Skip to main content

My Gift

 

To my daughters,

I tried to be her, and I could not.

I tried to be their buddy, and I could not.

Then I understood: I am Dad.

That is my role, my strength, and my gift.

Now, it is recorded forever, here.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Planner 00Iren

When I tell my daughters that their mother was amazing, I am not sure they grasp the magnitude of her stature. They tell me, “Yes dad, we know,” but I want them to understand the steel in her soul. I remember the day I saw Christina for the first time. it was in the halls of the chemistry department at Simon Fraser University. We both entered a long hallway at the same time, walking in opposite directions in our white lab coats. We had the opportunity to take a good look at each other. When we passed, our eyes crossed. She kept walking without turning, but I looked back to see her disappear into one of the laboratories. I thought, “Wow, I do not have a remote chance with that girl!” Years later, after we reunited in Vancouver, she told me she had thought the same: "He is going to make a woman very happy one day." She said she had no idea it was going to be her. In 1993, after I received an ultimatum letter from Canada Immigration, I was left with no option but to escape to th...

Our Charlie, Hegel

It was 1981, and I had barely survived my first year at the University of Havana, where I was studying chemistry. The leap from high school to university had been a huge adjustment—not just for me, but for many others. In the fall of 1979, about 250 of us began the program together. By the second year, fewer than 50 remained. That year we were introduced to a new subject: Philosophy. Every subject has to start somewhere, and we began with the classics—their ideas, their conflicts, their strengths and weaknesses. But one question weighed heavily on us: why study philosophy at all? Shouldn’t we be focused on chemistry—the nature of substances, their reactions, the concepts of atoms, molecules, and bonds? That was the very first challenge we posed to our philosophy lecturer, and to us, it seemed perfectly legitimate. The answer, fittingly, was philosophical. In the Soviet context, philosophy was meant to train us in analytical reasoning and critical thinking—by grappling with big questi...