(July 3rd). Today – exactly 32 years since my father died – I’m grading essays. The assignment was to interview someone significant and write an essay about that person. “The interview opened many doors of silence,” one student wrote, saying that his father now “tries to bring up conversations at the dinner table.” It’s comments like these that keep me re-assigning this essay. 
Looking back, I remember my own silent mornings, riding along with my dad till he’d drop me near the high school and head for his university job. Each of us wanted to talk, but neither knew what to say. Why didn’t someone give me an assignment like this? What would I have asked if I’d been given that nudge?
I wonder whether I’d have known then – less than a decade before he would die – the right questions to ask. What was it like to be a husband, the father of children? How did his teaching affect his life? He was an Oceanography professor – these days, I teach college English myself. Yet back then, I never dreamed I’d go in that direction.
And there’s another question I often suggest: “Is there anything else I should have asked you?” How would he have answered that question, I wonder?
Looking back, I remember my own silent mornings, riding along with my dad till he’d drop me near the high school and head for his university job. Each of us wanted to talk, but neither knew what to say. Why didn’t someone give me an assignment like this? What would I have asked if I’d been given that nudge?
I wonder whether I’d have known then – less than a decade before he would die – the right questions to ask. What was it like to be a husband, the father of children? How did his teaching affect his life? He was an Oceanography professor – these days, I teach college English myself. Yet back then, I never dreamed I’d go in that direction.
And there’s another question I often suggest: “Is there anything else I should have asked you?” How would he have answered that question, I wonder?
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