A Father’s Conversation with Someone Else’s Daughter
There was a little bit of bourbon left in the bottle of Makers Mark Private Selection. It had been nagging me every time I passed it or moved something around on the server it occupied. Last night seemed as good a time as any to polish it off. There was, in fact, more than a “little bit” left, as its remaining contents were emptied into a whiskey glass bearing my namesake, filling the glass about a third of the way. The sweet, smokey, caramel flavor of the charred liquid was going down way too easy. The stage was being set for the kind of memory you can’t plan for, and as my favorite t-shirt promises: when “Bourbon goes in, Wisdom comes out.”
I was working on an article when Frances, my wife’s soon to be 22-year-old daughter, called her from her home in San Diego, California. The combination of their banter and my slow sipping was a perfect recipe for reflection, and before long, I was engulfed by the conversation — the way a good bourbon pulls you in: seducing you gradually with the savor of its intimacy, then suddenly embracing you with its warmth.
There’s something about drinking and talking that complements each other so well. For a real conversation to happen, two or more individuals must be so captivated by a subject — so motivated to share it — that they quiet the negotiations between their competing thoughts and free up their mental currency to spend focusing on each other’s contributions.
Alcohol — for all its faults — relaxes us by slowing down the nervous system (Costardi, J.V., et. al., 2015) and disarming the barriers between the heart and the mind, allowing us to listen without judgment and speak vulnerably what the heart would otherwise hold back.
The three of us spoke for what seemed like an hour or more. Frances received her California state license and wanted to talk to her mom about buying a car. I chimed in here and there to let them know I was paying attention, but Frances officially brought me into the conversation with a question — which was more of a statement, really — that she was wrestling with.
I was honored that she saw me as a person worthy of such petition.
And lucky for her, I had been drinking.
“I don’t really talk to my father that much,” she started, “only on holidays pretty much. Lately I’ve been thinking about that relationship…and I don’t even think it’s worth the bother anymorrre…”
She trails off her speech, regretfully letting the last word stretch and fade — without the finality of a period or the upward intonation of a question mark — just hanging there, as if unsure whether she wanted to commit to the journey of the subject or leave it unspoken. A trailing off that hesitated in fear of the response but yearned for reflection.
She knows I come from a broken home — that I carry the emotional scars of a child neglected by his father. She knew I had the perspective of someone with first-hand experience of estranged filial relationships, and I knew exactly where her words were coming from the moment she spoke them.
Conie could never understand why I got so upset over certain interactions with my father. If he didn’t call to wish me a Happy Birthday — something my wife has had to remind him to do several times over the years — or if he rushed me out the door after one of our semi-annual visits, it would make me really upset. The disappointment caused a cognitive dissonance that lingered long after the moment had passed. I’m not a father, but it’s very difficult for me to reconcile the idea of a father not wanting to be a presence in his child’s life.
“You’re a 40-something-year-old man,” my wife would say, “why do you still let your father bother you? Frances doesn’t have these issues with her dad,” she would proudly boast.
“Frances may not show that it bothers her at the moment,” I would always respond, “but I’m telling you from experience, it definitely bothers her.”
Conie has a hard time understanding the emotional burden a child carries coming from a broken home. Her parents were together throughout her childhood — stability she never had to worry about — one of those essential constants that quietly built the foundation of her life.
In any meaningful pursuit, there must be a priori (Latin for from what is earlier) truths — presuppositions of experience — conceived beforehand, forming the foundation upon which all further development depends. Trust, safety, and stability are those truths that must be in place for a child to reach their developmental potential (Anderson, J., 2014). Her life may have been hard, growing up poor in the Philippines, but the strength of her family unit speaks volumes about the role that security played in her development. It’s something I often remind her of that’s etched into her story: one of resilience, love, and the accomplishment of becoming a thriving American citizen.
I don’t fault her for not understanding, but it was reassuring to hear about Frances’s existential struggle over her lack of a relationship with her father — it was enough to give my wife the perspective she had been missing.
I told Frances that the fact she was contemplating the value of that relationship at all was a revelation that she was growing wiser. Abraham Maslow spoke of this kind of growth in his famous paper A Theory of Human Motivation (1943), where he introduced the concept of a “hierarchy of needs.”
From the bottom up — beginning with basic survival needs and evolving into more complex, higher-order desires — our development progresses as each level of the hierarchy is satisfied. Self-actualization — at the summit for a reason — is where we become free to acknowledge our creativity and confront the existential crises that fuel growth. This is the stage that marks the beginning of the journey to becoming the ideal version of ourselves.
“You’ve spent most of your life up to this point focused and working hard on academic achievement,” I said to Frances, “and you’ve done very well! But as you get older, and collect more knowledge and experience, the pieces of the puzzle of life come together to frame a complete picture. As you get older, you will see things differently: you see things through the lens of one who has more information from which to draw conclusions.”
I fumbled through an attempt to recite 1 Corinthians 13:11:
“When I was a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
But my rendition sounded more like:
“When I was a child, I needed to put away childish things. When I became a man, I needed to…get more adult things…or something like that. I forget how it goes.”
Reflecting on it now, I wish I remembered the next verse, which would’ve served the moment even better. Verse 12 continues:
“For now, we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
1 Corinthians 13 is perhaps one of the most quoted chapters of the biblical corpus — known as “the love chapter” — and is recited at just about every wedding. 1 Corinthians 13:4–8 from the New International Version reads:
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.”
For context, Paul was writing to the early Christian community in Corinth, instructing the Corinthians on the proper use of spiritual gifts as a direct response to conflict and division within the young church. He needed to make one truth unmistakably clear: All gifts, no matter how powerful, fall short of their purpose without love.
