“My dad enrolled in college when he was twelve years old. He met...

“My dad enrolled in college when he was twelve years old. He met my mother during his junior year. He was fifteen at the time, and she wanted nothing to do with him. But he was determined in his pursuit. He accompanied her one day to collect millipedes for a biology project. He wasn’t very good at it. He found nothing but spiders. But he took his collection back to the lab and put one of the spiders under a microscope. Then he did it again. And again. Until he eventually became the world’s leading arachnologist. People always ask me if there were spiders around our house growing up. And there weren’t. His job mainly consisted of research. He published hundreds of books and papers. He wrote so much that I always fell asleep to the sound of his keyboard. If you look at the arc of his work, it’s clear that his true passion was classification. He loved to collect and synthesize information. Spiders were just his entry into that world. But I’m not sure how much that examination extended to his own emotions. We never talked about feelings in our house. So when my mother passed way, I was surprised to receive a letter from my dad. He said that he loved me. And that he felt like the worst father ever, because he’d spent too much time on his work. That’s not at all how I viewed him. But clearly it was a belief that he’d been living with. It was the first time he’d ever been vulnerable with me. Dad suffered a fatal fall a few weeks ago. And it’s been really hard. Because ever since he’d written that letter, we’d become best friends. We didn’t just talk about events anymore. He was sharing his feelings. It wasn’t perfect. It was still spotty. But Dad was beginning to understand that emotions aren’t just an inconvenience that get in the way of truth. They have a life of their own. They’re part of the fullness of life. They’re what make us different than spiders. I remember the year after Mom passed away. We’d grown much closer. And we were eating dinner together at a seaside restaurant. I remember Dad got really quiet, and said: ‘I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m feeling lately. And I’ve decided that I’m happy.’ It was the first time that I’d ever heard him say it.”

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