37. Liners: Île de France, 1957
My first and most tyrannically absolute memory of childhood, one free from the grainy coaxing of black and white photo [...]
38. Liners: Cristoforo Colombo, 1963
A full three years between my first and second transatlantic crossings. The second, like the first, was westbound, from Gibraltar [...]
39. Liners: MS Cesare Augustus, 1970
Slowly hauled toward adolescence, and later adulthood, as if by a weary stork eager to deposit me at the foot [...]
23. Father Knows Best: Misunderstandings
With my mother now a resident of Neverland, camped out in Europe by choice and what she might do next [...]
24. Father Knows Best: Marcia
My tiff with Pussy Galore and Mrs. Conte came not long after Samantha’s tomboy reassurances had seemed to defang the [...]
25. Father Knows Best: Home and General
Though my mother was gone and my switchboard heartbreak was still raw, home remained a sweet place, mostly because its [...]
26. Father Knows Best: The “Californian” in the Dark
As a lover of old magazines and illustrated books, I found subjects of interest my father never discussed. In a [...]
27. Father Knows Best: Walter Lord
To get to New York we retraced our off-to-Spain steps of four years before. Only this time, without my mother [...]
A shell game
As a child, I collected souls (but it was only when the deities slumbered). It mattered little that I [...]
28. Father Knows Best: Mrs. Margaret
My much-anticipated VC-10 adventure did not go quite as planned, and yet again, it was my father’s uncanny sense of [...]
In real life
Some weeks ago — my sense of time these days is admittedly fragile — I received an email from a [...]