pink breast cancer ribbon on his keychain swayed in the ignition. Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The moon, distant & flickering, trapped itself in beads of sweat on my neck. I let the fog spill through the cracked window & cover my fangs. When I left, the Buick kept sitting there, a dumb bull in pasture, its eyes searing my shadow onto the side of suburban houses. At home, I threw myself on the bed like a torch & watched the flames gnaw through my mother’s house until the sky appeared, bloodshot & massive. How I wanted to be that sky — to hold every flying & falling at once. i Say amen. Say amend. Say yes. Say yes anyway. i In the shower, sweating under cold water, I scrubbed & scrubbed. i In the life before this one, you could tell two people were in love because when they drove the pickup over the bridge, their wings would grow back just in time. Some days I am still inside the pickup. Some days I keep waiting. i It’s not too late. Our heads haloed             with gnats & summer too early to leave any marks.             Your hand under my shirt as static intensifies on the radio.             Your other hand pointing your daddy’s revolver             to the sky. Stars falling one by one in the cross hairs.             This means I won’t be afraid if we’re already             here. Already more than skin can hold. That a body             beside a body must ma

she does before she falls asleep. She pauses for a second or two, assessing the man walking up the field toward us. Then she screams, “Daddy!” and she begins to run, her sheep abandoned. I watch her racing down the field, elbows pumping. She is wearing pink shorts and red wellies and her hair trails behind her in a dark cloud. I watch Frank as he opens his arms, as she flies into them. As he swoops her up and spins her around. I can hear them laughing. I watch as Frank throws his head back and yells at the gray clouds passing overhead. “I am home. I AM HOME.” As Grace tries it, resting her neck against her father’s shoulder, face upturned to the sky. “I AM HOME. I AM HOME.” As they laugh and yell and laugh some more, this father and daughter who are meeting for the first time. Then they turn to me. Frank stretches out his right arm and Grace, cottoning on instantly, holds out her left. A giant man and girl scarecrow.

But suppose my daughters had approached me as we often approach God. “Hey, Dad, glad you’re home. Here is what I want. More toys. More candy. And can we go to Disneyland this summer?” “Whoa,” I would have wanted to say. “I’m not a waiter, and this isn’t a restaurant. I’m your father, and this is our house. Why don’t you just climb up on Daddy’s lap and let me tell you how much I love you?” Ever thought God might want to do the same with you? Oh, he wouldn’t say that to me. He wouldn’t? Then to whom was he speaking when he said, “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jer. 31:3 NIV)? Was he playing games when he said, “Nothing . . . will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ” (Rom. 8:39)? Buried in the seldom-quarried mines of the minor prophets is this jewel: The LORD your God is with you; the mighty One will save you. He will rejoice over you. You will rest in his love; he will sing and be joyful about you. (Zeph. 3:17) Don’t move too quickly through that verse. Read it again and prepare yourself for a surprise. The LORD your God is with you; the mighty One will save you. He will rejoice over you. You will rest in his love; he will sing and be joyful about you. (Zeph. 3:17) Note who is active and who is passive. Who is singing, and who is resting? Who is rejoicing over his loved one, and who is being rejoiced over? We tend to think we are the singers and God is the “singee.” Most certainly that is often the case. But apparently there are times when God wishes we would just be still and (what a stunning thought!) let him sing over us. I can see you squirming. You say you aren’t worthy of such affection? Neither was Judas, but Jesus washed his feet. Neither was Peter, but Jesus fixed him breakfast. Neither were the Emmaus-bound disciples, but Jesus took time to sit at their table. Besides, who are we to determine if we are worthy? Our job is simply to be still long enough to let him have us and let him love us.

Good show,” Adam says as he cracks his neck. “I’m getting too old for this shit.” “You are old.” “You’re older than I am,” Adam reminds me. Even though I’m forty-two, I enjoy the rush of performing. I’d just like it not to be so rough on my aging body. I don’t remember having to take this many painkillers a few years ago, but between the traveling, shit food, and performing—I feel old as fuck. Even though I love acting much more than I thought I would, I love the fans more. I don’t have this kind of fun when I’m stuck on a set all day. I look over at my brother, “Randy is older than all of us, so there’s that.” “Fuck off,” Randy tosses back. “We’ve got a few weeks before we need to meet up again since the tour is over. I’m going to head home to Savannah. She said the kids are acting up. It’s time for Daddy to come lay the smack down.” “Right.” I laugh. Those kids have him wrapped around his finger. “We all know Vannah is who they listen to.” “Don’t piss in my Cheerios.

He couldn’t have known it, but among the original run of The History of Love, at least one copy was destined to change a life. This particular book was one of the last of the two thousand to be printed, and sat for longer than the rest in a warehouse in the outskirts of Santiago, absorbing the humidity. From there it was finally sent to a bookstore in Buenos Aires. The careless owner hardly noticed it, and for some years it languished on the shelves, acquiring a pattern of mildew across the cover. It was a slim volume, and its position on the shelf wasn’t exactly prime: crowded on the left by an overweight biography of a minor actress, and on the right by the once-bestselling novel of an author that everyone had since forgotten, it hardly left its spine visible to even the most rigorous browser. When the store changed owners it fell victim to a massive clearance, and was trucked off to another warehouse, foul, dingy, crawling with daddy longlegs, where it remained in the dark and damp before finally being sent to a small secondhand bookstore not far from the home of the writer Jorge Luis Borges. The owner took her time unpacking the books she’d bought cheaply and in bulk from the warehouse. One morning, going through the boxes, she discovered the mildewed copy of The History of Love. She’d never heard of it, but the title caught her eye. She put it aside, and during a slow hour in the shop she read the opening chapter, called 'The Age of Silence.' The owner of the secondhand bookstore lowered the volume of the radio. She flipped to the back flap of the book to find out more about the author, but all it said was that Zvi Litvinoff had been born in Poland and moved to Chile in 1941, where he still lived today. There was no photograph. That day, in between helping customers, she finished the book. Before locking up the shop that evening, she placed it in the window, a little wistful about having to part with it. The next morning, the first rays of the rising sun fell across the cover of The History of Love. The first of many flies alighted on its jacket. Its mildewed pages began to dry out in the heat as the blue-gray Persian cat who lorded over the shop brushed past it to lay claim to a pool of sunlight. A few hours later, the first of many passersby gave it a cursory glance as they went by the window. The shop owner did not try to push the book on any of her customers. She knew that in the wrong hands such a book could easily be dismissed or, worse, go unread. Instead she let it sit where it was in the hope that the right reader might discover it. And that’s what happened. One afternoon a tall young man saw the book in the window. He came into the shop, picked it up, read a few pages, and brought it to the register. When he spoke to the owner, she couldn’t place his accent. She asked where he was from, curious about the person who was taking the book away. Israel, he told her, explaining that he’d recently finished his time in the army and was traveling around South America for a few months. The owner was about to put the book in a bag, but the young man said he didn’t need one, and slipped it into his backpack. The door chimes were still tinkling as she watched him disappear, his sandals slapping against the hot, bright street. That night, shirtless in his rented room, under a fan lazily pushing around the hot air, the young man opened the book and, in a flourish he had been fine-tuning for years, signed his name: David Singer. Filled with restlessness and longing, he began to read.

There are all sorts of different families, Katie. Some families have one mommy, some families have one daddy, or two families. And some children live with their uncle or aunt. Some live with their grandparents, and some children live with foster parents. And some live in separate homes, in separate neighborhoods, in different areas of the country - and they may not see each other for days, or weeks, months... even years at a time. But if there's love, dear... those are the ties that bind, and you'll have a family in your heart, forever.

There are two different types of time. Chronos time is what we live in. It’s regular time. It’s one minute at a time, staring down the clock until bedtime time. It’s ten excruciating minutes in the Target line time, four screaming minutes in time-out time, two hours until Daddy gets home time. Chronos is the hard, slow-passing time we parents often live in. Then there’s Kairos time. Kairos is God’s time. It’s time outside of time. It’s metaphysical time. Kairos is those magical moments in which time stands still. I have a few of those moments each day, and I cherish them.

Ok, let’s get practical and talk about how to implement PNP Time in your home: Give it a name to indicate that this time is special. I use the term PNP Time because I happen to love a good acronym and, also, there’s something a bit silly about the term that my kids really like. Feel free to name it something else, like Daddy-Marco Time or Mommy-Daughter time. Limit time to ten to fifteen minutes. No phones, no screens, no siblings, no distractions. Let your child pick the play. This is key. Allow your child to be in the spotlight; your job is only to notice, imitate, reflect, and describe what they’re doing.

I thumped her on the back, picked her up and dropped her on top of her dungarees. “Put them pants on,” I said, “and be a man.” She did, but she cried quietly until I shook her and said gently, “Stop it now. I didn’t carry on like that when I was a little girl.” I got into my clothes and dumped her into the bow of the canoe and shoved off. All the way back to the cabin I forced her to play one of our pet games. I would say something—anything—and she would try to say something that rhymed with it. Then it would be her turn. She had an extraordinary rhythmic sense, and an excellent ear. I started off with “We’ll go home and eat our dinners.” “An’ Lord have mercy on us sinners,” she cried. Then, “Let’s see you find a rhyme for ‘month’!” “I bet I’ll do it … jutht thith onthe,” I replied. “I guess I did it then, by cracky.” “Course you did, but then you’re wacky. Top that, mister funny-lookin’!” I pretended I couldn’t, mainly because I couldn’t, and she soundly kicked my shin as a penance. By the time we reached the cabin she was her usual self, and I found myself envying the resilience of youth. And she earned my undying respect by saying nothing to Anjy about the afternoon’s events, even when Anjy looked us over and said, “Just look at you two filthy kids! What have you been doing—swimming in the bayou?” “Daddy splashed me,” said Patty promptly. “And you had to splash him back. Why did he splash you?” “ ’Cause I spit mud through my teeth at him to make him mad,” said my outrageous child. “Patty!” “Mea culpa,” I said, hanging my head. “ ’Twas I who spit the mud.” Anjy threw up her hands. “Heaven knows what sort of a woman Patty’s going to grow up to be,” she said, half angrily. “A broad-minded and forgiving one like her lovely mother,” I said quickly. “Nice work, bud,” said Patty. Anjy laughed. “Outnumbered again. Come in and feed the face.

