Parenting is difficult under any circumstances, and in my father's view, to raise a morally upright and honest child, you sometimes have to lie to him.
My father worked for IBM. My mother raised us kids. There were six of us, and a couple of extra foster kids at any given time.
People ask me from time to time what it was like growing up with Henry Fonda as my father. I say, Ever see Fort Apache? He was like Colonel Thursday.
I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother's a black woman, South African Xhosa woman... and my father's Swiss, from Switzerland.
I lost contact with my father for many years because of apartheid. For, like, six years, I didn't see my dad. And, now, this was the six years of being a teenager.
I was being trained because I wanted to be a preacher like my father. I wanted to talk about Moses; I wanted to talk about God... I wanted to talk about the apostles, the disciples and all that.
You must all follow the lead of the bishop, as Jesus Christ followed that of the Father; follow the presbytery as you would the Apostles; reverence the deacons as you would God's commandment.
I was 19 when my father died from a heart attack. He was a 55-year-old college professor and had led what was by all appearances a risk-free life. But he was overweight, and heart disease runs in our family.
The God of the Christians is a father who makes much of his apples, and very little of his children.
I once did a gig at an office Christmas party in the showroom floor of a friend's father's home appliance shop in the suburbs of Melbourne. It was to a much older crowd. Without a microphone. Or a stage. With the queue for the buffet behind me.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
Even as my father grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, signs told him: 'No Irish Need Apply.'
I always joke that my kids' favorite holiday is Father's Day. They love the way I celebrate the occasion by writing each of them a thank-you letter and a generous check. It's my way of letting them know how much I appreciate the great pleasure and privilege of being their dad.
My father is my best friend. Just growing up with him inspired me to appreciate music that much more because he appreciates music.
As a father and grandfather, I have witnessed firsthand the joy of new life entering the world. I know the pain and apprehension that goes along with premature births and birth defects.
If you are a good person, you will probably be a good father. Try not to worry too much. If you don't feel apprehensive just before your first child arrives, you are abnormal. Though catastrophe doesn't come as often in childbirth as it did a few generations ago, we naturally fear it.
My mother had aspirations to become a concert singer. Her Methodist Minister father didn't approve of young girls leaving home until they married, so she had to pass it up.
My mother is Lithuanian Australian, and my father was born in Singapore, but he is Pakistani / Saudi Arabian.
I found poetry at 12 and 13 and, lo and behold, learned that my attorney father had a background in poetry - as he wore dashikis and Afros in the '70s and named his kids Arabic names. He was a poet and a lot like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron and all of these folks. He definitely was an artist.
My father was a creature of the archaic world, really. He would have been entirely at home in a Gaelic hill-fort. His side of the family, and the houses I associate with his side of the family, belonged to a traditional rural Ireland.
