Great Daddy Quotes

It isn't the great big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones--I've discovered the true secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be for ever regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most that you can out of this very instant.

people used to tell me that i had beautiful hands told me so often, in fact, that one day i started to believe them until i asked my photographer father, “hey daddy could i be a hand model” to which he said no way, i dont remember the reason he gave me and i wouldve been upset, but there were far too many stuffed animals to hold too many homework assignment to write, too many boys to wave at too many years to grow, we used to have a game, my dad and i about holding hands cus we held hands everywhere, and every time either he or i would whisper a great big number to the other, pretending that we were keeping track of how many times we had held hands that we were sure, this one had to be 8 million 2 thousand 7 hundred and fifty three. hands learn more than minds do, hands learn how to hold other hands, how to grip pencils and mold poetry, how to tickle pianos and dribble a basketball, and grip the handles of a bicycle how to hold old people, and touch babies , i love hands like i love people, they're the maps and compasses in which we navigate our way through life, some people read palms to tell your future, but i read hands to tell your past, each scar marks the story worth telling, each calloused palm, each cracked knuckle is a missed punch or years in a factory, now ive seen middle eastern hands clenched in middle eastern fists pounding against each other like war drums, each country sees theyre fists as warriors and others as enemies. even if fists alone are only hands. but this is not about politics, no hands arent about politics, this is a poem about love, and fingers. fingers interlock like a beautiful zipper of prayer. one time i grabbed my dads hands so that our fingers interlocked perfectly but he changed positions, saying no that hand hold is for your mom. kids high five, but grown ups, we learn how to shake hands, you need a firm hand shake,but dont hold on too tight, but dont let go too soon, but dont hold down for too long, but hands are not about politics, when did it become so complicated. i always thought its simple. the other day my dad looked at my hands, as if seeing them for the first time, and with laughter behind his eye lids, with all the seriousness a man of his humor could muster, he said you know you got nice hands, you could’ve been a hand model, and before the laughter can escape me, i shake my head at him, and squeeze his hand, 8 million 2 thousand 7hundred and fifty four.

How You Doing, Little Lucy?” His bright tone and mild expression indicates we’re playing a game we almost never play. It’s a game called How You Doing? and it basically starts off like we don’t hate each other. We act like normal colleagues who don’t want to swirl their hands in each other’s blood. It’s disturbing. “Great, thanks, Big Josh. How You Doing?” “Super. Gonna go get coffee. Can I get you some tea?” He has his heavy black mug in his hand. I hate his mug. I look down; my hand is already holding my red polka-dot mug. He’d spit in anything he made me. Does he think I’m crazy? “I think I’ll join you.” We march purposefully toward the kitchen with identical footfalls, left, right, left, right, like prosecutors walking toward the camera in the opening credits of Law & Order. It requires me to almost double my stride. Colleagues break off conversations and look at us with speculative expressions. Joshua and I look at each other and bare our teeth. Time to act civil. Like executives. “Ah-ha-ha,” we say to each other genially at some pretend joke. “Ah-ha-ha.” We sweep around a corner. Annabelle turns from the photocopier and almost drops her papers. “What’s happening?” Joshua and I nod at her and continue striding, unified in our endless game of one-upmanship. My short striped dress flaps from the g-force. “Mommy and Daddy love you very much, kids,” Joshua says quietly so only I can hear him. To the casual onlooker he is politely chatting. A few meerkat heads have popped up over cubicle walls. It seems we’re the stuff of legend. “Sometimes we get excited and argue. But don’t be scared. Even when we’re arguing, it’s not your fault.” “It’s just grown-up stuff,” I softly explain to the apprehensive faces we pass. “Sometimes Daddy sleeps on the couch, but it’s okay. We still love you.

... in spite of being happier than I ever dreamed I could be, I'm also soberer. The fear that something may happen to you rests like a shadow on my heart. Always before I could be frivolous and carefree and unconcerned, because I had nothing precious to lose. But now -- I shall have a Great Big Worry all the rest of my life. Whenever you are away from me I shall be thinking of all the automobiles that can run over you, or the signboards that can fall on your head or the dreadful, squirmy germs that you may be swallowing.

What do you think is my favourite book? Just now, I mean; I change every three days. "Wuthering Heights." Emily Bronte was quite young when she wrote it, and had never been outside of Haworth churchyard. She had never known any men in her life; how could she imagine a man like Heathcliff? I couldn't do it, and I'm quite young and never outside the John Grier Asylum - I've had every chance in the world. Sometimes a dreadful fear comes over me that I'm not a genius. Will you be awfully disappointed, Daddy, if I don't turn out to be a great author?

Occasionally, events in one's life become clearer through the prism of experience, a phrase which simply means that things tend to be clearer as time goes on. For instance, when a person is just born, they usually have no idea what curtains are and spend a great deal of their first months wondering why on earth Mommy and Daddy have hung large pieces of cloth over each window in the nursery. But as the person grows older, the idea of curtains becomes clearer through the prism of experience. The person will learn the word "curtains" and notice that they are actually quite handy for keeping a room dark when it is time to sleep, and for decorating an otherwise boring window area. Eventually, they will entirely accept the idea of curtains of their own, or venetian blinds, and it is all due to the prism of experience.

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?

Menoceus wants his father." "Bob is crying because he wants his mother to stop calling him that crap-ass name. It's all right Bob. Daddy's got you now. I'm saving you fromMommy's bad naming taste. I'd be crying, too, if my mom named me after an idiot." "Menoeceus is a great name." "For an old man or a feminine hygeine product. Not for my son. And next time I get to name the kid and it won't be something that sounds like meningitis.

When all great movements are in their infancy, they are nourished basically on the mother's milk of righteous indignation. It is a time of red-faced screaming and finger pointing. That's a good thing - we need to be angry to move toward any systemic change. But ultimately the fingers have to stop pointing and the hand has got to get down to work - and the work is always messy.

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.

As Hardy Cates stood there looking at me, really seeing me for the first time, it felt like the whole world had been snatched up in a great unseen hand, its motion arrested.

But Julia hasn’t a bit of tact; and men, I find, require a great deal. They purr if you rub them the right way and spit if you don’t. (That isn’t a very elegant metaphor. I mean it figuratively.)

Robin was a great kid. Smarter than her father at eight years old. She liked the oddest things. Like the instructions for a toy more than the toy itself. The credits of a movie instead of the movie. The way something was written. An expression on my face. Once she told me I looked like the sun to her, because of my hair. I asked her if I shined like the sun, and she told me, ‘No, Daddy, you shine more like the moon, when it’s dark outside.

But suddenly his daddy was there, looking at him in mortal agony, and a sorrow so great that Danny’s heart flamed within his chest. The mouth drew down in a quivering bow. “Doc,” Jack Torrance said. “Run away. Quick. And remember how much I love you.” “No,” Danny said. “Oh Danny, for God’s sake—” “No,” Danny said. He took one of his father’s bloody hands and kissed it. “It’s almost over.

I don't believe it pays to be a great author.

I’m alive. Oh, God. I cry for a little while. Mama’s boyfriend ain’t here to slap me and say I’m not a man for it. Daddy would’ve said it was okay—tears mean you’re alive—but Daddy’s dead. And I’m alive.

So, like, Zeus was just some great big preternatural baby-daddy?

I wondered if all fathers secretly wanted to kill their sons. Just a little bit.

It isn't the great big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones—I've

When you allow yourself to be bored, it takes an enormous amount of pressure off you to be performing and doing something every second of every day. Now, when either of my two children says to me, “Daddy, I’m bored,” I respond by saying, “Great, be bored for a while. It’s good for you.” Once I say this, they always give up on the idea of me solving their problem.

