Great dads in pop culture not named Atticus Finch

Slide show: What do "The Andy Griffith Show" and "Glee" have in common? Men who make fatherhood look great

By Matt Zoller Seitz

Michael Landon as Charles Ingalls in "Little House on the Prairie"

Topics:Father's Day, Fatherhood, Glee, Slide Shows

“I remember when my daddy gave me that gun,” Atticus Finch tells his daughter, Scout and his son, Jem. “He told me that I should never point it at anything in the house, and that he’d rather I’d shoot at tin cans in the backyard. But he said that sooner or later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all the blue jays I wanted — if I could hit ‘em. But to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

That might be the most widely quoted passage from Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The book was made into a terrific 1962 film starring Gregory Peck as Finch, a widowed lawyer who raised Scout and her Jem while fighting a noble but doomed struggle to defend a poor black man wrongly accused of rape. Peck’s Oscar-winning performance as Finch became the gold standard for representations of fatherhood on film, and whenever you run into a list like this one, he’s all but guaranteed to top it. So let’s take him out of the equation.

What are we left with? The following list of 10 great pop culture dads — very different men who are faced with their own unique, difficult challenges and rise to meet them.

View the slide show

: More Matt Zoller Seitz

- 50Comments
- Permalink
- Print
- Short URL
Share:
- Email
- Twitter
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- Digg
- Reddit
- StumbleUpon
- ShareThis

Don’t take your 2-year-old daughter to Hooters

I didn't think it would be a big deal -- but it turned into a cringe-inducing lesson in fatherhood

By Aaron Traister

Don't take your 2-year-old daughter to Hooters

Topics:Father's Day, Fatherhood, Parenting, Real Families

It started with a craving for fried pickles. I love fried pickles, my 2-year-old daughter and I share a similar palate, so I figured she was probably craving fried pickles too, even if she couldn’t articulate that fact. Sadly, the only place within driving distance that had fried pickles at 11 a.m. was Hooters. Hooters does not have the best fried pickles, but fried pickle beggars cannot be fried pickle choosers, so after dropping my son off at preschool, my daughter and I began our pilgrimage to the Owls’ busty playground.

I’m kinda fond of Hooters. As chain restaurants go, it is a fine establishment with a specific culinary point of view. Food-wise it never tries to be anything it isn’t. The food is deeply fried and tastes like shame, but the bathrooms are always very clean. The domestic beer is served in a frosty cold mug.

The service is spectacular, and I’m not making a dumb joke about boobs here. I’ve had waitresses scare me up cigarettes after casually mentioning that I’d love a smoke, I’ve had waitresses offer to watch my computer while I go have a cigarette or make a run to one of the pristine bathrooms, I’ve even gotten the rare corporate beer buy-back. But mostly, the service is attentive and friendly without being overbearing and obnoxious, which is sort of an amazing feat considering the dress code.

And speaking of the dress code, while those tank tops can be kind of awe-inspiring, the Hooters ensemble, as a whole, is a turn-off. It looks like it was developed by a colorblind exercise fetishist in 1983. It’s a hard look for most earth women to pull off successfully.

Hooters is an asexual place for me. I don’t go there to get my blood pumping; I go there to feel my blood clogging as I watch the Phillies and get some work done. I don’t go to Hooters for a pseudo-sexual performance in the same way I don’t go to the strip club for the buffet (that’s for hardcore perverts).

So I didn’t think it would be weird to take the kid to Hooters.

I had never taken either of my kids to Hooters before, especially not at night when random bikini or lingerie contests occasionally break out, because I’m not sure my daughter needs to be exposed to that kind of awkward chaos just yet. But in the daylight hours, Hooters not only has fried pickles, but it also has high chairs, and a kids’ menu, although I might argue that it’s all a kids’ menu. (And now might argue that the kids’ menu is an affront.)

After all, I’ve taken my daughter to much seedier establishments around Philadelphia in pursuit of sandwiches. Why not try a clean corporate world with a weird dress code? Outside a sandwich shop in South Philly a man with an unintentionally exposed handgun in his waistband once tickled my daughter’s chin to make her laugh and told me what a lucky guy I was. Nice fella.

