The View from a Drawbridge

Tag: father

  • What Makes a Good Father?

    I can spot a good father from a mile away.

  • Loving the Father I Chose

    You get to choose whom to love and invite into the family circle that you create in your heart.

  • My Imaginary Father

    I used to think he was strong.

  • The Epitome of a Great Man

    When I was a bridgetender in Jacksonville, Florida, one of my coworkers was a guy named Buz Wickless. I always enjoyed talking to him at shift change. He was definitely a people person. More than most of us crusty old bridgetenders, he liked talking to boaters and pedestrians. He was also a family man. Never…

  • Whoa. My Parents Loved Each Other.

    I know this is going to sound awfully strange to those of you who were lucky enough to grow up in intact households, but for the first time, at age 52, it recently dawned on me that at some point in time, my parents actually loved each other. And now I’m having to reframe my…

  • Thanks, Crappy Dad!

    I was commiserating the other day with someone about what horrible, toxic, deadbeat and emotionally unsupportive fathers we each have. I was wondering how much farther ahead we’d both be if we had grown up with men in our lives who encouraged us and made us feel safe and loved. I can’t even imagine what…

  • A Shout Out to Deadbeat Dads

    My parents got divorced when I was three months old. I never met my father. I did not receive a single Christmas or birthday card, photograph or visit, in my entire life. He paid not one penny of child support. People used to ask me if I missed my father. My stock response was, “How…

  • One Crabby Family

    During one of my recent “weekends” (Oh, to actually have it fall on a weekend, for once, but nooooo…) I went with my first Seattle friend to visit her parents in Port Townsend, Washington. What a gorgeous place! I’ll write about it tomorrow. For today, I want to write more about what interested me the…

  • Pennies in the Parking Lot

    A friend and coworker told me a delightful story the other day. When he has spare change he drops it in parking lots. Why? Because when one of his daughters was young, he noticed that she had inherited his extreme ability to quickly spot when things were out of place. This ability meant they both…

  • Another Rant About Alcoholism

    One of my most popular blog entries is Why I Hate Alcohol, and I genuinely thought I’d gotten all my anger about the subject off my chest when I wrote it. It turns out that that is not the case. Far from it. The other day, someone who calls himself “Dad” commented on another one…