It’s great that Mommy and Daddy did all that uncool work, so you could sit in your air-conditioned classroom and shit all over them, to the approving eye of your ponytailed professor.

It isn't the great big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones--I've discovered the true secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be forever regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most that you can out of this very instant. It's like farming. You can have extensive farming and intensive farming; well, I am going to have intensive living after this. I'm going to enjoy every second, and I'm going to know I'm enjoying it while I'm enjoying it. Most people don't live, they just race. They are trying to reach some goal far away on the horizon, and in the heat of the going they get so breathless and panting that they lose all sight of the beautiful, tranquil country they are passing through; and then the first thing they know, they are old and worn out, and it doesn't make any difference whether they've reached the goal or not. I've decided to sit down by the way and pile up a lot of little happinesses.

CHRONO-SYNCLASTIC INFUNDIBULA—Just imagine that your Daddy is the smartest man who ever lived on Earth, and he knows everything there is to find out, and he is exactly right about everything, and he can prove he is right about everything. Now imagine another little child on some nice world a million light years away, and that little child’s Daddy is the smartest man who ever lived on that nice world so far away. And he is just as smart and just as right as your Daddy is. Both Daddies are smart, and both Daddies are right.    Only if they ever met each other they would get into a terrible argument, because they wouldn’t agree on anything. Now, you can say that your Daddy is right and the other little child’s Daddy is wrong, but the Universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.    The reason both Daddies can be right and still get into terrible fights is because there are so many different ways of being right. There are places in the Universe, though, where each Daddy could finally catch on to what the other Daddy was talking about. These places are where all the different kinds of truths fit together as nicely as the parts in your Daddy’s solar watch. We call these places chrono-synclastic infundibula.    The Solar System seems to be full of chrono-synclastic infundibula. There is one great big one we are sure of that likes to stay between Earth and Mars. We know about that one because an Earth man and his Earth dog ran right into it.    You might think it would be nice to go to a chrono-synclastic infundibulum and see all the different ways to be absolutely right, but it is a very dangerous thing to do. The poor man and his poor dog are scattered far and wide, not just through space, but through time, too.    Chrono (kroh-no) means time. Synclastic (sin-class-tick) means curved toward the same side in all directions, like the skin of an orange. Infundibulum (in-fun-dib-u-lum) is what the ancient Romans like Julius Caesar and Nero called a funnel. If you don’t know what a funnel is, get Mommy to show you one.

Someone's at the door! Someone's at the door!!!" they both yelled. "I just told you, it's my—" I called, knowing they couldn't hear. "Hey. Get away from the door, you miserable jack-off," I heard Chuck shout at my dad. "I'll rip your ass in half." "Me too! I'll rip your ass in half, too!!" yelled Johnny Depp. "We hate you. We hate you. We hate you. We hate you." "You guys, knock it off," I said, racing to open the door. "I just told you...it's my—Hi, Daddy," I said, hugging him. "Come on in! Great to see you again!!" screamed Chuck. "Thank God you're finally here!" screamed Johnny Depp. "We missed you. Where you been? Welcome back! Who are you??

Certainly–and we can all agree on this, whether we are atheists, theists, panentheists–the future is doing the calling. The unborn children, our great-great-grandchildren are doing the calling. A mere seventy-five years from now they're going to be saying, 'What did you do, Daddy, when the Earth was collapsing and when militarism was where you were putting so much of your money, and when empires were still the mode of the day, and when religions were at each other's throats and Christianity was collapsing? What did you do? How did you interfere and say no?

So, to recap," Lily said, sounding calm, but not entirely apathetic, "Campbell isn't your half sister. She's mine, because my daddy's mistress, who had Campbell's daddy's baby way back when, is actually my biological mother, and that baby was me. Victoria is my great-aunt, and technically, so is Lillian, because my adoptive mama is actually Lillian's identical twin sister's daughter. The real Liv Taft was killed twenty-five years ago in what might — or might not — have been an accident, involving practically every adult I know." Lily paused. "Does that about sum things up?

For folks who have that casual-dude energy coursing through their bloodstream, that's great. But gays should not grow up alienated just for us to alienate each other. It's too predictable, like any other cycle of abuse. Plus, the conformist, competitive notion that by "toning down" we are "growing up" ultimately blunts the radical edge of what it is to be queer; it truncates our colorful journey of identity. Said another way, it's like living in West Hollywood and working a gay job by day and working it in the gay nightlife, wearing delicate shiny shirts picked from up the gay dry cleaners, yet coquettishly left unbuttoned to reveal the pec implants purchased from a gay surgeon and shown off by prancing around the gay-owned-and-operated theater hopped up on gay health clinic steroids and wheat grass purchased from the friendly gay boy who's new to the city, and impressed by the monstrous SUV purchased from a gay car dealership with its rainbow-striped bumper sticker that says "Celebrate Diversity." Then logging on to the local Gay.com listings and describing yourself as "straight-acting." Let me make myself clear. This is not a campaign for everyone to be like me. That'd be a total yawn. Instead, this narrative is about praise for the prancy boys. Granted, there's undecided gender-fucks, dagger dykes, faux-mos, po-mos, FTMs, fisting-top daddies, and lezzie looners who also need props for broadening the sexual spectrum, but they're telling their own stories. The Cliff's Notes of me and mine are this: the only moments I feel alive are when I'm just being myself - not some stiff-necked temp masquerading as normal in the workplace, not some insecure gay boy aspiring to be an overpumped circuit queen, not some comic book version of swank WeHo living. If that's considered a political act in the homogenized world of twenty-first century homosexuals, then so be it. — excerpt of "Praise For The Prancy Boys," by Clint Catalyst appears in first edition (ISBN # 1-932360-56-5)

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.

I have been thinking about you a great deal this summer; having somebody take an interest in me after all these years makes me feel as though I had found a sort of family. It seems as though I belonged to somebody now, and it’s a very comfortable sensation.

After, Mam,' I say. 'What happens when you pass away?" I couldn't bear her being a ghost. Couldn't take her sitting in the kitchen, invisible. Couldn't take seeing Pop walk around her without touching her cheek, without bending to kiss her on her neck. 'It's like walking through a door, Jojo.' 'But you won't be no ghost, huh, Mam?' I have to ask even though I know the telling hurts her. Even though I feel like speaking's bringing her leaving closer. Death, a great mouth set to swallow. 'Can't say for sure. But I don't think so. I think that only happens when the dying's bad. Violent. The old folks always told me that when someone dies in a bad way, sometimes it's so awful even God can't bear to watch, and then half your spirit stays behind and wanders, wanting peace the way a thirsty man seeks water.' She frowns: two fishhooks dimpling down. 'That ain't my way.' 'That don't mean I won't be here, Jojo. I'll be on the other side of the door. With everybody else that's gone before. Your uncle Given, my mama and daddy, Pop's mama and daddy.' 'How?' 'Because we don't walk no straight lines. It's all happening at once. All of it. We all here at once. My mama and daddy and they mamas and daddies.' Mam looks to the wall, closes her eyes. 'My son.

You only get one senior year of high school, and I want you to enjoy it. You have a hot boyfriend and you got into a great school. Your birthday is coming up soon. This is the time to just be young and celebrate and enjoy each other!” “Yes, within reason, of course,” Daddy says hastily.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Daddy, why are we going to the Capitol?” she asked her father. “Luci Baines, we have to go to the Capitol,” Johnson said to his daughter. “It’s the only place to go. As a result of this great legislation becoming the law of the land, there will be many men and women who will not be returning to these hallowed halls because of the decision they have made to support it. And because of this great legislation that I will be signing into law, there will be many men and women who will have an opportunity to come to the halls of Congress who could have never have come otherwise.