My daughter has also seen women (occasionally working) in much skimpier outfits, and the fabric of our family has not been torn asunder as a result. In fact, when I met my daughter’s mother, she was working behind a bar in a place that served wings and she was wearing a top that was nearly, if not equally, form fitting as those found at Hooters. I thought it might even be a good lesson for my daughter to see that we don’t judge or treat people differently because of the way they’re dressed, and that people are not the sum total of their apparel; for instance, I am not a hobo, even though I dress like one.

I expected to walk into Hooters at 11 a.m. and have a bunch of bored waitresses fawning all over my daughter. We’d get attention and good laughs, maybe even a comped order of mozzarella sticks, and my daughter would see how casually and normally Daddy interacts with women in tight tank tops.

Instead we walked in at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday and found a smattering of guys sitting by themselves or in pairs at the bar already drinking hard and vying for attention from waitresses who looked seriously thrown off their rhythm by the arrival of a 2-year-old.

It was in that moment that I realized that beyond all the debate about exhibitionism and objectification, Hooters is a bar, and forcing your kid on a group of adults who want to get drunk is a dick move, especially guys who want to get drunk at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday … at a Hooters. That type of guy is looking for something a little more extreme to go with his problems than what the corner bar has to offer.

But more important, my daughter’s presence obviously affected the way the waitresses could deal with those guys. The kid’s presence was disrupting the ever-shifting balance of power between client and patron in a sexually charged alcohol-fueled situation. I had upended the delicate Hooters ecosphere.

The guys who had just been joking with the bartenders looked at me like they would like to strangle me with a pair of flesh-toned leggings. The waitresses were cold; instead of the usual big, “Welcome to Hooters!” I got a clipped, “Can I help you with something?” Instead of being shown to our table we were hemmed in by a stony-faced phalanx of orange-and-white-clad servers who silently established a perimeter around us preventing entrance into the main dining room or access to a table by the bar, a well-endowed Praetorian Guard, protecting the sanctity of their establishment from the sticky-fingered cuteness of my 2-year-old. They were all cold eyes, and concerned looks, whereas normally it’s all about smiles and calisthenics. They looked at me like I was stupid for bringing my daughter to Hooters. Me! Stupid?! I had never had icy service at Hooters, but as the greeter had a muffled conversation with one of the other perimeter guards and pointed at me and my daughter I made the command decision to get our fried pickles to go.

The next 10 minutes were some of the longest of my life. As we waited for our order, the only sound was the replay telecast of Duke vs. the University of Eastern Irkutsk — or whatever the hell ballgame is playing on Tuesday at 11 a.m. on ESPN2. My daughter was understandably mesmerized by the bright orange shorts and the ladies with hair extensions. She made entreaties to be noticed by some of the waitresses and she was rebuffed with extreme prejudice. Then she headed over to start gabbing at some of the guys at the bar, who did not seem to offer the smiles she is so used to receiving. I picked her up and held her until our pickles finally arrived. As the door closed behind us, I could hear the 11 a.m. Hooters fiesta begin again.

Perhaps it would have been different if we were there for the lunch rush when the place was packed, but I’m not willing to take the chance again. Hooters touches the holy trinity of guydom with booze, sports and women’s sexuality. And it’s not fair to anyone to slap a kid in the middle of it. Not to the people who work there and have to worry about the kid’s safety and boundaries, and not to the kid, who wonders why everyone is acting so weird.

In five years of fatherhood, here is the one tangible lesson I can pass along: Don’t take your daughter to Hooters. Or the racetrack. Or the bar. (Brooklyn, I’m talking to you.) As cool and comfortable as I want my kids to be in a wide variety of situations, there are some joints that are a little too spicy for the young’uns (if you know what I mean). Like me, you may want to be a cool and casual relaxed parent with cool, casual and relaxed kids, but how relaxed are your kids going to be when their earliest memories are strangers recoiling from them in shame and fear and annoyance? Part of what I want for my kids will come from trying to avoid weird and uncomfortable situations before they’re ready. That means being a little more thoughtful about their feelings and other people’s feelings. That means being thoughtful and considerate — two things that were not a big part of my emotional vocabulary before I had children. It doesn’t come naturally, but it’s coming.

