A Girl Without a Father
Suggested listening: Loudon Wainwright's "Daughter" I’ve been a girl without a father almost as long as I’ve been a girl with one. My dad died when I was 17, halfway through my senior year of high school, just a couple of months after he turned 57. I have missed so many things. I missed him watching me graduate high school, moving me - a first-generation college student -into UNC (the school he kept nudging me toward), celebrating my journalism degree, walking me down the aisle, reading my articles in his favorite beach newspaper, holding his third granddaughter, talking me through my divorce, and hearing about my new life. I have forgotten so many things. I have forgotten the sound of his voice, the way he walked, the everyday mix of things that made him Big Jim. All of those things seem so, so far away from me now. Except. Except I took my daughter to the library one day, a pretty common field trip for us, and when I looked across a...