Daddy.” I looked up towards my Heavenly Father in His garden. “Daddy, what is happening?” “Your wounds are the wounds of a great battle, beloved. “The glass that falls from your head is trauma. “The more you play, the more you rest as a little child in My presence, and the more healing of your body and your mind takes place on Earth. “Every time shards of jagged glass fall from your head it means that the trauma is falling from your mind. “Beloved, many in My Church do not yet understand how to heal those that have been wounded in battle. “That is why it is so important that every wounded warrior runs directly to Me. “For in this present Church age it is sometimes I, and I alone, who can bring the healing balm that is essential to heal the wounds of this present age.

In many ways, it felt like having an impotent sugar daddy—I got all the perks but not the dick. The problem was, I wanted the dick. The shoes were great, but not so great I wanted to moan their names.

Daddy was always searching for new adventure--always looking for a revelation. He used to say 'If you climb every mountain and walk into every valley, one day you'll surprise the Great Creator at his work.

The scent of the leather and the feel of the cold steel transported her back in time. “But Daddy, why can’t I have a sword and a scabbard? Dillon and Tynan have one and look, I can lift it above my head, too.” Kylah chuckled because she hadn’t lifted it above her head; she’d barely lifted the broadsword off the floor. But Cearnach was always supportive. He’d told her, “Someday, little one… someday you will be a great warrior just like your brothers.

All the while I was trying to figure out if I knew anyone who had married and stayed in love for decades. I thought about Daddy and Momma. Daddy had loved Momma with a great passion. Everyone knew that. But, why? I knew why! The ugly truth was that he loved her because of how she made him feel, not because of who she was. Was that the nature of a man’s love for a woman? Not what you bring to the table, but how you make him feel? I was drinking a cup

Hand-to-hand combat provided a great workout, but it wreaked havoc on my cleaning bill. Or if I get dirty enough, I could always go shopping. I’d stolen Daddy’s credit card again, to his delight, which meant I could go shopping until it screamed.

Suddenly, lots of things of my own life occurred to me for the first time as stories: my great-granddaddy's 'other family' in West Virginia; Hardware Breeding, who married his wife Beulah, four times; how my Uncle Vern taught my daddy to drink good liquor in a Richmond hotel; how I got saved at the tent revival; John Hardin's hanging in the courthouse square; how Petey Chaney rode the flood; the time Mike Holland and I went to the serpent handling-church in Jolo; the murder Daddy saw when he was a boy, out riding his little pony - and never told... I started to write these stories down. Many years later, I'm still at it. And it's a funny thing: Though I have spent my most of my working life in universities, though I live in piedmont North Carolina now and eat pasta and drive a Subaru, the stories that present themselves to me as worth the telling are often those somehow connected to that place and those people. The mountains that used to imprison me have become my chosen stalking ground.

But now—I shall have a Great Big Worry all the rest of my life. Whenever you are away from me I shall be thinking of all the automobiles that can run over you, or the sign-boards that can fall on your head, or the dreadful, squirmy germs that you may be swallowing.

Great. I'm already telling God what to do. Can you say Control Freak? But then I remember something I've heard my daddy say more than once through the years: "God wants us just as we are—no pretense. He can handle our emotions and our doubts. He wants a real relationship.

And for all that, look what happens when a man really does blow his top. Call the Troopers, get him out of sight quick, hustle him off and lock him up before he wakes the neighbors. Christ's sake, when it comes to any kind of a showdown we're still in the Middle Ages. It's as if everybody'd made this tacit agreement to live in a state of total self-deception. The hell with reality! Let's have a whole bunch of cute little winding roads and cute little houses painted white and pink and baby blue; let's all be good consumers and have a lot of Togetherness and bring our children up in a bath of sentimentality—Daddy's a great man because he makes a living, Mummy's a great woman because she's stuck by Daddy all these years—and if old reality ever does pop out and say Boo we'll all get busy and pretend it never happened.

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.

My conversations with people who are just beginning to understand and include transsexual and transgender people in their plans or programs lean heavily on this. For them, the very fact of a transsexual who is a real student at their school or client of their agency can be new and surprising. But for queers and transfolk, who have institutionalized an additional set of queerly normative genders, it can sometimes be difficult to hear that we, too, must expand. If butch daddies want to crochet, if twinkly ladyboys are sometimes tops in bed, if burly bears can do BDSM play as little girls, if femme fatales build bookcases in their spare time, these things, too, are not just good but great. They bring us, I believe, wonderful news: news that gendered options can continue to explode, that the chefs in the kitchen of gender are creating new and imaginative specials every day. That we, all of us, are the chefs. Hi. Have a whisk.

This is called a piqué machine, it sews that finest stitch, called piqué, requires far more skill than the other stitches.... This is called a polishing machine and that is called a stretcher and you are called honey and I am called Daddy and this is called living and the other is called dying and this is called madness and this is called mourning and this is called hell, pure hell, and you have to have strong ties to be able to stick it out, this is called trying-to-go-on-as-though-nothing-has-happened and this is called paying-the-full-price-but-in-God's-name-for-what, this is called wanting-to-be-dead-and-wanting-to-find-her-and-to-kill-her-and-to-save-her-from-whatever-she-is-going-through-wherever-on-earth-she-may-be-at-this-moment, this unbridled outpouring is called blotting-out-everything and it does not work, I am half insane, the shattering force of that bomb is too great ... And then they were back at his office again.

It’s natural for children to drift through their early childhood taking their parents for granted, then adolescence rears its ugly head and insouciance morphs into rebellion as they strive to define themselves by being as different from those who gave them life as possible. But for me, now on the eve of my sixteenth year, familial insurrection had yet to seize me—and in reality, it never would. I was my father’s son. His moral compass was inexorably mine. I knew that day I would forever define myself not by contrasts to my father, but by emulation, striving to be a “good man” like him. But the term “good man” was not adequate to describe him. Daddy was a great man who charted his own course in life, guided by his own light, irrespective of the opinions of others, be they my grandmother’s or those of his Brothers in the Lodge. He was the kind of man I wanted to be, the kind of man I was already becoming without fully realizing it.

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.

Another thing I knew: I knew my sister, Laleh, wasn't an accident. Many people thought so, because she was eight years younger than me, and my parents weren't "trying for another child," which is kind of gross if you think about it. But she wasn't an accident. She was a replacement. An upgrade. I knew that without anyone saying it out loud. And I knew Stephen Kellner was relieved to have another chance, a new child who wouldn't be such a disappointment. It was written across his face every time he smiled at her. Every time he sighed at me. I didn't blame Laleh for that. I really didn't. But sometimes I wondered if I was the one who was an accident. That's normal. Right?

Prayer is much more than just giving a list of desires to God, as if He were the great Sugar Daddy/Santa Claus in the sky. Prayer is acknowledging and experiencing the presence of God and inviting His presence into our lives and circumstances. It’s seeking the presence of God and releasing the power of God which gives us the means to overcome any problem.

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.

Men's rights activists tend to make a series of valid observations from which they proceed to a single, 180-degree-wrong conclusion. They are correct to point out that, worldwide, suicide is the most common form of death for men under fifty. It's also true that men are more likely than women to have serious problems with alcohol, that men die younger, that the prison population is 95 per cent male and that the lack of support for our returning frontline soldiers is a national disgrace. So far, so regrettably true. They are incorrect, however, to lay any of this at the door of 'feminism', a term which they use almost interchangeably with 'women'. [...] No, sir. No, lads. No, Daddy. That won't help us and it won't help anyone else. Men in trouble are often in trouble precisely because they are trying to Get a Grip and Act Like a Man. We are at risk of suicide because the alternative is to ask for help, something we have been repeatedly told is unmanly. We are in prison because the traditional breadwinning expectation of manhood can't be met, or the pressure to conform is too great, or the option of violence has been frowned upon but implicitly sanctioned since we were children. [...] We die younger than women because, for one thing, we don't go to the doctor. We don't take ourselves too seriously. We don't want to be thought self-indulgent. The mark of a real man is being able to tolerate a chest infection for three months before laying off the smokes or asking for medicine.