Spending time with your kids is one of the most important parts of being a parent. Figuring out how to act like a grown-up and still have fun during that time may be equally important. Here’s what I learned: Get the fried pickles to go.

: Aaron Traister is a proud graduate of the Community College of Philadelphia. He writes a monthly column for Redbook. More Aaron Traister

Share:
- Email
- Twitter
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- Digg
- Reddit
- StumbleUpon
- ShareThis

When my larger-than-life dad finally became real

His battle with the Kennedys brought him fame and grief, but it wasn't until he died that I saw him for who he was

By John Manchester

The author and his father on the Snake River in 1980

Topics:Father's Day, Fatherhood, Life stories, Real Families

Seven years ago early in the morning of June 1, my father’s nurse woke me to say, “Your father has passed.” I sat vigil alone at the foot of his bed, glancing at his face and then away, because it was hard to look at him. His mouth hung open, perhaps from trying for a last breath that never came.

I finally got a glimpse of who he was as a person, though that person had departed an hour ago. Despite walls plastered with awards, numerous bestsellers, bushels of adoring fan mail and the company of great men, his face was etched with disappointment.

As a boy, my vision of my father was hindered by physical fear. All I saw was a giant, one who would periodically strike me to unleash his rage.

Just as I became a man, my father, William Manchester, rocketed to international fame after the publication of his bestseller “The Death of a President.” Now he towered over me in the world. All I saw was how much he had achieved and how little I had in comparison.

Just as my father reached the age I am now, 60, the mask of the famous author slipped and I saw a very different face, that of his shadow.

As the skeletons clattered from our family closet — my father’s secret lifetime of self-destructive habits, his marriage that was something out of a horror movie — I could only blink in disbelief. How could these two men, these two lives, coexist in a single body?

Was he a writer of tireless discipline, who could work around the clock, who published 18 books, some over a thousand pages long? Or the man powerless in the face of his addictions?

Was he the man who’d met four presidents, who’d fought Bobby and Jackie Kennedy and won? Or the husband who sat alone in his own home because his wife wouldn’t let his friends inside, not even his brother?

Was he the Marine who received a Navy Cross for grabbing a machine gun and running up a hill into an enemy position? Or was he the person who cowered before his dentist, who was afraid to fire secretaries, who could barely stand to enter a roomful of strangers?

Eight years before my father died, his heart was within days of giving out on him. I drove him to the hospital for a quadruple bypass, acutely aware that these might be our last moments together. I asked him how he felt — to offer comfort, to touch his heart just once while I still could. He said, “I’m not afraid. I stared death in the face on Okinawa and said, ‘Fuck you!’” We rode the rest of the way in silence.

It’s the tough Marine whose picture stares, pipe clenched in his teeth, from the cover of his 1980 memoir of combat, “Goodbye Darkness.” After he died I found a series of outtakes from that photo shoot. He mugs for the camera, putting on mask after mask. What stuck with me was the one of him grinning, saturnine, all powerful. But not one of them was really him.

When the mother of my childhood best friend died, a woman who was dear to my entire family, my father delivered the eulogy. He was overcome by tears and could barely finish speaking. I had never seen my father cry. Maybe this was the real person coming out at last. But in the car after the funeral he said, “I disgraced myself.”

He was a frail boy, terrible at sports. His father beat him, demanding, “Don’t cry.” The jeers of his peers and blows of his father rained down on a person of extraordinary sensitivity. That sensitivity would later prove a valuable asset for him as a writer. But as a youth he could only cover it in thick armor. That armor served him well in literal combat. It also closed him off from feelings of fear and loneliness.

What he felt instead were the extraordinary highs and lows of his fluctuating self-esteem. He’d always suffered mood swings, but fame and chemicals escalated their intensity. He was forever on top of the world or at the bottom of the deepest pit, never in between.

I spoke with one of his few surviving Marine buddies, who offered this simple wisdom, “Your father was just a man. A good man, but just a man.”

And there’s the real person that neither of us could ever see: just a man.