The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows. You see? Size defeats us. For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe where the air drowns him and the light is blue madness? Where hugh bipeds with no gills stuff it into a suffocating box and cover it with wet weeds to die?

Concord Academy. Since leaving home, John’s sister had decided that she, too, wished to take to the skies. “People always think of John running up to welcome his father’s helicopter,” Pierre Salinger said. “They forget Caroline was on the White House lawn waiting for Daddy, too.” Moreover, JFK’s campaign plane was named after her—something she took considerable pride in as a little girl. “Caroline had been flying for years before John was even born,” George Plimpton said. “Flying was second nature to her, and it made perfect sense that she’d want to give it a try.” As enthusiastic as John was about aviation, it was their stepbrother who took them up in planes

I started carrying an old tour book for the Florida Keys in my bag with me at all times. I'd had it since I was a kid, and after my daddy died, I read it to escape back to memories of him taking me there. As I read it to my guys, we'd leave whatever hospital we were in, and go somewhere beautiful, away from trouble and worry. They'd all come home to Arkansas, a place that had birthed them but wouldn't claim them. So we left. . . . We went someplace else, where they were safe and warm. Where there was nothing to be hidden and nothing wrong with admiring the way the sun shone down on the beauty of men. As it it existed for that very reason -- to be admired and loved.

The Freemantles had come to Nebraska as freed slaves, and Abagail’s own great-granddaughter Molly laughed in a nasty, cynical way and suggested the money Abby’s father had used to buy the home place – money paid to him by Sam Freemantle of Lewis, South Carolina, as wages for the eight years her daddy and his brothers had stayed on after the States War had ended – had been ‘conscience money.’ Abagail had held her tongue when Molly said that – Molly and Jim and the others were young and didn’t understand anything but the veriest good and the veriest bad – but inside she had rolled her eyes and said to herself: Conscience money? Well, is there any money cleaner than that?

There's no such thing as witches. But there used to be. It used to be the air was so thick with magic you could taste it on your tongue like ash. Witches lurked in every tangled wood and waited at every midnight-crossroad with sharp-toothed smiles. They conversed with dragons on lonely mountaintops and rode rowan-wood brooms across full moons; they charmed the stars to dance beside them on the summer solstice and rode to battle with familiars at their heels. It used to be witches were wild as crows and fearless as foxes, because magic blazed bright and the night was theirs. But then came the plague and the purges. The dragons were slain and the witches were burned and the night belonged to men with torches and crosses. Witching isn’t all gone, of course. My grandmother, Mama Mags, says they can’t ever kill magic because it beats like a great red heartbeat on the other side of everything, that if you close your eyes you can feel it thrumming beneath the soles of your feet, thumpthumpthump. It’s just a lot better-behaved than it used to be. Most respectable folk can’t even light a candle with witching, these days, but us poor folk still dabble here and there. Witch-blood runs thick in the sewers, the saying goes. Back home every mama teaches her daughters a few little charms to keep the soup-pot from boiling over or make the peonies bloom out of season. Every daddy teaches his sons how to spell ax-handles against breaking and rooftops against leaking. Our daddy never taught us shit, except what a fox teaches chickens — how to run, how to tremble, how to outlive the bastard — and our mama died before she could teach us much of anything. But we had Mama Mags, our mother’s mother, and she didn’t fool around with soup-pots and flowers. The preacher back home says it was God’s will that purged the witches from the world. He says women are sinful by nature and that magic in their hands turns naturally to rot and ruin, like the first witch Eve who poisoned the Garden and doomed mankind, like her daughter’s daughters who poisoned the world with the plague. He says the purges purified the earth and shepherded us into the modern era of Gatling guns and steamboats, and the Indians and Africans ought to be thanking us on their knees for freeing them from their own savage magics. Mama Mags said that was horseshit, and that wickedness was like beauty: in the eye of the beholder. She said proper witching is just a conversation with that red heartbeat, which only ever takes three things: the will to listen to it, the words to speak with it, and the way to let it into the world. The will, the words, and the way. She taught us everything important comes in threes: little pigs, bill goats gruff, chances to guess unguessable names. Sisters. There wer ethree of us Eastwood sisters, me and Agnes and Bella, so maybe they'll tell our story like a witch-tale. Once upon a time there were three sisters. Mags would like that, I think — she always said nobody paid enough attention to witch-tales and whatnot, the stories grannies tell their babies, the secret rhymes children chant among themselves, the songs women sing as they work. Or maybe they won't tell our story at all, because it isn't finished yet. Maybe we're just the very beginning, and all the fuss and mess we made was nothing but the first strike of the flint, the first shower of sparks. There's still no such thing as witches. But there will be.

The children understood the stakes they were fighting for. I think of one teenage boy whose father’s devotion to the movement turned sour when he learned that his son had pledged himself to become a demonstrator. The father forbade his son to participate. “Daddy,” the boy said, “I don’t want to disobey you, but I have made my pledge. If you try to keep me home, I will sneak off. If you think I deserve to be punished for that, I’ll just have to take the punishment. For, you see, I’m not doing this only because I want to be free. I’m doing it also because I want freedom for you and Mama, and I want it to come before you die.” That father thought again, and gave his son his blessing.

i don't want to give the impression that I fault my father. I don't. The truth is that he's one of my heroes. He's monumental to me. I believed - and still do - that a man must stand in the door of his home and let the wolf get him before the wolf gets his family. The wolf never got my father or his family, and I admire Daddy's guts. He never slacked off work or lied to me or shrugged his responsibilities. He dealt with his family from a distance, but was available, when needed. Eventually I'd do the same. I don't know whether I was copying him or whether, by coincidence, my work, like Daddy's, simply kept me away. All I know is that in many ways, big and small, I've followed my father.

It was because of the war, Daddy had once confided in them--- everything she loved had been lost when that bomb fell on her family home... and turned her past to rubble. She'd been determined her children would never suffer the same fate. She might not be able to spare them every heartache, but she could damn well make sure they knew where to find their class photo when they wanted it. Their mother's passion for things, for possessions---objects that could be held in one's hands and invested with deeper meaning---had verged on obsessive, her enthusiasm for collecting so great that is was hard not to fall in line. Everything was kept; nothing thrown away; traditions adhered to religiously.

Did Mama leave you all alone in here?" I picked her up out of bed and rubbed her back for a minute while she hiccuped. "Daddy's here," I murmured against her bald head, rocking her from side to side. "Let's get that wet diaper off you." I laid her on the bed and grabbed a diaper from the top of Kate's dresser, talking the whole time. "I don't know what your mommy was thinking, leaving my princess in here all alone," I crooned, my voice somehow keeping Iris calm. "She's outside with your brothers and sister and Daddy's friend Miles. He's a jackass. You stay away from him, okay?" I smiled as Iris froze, like she was listening intently. "Daddy was not very nice," I said, pulling her little pants down her legs and unbuttoning her onesie. "I wasn't even there when you were born, and I'm really sorry about that. But your mama came home with me anyway, so that means there's a chance, right? As long as Miles keeps his you-know-what in this pants." Iris lifted her hand to her face and tried really hard to get it to her mouth, her eyes unfocused as I babbled. "You're doing so good, princess. Look at you, not even crying while I change you. Such a big girl." I finished re-dressing her and pulled her to my chest. "You think your mama could love me again?" I asked, kissing her little cheek. "Probably not, huh? We'll just have to keep working at it so you can live with Daddy forever.

I went to a party, And remembered what you said. You told me not to drink, Mom So I had a sprite instead. I felt proud of myself, The way you said I would, That I didn't drink and drive, Though some friends said I should. I made a healthy choice, And your advice to me was right, The party finally ended, And the kids drove out of sight. I got into my car, Sure to get home in one piece, I never knew what was coming, Mom Something I expected least. Now I'm lying on the pavement, And I hear the policeman say, The kid that caused this wreck was drunk, Mom, his voice seems far away. My own blood's all around me, As I try hard not to cry. I can hear the paramedic say, This girl is going to die. I'm sure the guy had no idea, While he was flying high, Because he chose to drink and drive, Now I would have to die. So why do people do it, Mom Knowing that it ruins lives? And now the pain is cutting me, Like a hundred stabbing knives. Tell sister not to be afraid, Tell daddy to be brave, And when I go to heaven, Put Daddy's Girl on my grave. Someone should have taught him, That its wrong to drink and drive. Maybe if his parents had, I'd still be alive. My breath is getting shorter, Mom I'm getting really scared. These are my final moments, And I'm so unprepared. I wish that you could hold me Mom, As I lie here and die. I wish that I could say, "I love you, Mom!" So I love you and good-bye.

This reminds me of a funny Chris story. Back when we lived in California, Easter was coming up and Chris was home with the kids. I forget exactly what the children did, but they got out of line and Chris decided rather than disciplining them, he’d use a little daddy logic on them. Daddy logic, as expressed by a SEAL sniper. “I’ll tell you, you better behave,” he said, “or I’ll keep the Easter Bunny from coming.” “How?” one of them wondered. Daddy logic met kid logic and raised the ante through the roof. “I’ll sit on the stoop and I’ll shoot him when he comes,” said Chris. Somehow he kept a straight face. “You’ll ruin it for everyone, not just yourselves.” We had great behavior for weeks. It’s different living with a sniper as a dad.