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!

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.

People always said to me, “You must have been dyslexic.” I wasn’t. Why is it that when a white kid can’t read people say he’s dyslexic but when a black kid can’t read people say he “fell through the cracks.” This is a racist thought. I was as white as they come, and I fell through the cracks known as my parents and the Los Angeles school system. That said, Dyslexia would make a great black name. Sounds like a good wide out for the Steelers.

Why, Daddy?” she asked. She still had that strange look on her face. “Why do dogs die so young? Shadow was only seventeen. He was not even as old as my babysitter.” “To teach us,” he said. “Teach us what, Daddy?” “Compassion,” he replied. “But why, Daddy?” she asked. “So that we might be kinder. So we might make the world kinder. They leave, but they leave us with their lesson. All great teachers do that.” “Yes,” said Emma. “He was a good teacher to me too. He was also a wonderful runway model.” He handed her the polaroid. She examined its rivulets and splotches. She put her thumb on the smudges, rubbing them. To Theo, it seemed she knew of the eyes and mouth that once had been. Then the full gravity of the circumstance fell upon her. Emma wept. She was now a girl with a crack in her heart. The sorrows of the world were now available to her. Soon, she would know their beauty.

What’s your dad doing for his bachelor party?” I laugh. “Have you met my dad? He’s the last person who would ever have a bachelor party. He doesn’t even have any guy friends to have a party with!” I stop and consider this. “Well, I guess Josh is the closest thing he has. We haven’t seen much of him since he went to school, but he and my dad still e-mail every so often.” “I don’t get what your family sees in that guy,” Peter says sourly. “What’s so great about him?” It’s a touchy subject. Peter’s paranoid my dad likes Josh better than him, and I try to tell him it’s not a contest--which it definitely isn’t. Daddy’s known Josh since he was a kid. They trade comic books, for Pete’s sake. So, no contest. Obviously my dad likes Josh better. But only because he knows him better. And only because they’re more alike: Neither of them is cool. And Peter’s definitely cool. My dad is bewildered by cool. “Josh loves my dad’s cooking.” “So do I!” “They have the same taste in movies.” Peter throws in, “And Josh was never in a hot tub video with one of his daughters.” “Oh my God, let it go already! My dad’s forgotten about that.” “Forgotten” might be too strong of a word. Maybe more like he’s never brought it up again and he hopefully never will. “I find that hard to believe.” “Well, believe it. My dad is a very forgiving, very forgetful man.

In Florida, her father had once said at dinner: "I like Negroes, yessir. I think everyone should own one". She had stormed from the table and stayed in her room for two days. Her dinner was slid under the door. Well, not slid under. Handed around the doorknob. Seventeen and about to go off to college. "Tell Daddy I'm not coming out until he apologizes". And he did. Clomped up the curving staircase. Held her in his big round southern arms and called her modern. Modern. Like a fixture. A painting. A Miró.

I knew in my heart that the only rationale he could have had for leaving was because of how big a disappointment I must have been, and I wasn’t going to do that to some other kid. So it stood to reason that if I could disappoint my own father—if I couldn’t get my own father to love me enough to stick around or, God forbid, visit more often than one day a year—how was I ever going to get a man who didn’t have to love me like daddies were supposed to? (Hey, Envious Classmate, see how fucking great I thought I was?)

What do you call that thing, Daddy?” “That? That’s the Cadillac seal.” “What’s the Cadillac seal?” “Well, a long time ago, there was a French explorer named Cadillac, and he was the one who discovered Detroit. And that seal was his family seal, from France.” “What’s France?” “France is a country in Europe.” “What’s Europe?” “It’s a continent, which is like a great big piece of land, way, way bigger than a country. But Cadillacs don’t come from Europe anymore, kukla. They come from right here in the good old U.S.A.

PROLOGUE   Zoey “Wow, Z, this is a seriously awesome turnout. There are more humans here than fleas on an old dog!” Stevie Rae shielded her eyes with her hand as she looked around at the newly lit-up campus. Dallas was a total jerk, but we all admitted that the twinkling lights he’d wrapped around the trunks and limbs of the old oaks gave the entire campus a magickal, fairy-like glow. “That is one of your more disgusting bumpkin analogies,” Aphrodite said. “Though it’s accurate. Especially since there are a bunch of city politicians here. Total parasites.” “Try to be nice,” I said. “Or at least try to be quiet.” “Does that mean your daddy, the mayor, is here?” Stevie Rae’s already gawking eyes got even wider. “I suppose it does. I caught a glimpse of Cruella De Vil, a.k.a. She Who Bore Me, not long ago.” Aphrodite paused and her brows went up. “We should probably keep an eye on the Street Cats kittens. I saw some cute little black and white ones with especially fluffy fur.” Stevie Rae sucked air. “Ohmygoodness, your mamma wouldn’t really make a kitten fur coat, would she?” “Faster than you can say Bubba’s drinkin’ and drivin’ again,” Aphrodite mimicked Stevie Rae’s Okie twang. “Stevie Rae—she’s kidding. Tell her the truth,” I nudged Aphrodite. “Fine. She doesn’t skin kittens. Or puppies. Just baby seals and democrats.” Stevie Rae’s brow furrowed. “See, everything is fine. Plus, Damien’s at the Street Cats booth, and you know he’d never let one little kitten whisker be hurt—let alone a whole coat,” I assured my BFF, refusing to let Aphrodite mess up our good mood. “Actually, everything is more than fine. Check out what we managed to pull off in a little over a week.” I sighed in relief at the success of our event and let my gaze wander around the packed school grounds. Stevie Rae, Shaylin, Shaunee, Aphrodite, and I were manning the bake sale booth (while Stevie Rae’s mom and a bunch of her PTA friends moved through the crowd with samples of the chocolate chip cookies we were selling, like, zillions of). From our position near Nyx’s statue, we had a great view of the whole campus. I could see a long line at Grandma’s lavender booth. That made me smile. Not far from Grandma, Thanatos had set up a job application area, and there were a bunch of humans filling out paperwork there. In the center of the grounds there were two huge silver and white tents draped with more of Dallas’s twinkling lights. In one tent Stark and Darius and the Sons of Erebus Warriors were demonstrating weaponry. I watched as Stark was showing a young boy how to hold a bow. Stark’s gaze lifted from the kid and met mine. We shared a quick, intimate smile

...this so-called animisn that not so much the Fan Nannies but everybody else around here subscribes to. can we really just write it off as primitive superstition run amok? Do only human beings have souls, or is that a narcissistic, chauvinistic piece of self-flattery? I mean, can't we look at that great old teak tree over there or at this gulch, and see as much of the divine in them as in some ol' anthropomorphic Sunday school Boom Daddy with imaginary long gray whiskers and a platinum bathrobe? Are we capable of entertaining the possibility that there may have been a holy entity in the cross as well as on it?

reality after he won the battle of Pedicoste in 1763. The man the Corsicans nicknamed Il Babbù (Daddy) quickly set about reforming the island’s financial, legal and educational systems, built roads, started a printing press and brought something approaching harmony between the island’s competing clans of powerful families. The young Napoleon grew up revering Paoli as a lawgiver, reformer and genuinely benevolent dictator. Genoa had no appetite for the fight that she knew would be required to reassert her authority over Corsica, and reluctantly sold the island to King Louis XV of France for 40 million francs in January 1768.

