Dear Dad, You Were Right.

This morning, republishing one of my favorite pieces I’ve ever written. It’s my favorite because it has felt — for the past decade — imperative, urgent really to let my father know how much I love him, and how much his early-year advice on pursuing a creative life made possible the wild and fulfilling adventure I am enjoying. It’s also my favorite because — to quote Van Gogh — “what is done in love is done well.”

Sometimes there are no easy places to insert this kind of life-spanning gratitude into conversation. So here it lives. When I originally published this piece, my mother called me and said: “Oh, your blog today. I heard Dad take a deep sigh from the breakfast room as soon as he read the title.” I of course also included it in my book, both in abridged form and in shorthand, as the dedication: “Dear Dad, You Were Right.”

Dad, I love you. You were right.

******

*Above: my Dad with my six-month-old daughter.

I was at an event recently where a reader approached me and said, among other lovely things, “I just have to tell you – I love your dad. I had tears streaming down my cheeks reading what he said.”

I wanted to ask which essay she was referring to, but quickly decided that it didn’t matter. Instead, I nodded: “I know. He’s the best.”

Earlier this week, I listened to the section of Anne Lamott’s book in which she talks about writing as a gift for people we love. Of a book on her father’s diagnosis with and death from brain cancer, she says: “I first I wrote down everything that happened to us, then I took out the parts that felt self-indulgent. I wasn’t writing the book with my thumb stuck out trying to hitchhike into history. I just wanted to write a book for my father that might also help someone going through a similar situation. Some people may have thought that this book was too personal, too confessional, but what these people think about me is none of my business. I got to write books about my father and my best friend, and they got to read them before they died. Can you imagine? I wrote for an audience of two whom I loved and respected, who loved and respected me. So I wrote for them as carefully and soulfully as I could, which is needless to say, how I wish I could write all the time.”

I’m not sure if I realized, before I listened to Lamott, how much my writing takes the form of love letters. I mean, I know that my writings about Elizabeth and my grandfather and other deceased are elegiac. They are conscious expressions of remembrance. I’ve elsewhere described them as “paper boats: something slight and hand-formed that still, against all odds, float.” I also observed: “When I write about the past, and particularly those beloved deceased who belong to it, I am able for a moment to unstrap myself from the present. I find things lost. Sometimes these unearthings are only shadow and dust: there are details, for example, of my friend Elizabeth that have atrophied to the point of disintegration. I mourn those degradations intensely. I wish I had written them down when the grief was keener and the memory sharper. It is, I realize, a mad task, to believe that I might somehow resurrect her in her entirety through language. But it can sometimes feel that way, when I am sitting at my screen, and she appears on the page wearing my own words.”

But I did not realize that when I sit down to represent the advice and lessons I’ve learned from the still-living, I am also writing directly to those mentors: “You were right,” and “I listened,” and “I love you.”

I sometimes feel that there are no easy places to say these things in real life. You are sitting in the dining room over bagel sandwiches, or unpacking groceries, or listening to Siri on the car navigation system, and it doesn’t feel right to interject: “You know all those times you told me, on the eve of a big decision, to move forward anyway? And you did this by insisting, ‘You’re gonna love it,’ even though you had no idea whether I would? Thanks for that. And while we’re at it, thanks for telling me to pursue something I was passionate about, for insisting I carry petty cash, for taking me to the Kennedy Center symphony when I was little, for saying “Oo la la” when I wore that dress you brought me from your trip to Mexico, for never trivializing my writing or my academic pursuits, for introducing me to Sibelius and Schubert and Puccini, for paying for my education, for taking me seriously when I said I wanted to start a technology business, for always answering your phone — even when you are huffing and puffing on mile nine of a long run, for flying to Rome to listen to me stumble through a piffling academic paper at a conference, for teaching me to avoid making jokes at the expense of anyone but myself, for reminding me to give people space, for offering me the benefit of the doubt, for letting me tag along fly-fishing in Aspen, for singing me “Ghost Riders in the Sky” before bed, for insisting that life is too short to hold grudges — especially within the family, for loving Mom, for stopping halfway up the driveway of my childhood home to point out the blooming forsythia bushes for the twentieth time–which is to say, for showing me how to live.”

Dad, you were right. I listened. I love you.

Post-Scripts.

+More (recently-captured) lessons from my Dad.

+On the reference to Sibelius.

+From another essay on (ahem, love letter to) my parents:

““But isn’t it beautiful?” he’d ask, gesturing at the forsythia, harbinger of imminent thaw, and we’d murmur or nod in bewildered or shrugging assent, shifting in our seats, anxious to return to play. Or the way he’d drive the back way home from Church and put his car in park on the far side of our home, at the foot of the hill on which it sat, and point out recent plantings from Johnson’s on Wisconsin Avenue, or the growth of the boxwood hedge he’d installed at the property’s perimeter. At the time, I could neither fathom nor feign their interest in such things. But now I see When morning schedules have limited give, and time for tending to the plants in our own yard requires elbowing around plans, and entire months hurtle by in a blink, their care and nurture, their marking of the seasons, their every admiring comment at the blossom-then-fade a reminder that time is a gift.”

Shopping Break.

+Quickly becoming the Faherty fangirl so many of you already are — I ordered this bikini. The proportions look perfect.

+If you’re a Nordstrom card holder, you get early access to their Anniversary Sale starting today. I’ll have a post with my favorites going live when it opens for more of us later this week, but you can shop my sale picks here for now!

+Doen is launching a warehouse sale this morning at 11 AM EST! Will be shopping it!

+New tennis/athletic wear line alert: Spence. Love this dress. (The gold standard remains this Rhoback for me.)

+Deeply chic new arrival at Tuckernuck — perfect for an end of summer wedding. (My other top wedding guest rec right now: this Cara Cara, 50% off.)

+20% off at Oak Essentials (Jenni Kayne’s sister brand). I picked up this chic hand wash!

+Low stock on this everyday dress (use code JENSHOOP) I’m obsessed with (see me in it here). I have in black and the new stone color, which I find impossibly chic. Hermes-coded color for sure. I like the way it looks with denim, gold accents, brown leather…!

+Mentioned on Sunday, but how FAB is this new tank from Marea you can pair with either the pareo or matching shorts?! That shell pattern is beyond perfect. Use code MAREA10. Also love this airy new dress they released!

+In a similar vein, obsessing over this new La Ligne silhouette. The description has me: “A throw-on-and-go dress that still feels considered.” Exactly what I want in a dress. This would make a perfect travel/trip piece, too, because of its versatility. While you’re there, only a few left of the new cropped Colbys! (Use code MAGPIE10).

+Apparently Barefaced sells a set of their glycolic acid pads once every three minutes…!

+CUTE statement skirt over at Tuckernuck. Love the seaming and pattern!

+If you liked the look of my VB collarless vest with the Ruti pants (seen here) but are looking for a less expensive option, M.M. La Fleur has a really chic similar style here for about half the price.

+While you’re at MM La Fleur: how great are these red trousers? The color, the fit!

+Back to Ruti: I styled my new walnut-colored version (use code JEN15) of THE magic pant three ways to spotlight versatility — here, here, here. Can’t decide whether to bring the black or walnut to London/Norway. Is both too much?

+And back to VB: I get so much wear out of that denim collarless vest that I got their new statement gingham one, too. I think this will look great with the Ruti pants too! Sorry, can’t stop talking about those. Just so good.

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