It’s worth repeating:
Without love, everything else loses its meaning.
I’ve read and heard these verses recited many times. As I read them anew, now with the perspective of a middle-aged man trying to offer some insight of my own, I’m struck by Paul’s need to use the deepest human emotion — not doctrine, not law, nor miracles — as an example to convey his message, because Paul himself was changed by grace.
He was a Jew before the light of Christ struck him blind (Acts 3:3–9) — bound by the limits of his own understanding. And then the “scales fell from his eyes” (Acts 9:18) — when he himself was shown mercy and given the awareness he lacked. Later, writing to an emerging Christian church composed largely of Greek Gentiles — people who spoke a different language and lived by different customs — Paul chose to speak in a way that appealed to a sensation so obvious that it transcended differences.
He knew that only love could offer the kind of grace needed to forgive ourselves of our own ignorance — grace enough to soften our hearts towards each other — if only long enough to grasp a deeper understanding of what it means to be human: “…and then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
The Distance Father’s Leave Behind
As children, our bodies intuitively grasp the depth of love. In infancy, we require the nurturing tenderness and compassion of our mother and the security of our father. But that depth is lost the further one ascends the levels of the hierarchy and becomes consumed with existential conquest.
The mind isn’t as sophisticated as the body, though, which manages our survival effortlessly: breathing, healing, regulating temperature, adapting to threats, and fighting off disease without a conscious command.
Like a spotlight, consciousness can only concern itself with the moment (Nørretranders, T., 1998), limiting its grasp of a broader narrative. It takes a lifetime to abstract the meaning and relevance of these fragmented patterns of being — small moments of joy, hurt, disappointment, hope, triumph, and humiliation — and our mind resists seeing their purpose until it has lived, suffered, and reflected enough to believe the evidence.
I knew why Frances was laying her concerns about her father at my feet. She’s mentioned how difficult it is for her to make peace with the past — the circumstances under which her father abandoned her mother when she was twenty-four and pregnant — and the present: a young Filipino American woman separated by more than 7,000 miles from a father who now feels as distant as another galaxy.
“My father lives less than an hour away,” I told her, “and I probably see him slightly more than you see yours,” highlighting the paradox of distance.
We don’t need someone to be far away to feel disconnected from them. In fact, the closer someone is in proximity, the more painful the distance can feel.
I also suspect she may feel a little guilty from the conclusion she had drawn to “cut-off” her father.
“The fact that you feel the desire to cut your father out of your life while he occupies such a small part of it suggests a retaliatory spirit,” I said, “it means there must be some resentment harbored to cut off that which is already essentially nonexistent.”
I made a poor attempt at convincing her that it’s good she feels remorse as it signifies a reverence for her parents.
“That says more about your character that you have a presence of mind to feel bad neglecting familial bonds,” I said, trying to comfort her.
Which is true. If you can honor the sacred, even when the sacred looks flawed and human, that reverence covers you with grace.
And those who cover with grace, will themselves be covered by grace.
As Dr. Jordan Peterson notes in his brilliant psychological exposé of the Bible, We Who Wrestle With God (2024):
“Without such honor, all the necessary constraints of tradition vanish; worse, if possible, the future itself degenerates — as absence of respect for father and mother simultaneously means absence of respect for the future self.”
It’s the lesson embedded in the story of Noah, exposed in his drunkenness, mocked by his son Ham, but gently and respectfully covered by his sons Shem and Japheth, who preserved their father’s dignity, and were then blessed with divine inheritance for honoring him (Genesis 9:20–27).
These are difficult truths to digest. Grace asks us to set aside the hurt we have every right to feel — to sacrifice it — and instead honor the sacred bonds that shaped us, even when the people who forged them have fallen short of the ideal.
“I have recently come to similar conclusions myself, Frances,” I confessed, confronting my own temptation to ignore my father in retaliation — to make him feel as small as he’s made me feel my whole life. “But he’s still your father,” I said, echoing the sentiments my grandfather John offered when I needed perspective as a young, angry child.
She grasped the significance.
We drifted off topic before I felt like we ever reached a resolution — or before I had effectively addressed her concerns. I’m not sure if I offered her what she was looking for. Maybe there wasn’t an answer sufficient enough to offer. Maybe that was for the better. I have a habit of talking too much, especially after a few drinks — and ideas, like breathing, require both intake and expiration.
Maybe that’s the hallmark of a good conversation: when spirit, body, and mind are engaged in the sharing, and the participants trust the flow enough to let go — free to express and explore without clinging too tightly to any one point. In the end, it’s undivided attention that conveys more meaning than the dialogue itself ever could.
I couldn’t help but wonder how much our fathers were missing out on, if they even knew, and just how lost in their ignorance they remained.
I felt blessed to have been part of the conversation.
References:
1. Costardi, J. V., Nampo, R. A., Silva, G. L., Ribeiro, M. A., Stella, H. J., Stella, M. B., & Malheiros, S. V. (2015). A review on alcohol: from the central action mechanism to chemical dependency. Revista da Associacao Medica Brasileira (1992), 61(4), 381–387.
2. Anderson J. (2014). The impact of family structure on the health of children: Effects of divorce. The Linacre quarterly, 81(4), 378–387.
3. Merriam-Webster. (2025). A priori.
4. Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396.
5. Nørretranders, T. (1998). The user illusion: Cutting consciousness down to size. Viking.
6. Peterson, J.B. (2024). We Who Wrestle With God. Portfolio/Penguin. Pg. 225.
