From her Father

Fathers and daughters have a special relationship


I loved Janet not because she was smart, funny, talented and a beautiful person – which she was - but because she was my daughter. At some level she remained, to me, always the curious twelve year old girl who hacked into my Apple II and modified the code of Star Trek to run up fabulous scores which neither I nor her brother could approach. When she was awarded a four-year unlimited ITT scholarship, I suggested that Computer Science at MIT or Rensselaer could lead to a career that a woman might pursue without disadvantage. But she chose music.

David writes of her love of dogs. True, her hard-hearted father would not let her have a dog in the days when we travelled so much but she did adopt horses in Singapore and in New Zealand.

I try hard to recall happy times and just now it is difficult, but one day stands out in memory. It must have been the late sixties or early seventies, the early days of satellite communications and my work was exciting and enjoyable. I was doing something in the yard and watched as my children played. Malcolm was about eight, Janet perhaps six. She rode in the red wagon while Malcolm pulled. Janet – I see her in my mind in a bright yellow dress - screamed and laughed, excited and a little afraid. Alma opened the kitchen window, leaned out to tell Malcolm to be careful of his sister. Malcolm slowed but Janet urged him on faster and faster until he ran out of breath. Alma smiled and shook her head in despair at their antics. The people I loved most in the world, all together in a perfect moment. Forty years later I still remember thinking of life at that instant as perfect and knowing that there could be few times of ideal happiness. Thinking of those moments does help, just a little, now.

Janet is the tiny creature I held on her first day, the skinny rabbit shaking the bars of her crib, the rambunctious six-year old, the little girl climbing onto my lap to be read to, the early musician sounding the cheap recorder, the rider taking Aliesha over the jumps at the Singapore Polo Club, the teen-ager going away, far too soon, the young bride standing alongside David and the mature adult who told me, “Well, Dad, we have worked out a pretty good relationship.”

There feels to be something amiss in cosmic time when the child goes before the parent, something wrong with the universe. The day is less bright; the wine of life has less taste.


-Alec Whittaker