Dad

Last April, my dad died two days before his 58 birthday after struggling with Huntington's Disease for over a decade. This is my first year without a dad.

My dad had an explosive anger that he took out on his children. My father abused me and I love him in spite of myself. I don’t want him to die.

Babies are born. People die. Birthdays and anniversaries and Christmas all happen, and our military folks miss it all.

Today I saw this video of Joe and Meghan, and for a just a minute I remembered that life is shockingly fragile and people are better than we think.

Parents this awesome just remind me how I don't even have a baby book for 4 out of 5 of my children.

I’m not sure I would have persisted with such ambition prior to my father’s death. I’ve found that a loved one’s passing does more than nudge you forward; it can catapult you towards exciting opportunities.

It would be easy to point to my mother as the originator of my lifelong feminism. She kept her last name when my parents married in the ‘80s, refused to perpetuate schoolyard gender norms, and encouraged my sister and me not to let anyone limit us by our gender... My mother may have been the louder influence, but ignoring my father’s impact does us both a disservice.

Judith Shulevitz recently noted in the New York Times that although “unmarried childless women have overcome every barrier to opportunity you can think of... Mothers, on the other hand, aren’t doing nearly as well.” According to Shulevitz, this is because the feminists of Hillary Clinton’s generation focused on demanding equality for women in the workplace.