: John Manchester's music has been heard worldwide for the last 25 years on TV, radio and the Internet. You can also hear it on his MySpace page and at Manchester Music Library. More John Manchester

- 24Comments
- Permalink
- Print
- Short URL
Share:
- Email
- Twitter
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- Digg
- Reddit
- StumbleUpon
- ShareThis

When my dad and I were hustlers

We slept in his truck and lived off our wits. The experience brought us together in a way nothing else could

By Ingrid Ricks

Topics:Father's Day, Fatherhood, Life stories, Real Families

Dad and I were vagabonds. It’s a lifestyle he’d been living for years, and one I had begged to join since I was 4. Now that I was 13 and on the run from a cruel Mormon stepfather, he and I had finally joined forces. We’d quickly become two of the best tool hustlers in the Midwest.

Every morning at six, we’d gas up at a 7-Eleven and treat ourselves to a Diet Dr. Pepper to get our juices flowing.

“What’s our saying?” Dad would yell as he turned the key in our old brown Dodge pickup.

“The early bird gets the worm!” we would shout in unison.

It was the early 1980s and the oil boom was in full-swing. Our sales strategy consisted of driving the back roads of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas and Iowa looking for prospects. We kept our eyes peeled for the lone gas station attendant or a do-it-yourself mechanic working on his car. But what interested us most were the oil rig sites where, at any given time, a group of two or three migrant workers could be found taking a smoke break or digging into the sandwiches they’d brought from home.

“These guys have so much money in their pockets they are just waiting for an opportunity to spend it,” Dad would say as we pulled up to a job site. “Well, they are about to get their chance.”

Whenever Dad or I spotted what looked like a good prospect, Dad parked the truck, hopped out and initiated a conversation.

“Is it hot enough for you, today?” he would ask, or “I think it’s quitting time, don’t you?”

If the guy responded positively, Dad would make small talk for a couple more minutes to warm him up. Then he would casually mention that he was liquidating some tools and ask if the guy would like to take a look.

I always waited for the designated moment to bring out the merchandise. Sometimes Dad just looked over at the truck and gave me a quick nod. On other occasions, it boiled down to time.

“If I’m still gone after five minutes, bring me a wrench set,” he would say as he left the truck.

When it was time, I grabbed the agreed upon tools from the back of the truck, ran to Dad’s side and flashed my warmest smile. When our prospect saw that Dad had a daughter with him, it usually softened him up and he was willing to spend $15 even if he didn’t need a wrench set. Unlike my siblings, who viewed our father as a stranger who rarely visited, I understood Dad and his need to be free. But it was during those long hours on the road that I really began to see what drove him.

Dad filled me with stories about his childhood. He told me about growing up on a farm in a four-room shack without heat, running water or even an indoor toilet. Each morning at 4 a.m., Dad helped Grandpa feed the pigs and milk the cows. Then he headed off to elementary school while Grandpa traveled sixty miles to a construction job — which barely netted enough to cover the basics for a growing family that would swell to 11 children.

“I would read these books on slavery and about how slaves were given a rundown shack and a little food in exchange for their labor,” Dad told me as we drove down the road. “Then I would look at my dad and realize he was a slave. He worked so hard every day and all he got in exchange was barely enough to put a shack over our heads and feed us. I decided that I was going to do whatever it took to escape that life. “

To others, Dad and I might have looked like slaves ourselves. Each day we were forced to earn enough money to survive until the next and rarely took time off. When we had a good sales day, we rented a room at a Motel 6. When we didn’t, we crashed in a rest area or a truck stop parking lot.

We spent 12 hours a day in a hot truck without air conditioning. But to Dad and me, it was paradise. Each morning we headed out on an open highway, the truck taking us wherever we wanted to go as we belted out the lyrics to Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again,” our theme song. And unlike the never-ending home church sessions and suffocating, rigid lifestyle I faced at home, Dad and I had only one rule: sell tools.

With the pressure always on us to make money, we rarely had time for entertainment. But we occasionally took a break and treated ourselves to a movie or a steak and baked potato at Shoney’s. We also had a standing weekly date with the TV show “Dallas.” Dad loved the main character, J.R., both because he was a savvy, ruthless businessman who had millions of dollars, and because Dad’s name, Jerry Ricks, shared the same initials.

“You know what time it is, don’t you?” Dad would say each Sunday night, a few minutes before the show was to begin.

“It’s Dallas time!” I would call out.

