What impact did your father have on you? If you’ve never much thought about it, or discussed it with him, the answers might startle you. I never reflected on it deeply, let alone said anything to him—at least not in words.
If I had asked him that question before he died—as the approaching ninth anniversary of his death, just three weeks following Father’s Day, prompts me at last to do—my father would have waved the question aside, implying that he’d had no impact at all. If pressed, he’d have allowed that he had put a roof over my head. And, of course, that he had possessed the good sense to marry a wonderful girl who devoted her life to raising her four boys….