Daddy’s Girl, passive, adaptable, respectful of and in awe of the male, allows him to impose his hideously dull chatter on her. This is not too difficult for her, as the tension and anxiety, the lack of cool, the insecurity and self-doubt, the unsureness of her own feelings and sensations that Daddy instilled in her make her perceptions superficial and render her unable to see that the male’s babble is a babble; like the aesthete “appreciating” the blob that’s labelled “Great Art”, she believes she’s grooving on what bores the shit out of her. Not only does she permit his babble to dominate, she adapts her own “conversation” accordingly.

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?

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.

Brick's detachment is at last broken through. His heart is accelerated; his forehead sweat-beaded; his breath becomes more rapid and his voice hoarse. The thing they're discussing, timidly and painfully on the side of Big Daddy, fiercely, violently on Brick's side, is the inadmissible thing that Skipper died to disavow between them. The fact that if it existed it had to be disavowed to "keep face" in the world they lived in, may be at the heart of the "mendacity" that Brick drinks to kill his disgust with. It may be the root of his collapse. Or maybe it is only a single manifestation of it, not even the most important. The bird that I hope to catch in the net of this play is not the solution of one man's psychological problem. I'm trying to catch the true quality of experience in a group of people, that cloudy, flickering, evanescent - fiercely charged! - interplay of live human beings in the thundercloud of a common crisis. Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself. This does not absolve the playwright of his duty to observe and probe as clearly and deeply as he legitimately can: but it should steer him away from "pat" conclusions, facile definitions which make a play just a play, not a snare for the truth of human experience.

Damn it, Jacob, I’m freezing my butt off.” “I came as fast as I could, considering I thought it would be wise to walk the last few yards.” Isabella whirled around, her smiling face lighting up the silvery night with more ease than the fullest of moons. She leapt up into his embrace, eagerly drinking in his body heat and affection. “I can see it now. ‘Daddy, tell me about your wedding day.’ ‘Well, son,’” she mocked, deepening her voice to his timbre and reflecting his accent uncannily, “’The first words out of your mother’s mouth were I’m freezing my butt off!’” “Very romantic, don’t you think?” he teased. “So, you think it will be a boy, then? Our first child?” “Well, I’m fifty percent sure.” “Wise odds. Come, little flower, I intend to marry you before the hour is up.” With that, he scooped her off her feet and carried her high against his chest. “Unfortunately, we are going to have to do this hike the hard way.” “As Legna tells it, that’s what you’re supposed to do.” “Yeah, well, I assure you a great many grooms have fudged that a little.” He reached to tuck her chilled face into the warm crook of his neck. “Surely the guests would know. It takes longer to walk than it does to fly . . . or whatever . . . out of the woods.” “This is true, little flower. But passing time in the solitude of the woods is not necessarily a difficult task for a man and woman about to be married.” “Jacob!” she gasped, laughing. “Some traditions are not necessarily publicized,” he teased. “You people are outrageous.” “Mmm, and if I had the ability to turn to dust right now, would you tell me no if I asked to . . . pass time with you?” Isabella shivered, but it was the warmth of his whisper and intent, not the cold, that made her do so. “Have I ever said no to you?” “No, but now would be a good time to start, or we will be late to our own wedding,” he chuckled. “How about no . . . for now?” she asked silkily, pressing her lips to the column on his neck beneath his long, loose hair. His fingers flexed on her flesh, his arms drawing her tighter to himself. He tried to concentrate on where he was putting his feet. “If that is going to be your response, Bella, then I suggest you stop teasing me with that wicked little mouth of yours before I trip and land us both in the dirt.” “Okay,” she agreed, her tongue touching his pulse. “Bella . . .” “Jacob, I want to spend the entire night making love to you,” she murmured. Jacob stopped in his tracks, taking a moment to catch his breath. “Okay, why is it I always thought it was the groom who was supposed to be having lewd thoughts about the wedding night while the bride took the ceremony more seriously?” “You started it,” she reminded him, laughing softly. “I am begging you, Isabella, to allow me to leave these woods with a little of my dignity intact.” He sighed deeply, turning his head to brush his face over her hair. “It does not take much effort from you to turn me inside out and rouse my hunger for you. If there is much more of your wanton taunting, you will be flushed warm and rosy by the time we reach that altar, and our guests will not have to be Mind Demons in order to figure out why.” “I’m sorry, you’re right.” She turned her face away from his neck. Jacob resumed his ritual walk for all of thirty seconds before he stopped again. “Bella . . .” he warned dangerously. “I’m sorry! It just popped into my head!” “What am I getting myself into?” he asked aloud, sighing dramatically as he resumed his pace. “Well, in about an hour, I hope it will be me.

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.

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.

Drowning in Blue Pulled deeper and deeper into the void, I dig down into my pocket, find the capsule I stashed, first beneath a flap of tongue, then in a cave of fleece. I hold it like a jewel, the key to some magic kingdom where only good feelings are allowed. Funny, but sometimes all I feel is good. More than good. Great. Invincible. When Mama felt like that, Daddy called her manic. But why is mania bad, if it means you're on top of the world, where everything is white? Bright. I wish I were up there now, instead of treading water in this damn blue hole. This magic pill won't fly me there. It will only take me halfway, to what others call normal and I call gray-- toeing a straight gray line is all medication is good for. Bad genes have doomed me to seesaw, white to blue and back again, for the rest of my pitiful life. And the thought of that makes me want to open a vein, experience pain, know I'm alive, despite this living death.

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?

The first Easter Chris was gone, I stayed up late Saturday night to hide the Easter eggs. We got up early, and I watched as Bubba and Angel went to work finding them. You can’t help but smile at kids who are just alive with the fun of it all. For a few moments I was so absolutely into their happiness that I forgot how tired I was, and didn’t think of Chris or the fact that we were missing him so badly. Finally, after all the eggs and candy were gathered, I told the kids I was going to take a shower and get ready for the rest of the day. I was feeling great--until I closed the door behind me. The sense of loss that I’d been screening out hit me. It drove me to my knees, and I began crying uncontrollably. There was a knock on the door. Angel opened it and looked in. I did my best to smile. “Hey, what’s up?” I asked. “Are you okay, Momma?” “Yes.” “You miss Daddy?” she asked. I nodded. Angel came in and gave me a hug. “You know he’s still here with us, right?” “Yes. Yes, I do.

Fitzgerald contrasts rupture with structural pseudobreaks in so-called signifying chains. But he also distinguishes it from more supple, more subterranean links or stems of the "voyage" type, or even from molecular conveyances. "The famous 'Escape' or 'run away from it all' is an excursion in a trap even if the trap includes the South Seas, which are only for those who want to paint them or sail them. A clean break is something you cannot come back from; that is irretrievable because it makes the past cease to exist." Can it be that voyages are always a return to rigid segmentarity? Is it always your daddy and mommy that you meet when you travel, even as far away as the South Seas, like Melville? Hardened muscles? Must we say that supple segmentarity itself reconstructs the great figures it claimed to escape, but under the microscope, in miniature? Beckett's unforgettable line is an indictment of all voyages: "We don't travel for the fun of it, as far as I know; we're foolish, but not that foolish.

Unlike some of his buddies, Truely had never been afraid of books. Following his daddy's example, he had read the newspaper every day of his life since the sixth grade, starting with the sports page. He had a vague idea what was going on in the world. It was true that Truely could generally nail a test, took a certain pride in it, but he was also a guy who like to dance all night to throbbing music in makeshift clubs off unlit country roads. He liked to drink a cold beer on a hot day, maybe a flask of Jack Daniel's on special occasions. He wore his baseball cap backwards, his jeans ripped and torn--because they were old and practically worn-out, not because he bought them that way. His hair was a little too long, his boots a little too big, his aspirations modest. He preferred listening to talking--and wasn't all that great at either. He like barbecue joints more than restaurants. Catfish and hush puppies or hot dogs burned black over a campfire were his favorites. He preferred simple food dished out in large helpings. He liked to serve himself and go for seconds.