If we were at a motel, we kicked back on our beds with a can of Diet Dr. Pepper a piece and flipped on the TV. If we were spending the night in the truck, we found a truck stop lounge, plopped down on one of the couches, and lost ourselves in the lives of J.R., Sue Ellen and the rest of the Dallas gang.

Our time on the road together ended when I started my junior year in high school. Dad and I had a run-in with the law that had shaken both of us and made me rethink our lifestyle. But more than that, I was now sixteen and wanted to date and hang out with friends. Dad was also ready to move on. He had met a woman we both knew would take my place on the road.

Our lives drifted apart. He got married and eventually so did I. We both started new families and settled in different parts of the country.

Dad’s now almost 72 and at 44, I’m the age he was the last summer we traveled together — with a 12-year-old daughter of my own who’s a lot like I was back then.

I called him the other day to tell him I would be in his city the last week in June. We’d had a rare, explosive argument a few weeks earlier and I knew we were both hurting. We needed to recapture the magic of our time together — back when it was just the two of us, a truck full of tools, an open road and Willie Nelson singing on the radio.

“How about if we have a dad/daughter date, just you and me,” I said into the phone, feeling myself yearning for the past. “I’ll take you out for a nice dinner and maybe we can even rent a motel room, just like old times.”

“Yes. Absolutely,” he said, the heavy weight lifting from voice. “We need that, you and me. We really do.”

He paused for a moment and I knew what was coming.

“Maybe I should load up an old truck with tools and you and me hit the road for a week or two. What do you think about that?”

I smiled at the up-tick in his voice.

“Yeah those days were really something, weren’t they, Ingrid?” he continued, his voice trailing off. “Whatever happens in life, no one can ever take that away from us.”

: Ingrid Ricks is planning to publish her memoir, "HIPPIE BOY: A girl's story," as an e-book this fall. More Ingrid Ricks

- 47Comments
- Permalink
- Print
- Short URL
Share:
- Email
- Twitter
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- Digg
- Reddit
- StumbleUpon
- ShareThis

What my father lost gambling

He blew money at the track and pulled me into his schemes. Our finances suffered -- and so did our relationship

By Lea Lane

Topics:Father's Day, Fatherhood, Gambling, Life stories, Real Families

I never really understood my father.

Daddy was a “professional gambler,” if betting daily on greyhounds and thoroughbreds could be considered a profession rather than an addiction. His mornings were spent at the desk in my brother’s room, hunched over the Racing Form in his robe. And most of his days and nights would be at Hialeah or Gulfstream or the Miami Beach Kennel Club, doing mysterious things that seemed to pass for his life’s work.

The only legitimate thing Daddy ever did to earn money was invest in a plot of land on nearby Di Lido Island, so when someone asked us what Daddy did for a living we were able to say he was in “real estate.” In fact, I was so prepped by Mom to say those two words that when the teacher asked my name in kindergarten, I proudly blurted “Real Estate.”

I noticed a curious thing about gamblers from an early age: Daddy didn’t get excited when he won at the track. No, the adrenaline would be flowing, the monologue would be deafening and he’d come roaring into the house, pacing up and down and yelling — when he’d almost won. And he’d be cursing when he lost.

So when he was quiet, I figured he’d won some money. He wasn’t often quiet.

The closest conversations I can remember with Daddy were at dinnertime, when he’d offer a nickel to my sister, my brother or me — whichever of us gave the best report of our school day. We competed for the 5 cents until we realized it wasn’t worth it unless he upped the payoff to a dime.

We lived in rented apartments and bungalows until one year when Daddy must have bet big on long shots in the daily double and we moved to a half-block-long, marble-floored art moderne mansion with a buzzer in the floor of the dining room to call “the Help.” The following year we were poor again, and Daddy would go into my wallet to borrow my allowance. He always said he’d pay me back, but he never did.

Our parents weren’t officially separated — almost no couples were in those days — and yet half the year they lived apart. From April to September, he holed up in a seedy Boston hotel called the Touraine where the elevator was manned by a one-legged operator. It was near the dog track at Revere.

But we didn’t see all that much of Daddy even while he was home in Miami Beach, and my brother and sister and I thought his leaving was as natural as the hurricanes that arrived in his absence.