I kept myself to myself in the early years. I walked around and around the playground pretending to scale great mountain ranges or horizontal marshlands. In the summer months I sat beneath a sycamore tree on the edge of the school field. I collected insects in my hands only to release them at the end of playtime or lunch hour. Daddy asked me if I wanted an insect collecting set for my birthday or some jars to put them in to and take them home but I said I did not. I liked having them in my hands for that certain amount of time then letting them go off again into the undergrowth, back to their homes and to their lives. I would think about them living those lives while I sat back in my chair in the classroom and gazed blankly at times-tables.

He shortened up the rope a couple of reaches and dragged the wolf through the bar ditch and stood by the fence and watched the truck come over the hill and approach in its attendant dust and clatter. The old man slowed and peered. The wolf was jerking and twisting and the boy stood behind her and held her with both hands. By the time the truck had pulled abreast of them he was lying on the ground with his legs scissored about her midriff and his arms around her neck. The old man stopped and sat the idling truck and leaned across and rolled down the window. What in the hell, he said. What in the hell. You reckon you could turn that thing off? the boy said. That's a damn wolf. Yessir it is. What in the hell. The truck's scarin her. Scarin her? Yessir. Boy what's wrong with you? That thing comes out of that riggin it'll eat you alive. Yessir. What are you doin with him? It's a she. It's a what? A she. It's a she. Hell fire, it dont make a damn he or she. What are you doin with it? Fixin to take it home. Home? Yessir. Whatever in the contumacious hell for? Can you not turn that thing off? It aint all that easy to start again. Well could I maybe get you to drive down there and catch my horse for me and bring him back. I'd tie her up but she gets all fuzzled up in the fencewire. What I'd liketo do is to try and save you the trouble of bein eat, the old man said. What are you takin it home for? It's kindly a long story. Well I'd sure like to hear it. The boy looked down the road where the horse stood grazing. He looked at the old man. Well, he said. My daddy wanted me to come and get him if I caught her but I didnt want to leave her cause they's been some vaqueros takin their dinner over yonder and I figured they'd probably shoot her so I just decided to take her on home with me. Have you always been crazy? I dont know. I never was much put to the test before today. How old are you? Sixteen. Sixteen. Yessir. Well you aint got the sense God give a goose. Did you know that? You may be right. How do you expect your horse to tolerate a bunch of nonsense such as this. If I can get him caught he wont have a whole lot of say about it. You plan on leadin that thing behind a horse? Yessir. How you expect to get her to do that? She aint got a whole lot of choice either.

The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but size. Size encompasses life, and the Tower encompasses size. The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows. You see? Size defeats us. For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe where the air drowns him and the light is blue madness? Where huge bipeds with no gills stuff it into a suffocating box and cover it with wet weeds to die?.

Just before noon one sunny summer’s day, three bears were returning home from their morning wander. They lived in a sturdy wooden cabin, unpretentious and rustic. Approaching the house he’d built with his own paws, Daddy Bear felt a sense of satisfaction. The residence blended in with the forest rather than standing out from it. All the construction materials had been ethically sourced. The wood came from trees felled by storms. A thick layer of turf on the roof provided insulation in winter and kept the cabin cool in summer. In addition to being practical, the turf looked pretty. Its grass sprouted straight up like hair jutting from a mythic head. A little too big to be quaint, yet a little too small to be showoffish, the house was just right. And just right was the way Daddy Bear liked things.

I’ll take you home,” I say, and my words are simple, obvious. I’m surprised when she follows me to the passenger door of the Merc and slips into the seat without hesitation, but she seems dazed somehow. Naïve, maybe. Maybe that’s what got her into this mess in the first place. I suspect as much. Young, naïve and vulnerable. No way should she be out alone this late at night. No way should she be here, in this shithole part of Brighton. I feel the anger, at some unknown parents who should be worried sick, parents who should have taught her more fucking sense. A father who should be driving around looking for his daughter, who should be protecting her from pieces of shit like that fucking waster back there. I ignore the twitch in my jaw. Push aside that feeling. She needs a ride home. Just a ride home.

If Daddy got fired,” Claire began thoughtfully, “what would... what would change? I’m not sure …” “We would have to be very careful with our money,” said Mom. “We couldn’t buy extras or go on trips. And your dad would stay at home and look for a new job. He wouldn’t be happy about that,” she added. “Why not?” asked Margo. “Because looking for a new job, especially when you’ve been fired, is not easy. Dad will have to hear people say no to him a lot. He might start applying for jobs that are below the level of the one he’s got now, and people still might say no. He’ll call companies and hear other people say that there aren’t any jobs at all. It would be like going over to your friends’ houses and hearing each one of them say they don’t want to play with you.” “Ooh,” said Claire softly. That had hit home.

As I write this, I am still waiting for Steve to walk through the door. His sarong still hangs on the bed. His toothbrush is in the bathroom. Reality is sinking in more and more. Bindi and I have a lot of heart-to-heart talks. These seem to help her, just like when she was younger and lost a special koala named Wilson. Wilson died of renal failure and is buried in our backyard. I felt thankful that over the years, I had set the foundation of faith with Bindi. “As hard as it is to understand, there was a reason for all of this,” I told her. “One day it will be clear.” Robert is like a pitiful puppy, and he still waits patiently for his daddy to come home from heaven. I hadn’t been prepared for how devastated Robert would be. Some nights he sits in the bathtub and cries. “I want my daddy,” he says, over and over. It absolutely tears my heart out.

It was in that kitchen where I waited for Daddy and Mrs. Masicotte to be finished with the weekly business, two rooms away. Though Mrs. Masicotte seemed as indifferent to me as her renters were, she provided richly for me while I waited. On hand were plates of bakery cookies, thick picture books with shiny pages, punch-out paper dolls. My companion during these vigils was Zahra, Mrs. Masicotte’s fat tan cocker spaniel, who sat at my feet and watched, unblinking, as cookies traveled mercilessly from the plate to my mouth. Mrs. Masicotte and my father laughed and talked loud during their meetings and sometimes played the radio. (Our radio at home was a plastic box; Mrs. Masicotte’s was a piece of furniture.) “Are we going soon?” I’d ask Daddy whenever he came out to the kitchen to check on me or get them another pair of Rheingolds. “A few minutes,” was what he always said, no matter how much longer they were going to be. I wanted my father to be at home laughing with Ma on Saturday afternoons, instead of with Mrs. Masicotte, who had yellowy white hair and a fat little body like Zahra’s. My father called Mrs. Masicotte by her first name, LuAnn; Ma called her, simply, “her.” “It’s her,” she’d tell Daddy whenever the telephone interrupted our dinner. Sometimes, when the meetings dragged on unreasonably or when they laughed too loud in there, I sat and dared myself to do naughty things, then did them. One time I scribbled on all the faces in the expensive storybooks. Another Saturday I waterlogged a sponge and threw it at Zahra’s face. Regularly, I tantalized the dog with the cookies I made sure stayed just out of her reach. My actions—each of which invited my father’s anger—shocked and pleased me.

As a result of the experience of consistent parental love and caring throughout childhood, such fortunate children will enter adulthood not only with a deep internal sense of their own value but also with a deep internal sense of security. All children are terrified of abandonment, and with good reason. This fear of abandonment begins around the age of six months, as soon as the child is able to perceive itself to be an individual, separate from its parents. For with this perception of itself as an individual comes the realization that as an individual it is quite helpless, totally dependent and totally at the mercy of its parents for all forms of sustenance and means of survival. To the child, abandonment by its parents is the equivalent of death. Most parents, even when they are otherwise relatively ignorant or callous, are instinctively sensitive to their children’s fear of abandonment and will therefore, day in and day out, hundreds and thousands of times, offer their children needed reassurance: “You know Mommy and Daddy aren’t going to leave you behind”; “Of course Mommy and Daddy will come back to get you”; “Mommy and Daddy aren’t going to forget about you.” If these words are matched by deeds, month in and month out, year in and year out, by the time of adolescence the child will have lost the fear of abandonment and in its stead will have a deep inner feeling that the world is a safe place in which to be and protection will be there when it is needed. With this internal sense of the consistent safety of the world, such a child is free to delay gratification of one kind or another, secure in the knowledge that the opportunity for gratification, like home and parents, is always there, available when needed.

Phone Sex (Ft. Grimes) Make my eyes, mothers weep. all I see, is music to me. Oh my love, love, love, love. 
Talk to god, on the phone Born to him, I'm not alone. Please daddy, take me home.

 (Talk to god…)

 Please daddy, take me home.
 Please daddy, talk to god. Please daddy, take me home. 
Please daddy talk to God.

 Hey daddy, hey daddy, I'm okay. Livin' my love in a serious way. Oh, hey daddy, hey daddy, it's too soon. 
I am living on the moon. Hey daddy, hey daddy, I'm okay. Livin' my love in a serious way. Oh, hey daddy, hey daddy, it's too soon. 
I am living on the moon. 

Make my eyes, mothers weep all I see, is music to me. Oh my love, love, love, love.

 Talk to god, on the phone. Born to him, I'm not alone. Hey daddy, take me home.

 (Talk to god…)

 Hey daddy, hey daddy, I'm okay. Livin' my love in a serious way. Oh, hey daddy, hey daddy, it's too soon. 
I am living on the moon.