Then came lunch back at the house, attended by the family, the godparents, and the church rector. Beaverbrook stood up to propose a toast to the child. But Churchill rose immediately and said, “As it was my birthday yesterday, I am going to ask you all to drink to my health first.” A wave of good-natured protest rose from the guests, as did shouts of “Sit down, Daddy!” Churchill resisted, then took his seat. After the toasts to the baby, Beaverbrook raised a glass to honor Churchill, calling him “the greatest man in the world.” Again Churchill wept. A call went up for his reply. He stood. As he spoke, his voice shook and tears streamed. “In these days,” he said, “I often think of Our Lord.” He could say no more. He sat down and looked at no one—the great orator made speechless by the weight of the day. Cowles found herself deeply moved. “I have never forgotten those simple words and if he enjoyed waging the war let it be remembered that he understood the anguish of it as well.” The next day, apparently in need of a little attention himself, Beaverbrook resigned again.

Sam, Edilio’s a good guy,” Albert said, breaking in on Sam’s gloomy thoughts. “But like I said, he’ll tell the rest of them. Once the council knows, everyone knows. If everyone knows how desperate things are, what do you think will happen?” Sam smiled without humor. “About half the people will be great. The other half will freak.” “And people will end up getting killed,” Albert said. He cocked his head sideways, trying his best to look like the idea had just occurred to him. “And who is going to end up kicking butts? Who will end up playing Daddy and then be resented and blamed and finally told to go away?” “You’ve gained new skills,” Sam said bitterly. “You used to just be about working harder than anyone else and being ambitious. You’re learning how to manipulate people.” Albert’s mouth twitched and his eyes flashed angrily. “You’re not the only one walking around with a big load of responsibility on your shoulders, Sam. You play the big mean daddy who won’t let anyone have any fun, and I play the greedy businessman who is just looking out for himself. But don’t be stupid: maybe I am greedy, but without me no one eats. Or drinks.

Do you believe in God, Aunt Elner?” “Sure I do, honey, why?” “How old were you when you started believing, do you remember?” Aunt Elner paused for a moment. “I never thought about not believing. Never did question it. I guess believing is just like math: some people get it right out of the chute, and some have to struggle for it. (...) Oh, I know a lot of people struggle, wondering is there really a God. They sit and think and worry over it all their life. The good Lord had to make smart people but I don’t think he did them any favors because it seems the smart ones start questioning things from the get go. But I never did. I’m one of the lucky ones. I thank God every night, my brain is just perfect for me, not too dumb, not too bright. You know, your daddy was always asking questions.” “He was?” “I remember one day he said, ‘Aunt Elner, how do you know there is a God, how can you be sure?’ ” “What did you tell him?” “I said, ‘Well, Gene, the answer is right on the end of your fingertips.’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well, think about it. Every single human being that was ever born from the beginning of time has a completely different set of fingerprints. Not two alike. Not a single one out of all the billions is ever repeated.’ I said, ‘Who else but God could think up all those different patterns and keep coming up with new ones year after year, not to mention all the color combinations of all the fish and birds.’ ” Dena smiled. “What did he say?” “He said, ‘Yes, but, Aunt Elner, how do you know that God’s not repeating old fingerprints from way back and reusing them on us?’ ” She laughed. “See what I mean? Yes, God is great, all right. He only made one mistake but it was a big one.” “What was that?” “Free will. That was his one big blunder. He gave us a choice whether or not to be good or bad. He made us too independent … and you can’t tell people what to do; they won’t listen. You can tell them to be good until you’re blue in the face but people don’t want to be preached at except at church, where they know what they are getting and are prepared for it.” “What’s life all about, Aunt Elner? Don’t you ever wonder what the point of the whole thing is?” “No, not really; it seems to me we only have one big decision in this life, whether to be good or bad. That’s what I came up with a long time ago. Of course, I may be wrong, but I’m not going to spend any time worrying over it, I’m just going to have a good time while I’m here. Live and let live.

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.

Alexander has nearly completely forgotten what it’s like to play, except when he’s in the water, but there had been no water in Texas, barely any in New Mexico, and now they’re in Arid Zona. Anthony tries land games with his father. He perches on Alexander’s lap, holds the tips of his index fingers together, and says, “Daddy, want to see how strong I am? Hold my fingers in your fist, and I’ll get free.” Alexander stubs out his cigarette. He holds Anthony’s fingers lightly, and the boy wriggles free. The delight of freeing himself from his daunting father is so great that he wants to play the game again and again. They play it two hundred times. And then the reverse. Alexander holds his index fingers together while Anthony clenches his tiny four-year-old fist over them. When Alexander is unable to get free, Anthony’s joy is something to behold. They play that two hundred times while Tatiana either prepares lunch or dinner, or washes or tidies, or just sits and watches them with a gladdening heart. Alexander takes Anthony off his knee and says in a throaty, nicotine-stained voice, “Tatia, want to play? Put your fingers into my fist and see if you can wriggle free. Come.” Not a muscle moves on his face, but her heart is no longer just gladdening. It’s quickening, it’s maddening. She knows she shouldn’t, Anthony is right there, but when Alexander calls, she comes. That’s just how it is. She perches on his lap and touches together the tips of her slightly trembling index fingers. She tries not to look into his face, just at her fingers, over which he now places his enormous fist, squeezes lightly, and says, “Go ahead, wriggle free.” Her whole body weakens. She tries, of course, to get free, but she knows this: while as a father Alexander plays one way with Anthony, as a husband, he plays the opposite way with her. She bites her lip to keep from making a single sound. “Come on, Mommy,” says the uncomprehending child by her side. “You can do it. I did it! Wriggle free.” “Yes, Tatiasha,” whispers Alexander, squeezing her fingers tighter, looking deep into her face as she sits on his lap. “Come on, wriggle free.” And she glimpses the smiling soul peeking out.

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.

During the season, they saw each other and played together almost every day. At the aunt's request, seconded by Professor Valérius, Daaé consented to give the young viscount some violin lessons. In this way, Raoul learned to love the same airs that had charmed Christine's childhood. They also both had the same calm and dreamy little cast of mind. They delighted in stories, in old Breton legends; and their favorite sport was to go and ask for them at the cottage-doors, like beggars: "Ma'am..." or, "Kind gentleman... have you a little story to tell us, please?" And it seldom happened that they did not have one "given" them; for nearly every old Breton grandame has, at least once in her life, seen the "korrigans" dance by moonlight on the heather. But their great treat was, in the twilight, in the great silence of the evening, after the sun had set in the sea, when Daaé came and sat down by them on the roadside and in a low voice, as though fearing lest he should frighten the ghosts whom he loved, told them the legends of the land of the North. And, the moment he stopped, the children would ask for more. There was one story that began: "A king sat in a little boat on one of those deep still lakes that open like a bright eye in the midst of the Norwegian mountains..." And another: "Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing. Her hair was golden as the sun's rays and her soul as clear and blue as her eyes. She wheedled her mother, was kind to her doll, took great care of her frock and her little red shoes and her fiddle, but most of all loved, when she went to sleep, to hear the Angel of Music." While the old man told this story, Raoul looked at Christine's blue eyes and golden hair; and Christine thought that Lotte was very lucky to hear the Angel of Music when she went to sleep. The Angel of Music played a part in all Daddy Daaé's tales; and he maintained that every great musician, every great artist received a visit from the Angel at least once in his life. Sometimes the Angel leans over their cradle, as happened to Lotte, and that is how their are little prodigies who play the fiddle at six better than fifty, which, you must admit, is very wonderful. Sometimes, the Angel comes much later, because the children are naughty and won't learn their lessons or practice their scales. And, sometimes, he does not come at all, because the children have a bad heart or a bad conscience. No one ever sees the Angel; but he is heard by those who are meant to hear him. He often comes when they least expect him, when they are sad or disheartened. Then their ears suddenly perceive celestial harmonies, a divine voice, which they remember all their lives. Persons who are visited by the Angel quiver with a thrill unknown to the rest of mankind. And they can not touch an instrument, or open their mouths to sing, without producing sounds that put all other human sounds to shame. Then people who do not know that the Angel has visited those persons say that they have genius. Little Christine asked her father if he had heard the Angel of Music. But Daddy Daaé shook his head sadly; and then his eyes lit up, as he said: "You will hear him one day, my child! When I am in Heaven, I will send him to you!" Daddy was beginning to cough at that time.

