Conversations with Dad

I was thinking of my father tonight, and how he would have told me everything was going to be okay, even if he bloody well knew it wouldn’t be, and how even knowing he was lying to me I’d feel better.

These days when I see him he’s young—younger than I ever knew him, young like in his wedding picture or his college yearbook. Black hair slicked back, heavy black glasses, white shirt, dark tie. Today, a stereotypical nerd. Back then, in the late 50s/early 60s, a fashionable, handsome young offi...