Come on,” I hooked my arm through Aphrodite’s and started to pull her to the Street Cats tent. “You haven’t been good enough to watch.” Before Aphrodite could argue, we were at the Street Cats booth, facing a beaming Sister Mary Angela. “Oh, good, Zoey and Aphrodite. I need the both of you.” The nun made a gracious gesture to the young family standing beside one of the kitten cages. “This is the Cronley family. They have decided to adopt both of the calico kittens. It’s so lovely that the two of them have found their forever homes together—they are unusually close, even for littermates.” “That’s great,” I said. “I’ll start on their paperwork.” “I’ll help you. Two cats—two sets of paperwork,” Aphrodite said. “We came with a note from our veterinarian,” the mom said. “I just knew we’d find our kitten tonight.” “Even though we didn’t expect to find two of them,” her husband added. He squeezed his wife’s shoulder and smiled down at her with obvious affection. “Well, we didn’t expect the twins, either,” his wife said, glancing over at the two girls who were still looking in the kitten cage and giggling at the fluffy calicos that would be joining their family. “That surprise turned out great, which is why I think the two kittens will be perfect as well,” said the dad. Like seeing Lenobia and Travis together—this family made my heart feel good. I had started to move to the makeshift desk with Aphrodite when one of the little girls asked, “Hey mommy, what are those black things?” Something in the child’s voice had me pausing, changing direction, and heading to the kitten cage. When I got there I instantly knew why. Within the cage the two calico kittens were hissing and batting at several large, black spiders. “Oh, yuck!” the mom said. “Looks like your school might have a spider problem.” “I know a good exterminator if you need a recommendation,” the dad said. “We’re gonna need a shit ton more than a good exterminator,” Aphrodite whispered as we stared into the kitten cage. “Yeah, uh, well, we don’t usually have bug issues here,” I babbled as disgust shivered up my back. “Eesh, Daddy! There are lots more of them.” The little blond girl was pointing at the back of the cage. It was so completely covered with spiders that it seemed to be alive with their seething movements. “Oh, my goodness!” Sister Mary Angela looked pale as she stared at the spiders that appeared to be multiplying. “Those things weren’t there moments ago.” “Sister, why don’t you take this nice family into the tent and get their paperwork started,” I said quickly, meeting the nun’s sharp gaze with my own steady one. “And send Damien out here to me. I can use his help to take care of this silly spider problem.” “Yes, yes, of course.” The nun didn’t hesitate. “Get Shaunee, Shaylin, and Stevie Rae,” I told Aphrodite, keeping my voice low. “You’re going to cast a circle in front of all of these

Alas, great is my sorrow. Your name is Ah Chen, and when you were born I was not truly pleased. I am a farmer, and a farmer needs strong sons to help with his work, but before a year had passed you had stolen my heart. You grew more teeth, and you grew daily in wisdom, and you said 'Mommy' and 'Daddy' and your pronunciation was perfect. When you were three you would knock at the door and then you would run back and ask, 'Who is it?' When you were four your uncle came to visit and you played the host. Lifting your cup, you said, 'Ching!' and we roared with laughter and you blushed and covered your face with your hands, but I know that you thought yourself very clever. Now they tell me that I must try to forget you, but it is hard to forget you. "You carried a toy basket. You sat at a low stool to eat porridge. You repeated the Great Learning and bowed to Buddha. You played at guessing games, and romped around the house. You were very brave, and when you fell and cut your knee you did not cry because you did not think it was right. When you picked up fruit or rice, you always looked at people's faces to see if it was all right before putting it in your mouth, and you were careful not to tear your clothes. "Ah Chen, do you remember how worried we were when the flood broke our dikes and the sickness killed our pigs? Then the Duke of Ch'in raised our taxes and I was sent to plead with him, and I made him believe that we could not pay out taxes. Peasants who cannot pay taxes are useless to dukes, so he sent his soldiers to destroy our village, and thus it was the foolishness of your father that led to your death. Now you have gone to Hell to be judged, and I know that you must be very frightened, but you must try not to cry or make loud noises because it is not like being at home with your own people. "Ah Chen, do you remember Auntie Yang, the midwife? She was also killed, and she was very fond of you. She had no little girls of her own, so it is alright for you to try and find her, and to offer her your hand and ask her to take care of you. When you come before the Yama Kings, you should clasp your hands together and plead to them: 'I am young and I am innocent. I was born in a poor family, and I was content with scanty meals. I was never wilfully careless of my shoes and my clothing, and I never wasted a grain of rice. If evil spirits bully me, may thou protect me.' You should put it just that way, and I am sure that the Yama Kings will protect you. "Ah Chen, I have soup for you and I will burn paper money for you to use, and the priest is writing down this prayer that I will send to you. If you hear my prayer, will you come to see me in your dreams? If fate so wills that you must yet lead an earthly life, I pray that you will come again to your mother's womb. Meanwhile I will cry, 'Ah Chen, your father is here!' I can but weep for you, and call your name.

The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows. “You see? Size defeats us. For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe where the air drowns him and the light is blue madness? Where huge bipeds with no gills stuff it into a suffocating box and cover it with wet weeds to die? “Or one might take the tip of a pencil and magnify it. One reaches the point where a stunning realization strikes home: The pencil-tip is not solid; it is composed of atoms which whirl and revolve like a trillion demon planets. What seems solid to us is actually only a loose net held together by gravity. Viewed at their actual size, the distances between these atoms might become leagues, gulfs, aeons. The atoms themselves are composed of nuclei and revolving protons and electrons. One may step down further to subatomic particles. And then to what? Tachyons? Nothing? Of course not. Everything in the universe denies nothing; to suggest an ending is the one absurdity. “If you fell outward to the limit of the universe, would you find a board fence and signs reading DEAD END? No. You might find something hard and rounded, as the chick must see the egg from the inside. And if you should peck through that shell (or find a door), what great and torrential light might shine through your opening at the end of space? Might you look through and discover our entire universe is but part of one atom on a blade of grass? Might you be forced to think that by burning a twig you incinerate an eternity of eternities? That existence rises not to one infinite but to an infinity of them?

Bad lovers face to face in the morning Shy apologies and polite regrets Slow dances that left no warning of Outraged glances and indiscreet yawning Good manners and bad breath get you nowhere Even presidents have newspaper lovers Ministers go crawling under covers She's no angel He's no saint They're all covered up with white washed grease paint And you say... Chorus: The teacher never told you anything but white lies But you never see the lies And you believe Oh you know you have been captured You feel so civilized And you look so pretty in your new lace sleeves The salty lips of the socialite sisters With their continental fingers that have never seen working blisters Oh I know they've got their problems I wish I was one of them They say daddy's coming home soon With his sergeant stripes and his Empire mug and spoon No more fast buck And when are they gonna learn their lesson When are they gonna stop all of these victory processions And you say...

Johan had been away working for several weeks and home only at the weekends. Sigge missed him and I missed him and we were walking through the park on our way to daycare, two tired and sad souls. Sigge was sitting quietly in the buggy. He usually asks about everything we see along the way, why the air is so transparent, where the sun actually lives and if I like ice cream with pears and whipped cream. But today he was just sitting there quiet and tired, and I wanted to stop and hold him but instead I walked even faster. And then in the middle of the silence his questions started to come. ‘Mommy, why does Daddy have to work in Växjö?’ I gave him a tired, noncommittal answer. ‘He just has to. That’s where his job is right now.’ ‘But why?’ Sigge continued. ‘To earn money so we can buy food and pay the rent.’ ‘Why?’ Sigge said again, and I realized that he really did not understand and then I started wondering whether I really understood. ‘People have to work,’ I said and heard how hollow it sounded.

I covered all topics—everything and everyone whom I could possibly have wronged, including God, of course—and I asked for forgiveness. But in another part of my brain, I was screaming, “FORGIVENESS FOR WHAT?” I had no idea, but the strength of that absurdity couldn’t pierce the armor of my compulsion. When I finished praying, I got up and walked home. My mother, my father, and my pregnant sister, Corinne, were all waiting in the living room, dressed in their robes. From the expression on their faces, I thought that someone had died. My mother started crying. My father spoke first: “We called the police—they just left here. Do you know what time it is? It’s three o’clock in the morning! Where were you? What in God’s name were you doing?” I couldn’t bring myself to say, “I was praying, Daddy—I was lying in a field, praying to God to forgive me.” And if he had said, “Forgive you for WHAT?” I would have said, “I don’t know!” and he would have say, “For eight hours? Are you nuts?” . . . and he would have been right.

This puts me in mind of a circumstance that occurred when I was laboring on a mission in London many, many years ago: We had an old gentleman there that had been in the army. He was a war veteran and he was preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ on the streets. A man came up and slapped him on the face. "Now," he says, "if you are a Christian turn the other cheek." So old daddy turned the other cheek, but he said: "Hit again and down you go." He would have gone down, too, if he had struck again. True, Jesus Christ taught that non-resistance, was right and praiseworthy and a duty under certain circumstances and conditions; but just look at him when he went into the temple, when he made that scourge of thongs, when he turned out the money-changers and kicked over their tables and told them to get out of the house of the Lord! "My house is a house of prayer," he said, "but ye have made it a den of thieves." Get out of here! Hear him crying, "Woe unto you Scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and then ye make him ten-fold more the child of hell than he was before." That was the other side of the spirit of Jesus. Jesus was no milksop. He was not to be trampled under foot. He was ready to submit when the time came for his martyrdom, and he was to be nailed on the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, but he was ready at any time to stand up for his rights like a man. He is not only called "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," but also "the Lion of the Tribe of Judah," and He will be seen to be terrible by and by to his enemies. Now while we are not particularly required to pattern after the "lion" side of his character unless it becomes necessary, the Lord does not expect us to submit to be trodden under foot by our enemies and never resist. The Lord does not want us to inculcate the spirit of war nor the spirit of bloodshed. In fact he has commanded us not to shed blood, but there are times and seasons, as we can find in the history of the world, in [the] Bible and the Book of Mormon, when it is justifiable and right and proper and the duty of men to go forth in the defense of their homes and their families and maintain their privileges and rights by force of arms.

