Somewhere slightly before or after the close of our second decade, we reach a momentous milestone--childhood's end. We have left asafe place and can't go home again. We have moved into a world where life isn't fair, where life is rarely what it should be.

Our father presents an optional set of rhythms and responses for us to connect to. As a second home base, he makes it safer to roam. With him as an ally--a love--it is safer, too, to show that we're mad when we're mad at our mother. We can hate and not be abandoned, hate and still love.

I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

We begin life with loss. We are cast from the womb without an apartment, a charge plate, a job or a car. We are sucking, sobbing, clinging, helpless babies.

Sun lighting a child's hair. A friend's embrace. Slow dancing in a safe and quiet place. The pleasures of an ordinary life.

Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle, a higher tax bracket or a holding pattern over Philadelphia.

Our daily existence requires both closeness and distance, the wholeness of self, the wholeness of intimacy.