Mom seemed happier when he left, which confused the hell out of my childhood self, who believed in sitcom family units where daddies wore suits to dinner and moms served apple pie in gingham aprons, not families where Daddy went off to work at the race track and stayed away for six months, and called to wish his daughter a happy birthday, on the wrong day, and asked, “How old are you now, Lea?” At least he got my name straight.

It did come in handy on occasion, though. After my grandfather taught me to read at 2 years old, my dad was not only proud, he figured out a way to capitalize on his “smartypants daughter.” He would use me as a shill.

So we would walk around where the tourists would hang out in South Beach. If he found someone reading the Racing Form, Daddy would say, “I’ll take out my Racing Form and you can point to something and my baby daughter will read it.”

Then the gamblers would figure he had prepped me to learn from the paper he held. They must have thought that I could memorize, but I was too young to read, and they were on to something and could make some money.

“OK,” some would say, “I’ll bet you she won’t read — and I get to choose from my form.” But I usually could read whatever they put in front of me. Often it was the name of horses, and Daddy would prep me as a game: “Murray’s Desire.” “Long Boat Key.” “Blue Dame.”

“She’s a midget,” they’d grumble, forking over a Benjamin.

Mom divorced Daddy when I was in my 20s, and for a while he lived in a small apartment by the dog track. She remarried him a year later.

Not long before his death at the age of 83, we were watching a “60 Minutes” segment together about gambling addiction. Daddy was long “retired,” but still visited the track during the day, and often gambled away his Social Security check.

After the TV segment, my dad turned to me. This was his chance to show me, finally, that he had learned something about his lifetime of ruined potential and broken relationships. A chance to say he was sorry to the daughter whom he had involved in his gambling since she was a toddler, the neglected daughter whose age he still did not know, and who very well could have been named for Hialeah Race Track.

Daddy looked at me with resignation and shame. It took him a long time to get the words out.

“That wasn’t easy to watch,” he said.

I was ready for his late epiphany, and a chance for some closure for both of us.

“It’s really too bad,” he said, staring at me with the sad look of an old man. “I mean, I know addicted gamblers like that.”

How could I possibly have understood my father when he never could understand himself?

: More Lea Lane

- 20Comments
- Permalink
- Print
- Short URL
Share:
- Email
- Twitter
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- Digg
- Reddit
- StumbleUpon
- ShareThis

A single dad spills his secrets

As my daughter turns 10, I wonder how to help her grow up -- and shield her from my racy memoir

By Trey Ellis

Topics:Father's Day, Fatherhood, Memoirs

Of course all dads love their daughters, but a single dad’s bond is more complicated than that. Ever since my wife moved out seven years ago, leaving me to raise a 3½-year-old daughter and her 6-month-old brother Chet, I’ve been Ava’s daddy and in some sense her mommy too. I reveled in the challenge of single parenting, smug in my holy martyrdom. I guess it runs in the family. My father raised me from the time I was 16, after my mother killed herself. Then, six years later, I nursed my dad through his short and losing battle with HIV. So by the time I was 22, I’d decided we Ellises were good at surmounting the seemingly insurmountable. If we were destined to be tragic heroes, I dedicated myself to being the best tragic hero ever. The most noble single dad in all of single dad-dom.

Somewhere along the line I think I forgot that raising kids was a marathon and not a dash. I foolishly believed that conscientious parenting covered zero to five years, and with that good base, the kids were set for life. They’re in school now, my job is done, I tried to make myself believe.

The reality is that, as I write this, Ava will soon graduate from middle school, and I don’t know if I’ve ever felt less prepared.

I should’ve known I was heading for trouble when Ava was 8. The wife of one of my best friends asked me how, when the time came, I would explain to Ava puberty and menstruation. Back then I thought I’d just consult what I always consult when I want to know more about something, but then I realized that doing a Web search on “training bra” and “menstruation” was not only ineffective but seemed like a great way to get Chris Hanson from “To Catch a Predator” breaking down my door.

So my friend’s wife urged me, when the time was right, to buy the American Girl book, “The Care and Keeping of You.” Being addicted to the near-instant gratification of Amazon’s one-click , and even though my daughter was only in the second grade, I immediately ordered it. Two days later I unzipped the cardboard envelope and pried off the shrink wrap — and the book fell open to a two-page spread of a cartoon vagina.