As a black man Al, who went through the Civil rights fight in the 60s just like you did, and saw the first freedom bus burn in my home town of Anniston, Alabama, on May 14, 1961; I hated Dr. King for his non-violent philosophy. That did not change until I became a Christian later in life. Then I understood God’s biblical truth of love your enemy and do good to those who hate and persecute you. I think I have the right to tell you this sir; I think the likes of you and Jesse Jackson have done more damage to the black race than any white man will ever accomplish. You see as long as you can produce an ethnicity with a victim mentality to keep them in poverty, as the two of you get richer – you know like poverty pimps – and convince them that it is the white man’s fault because he has his boot on their necks, and as long as you teach our beautiful black women that there is a government out there to be their baby’s daddy, the two of you win. You are the self-proclaimed, appointed leaders of the black people. How we as black people have swallowed the lie that we have to have certain black leaders to get on the government teat escapes me.

He probably likes you. That's no reason to put ink all--" "I don't want him to like me," she said. Then she started looking at me funny. "Holden," she said, "how come you're not home Wednesday?" "What?" Boy, you have to watch her every minute. If you don't think she's smart, you're mad. "How come you're not home Wednesday?" she asked me. "You didn't get kicked out or anything, did you?" "I told you. They let us out early. They let the whole--" "You did get kicked out! You did!" old Phoebe said. Then she hit me on the leg with her fist. She gets very fisty when she feels like it. "You did! Oh, Holden!" She had her hand on her mouth and all. She gets very emotional, I swear to God. "Who said I got kicked out? Nobody said I--" "You did. You did," she said. Then she smacked me again with her fist. If you don't think that hurts, you're crazy. "Daddy'll kill you!" she said. Then she flopped on her stomach on the bed and put the goddam pillow over her head. She does that quite frequently. She's a true madman sometimes. "Cut it out, now," I said. "Nobody's gonna kill me. Nobody's gonna even--C'mon, Phoeb, take that goddam thing off your head. Nobody's gonna kill me." She wouldn't take it off, though. You can't make her do something if she doesn't want to.

suppose it’s not odd, then, that I have trouble reconciling my life to those of my friends, or at least to their lives as I perceive them to be. Charles and Camilla are orphans (how I longed to be an orphan when I was a child!) reared by grandmothers and great-aunts in a house in Virginia: a childhood I like to think about, with horses and rivers and sweet-gum trees. And Francis. His mother, when she had him, was only seventeen—a thin-blooded, capricious girl with red hair and a rich daddy, who ran off with the drummer for Vance Vane and his Musical Swains. She was home in three weeks, and the marriage was annulled in six; and, as Francis is fond of saying, the grandparents brought them up like brother and sister, him and his mother, brought them up in such a magnanimous style that even the gossips were impressed—English nannies and private schools, summers in Switzerland, winters in France. Consider even bluff old Bunny, if you would. Not a childhood of reefer coats and dancing lessons, any more than mine was. But an American childhood. Son of a Clemson football star turned banker. Four brothers, no sisters, in a big noisy house in the suburbs, with sailboats and tennis rackets and golden retrievers; summers on Cape Cod, boarding schools near Boston and tailgate picnics during football season; an upbringing vitally present in Bunny in every respect, from the way he shook your hand to the way he told a joke.

Her eyes watered triumphantly, and she let her gaze drop back towards the house: the window of her bedroom, the Michaelmas daisy she and Ma had planted over the poor, dead body of Constable the cat, the chink in the bricks where, embarrassingly, she used to leave notes for the fairies. There were faint memories of a time before, of being a very small child, collecting winkles from a pool by the seashore, of dining each night in the front room of her grandmother's seaside boardinghouse, but they were like a dream. The farmhouse was the only home she'd ever known. And although she didn't want a matching armchair of her own, she liked seeing her parents in theirs each night, knowing as she feel asleep that they were murmuring together on the other side of the thin wall, that she only had to reach out an arm to bother one of her sisters. She would miss them when she went. Laurel blinked. She would miss them. The certainty was swift and heavy. It sat in her stomach like a stone. They borrowed her clothes, broke her lipsticks, scratched her records, but she would miss them. The noise and heat of them, the movement and squabbles and crushing joy. They were like a litter of puppies, tumbling together in their shared bedroom. They overwhelmed outsiders and this pleased them. They were the Nicolson girls, Laurel, Rose, Iris, and Daphne; a garden of daughters, as Daddy rhapsodized when he'd had a pint too many. Unholy terrors, as Grandma proclaimed after their holiday visits.

I stared through the front door at Barrons Books and Baubles, uncertain what surprised me more: that the front seating cozy was intact or that Barrons was sitting there, boots propped on a table, surrounded by piles of books, hand-drawn maps tacked to the walls. I couldn’t count how many nights I’d sat in exactly the same place and position, digging through books for answers, occasionally staring out the windows at the Dublin night, and waiting for him to appear. I liked to think he was waiting for me to show. I leaned closer, staring in through the glass. He’d refurnished the bookstore. How long had I been gone? There was my magazine rack, my cashier’s counter, a new old-fashioned cash register, a small flat-screen TV/DVD player that was actually from this decade, and a sound dock for my iPod. There was a new sleek black iPod Nano in the dock. He’d done more than refurnish the place. He might as well have put a mat out that said WELCOME HOME, MAC. A bell tinkled as I stepped inside. His head whipped around and he half-stood, books sliding to the floor. The last time I’d seen him, he was dead. I stood in the doorway, forgetting to breathe, watching him unfold from the couch in a ripple of animal grace. He crammed the four-story room full, dwarfed it with his presence. For a moment neither of us spoke. Leave it to Barrons—the world melts down and he’s still dressed like a wealthy business tycoon. His suit was exquisite, his shirt crisp, tie intricately patterned and tastefully muted. Silver glinted at his wrist, that familiar wide cuff decorated with ancient Celtic designs he and Ryodan both wore. Even with all my problems, my knees still went weak. I was suddenly back in that basement. My hands were tied to the bed. He was between my legs but wouldn’t give me what I wanted. He used his mouth, then rubbed himself against my clitoris and barely pushed inside me before pulling out, then his mouth, then him, over and over, watching my eyes the whole time, staring down at me. What am I, Mac? he’d say. My world, I’d purr, and mean it. And I was afraid that, even now that I wasn’t Pri-ya, I’d be just as out of control in bed with him as I was then. I’d melt, I’d purr, I’d hand him my heart. And I would have no excuse, nothing to blame it on. And if he got up and walked away from me and never came back to my bed, I would never recover. I’d keeping waiting for a man like him, and there were no other men like him. I’d have to die old and alone, with the greatest sex of my life a painful memory. So, you’re alive, his dark eyes said. Pisses me off, the wondering. Do something about that. Like what? Can’t all be like you, Barrons. His eyes suddenly rushed with shadows and I couldn’t make out a single word. Impatience, anger, something ancient and ruthless. Cold eyes regarded me with calculation, as if weighing things against each other, meditating—a word Daddy used to point out was the larger part of premeditation. He’d say, Baby, once you start thinking about it, you’re working your way toward it. Was there something Barrons was working his way toward doing? I shivered.

It turned out there was something Marty did a little better. It all started with tuna casserole, or at least something RBG called tuna casserole. At Fort Sill one night, right after they were married, she dutifully presented the dish. That was her job, after all, or one of them. Marty squinted at the lumpy mass. “What is it?” And then he taught himself how to cook. The Escoffier cookbook had been a wedding gift from RBG’s cousin Richard. The legendary French chef had made his name at hotels like the Ritz in Paris and the Savoy in London. It was not exactly everyday fare for two young working parents on a military base in Oklahoma. But Marty found that his chemistry skills came in handy, and he began working his way through the book. Photograph by Mariana Cook made at the Ginsburgs’ home in 1998 Still, for years, the daily cooking was still RBG’s reluctant territory. Her repertoire involved thawing a frozen vegetable and some meat. “I had seven things I could make,” RBG said, “and when we got to number seven, we went back to number one.” Jane isn’t sure she saw a fresh vegetable until she was sent to France the summer she turned fourteen. Around that time, she decided, as RBG put it to me, “that Mommy should be phased out of the kitchen altogether.” RBG cooked her last meal in 1980. The division of labor in the family, Jane would say, developed into this: “Mommy does the thinking and Daddy does the cooking.” Growing up, James says, he got used to people asking him what his father did for a living, when his mother did something pretty interesting too.

Open All Night" (originally by Bruce Springsteen) I had the carburetor cleaned and checked With her line blown out, she's hummin' like a turbojet Propped her up in the backyard on concrete blocks For a new clutch plate and a new set of shocks Took her down to the carwash, check the plugs and points I'm goin' out tonight, I'm gonna rock that joint Early north Jersey industrial skyline I'm a all-set cobra jet creepin' through the nighttime Gotta find a gas station, gotta find a payphone This turnpike sure is spooky at night when you're all alone Gotta hit the gas, baby, I'm runnin' late This New Jersey in the mornin' like a lunar landscape The boss don't dig me, so he put me on the nightshift It takes me two hours to get back to where my baby lives In the wee wee hours, your mind gets hazy Radio relay towers, won't you lead me to my baby? Underneath the overpass, trooper hits his party light switch Goodnight, good luck, one two powershift I met Wanda when she was employed Behind the counter at the Route 60 Bob's Big Boy Fried chicken on the front seat, she's sittin' in my lap We're wipin' our fingers on a Texaco roadmap I remember Wanda up on scrap metal hill With them big brown eyes that make your heart stand still 5 A.M., oil pressure's sinkin' fast I make a pit stop, wipe the windshield, check the gas Gotta call my baby on the telephone Let her know that her daddy's comin' on home Sit tight, little mama, I'm comin' round I got three more hours, but I'm coverin' ground Your eyes get itchy in the wee wee hours Sun's just a red ball risin' over them refinery towers Radio's jammed up with gospel stations Lost souls callin' long distance salvation Hey Mr. DJ, won't you hear my last prayer? Hey ho rock 'n' roll, deliver me from nowhere Ryan Adams, Nebraska (2022)

