His letters gave me what I’d been missing during the first 14 years of my life. Every typewritten page, every piece of personal stationery with his left-handed scrawl, managed to fill another gaping hole in my heart with something like love.
When I began writing for my high school newspaper and sent him my clippings, my dad, an aspiring writer with a deep wish for a published work of his own, was over the moon with praise.
When I was 16, he wrote: “I enjoyed your articles and I think you show great promise.” At 17, a note from him arrived that read, “Another excellent piece! You have found your calling. I am impressed.”
When I was not quite 18, he wrote to me and shared that the fun of writing had left him. He explained he was trying to remember the simple joy of getting words down on the page.
“I consider you a writer,” his typewritten words on thin vellum paper proclaimed, “and any suggestions you might care to share on this or other subjects would be most welcome.”
He considered me a writer. More than anything, he considered me.
When my graduation from high school coincided with my mother’s second divorce, there was no money to spare for college tuition. My father — who’d finally begun paying my mother that back child support — offered to send it straight to me. This made going to college possible, eventually making me the first in my family to graduate with a degree from higher education.
At 19, he bought me my first car, a used 1981 Honda Prelude. He laid out the agreement in another letter: “If you are going to drink, you may not drive under any circumstances. Wearing the Dad hat is still awkward and I am falling all over myself, please try and understand. I love you and respect you, all I want to know is how we can continue to improve our relationship.”
Every letter ended the same: Much love, Dad.
I used the car to get to school and work and to fulfill the requirements for my major in journalism, the choice of which was greatly influenced by my father. Once, when I mentioned changing my major to psychology, citing my love of people and desire to help them, he countered that my gift for writing was something that would help many people — and that it was a gift not everyone had to give.
Plus, he was paying, so journalism it was.
When I got caught up with my social life in college, ending up with average (or below average) grades, a letter arrived promptly, reminding me what I was in school to do.
“If being average is OK with you at this point, you might as well french fry your hair and get over to Burger King! No one ever set out to be average!” he wrote. “The world has become an average planet and has just about sealed its fate with average people doing average work. We need excellence and we need it from you. It will take people like you — young people with original ideas — to take charge.”
Reader, my grades improved, if only slightly.
During college and after, I drove the Prelude from my apartment in Los Angeles to his house in Monterey so often, the car could almost find its way there without me. Dad, his wife Karen and I stayed up too late watching movies and, after Karen went to bed, Dad and I sat by the fireplace for hours and talked about the world, about writing, about life.
What he didn’t share fireside arrived by mail.
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