I instantly closed the book and haven’t touched it since. It wasn’t a total waste, however. Just last month I discovered that Ava had rediscovered it, but of course when I gingerly tried to quiz her on its contents, she offered only her name, rank and serial number. I was hurt. I realize that most daughters can’t talk about such things with most dads, but c’mon, me? The guy who makes her lunches for field trips? The guy who volunteers to run the Hot Wheels racing booth at the school fair? The guy who sits down for an hour every Sunday and conditions and detangles her magnificent hair?

Ava’s hair. A young black woman’s hair. Volumes have been written on those voluminous manes. I pride myself on my prowess wrestling with my little girl’s locks, yet for her middle-school graduation she wants braids. “You can do it, Daddy,” she told me. Flattered as I was, I’m afraid she’ll end up looking like she’d been electrocuted. I’m working on getting her mom up here from her home in Atlanta, not just to be there to watch her daughter march, but the day before to do her hair.

But there is another, more personal part of Ava growing up that has recently made me nervous. Two years ago, I wrote a book of creative nonfiction laying bare the most painful events of my nuclear family’s young life. I began the book, “Bedtime Stories,” when Ava was in the second grade, so there was no chance of her reading it. Now that she’s heading into the sixth, I’m petrified that I’ll come home and see her nose in the (sometimes steamy) pages.

Novelist Meg Wolitzer, daughter of novelist Hilma Wolitzer, wrote about this writer-parent dilemma in Salon five years ago. When a boy in her high school discovered that Meg’s mother had written a scene about a blowjob in her latest book, it instantly became the scandal of the school. My memoir is not only dirtier but also involves tough family secrets. While I tried my best not to make Ava’s mother my story’s villain, the question hangs there, nevertheless, between every line and piece of punctuation: Why did a woman walk out on raising her babies?

Amanda, my amazing girlfriend, is convinced that Ava will sometime soon open the book. I’m not so sure. Ava’s heart is as finely tuned as a Stradivarius. I think she intuits that at just 10 now, she’s still way too young to understand her father’s complicated, R-rated life. Kids are amazingly adept at self-preservation. Just because they can hear their parents going at it if they press their ear up against the bedroom wall doesn’t mean they necessarily want to.

Still, if I were writing the same book now, I know I’d greatly abridge the story of my recovery from divorce and learning to raise two little ones alone.

Maybe what I’m writing here is an explanation, an addendum, to what I wrote in the book — this time tailor-made for the most amazing little girl on the planet. Few things are more important to me than loving her through the difficult tween and teen years. As I wrote in the book, “Almost every woman whom I have ever dated has also had a troubled, contentious, aggressive relationship with their own fathers. Perhaps for me it’s a prerequisite. In my lowest points, when everything around me seems to be disintegrating, I terrify myself with the thought that my own little girl will one day stop loving me. After all there was a time when her mother looked at me the way Ava looks at me now.”

But I didn’t realize how much stronger my bond was with Ava than, I think, most dads have with their daughters, until I met Amanda. Amanda sometimes calls Ava my other girlfriend. Ava isn’t classically jealous. Around Amanda she’s been less jealous than her brother in general, but I do get the sense not only that am I her “best friend,” as she tells me daily while she squeezes her whole body against my arm, but that I’m also “her man.” It’s unbelievably cute to watch her just now as she begins to separate. She became addicted, instantly, to the “Twilight” books and it was so lovely to see in her the precise moment that she felt romantic love for another man. She is “Twilight’s” Bella Swan, and Edward the vampire is taking her away from me. She actually told me, “Don’t worry, Daddy.”

It’s hard to know what she will make of love, of mating. With my loving, long-term relationship with Amanda (we plan on marrying), I hope to model for Ava a counter-argument to the failed relationship that hatched her.

The more that I think about it, perhaps reading the book, when she’s ready, will answer some questions for her. Or at the very least it should be the start of something else: a pretty interesting conversation with a newly minted adult.

Trey Ellis is a novelist, screenwriter and assistant professor at Columbia University.

: Trey Ellis is a novelist, screenwriter, blogger and Assistant Professor at Columbia University. His new memoir is "Bedtime Stories: Adventures in the Land of Single-Fatherhood," from which this is adapted. More Trey Ellis