Sweetheart Like You" Well the pressure's down, the boss ain't here He gone North, for a while They say that vanity got the best of him But he sure left here in style By the way, that's a cute hat And that smile's so hard to resist But what's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this ? You know, I once knew a woman who looked like you She wanted a whole man, not just a half She used to call me sweet daddy when I was only a child You kind of remind me of her when you laugh In order to deal in this game, got to make the queen disappear It's done with a flick of the wrist What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this ? You know, a woman like you should be at home That's where you belong Taking care for somebody nice Who don't know how to do you wrong Just how much abuse will you be able to take ? Well, there's no way to tell by that first kiss What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this ? You know you can make a name for yourself You can hear them tires squeal You can be known as the most beautiful woman Who ever crawled across cut glass to make a deal. You know, news of you has come down the line Even before ya came in the door They say in your father's house, there's many mansions Each one of them got a fireproof floor Snap out of it baby, people are jealous of you They smile to your face, but behind your back they hiss What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this ? Got to be an important person to be in here, honey Got to have done some evil deed Got to have your own harem when you come in the door Got to play your harp until your lips bleed. They say that patriotism is the last refuge To which a scoundrel clings Steal a little and they throw you in jail Steal a lot and they make you king There's only one step down from here, baby It's called the land of permanent bliss What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this ? Bob Dylan, Infidels (1983)

The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence celestial, glistening on Dublin stone there under starshiny coelum. God’s air, the Allfather’s air, scintillant circumambient cessile air. Breathe it deep into thee. By heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done a doughty deed and no botch! Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest progenitor barring none in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle. Astounding! In her lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man’s work. Cleave to her! Serve! Toil on, labour like a very bandog and let scholarment and all Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all their daddies, Theodore. Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with butcher’s bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the countinghouse? Head up! For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See, thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby Dullman there with his Joan? A canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell thee! He is a mule, a dead gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked kreutzer. Copulation without population! No, say I! Herod’s slaughter of the innocents were the truer name. Vegetables, forsooth, and sterile cohabitation! Give her beefsteaks, red, raw, bleeding! She is a hoary pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever, bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney, Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music! Twenty years of it, regret them not. With thee it was not as with many that will and would and wait and never—do. Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How saith Zarathustra? Deine Kuh Trübsal melkest Du. Nun Trinkst Du die süsse Milch des Euters. See! it displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, man, an udderful! Mother’s milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of those burgeoning stars overhead rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such as those rioters will quaff in their guzzling den, milk of madness, the honeymilk of Canaan’s land. Thy cow’s dug was tough, what? Ay, but her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. No dollop this but thick rich bonnyclaber. To her, old patriarch! Pap! Per deam Partulam et Pertundam nunc est bibendum!

The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence celestial, glistering on Dublin stone there under starshiny coelum. God's air, the Allfather's air, scintillant circumambient cessile air. Breathe it deep into thee. By heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done a doughty deed and no botch! Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest progenitor barring none in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle. Astounding! In her lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man's work. Cleave to her! Serve! Toil on, labour like a very bandog and let scholarment and all Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all their daddies, Theodore. Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with butcher's bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the countinghouse? Head up! For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See, thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby Dullman there with his Joan? A canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell thee! He is a mule, a dead gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked kreutzer. Copulation without population! No, say I! Herod's slaughter of the innocents were the truer name. Vegetables, forsooth, and sterile cohabitation! Give her beefsteaks, red, raw, bleeding! She is a hoary pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever, bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney, Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music! Twenty years of it, regret them not. With thee it was not as with many that will and would and wait and never do. Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How saith Zarathustra? Deine Kuh Trübsal melkest Du. Nun Trinkst Du die süsse Milch des Euters. See! it displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, man, an udderful! Mother's milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of those burgeoning stars overhead rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such as those rioters will quaff in their guzzling den, milk of madness, the honeymilk of Canaan's land. Thy cow's dug was tough, what? Ay, but her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. No dollop this but thick rich bonnyclaber. To her, old patriarch! Pap! Per deam Partulam et Pertundam nunc est bibendum!

I had this book when I was a little kid," Eddie said at last. He spoke in the flat tones of utter surety. "Then we moved from Queens to Brooklyn--I wasn't even four years old--and I lost it. But I remember the picture on the cover. And I felt the same way you do, Jake. I didn't like it. I didn't trust it." Susannah raised her eyes to look at Eddie. "I had it, too--how could I ever forget the little girl with my name...although of course it was my middle name back in those days. And I felt the same way about the train. I didn't like it and I didn't trust it." She tapped the front of the book with her finger before passing it on to Roland. "I thought that smile was a great big fake." Roland gave it only a cursory glance before returning his eyes to Susannah. "Did you lose yours, too?" "Yes." "And I'll bet I know when," Eddie said. Susannah nodded. "I'll bet you do. It was after that man dropped the brick on my head. I had it when we went north to my Aunt Blue's wedding. I had it on the train. I remember, because I kept asking my dad if Charlie the Choo-Choo was pulling us. I didn't WANT it to be Charlie, because we were supposed to go to Elizabeth, New Jersey, and I thought Charlie might take us anywhere. Didn't he end up pulling folks around a toy village or something like that, Jake?" "An amusement park." "Yes, of course it was. There's a picture of him hauling kids around that place at the end, isn't there? They're all smiling and laughing, except I always thought they looked like they were screaming to be let off." "Yes!" Jake cried. "Yes, that's right! That's JUST right!" "I thought Charlie might take us to HIS place--wherever he lived--instead of to my aunt's wedding, and never let us go home again." "You can't go home again," Eddie muttered, and ran his hands nervously through his hair. "All the time we were on that train I wouldn't let go of the book. I even remember thinking, 'If he tries to steal us, I'll rip out his pages until he quits.' But of course we arrived right where we were supposed to, and on time, too. Daddy even took me up front, so I could see the engine. It was a diesel, not a steam engine, and I remember that made me happy. Then, after the wedding, that man Mort dropped the brick on me and I was in a coma for a long time. I never saw Charlie the Choo-Choo after that. Not until now." She hesitated, then added: "This could be my copy, for all I know--or Eddie's." "Yeah, and probably is," Eddie said.

With the news that he would soon be a daddy again, Steve seemed inspired to work even harder. Our zoo continued to get busier, and we had trouble coping with the large numbers. The biggest draw was the crocodiles. Crowds poured in for the croc shows, filling up all the grandstands. The place was packed. Steve came up with a monumental plan. He was a big fan of the Colosseum-type arenas of the Roman gladiator days. He sketched out his idea for me on a piece of paper. “Have a go at this, it’s a coliseum,” he declared, his eyes wide with excitement. He drew an oval, then a series of smaller ovals in back of it. “Then we have crocodile ponds where the crocs could live. Every day a different croc could come out for the show and swim through a canal system”--he sketched rapidly--“then come out in the main area.” “Canals,” I said. “Could you get them to come in on cue?” “Piece of cake!” he said. “And get this! We call it…the Crocoseum!” His enthusiasm was contagious. Never mind that nothing like this had ever been done before. Steve was determined to take the excitement and hype of the ancient Roman gladiators and combine it with the need to show people just how awesome crocs really were. But it was a huge project. There was nothing to compare it to, because nothing even remotely similar had ever been attempted anywhere in the world. I priced it out: The budget to build the arena would have to be somewhere north of eight million dollars, a huge expense. Wes, John, Frank, and I all knew we’d have to rely on Steve’s knowledge of crocodiles to make this work. Steve’s enthusiasm never waned. He was determined. This would become the biggest structure at the zoo. The arena would seat five thousand and have space beneath it for museums, shops, and a food court. The center of the arena would have land areas large enough for people to work around crocodiles safely and water areas large enough for crocs to be able to access them easily. “How is this going to work, Steve?” I asked, after soberly assessing the cost. What if we laid out more than eight million dollars and the crocodiles decided not to cooperate? “How are you going to convince a crocodile to come out exactly at showtime, try to kill and eat the keeper, and then go back home again?” I bit my tongue when I realized what was coming out of my mouth: advice on crocodiles directed at the world’s expert on croc behavior. Steve was right with his philosophy: Build it, and they will come. These were heady times. As the Crocoseum rose into the sky, my tummy got bigger and bigger with our new baby. It felt like I was expanding as rapidly as the new project. The Crocoseum debuted during an Animal Planet live feed, its premiere beamed all over the world. The design was a smashing success. Once again, Steve had confounded the doubters.

I’ll never forget this one night when Daddy had taken us way out to a little church up on a high ridge. There was no kind of instrumentation, and the hymns were all sung a cappella. During the preaching, there was a little more shouting from the congregation than usual. When it came time for us to sing, we were introduced by the preacher, a wiry little man with kind of a fiery look in his eyes. We stepped to the front and took our places on the old wood-plank platform to one side of the pulpit. Softly, I sung a note to get us started because it was decided I could come closest to hitting a key that we could all sing in. We began our songs, just as we had planned. I was aware that the pastor was on the stage behind us, but I didn’t think anything of it. After a while, I could feel Stella nudging me in the ribs, trying not to be noticed. I looked at her, and she motioned with her head slightly back toward where the preacher was standing. He seemed to be totally wrapped up in the spirit, nearly in a trance. I didn’t think too much of it, until I spotted a familiar sight—the back markings of a snake, a cottonmouth moccasin. I had seen them in the woods, usually scurrying across the path toward cover. They were afraid of me, and I was afraid of them. And up to now, we had always managed to keep our distance from each other. Here, apparently, they were a part of the worship service. I could see now, out of my peripheral vision, that the preacher had a full grown cottonmouth by the back of the head and it was twisting and coiling all around his forearm. Some members of the congregation were reaching out as if they wanted to touch it. The preacher was getting more and more worked up, and he reached into a wooden crate by the pulpit and took out two more snakes. This time he seemed to be holding them much more carelessly. He lifted them near his face as if daring them to strike. We sisters just kept on singing, unconsciously moving away from the snakes until we were very near the front of the platform. Just then, I noticed something that struck a note of fear in my heart much greater than that inspired by the snakes. My father had stepped into the back of the church to hear his little girls sing. Whatever he had been drinking didn’t impair his ability to see exactly what the preacher had in his hands. Just at that moment, the man and his snakes took a step toward the congregation, thus toward us. Daddy had seen enough. He charged down the aisle like a wild boar through a thicket. “You get them Goddamn snakes away from my kids!” Daddy bellowed with a force in his voice I had never heard before. It was amazing how quickly that preacher broke his trance and paid heed. He had heard the voice of a higher power, in this case a really pissed-off redneck. Daddy swooped us up and out the front door before we had time to think about what was happening. We didn’t even stop singing until we were almost down the steps into the churchyard. We were glad to be out of there, and I at least was proud that Daddy had come to our rescue. But Daddy obviously felt terrible about it. On the way home in the car, he got to feeling especially bad. “Goddamn! I can’t believe I said Goddamn in church!” he muttered to himself. He finally got so upset he had to stop the car and get out in the woods and, in his way, ask God’s forgiveness. I couldn’t help thinking how badly Mama had always wanted Daddy to walk down the church aisle and declare himself. Now he had certainly done that, although not I’m sure the way Mama had in mind.

