My father's a clergyman, and he was in the mission field for a certain amount of time in British Honduras, which is now Belize.
My father, Dines Pontoppidan, belonged to an old family of clergymen and was himself a minister.
So the first job that I got - my father got it for me - he had his clerical collar on, was a gay bar in D.C., it was Mr. Henry's of Georgetown.
My father was a construction worker most of his life. My mother, when she came from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, to the United States, never had a chance to go to college either and became a clerical worker. But they did nothing but build this country.
My mother and father met through climbing and it was totally natural that I would become a climber too.
When a father climbs a dangerous mountain and dies, we mourn. When a mother does, we question her judgment. How could she?
The first job I had was a Pampers commercial. And I used to go with my father whenever he would do a performance. I remember clinging to his legs, saying, 'Please. Take me with you.'
My mother was a free-spirited clinical therapist, and I had the most hard-working father, a television lighting director by trade. My mum raised me to be a global citizen, with eyes open to sometimes harsh realities.
When I was born, my father named me Melissa, and I am still Melissa, but I got the nickname Lizzo around the time I was in the Cornrow Clique.
When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.
In the early years, I found a voice that was my voice and also partly my father's voice. But isn't that what you always do? Why do kids at 5 years old go into the closet and put their daddy's shoes on? Hey, my kids do it.
My relationship with my father still troubles me because it never got resolved, and there was no closure. There was a lot of bitterness, but having written about it, I found that I was able to overcome that bitterness and look at the relationship anew.
My father was always clowning around. It was a huge influence on me. In my family, everything is turned into a joke.
When I was in the ring at the Olympics, it was my father's words that I was hearing, not the coaches'. 'I never listened to what the coaches said. I would call my father and he would give me advice from prison.
My father found cocktail parties challenging.
My mother was very strong. Once, she picked up a coconut and smashed it against my father's head. It taught me about women defending themselves and not collapsing in a heap.
I like, 'I Believe In Father Christmas' - that is one of my favorites it is a lovely composition; 'Colder Than Winter' as well. There are so many beautiful songs.
My father's Alfred Newman - born in 1900, child prodigy at the piano, ended up in pit orchestras in the teens. I think he's one of the youngest conductors to conduct Broadway and worked with George Gershwin and Jerome Kern and Cole Porter - went out with Irvin Berlin in 1930 to Hollywood and never left.
My parents, particularly my father, had been used by commentators, political journalists and political commentators, to attack me, and the collateral damage was the reputations of my father and my mother.
A friend at school was always being laughed at because his father emptied dustbins for a living. But those who laughed worshipped famous footballers. This is an example of our topsy-turvy view of 'success.' Who would we miss most if they did not work for a month, the footballer or the garbage collector?
