Category: dad is good
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Daddy Issues are Overrated
When my dad hooked back up with the babysitter he’d originally cheated on mom with, my siblings and I didn’t hear from him for a month. I was eating at a Texas barbecue joint a block from Times Square when that carpenter and millwright finally returned all of my ignored calls. I paced in the…
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Dad is Good at Rearing Domestic Animals
One thing that seems so strange in retrospect is how many animals came through our home and therefore how good Dad was at rearing domestic animals. Now and again, I grew jealous of them, but I cannot deny that, generally speaking, my father was really good at rearing animals. I had, much like a halfling…
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Dad is Good at Welcoming Everyone
Dad had a lot of flaws when it came to making and keeping friends, but he always seemed to me to be great at welcoming everyone or at least early on he greeted everyone with a spirit of welcome that he shied away from in later years. My mother early on did the equivalent of…
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Dad is Good at Truck Maintenance
In that house on Circle Drive, the garage pulled into the basement where dad did truck maintenance. It’s funny because I remember that. And I remember the upstairs, the porch, the attic, my room. My memory is almost entirely blank on my parents room unless it was the one that had the green textured paint.…
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Dad is Good at Demon Hunting
Some of my relatives have always taken an interest in demon hunting stories, but in practice it seems my dad had a… different approach to it. I won’t mention who. However, I will say that sometimes it seems an over interest in power and control comes hand in hand with an over interest in the…
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Dad is Good at the Basics of Life
But there in the house that pierced the hill on circle drive, I learned the basics of life. Dad is good and taught me that sometimes there’s no other cure for pain but the hard break. He offered to pull my teeth with pliers, to tie a string to a door and slam it shut.…
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Dad is Good at the Giant Conspiracy
My dad, among others, affirmed the big family. And sometimes this meant speaking of the giant conspiracy. This includes the people you despise, you realize. If family’s big enough, you start to think of yourself as a part of the brotherhood of mankind. The founder of my alma mater, which was a small liberal arts…
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Dad is Good at Redefining Family
In secret soon before my father died, I was writing a memoir about him called Dad is Good. In it, I refused to talk about the daddy issues I mention elsewhere. I resolved only to talk about the qualitative goods of fatherhood in general, of my father in specific. To him. Then he died stupid…