Dear Adam, “Flying high is marvelous, staying on the ground is great. What is really tasteless is staying in between.” Love Daddy

fact, but that’s nothing to do with it. He came back a hero and he’s in the firm now. I don’t like him. Since Daddy’s been away I’ve liked him less. He was always a bit of a smart aleck but just lately he’s surpassed himself, cocky little beast. Still, it really isn’t snobbery that’s made me go on turning him down. I wouldn’t care what he was if I liked him. I just don’t, that’s all.” She was speaking defensively, repeating the argument she had used to Robert at that astonishing interview just before lunch, and she stood squarely on the leopard rug, looking surprisingly brave and modern in the big room which was so cluttered with forgotten elegancies. Gabrielle sat up. Marriage was a subject which her generation had entirely understood, and her bright eyes were hard. “Did this person have the impudence to ask you to marry him?” she enquired. Frances writhed. The démodé snobbery embarrassed her. It was so like great age to get the whole thing out of perspective and to pounce upon a single aspect. “There was nothing impudent about it, darling,” she protested. “It was only that when Robert began to badger me to take the horrid little brute

spend more time comforting and hugging infant girls and more time watching infant boys play by themselves.22 Other cultural messages are more blatant. Gymboree once sold onesies proclaiming “Smart like Daddy” for boys and “Pretty like Mommy” for girls.23 The same year, J. C. Penney marketed a T-shirt to teenage girls that bragged, “I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me.”24 These things did not happen in 1951. They happened in 2011. Even worse, the messages sent to girls can move beyond encouraging superficial traits and veer into explicitly discouraging leadership. When a girl tries to lead, she is often labeled bossy. Boys are seldom called bossy because a boy taking the role of a boss does not surprise or offend. As someone who was called this for much of my childhood, I know that it is not a compliment. The stories of my childhood bossiness are told (and retold) with great amusement. Apparently, when I was in elementary school, I taught my younger siblings, David and Michelle, to follow me around, listen to my monologues, and scream the word “Right!” when I concluded. I was the eldest of the neighborhood children and allegedly spent my time organizing shows that I could direct and clubs that I could run. People laugh at these accounts, but to this day I always feel slightly ashamed of my behavior

Why, Daddy?" she asked. She still had that strange look on her face. "Why do dogs die so young? Shadow was only seventeen. He was not even as old as my babysitter." "To teach us," he said. "Teach us what, Daddy?" "Compassion," he replied. "But why, Daddy?" she asked. "So that we might be kinder. So we might make the world kinder. They leave, but they leave us with their lesson. All great teachers do that.

Many times people focus on one attribute of God to the exclusion of other attributes, which leads to an inaccurate view of God. But the image of God as a Father encompasses all of His attributes. God as a Father encompasses His holiness because He demands respect and authentic worship (Mal. 1:6). God as a Father incorporates His great love (1 John 3:1), His goodness and generosity (Matt. 7:11), and His kindness as a Daddy (Rom. 8:15). God as a Father includes His sovereignty, as He is the authority over all things (Eph. 4:6), and His knowledge and wisdom (1 Pet. 1:2). And God as Father embodies His justice as He disciplines His own (Heb. 12:7).

Her face distressed, Astrid handed him off to Zarek. "Menoeceus wants his father." Zarek glared at her. "Bob is crying because he wants his mother to stop calling him that crap-ass name." Zarek cuddled the small boy to him as he rocked him gently against his shoulder while he continued to wail. Loudly. "It's all right, Bob. Daddy's got you now. I'm saving you from Mommy's bad naming taste. I'd be crying, too, if my mom named me after an idiot." "Menoeceus is a great name," Astrid said defensively. Zarek snorted. "For an old man or a feminine hygiene product. Not for my son. And next time I get to name the kid and it won't be something that sounds like meningitis." Astrid stood with her hands on her hips, toe to toe with her husband. "You keep that up and next time you'll be the one birthing it, and don't mess with me, bucko, I have connections in that department. A pregnant man is not an impossibility in my neighborhood." She started away from him. "Yeah, well, I'll be glad to birth it if it means I can name him something normal," Zarek called after her.

Every day, my daddy told me the same thing. 'Once a task is just begun, never leave it till it's done. Be the labour great or small, do it well or not at all.

in the middle. You have to be strong and leave well alone.’ ‘Oh, but suppose it’s a bit too hot and the cakes burn?’ Libby wailed. ‘My mother is a really good cook. It would be awful to give her burnt cake; don’t you think perhaps . . . ?’ ‘Oh, Libby, use your loaf,’ Matthews implored. ‘You can cut burnt off, but there’s nothing you can do if it goes all slimy in the middle and I must say,’ he added, beginning to pile utensils into the yellow bowl, ‘the mixture tastes absolutely delicious. I think raw cake is even nicer than the cooked sort.’ He intercepted Libby’s longing glance towards the oven and chuckled. ‘You start the washing up and I’ll dry, then we’ll put all the things away, and by the time we’ve done that, the cake will very likely be cooked.’ The cake was a great success; Libby lovingly clapped the two halves together with raspberry jam in between, and wrote Welcome, Mummy and Daddy in her very best writing. Icing had not been available since the beginning of the war, but a piece of white card propped up on top of the cake was the next best thing. However, it was only Neil who came striding across the yard halfway through Thursday afternoon. Libby and Matthew had been hanging about the lane all day but as luck would have it had gone back to the house to lay the table for high tea when their visitor arrived. Neil gave a shout, stood his suitcase and bag down and caught Libby as she

when the Internet made it possible, I was in touch with her daughter, Marylyn, who was living in a mobile home in Utah with a companion. She was the grandmother of eighteen children and the great-grandmother of twenty-two. In what she said online, Marylyn had nothing but kind words to say about both parents, upsetting my conviction, after reading Mary’s memoir, that Daddy was the bad guy.

Steve drove us to the airstrip at the ranger station. One of the young rangers there immediately began to bend his ear about a wildlife issue. I took Robert off to pee on a bush before we had to get on the plane. It was just a tiny little prop plane and there would be no restroom until we got to Cairns. When we came back, all the general talk meant that there wasn’t much time left for us to say good-bye. Bindi pressed a note into Steve’s hand and said, “Don’t read this until we’re gone.” I gave Steve a big hug and a kiss. Then I kissed him again. I wanted to warn him to be careful about diving. It was my same old fear and discomfort with all his underwater adventures. A few days earlier, as Steve stepped off a dinghy, his boot had gotten tangled in a rope. “Watch out for that rope,” I said. He shot me a look that said, I’ve just caught forty-nine crocodiles in three weeks, and you’re thinking I’m going to fall over a rope? I laughed sheepishly. It seemed absurd to caution Steve about being careful. Steve was his usual enthusiastic self as we climbed into the plane. We knew we would see each other in less than two weeks. I would head back to the zoo, get some work done, and leave for Tasmania. Steve would do his filming trip. Then we would all be together again. We had arrived at a remarkable place in our relationship. Our trip to Lakefield had been one of the most special months of my entire life. The kids had a great time. We were all in the same place together, not only physically, but emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. We were all there. The pilot fired up the plane. Robert had a seat belt on and couldn’t see out the window. I couldn’t lift him up without unbuckling him, so he wasn’t able to see his daddy waving good-bye. But Bindi had a clear view of Steve, who had parked his Ute just outside the gable markers and was standing on top of it, legs wide apart, a big smile on his face, waving his hands over his head. I could see Bindi’s note in one of his hands. He had read it and was acknowledging it to Bindi. She waved frantically out the window. As the plane picked up speed, we swept past him and then we were into the sky.