Know Your Father’s Heart Today’s Scripture Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 JOHN 4:10 KJV Today, I want you to reread the parable of the father of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32). As you read, keep in mind that this son utterly rejected and completely humiliated and dishonored his father, then only returned home when he remembered that even his father’s hired servants had more food than he did! It was not the son’s love for his father that made him journey home; it was his stomach. In his own self-absorbed pride, he wanted to earn his own keep as a hired servant rather than to receive his father’s provision by grace or unmerited favor. God wants us to know that even when our motivations are wrong, even when we have a hidden (usually self-centered) agenda and our intentions are not completely pure, He still runs to us in our time of need and showers His unmerited, undeserved, and unearned favor upon us. Oh, how unsearchable are the depths of His love and grace toward us! It will never be about our love for God. It will always be about His magnificent love for us. The Bible makes this clear: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10 KJV). Some people think that fellowship with God can only be restored when you are perfectly contrite and have perfectly confessed all your sins. Yet we see in this parable that it was the father who was the initiator, it was the father who had missed his son, who was already looking out for him, and who had already forgiven him. Before the son could utter a single word of his rehearsed apology, the father had already run to him, embraced him, and welcomed him home. Can you see how it’s all about our Father’s heart of grace, forgiveness, and love? Our Father God swallows up all our imperfections, and true repentance comes because of His goodness. Do I say “sorry” to God and confess my sins when I have fallen short and failed? Of course I do. But I do it not to be forgiven because I know that I am already forgiven through Jesus’ finished work. The confession is out of the overflow of my heart because I have experienced His goodness and grace and because I know that as His son, I am forever righteous through Jesus’ blood. It springs from being righteousness-conscious, not sin-conscious; from being forgiveness-conscious, not judgment-conscious. There is a massive difference. If you understand this and begin practicing this, you will begin experiencing new dimensions in your love walk with the Father. You will realize that your Daddy God is all about relationship and not religious protocol. He just loves being with you. Under grace, He doesn’t demand perfection from you; He supplies perfection to you through the finished work of His Son, Jesus Christ. So no matter how many mistakes you have made, don’t be afraid of Him. He loves you. Your Father is running toward you to embrace you! Today’s Thought My Father God runs to me in my time of need and showers His unmerited, undeserved, and unearned favor upon me. Today’s Prayer Father, thank You that I can experience Your love even when I have failed. No matter how many mistakes I may have made, I don’t have to be afraid to come to You. I am still Your beloved child, and I always have fellowship with You because of the finished work of Jesus. I thank You that You don’t demand perfection from me, but You supply perfection to me through the cross. It blesses my heart to know that You just love being with me. Thank You for running to embrace me. Amen.

body. My eyes were overflowing by the time I reached the front—thinking of her, thinking of Daddy’s cancer, thinking of the ways we were all dying, and how this meal was a promise of life.

We also ate well in the kitchen, and I found that I had inherited my father's palate and appreciation of good food. Our cuisine at home always been rather basic, even in the days when we had a cook, and I became fascinated with the process of creating such wonderful flavors. "Show me how you made that parsley sauce, those meringues, that oyster stew," I'd say to Mrs Robbins, the cook. And if she had a minute to spare, she would show me. After a while, seeing my willingness as well as my obvious aptitude for cooking, she suggested to Mrs Tilley that her old legs were not up to standing for hours any more and that she needed an assistant cook. And she requested me. Mrs Tilley agreed, but only if she didn't have to pay me more money and I should still be available to do my party piece whenever she entertained. And so I went to work in the kitchen. Mrs Robbins found me a willing pupil. After lugging coal scuttles up all those stairs, it felt like heaven to be standing at a table preparing food. We had a scullery maid who did all the most menial of jobs, like chopping the onions and peeling the potatoes, but I had to do the most basic of tasks- mashing the potatoes with lots of butter and cream until there wasn't a single lump, basting the roast so that the fat was evenly crisp. I didn't mind. I loved being amongst the rich aromas. I loved the look of a well-baked pie. The satisfaction when Mrs Robbins nodded with approval at something I had prepared. And of course I loved the taste of what I had created. Now when I went home to Daddy and Louisa, I could say, "I roasted that pheasant. I made that apple tart." And it gave me a great rush of satisfaction to say the words. "You've a good feel of it, I'll say that for you," Mrs Robbins told me, and after a while she even sought my opinion. "Does this casserole need a touch more salt, do you think? Or maybe some thyme?" The part I loved the best was the baking. She showed me how to make pastry, meringues that were light as air, all sorts of delicate biscuits and rich cakes.

sugar-free daddy. A job seemed like quite a smart move.

Faith is not just about the leap, its also about the destination and this world was never meant to be my home.

There's Daddy, who comes home every day, dives straight into a tall amber bottle, falls into a stone-walled silence, a place where he can tread the suffocating loneliness.

I should have taken the little prick’s eyes out. Sent the little punk home blind for daring to look at what’s mine. Because she is mine. My little girl to protect. And if anyone tries to take her from me, I’ll fucking kill them.

What’s Slipping Under Your Radar? Word Count: 1096 Summary: Ben, a high-level leader in a multi-national firm, recently confessed that he felt like a bad father. That weekend he had messed up his Saturday daddy duties. When he took his son to soccer practice, Ben stayed for a while to support him. In the process, though, he forgot to take his daughter to her piano lesson. By the time they got to the piano teacher’s house, the next student was already playing. This extremely successful businessman felt like a failure. Keywords: Dr. Karen Otazo, Global Executive Coaching, Leadership Article Body: Ben, a high-level leader in a multi-national firm, recently confessed that he felt like a bad father. That weekend he had messed up his Saturday daddy duties. When he took his son to soccer practice, Ben stayed for a while to support him. In the process, though, he forgot to take his daughter to her piano lesson. By the time they got to the piano teacher’s house, the next student was already playing. This extremely successful businessman felt like a failure. At work, one of Ben’s greatest strengths is keeping his focus no matter what. As a strategic visionary, he keeps his eyes on the ongoing strategy, the high-profile projects and the high-level commitments of his group. Even on weekends Ben spends time on email, reading and writing so he can attend the many meetings in his busy work schedule. Since he is so good at multi-processing in his work environment, he assumed he could do that at home too. But when we talked, Ben was surprised to realize that he is missing a crucial skill: keeping people on his radar. Ben is great at holding tasks and strategies in the forefront of his mind, but he has trouble thinking of people and their priorities in the same way. To succeed at home, Ben needs to keep track of his family members’ needs in the same way he tracks key business commitments. He also needs to consider what’s on their radar screens. In my field of executive coaching, I keep every client on my radar screen by holding them in my thinking on a daily and weekly basis. That way, I can ask the right questions and remind them of what matters in their work lives. No matter what your field is, though, keeping people on your radar is essential. Consider Roger, who led a team of gung-ho sales people. His guys and gals loved working with him because his gut instincts were superb. He could look at most situations and immediately know how to make them work. His gut was great, almost a sixth sense. But when Sidney, one of his team of sales managers, wanted to move quickly to hire a new salesperson, Roger was busy. He was managing a new sales campaign and wrangling with marketing and headquarters bigwigs on how to position the company’s consumer products. Those projects were the only things on his radar screen. He didn’t realize that Sidney was counting on hiring someone fast. Roger reviewed the paperwork for the new hire. It was apparent to Roger that the prospective recruit didn’t have the right background for the role. He was too green in his experience with the senior people he’d be exposed to in the job. Roger saw that there would be political hassles down the road which would stymie someone without enough political savvy or experience with other parts of the organization. He wanted an insider or a seasoned outside hire with great political skills. To get the issue off his radar screen quickly, Roger told Human Resources to give the potential recruit a rejection letter. In his haste, he didn’t consult with Sidney first. It seemed obvious from the resume that this was the wrong person. Roger rushed off to deal with the top tasks on his radar screen. In the process, Sidney was hurt and became angry. Roger was taken by surprise since he thought he had done the right thing, but he could have seen this coming.

I don't do the gym. Not even when a Dom tells me to. There are some things you have to use your safe word for.

I am beginning, in fact, to feel at home in the world—as though I really belonged to it and had not just crept in on sufferance.

I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people’s places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding. It ought to be cultivated in children. But the John Grier Home instantly stamped out the slightest flicker that appeared. Duty was the one quality that was encouraged. I don’t think children ought to know the meaning of the word; it’s odious, detestable. They ought to do everything from love.

Hello pretties,” I purred, stepping out onto the bridge. A bunch of the weakest Fae ran into the coop to hide and my smile stretched wider. “Daddy’s home.

