was eating well, or at least what he took for well. But just that he joked about almost everything too much. I know it got to my mother too. With me he was hardly ever serious except when I wasn’t eating well. And even that wasn’t seriousness; that was just plain strange. So, was he ever serious with me? Maybe when I was crossing a busy street with him and things like that. When I got a bad splinter. When I fell. All this troubled me. Bugged me, I wanted to say. Also infuriated me sometimes when I wanted to speak seriously to him about something and sometimes to someone else. If I spoke seriously to someone when he was around he usually interrupted with jokes, or little asides, such as ‘Boy, is she smart?’—in this real put-on dummy’s accent. I didn’t know how smart she was. Boy!’ Or ‘Who told you that what you just said? Too smart for it to be me, I mean “I,” I mean “him.” I want to know the guy who told you that so I can know someone who’s really smart, outside of my own daughter, of course.’ And so on. That he praised me too much too. Grievance. I wanted real honest praise, not total overwhelming sticky silly fake praise. I wanted real honest rejection from him too. Criticism, I mean. Something that could help. In just when I cut something out of paper, for instance. Made designs. Drew. But I almost never got it because of how unserious he was. But I loved him for his affectionateness. Which he gave a lot. I must have been kissed and hugged and said beautiful words to—’my darling daughter, my pretty princess, my wonderful bunny’—more times in the five years I knew him than anyone could be in, well, twenty-five years. In a lifetime even. That he spent so much time with me too. He could because of his job. But he also could have avoided it, claiming work, work, important older-person things he had to do, but he didn’t. I loved him for it. Appreciated it, rather. Both. But I didn’t like it that he yelled. Major grievance. He could turn on me in a second and this scared me too. Up and down, back and forth he was too in his niceness and anger bursts. He probably scarred me on that. When I hear a sudden gruff voice sometimes even today, I shake. Also his crazy temper things and yellings not against me this time but sometimes against everything. What I mean is — Well I have a memory put away somewhere from when I still wore diapers, because he was changing them then and I was on my back on the bed he changed me on and suddenly with his fists he’s banging the bed on both sides of me and screaming not words but straight yells as loud as he can. But he never hit me. Maybe once or twice I don’t know of. But normal for anyone, maybe even for someone who later becomes a saint: twice, three times in five years 111 say. I’m not trying to apologize for him. I’ve hit some kids and my sister for no reason and sometimes for good reason and swung at my mother once or twice too, but of course I’m much younger. And if he hit me I’m sure it was only a slap, on the hand, probably the little top part of it, but not hard and nothing more than that. I also admired the work he did. Not admired it, since except for it just lying around on tables and shelves I never saw it, but just that he did it, never stopped, year after year, started long before my mother met him, and that he wasn’t bothered or boosted by what people said of it, but that’s something else and maybe not for me to talk as if I know what I’m talking about. If it had any influence on me, it’ll turn up later. I like it too that he, with my mother, encouraged my reading and own creating and before that, read to me, every day and night, almost from the time I was born. So he was serious in that with me, which I forgot. Also that he dropped everything most times to get something for me. I’m talking about food, books, for my thirst, anything. He’d run into the house, he’d turn the car around and drive back five miles to the house, to get me a sweater if I was cold or my favorite stuffed animal at the time if I forgot it and was sad. So what I’m saying is he was generous most times with his time with me for a person who was really short of time, when you think that besides what he did at home he was doing two other work things. I’ve counted the words on two pages and multiplied that by the number of pages I’ve written so far and then divided it all in two and see I’ve gone way way over the word limit. Maybe I should just sum up now — I’m sure nobody will want to read even half this much from me and probably will just want to skip from page two to this last one — and say that I know I didn’t answer the aim of the essay Mrs. Zimkin asked for, but that losing my father so early in my life was a major tragedy for me, if that isn’t repeating myself after all I’ve said, and if this sentence isn’t too complicated, with not enough commas or something or with just not breaking it up into two or three sentences, to understand. And ‘the major’ then, I’ll say. The.”