Steve was his usual enthusiastic self as we climbed into the plane. We knew we would see each other in less than two weeks. I would head back to the zoo, get some work done, and leave for Tasmania. Steve would do his filming trip. Then we would all be together again. We had arrived at a remarkable place in our relationship. Our trip to Lakefield had been one of the most special months of my entire life. The kids had a great time. We were all in the same place together, not only physically, but emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. We were all there. The pilot fired up the plane. Robert had a seat belt on and couldn’t see out the window. I couldn’t lift him up without unbuckling him, so he wasn’t able to see his daddy waving good-bye. But Bindi had a clear view of Steve, who had parked his Ute just outside the gable markers and was standing on top of it, legs wide apart, a big smile on his face, waving his hands over his head. I could see Bindi’s note in one of his hands. He had read it and was acknowledging it to Bindi. She waved frantically out the window. As the plane picked up speed, we swept past him and then we were into the sky.

I immediately packed up Bindi and went to catch the next plane home. The family was in free fall. Steve was in shock, and Bob was even worse off. Lyn had always acted as the matriarch, the one who kept everything together. She was such a strong figure, a leader. Her death didn’t seem real. I sat on that plane and looked down at Bindi. Life is changed forever now, I thought. As we arrived home, I didn’t know what to expect. I had never dealt with grief like this before. Lyn was only in her fifties, and it seemed cruel to have her life cut short, as she was on the brink of a dream she had held in her heart forever. These were going to be her golden years. She and Bob could embark on the life they had worked so hard to achieve. They would be together, near their family, where they could take care of the land and enjoy the wildlife they loved. I couldn’t imagine what Steve, his dad, and his sisters were going through. My heart was broken. Bindi’s gran was gone just when they had most looked forward to spending time together. The aftermath of Lyn’s death was every bit as awful as I could have imagined. Steve was absolutely inconsolable, and Bob was very obviously unable to cope. Joy and Mandy were trying to keep things together, but they were distraught and heartbroken. Everyone at the zoo was somber. I felt I needed to do something, yet I felt helpless, sad, and lost. Steve’s younger sister Mandy performed the mournful task of sifting through the smashed items from the truck. One of the objects Lyn had packed was Bob’s teapot. There was nothing Bob enjoyed more than a cup of tea. As Mandy went to wash out the teapot, she noticed movement. Inside was Sharon, the bird-eating spider, the sole survivor of the accident. Although her tank had been smashed to bits, she had managed to crawl into the teapot to hide. After the funeral, time appeared to slow down and then stop entirely. Steve talked about moving out to Ironback Station. He couldn’t seem to order his thoughts. He no longer saw a reason for going on with all the projects on which we had worked so hard. Bindi was upset but didn’t have the understanding to know why. She was too young to get her head around what had happened. She simply cried when she saw her daddy crying. It would be a long time before life returned to anything like normalcy. Lyn’s death was something that Steve would never truly overcome. His connection with his mum, like that of so many mothers and sons, was unusually close. Lyn Irwin was a pioneer in wildlife rehabilitation work. She had given her son a great legacy, and eventually that gift would win out over death. But in the wake of her accident, all we could see was loss. Steve headed out into the bush alone, with just Sui and his swag. He reverted to his youth, to his solitary formative years. But grief trailed him. My heart broke for my husband. I was not sure he would ever find his way back.

I watched Bindi as she stared intently at her daddy with dark, piercing eyes. He gazed back at her and smiled, tears rolling down his cheeks, with such great love for his new daughter. The world had a brand-new wildlife warrior.

...And looking back, at least we got to state our love...before our world in Orleans ended in a symphony of broken glass. Earlier that evening, I had sat on the porch with Matthieu-Michele, as Cross and Christy watched over their Grandpa Timothy's comatose body in the back bedroom. I looked down into Timothy's face and wept. Timmy already looked dead. He was deathly pale, and his hair was heavily streaked with grey. "Don't cry, Uncle Obadiah," Matthieu-Michele said tenderly. "Just have faith, and love Him. Believe in Him, and keep preaching His Word." "And here I thought that you were a man of science, like your Daddy Matt." "I cannot be both?" he smiled gently, as he took my hand and led me out on the back porch. He lowered me into a chair, and seated himself beside me. "Look at the stars," he said softly. "However could I believe in the vastness and the great wonder of the universe itself, and not in He who created it? Science and Theology go hand-in-hand; they are not polar opposites. We must remember, the Holy Bible is only a guide. God isn't just a quick-fix solution for all of our problems. He isn't a pill that we pop to make everything go away. Instead, He is a shepherd, looking out for us...loving us from a great distance and calling out to us constantly...and sometimes, things get lost in the translation. We, for example, as men, will try to weave our own selfish desires and prejudices in with His. That is the greatest sin of all, the great sin of mankind. It frightens people away from His Word and His Grace. They believe that He hates them, that it’s the voice of God condemning them, rather than the blackened hearts of the misguided men who twist His words to suit their doctrine of anger and misunderstanding. Their words are straight from the evil core of mankind, who, in their foolishness, try to take on the guise of God." I leaned upon him heavily, the tears wet upon my cheeks. "And to think that there were times when I wondered if I did any good at all," I sighed, "But His Word lives in your heart." Matthieu-Michele embraced me in his wings. "Uncle, you are a wonder!" he smiled. "Never doubt it. My father couldn't ask for a better vessel for His Word." "I love you, Boy," I whispered. "You and Croccifixio and Christophe...we will always be family, and nothing will ever part us--" ~*~*~*~ ...And it was over, just like that. It happened so quickly. The window in the front room exploded in a rain of glass, and two soldiers seized Arik. Two came for me as well, and I surrendered. Arik struggled, and was silenced with a blow to the back of the head. Matthieu-Michele--who had been behind me--was mysteriously absent, and Cross, Christy, Morgan and Simone were nowhere in sight. Matthieu-Michele must have thrown up a psychic bubble around them, and around Timothy's body, as Arik and I were manacled and taken out into the street. A barred wagon awaited us there, and we were roughly forced into it...

Don't cry, Uncle Obadiah," Matthieu-Michele said tenderly. "Just have faith, and love Him. Believe in Him, and keep preaching His Word." "And here I thought that you were a man of science, like your Daddy Matt." "I cannot be both?" he smiled gently, as he took my hand and led me out on the back porch. He lowered me into a chair, and seated himself beside me. "Look at the stars," he said softly. "However could I believe in the vastness and the great wonder of the universe itself, and not in He who created it? Science and Theology go hand-in-hand; they are not polar opposites. We must remember, the Holy Bible is only a guide. God isn't just a quick-fix solution for all of our problems. He isn't a pill that we pop to make everything go away. Instead, He is a shepherd, looking out for us...loving us from a great distance and calling out to us constantly...and sometimes, things get lost in the translation. We, for example, as men, will try to weave our own selfish desires and prejudices in with His. That is the greatest sin of all, the great sin of mankind. It frightens people away from His Word and His Grace. They believe that He hates them, that it’s the voice of God condemning them, rather than the blackened hearts of the misguided men who twist His words to suit their doctrine of anger and misunderstanding. Their words are straight from the evil core of mankind, who, in their foolishness, try to take on the guise of God.