China wasn't one of them. She was the one among them that ruined his hate for them, and for that he resented her. Miss Chona. She wasn't Miss China when they were kids. She was just Chona, his sister's best friend, the odd girl with the limp who walked to school with Bernice, the two walking behind him, which was fine with him in those day. But then life happened. He'd gone to jail after high school, and when he returned home, the die was cast. Chona got married and went back to being white and Bernice had all those kids and got saved to the Lord and inherited his daddy's house--which he should've gotten, being his father's only son.

But then, he looked up at me with big blue eyes under long beautiful lashes. “It’s just he makes it look so simple, you know?” Yeah, no way I was walking away now. “I take it you have a leak under your sink?” I asked. “A leak? More like a geyser. But the pipe isn’t broken. It’s the part where the pipe changes directions for some reason. I mean, wouldn’t it make more sense to just go straight to where it needs to go instead of looking like a freaking spaghetti highway down there?” “Look, kid, plumbing is like life. If you know what the pipe’s purpose is, where they’re coming from and where they’re going, it all makes sense.” “Oh my god,” he said, throwing his hands up in the air. “Doesn’t that just fucking figure. This was such a shit day. And now I’m stuck in a hardware store with a hotter than fuck stranger who’s talking about plumbing using metaphors like he’s freaking Socrates or some shit.” He glared at me. “Plumbing is like life,” he mimicked. I forced myself not to laugh, which was hard because, in hindsight, it was a pretty stupid thing to say. Instead, I ignored the fact that he called me hot and focused on the fact that he was having a meltdown in the local home improvement store. Apparently not over a burst pipe, but over… well, I wasn’t sure exactly what over, but obviously something bigger than a pipe.

Shelves were jam-packed with orange and brown packaged treats: chocolate-covered Cheerios, chocolate-covered cornflakes, chocolate-covered raisins and pretzels and espresso beans. Chocolate malt balls, chocolate almonds, and giant 2.2-pound "Big Daddy" chocolate blocks. There was caramel corn, peanut brittle, mudslide cookie mixes, and tins of chocolate shavings so you could try replicating Jacques's über-rich hot chocolate at home- anything the choco-obsessed could dream was crammed in the small space. An L-shaped counter had all manner of fresh, handcrafted temptations: a spread of individual bonbons with cheeky names like Wicked Fun (chocolate ganache with ancho and chipotle chilies), Love Bug (key lime ganache enveloped in white chocolate), and Ménage à Trois (a mystery blend of three ingredients). Platters of double chocolate chip cookies and fudge brownies. And there were his buttery croissants and pain au chocolat, which duked it out in popularity with the French bakery across the street, Almondine.

I’ll take you home,” I say, and my words are simple, obvious. I’m surprised when she follows me to the passenger door of the Merc and slips into the seat without hesitation, but she seems dazed somehow. Naïve, maybe. Maybe that’s what got her into this mess in the first place. I suspect as much.

So, what exactly did Ignita tell you about me?” he hissed, sounding decidedly peevish, even to his own ears. “All good?” “Besides that you are her favourite great-nephew by any measure under the suns –” wielding the foot-wide ladle with aplomb, she poured one last bucketful of dragonwort soup, a noted restorative, down his throat with a pleasant gurgle “– she said that you are honourable, faithful, creative, artistic, misunderstood, a Dragon whose heart lives in his poetry, which you have sadly neglected to admit to me; you are finicky to a fault, severely short-sighted and lacking in firepower.” Gnarr-rum-blasted-death! he swore unhappily. “Nice list. Thanks for sharing.” Blithely, the mite added, “Ignita is also furious that you did not come to her earlier with your eye problems.” Blitz said something even ruder. “She even claimed that I’m more stubborn than you, which I believe was meant to be a compliment. Now, hold still. The eye drops are next.” “She specifically said, ‘Lacking in fire power?’ ” He sighed moodily, unable to break the sense of being utterly defeated. This was not a happy place for a Dragon. His wings drooped as if they weighed a tonne each, and his food stomach churned with nausea. “She didn’t use words such as disabled, worthless, fireless lizard, witless fool, cold-hearted undraconic worm, a Dragon who is no Dragon at all, or –” “Blitz, stop.” “So, why don’t you just run back to Daddy, little Princess? Go on. Go home. Why be dragged down in the maelstrom of a worthless loser?” “Blitz! Shut your stupid fangs.” “Whinging being so charismatic in a Dragon …” Grinding her teeth furiously, the girl who was climbing his neck leaned over to his left upper ear canal and hissed, “Do you know what I would go back to, you thumping great moron? Let me give you the salient highlights. Since I was old enough to walk and my mother passed, it has been impressed upon me that my sole purpose in life is to get married to the richest fool I can charm into my bed, no matter how despicable he might be. I will not inherit. That privilege is for my brothers. Instead, I am merely an entry on my kingdom’s asset register – a very fat entry. I am commanded to be charming, accomplished and perfectly presented at all times. I go to balls to catch wealthy Princes. Can you imagine what it is like to be valued for your dark, beautiful skin, and nothing else? To only ever be seen skin-deep – I mean … you know?” Blitz groaned softly. “So aye, I don’t really want to go home, in case that was somehow unclear. I would rather live with an enormously unreasonable, complaining, crabby, haughty chunk of a Dragon, because among your many admirable qualities and your damnably beautiful honour, you have one gift I value above all others. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?” He croaked, “Of course, aye … sort of … not a whole lot. Sorry.” Nonsensical, but true. Warm moisture dripped into his ear. Crying! Oh, by his wings, what had he done now? The Princess whispered, “You see me, and accept me, just as I am.

Babygirl…” He steadies my hips with his hands and drops his forehead down to mine. “Hey, Daddy. Fancy seeing you here.” He’s got his grumpy face on, but it fades when I tip my head back and give him a quick kiss on the lips. His breath fans my face as he exhales and relaxes. “Six hours was way too long to go without touching you. I wanted to smack every single guy who got a look at your gorgeous tits.” “Yeah, I know. But it’s not them I’m going home with tonight. It’s you, Daddy. And I’m proud of you.” “You’re proud of me? What for?” I go up on my tiptoes and circle his neck with my arms, running my fingers through the back of his short, dark hair. “Proud of you for curbing your caveman stalker tendencies and leaving me be, big tits and all, when I know what you really wanted to do was throw me over your shoulder and drag me back to your cave.

The dining room overflows with love-made dishes-smoked turkey, collards, mac and cheese, okra and tomatoes.

This was everything I needed right now.” I threw another handful of chips into my mouth and reached for my Coke. River chuckled quietly and put his feet up on the coffee table, crossing his legs at the ankles. “Just don’t tell Daddy when he gets home. He doesn’t approve of chips before breakfast.

This is stupid.  You two children need to go home,” I growled. “Like hell!  Who do you think you are to order us about, the king?” growled Shelly, standing with her spine erect.  Jerry said something, too, but he was face down in the mud.  He could have been pleading for help or making death threats; it all would have sounded the same.  I reached forward and grabbed her by the armor, then lifted.  Lifting heavy objects was a combination of your Strength stat and your Stamina pool.  I had a massive pool of Stamina that had regenerated, and I was well and truly done with this.  “No, I am Jim, the Curious Puppy.  You need to learn to mind your manners.” ●   Intimidation check: critically successful, Rank Up! New rank: Advanced! “Sorry, Daddy, I’ve been naughty,” she hissed out with wild eyes.  That was the actual reply used in the stupid Curious Puppy books, when Jim taught someone a lesson they should already know.

The aim of the John Grier Home (as you doubtless know and heartily approve of) is to turn the ninety-seven orphans into ninety-seven twins.

You probably think that the old crow was just sitting there waiting for someone to drop part of their sandwich, so he could swoop down and snatch it. But he wasn’t. That old crow was admiring daddies pushing their kids on the swings and moms cuddling babies on the park bench nearby. Then, when the sun started to lower in the sky and all the children were gathered to make their way back home, the old crow would remember all the good things he’d seen that day and would hop across his branch and snuggle down deep in his hollow for the night, all the happy images melding into his dreams.

Please, Daddy. I just want to go back home. Even if it means I’ll die.

Daddy’s home!

Trent and Shawna are African American; Ricky and Julia, Hispanic; and Jane is Korean. My youngest’s favorite show is The Magic School Bus. When we brought home the DVD, she exclaimed, “Daddy, it’s a show about our family!

You see, if we hold the dead so strongly with us, they cannot truly pass on.

What did you think I’d do with her? Send her back home to mommy and daddy? Did you really think that’s how this played out?” He snorted, threw his head back, and laughed.

I should have taken the little prick’s eyes out. Sent the little punk home blind for daring to look at what’s mine. Because she is mine.

Jessica had gone to church all her life, in her frilly pinafores and white gloves, but when she was young it was only another place she had to go. Home, school, church. She didn’t really learn what faith was until after her father died, when she stood on her toes to see what was in the rose-colored casket. She didn’t know what to expect, why she’d been so anxious to take her place in the line at the front of the church, clinging to her mother’s hand. There, inside, was the grim, washed-out face of Daddy. Daddy was going to stay in this box? And they were going to bury this box in the ground? He had to be somewhere else, like her mother kept saying. That wasn’t him at all. On that day, Heaven kept Jessica’s world from caving in. David, somehow, lived without believing in a better place. And yet he could still wake up in the morning and carry out his day and go to sleep without being frozen awake with fears of death, of darkness, of nothing. She didn’t understand how he could do that. She tried, telling herself one night This is all, there is nothing after this, but she felt swallowed by the vast barrenness. She thought of her father’s bones, crumbling to black dust inside that beautiful casket beneath the ground. Maybe David had a point. Religion was a crutch, a way people rationalized away their pain in life, like the slaves yearning for a better existence. A denial. When there is no fear of death, David had told her once, there is no need for religion.