[My brother John asked me to describe my parents to those who don’t know them for the readers of the Mercer Island Reporter. I wrote the paragraphs below. After I shared them with him, he indicated that he would have to cut them down to a few sentences. Anyway, I have decided to post them here, unedited.]

I have to say that, when I left home to attend college, the biggest shock was learning that most people didn’t argue the way my parents did.

For most people, a disagreement about anything is taken as a personal insult. The reasoning seems to go something like this, “If you know that I like the movie, then you should (at least) pretend to like it, too, so I will know that you like me.”

My parents weren’t like that at all. They argued about everything, all of the time, but none of the arguments were taken as insults. For example, I clearly remember my parents arguing about “unilateral disarmament” (the idea that the USA should just give up its nuclear weapons, unilaterally). As I recall, my Mom was in favor and my father was against. The argument was intense and involved complicated sub-arguments. But at no time was it personal.

When I learned that many people were unable to discuss (argue about) a topic without getting emotional (in the negative sense), my opinion of my parents went up, my opinion of most of the rest of the world went down.

Mark Twain wrote, "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he'd learned in seven years.”

At no time in my life did I think that my Dad was ignorant. Even as he lay dying, his consideration for others and his wisdom shone through. I still live by things he taught me; or not, to my loss.

He explained to me that lying breaks trust, and that, without trust, human relationships are impossible And that life itself is impossible without human relationships. But it is not a lie to tell your grandmother you believe in God (whom you worship in private) because you are not the sort of person she wrongly imagines an atheist to be.

Corollary: Use words to mean what your audience considers them to mean (even if you KNOW that their understanding of the meaning is wrong).

He often said that if you can not explain it to a reasonably intelligent eight year old child, you don't really understand it.

Standing in front of the Eastshore Unitarian Church Congregation in 1968(?), he said, "If I were a young man living in Vietnam now, I would probably join the Communist Party."

As a 8? year old child in Washington, D.C., I used the version of "eeny meeny miny moe" which said "catch a nigger by the toe" (instead of the "tiger" version). He took me aside and explained in words a reasonably intelligent 8-year-old understood why that was unacceptable.

At the age of 12?, my Dad (and Mom) gave me the children's bible books my father's mother had sent me for Christmas starting when I was 5. He explained that I was at that time old enough to understand them.

He wrote a full-length musical comedy about a Peace Corp Volunteer going to Africa. When the  volunteer explained to the African chief how he would improve their lives, the chief responded, "That is white of you."

I miss you Dad.

Dear Absent/Divorced Father:

Although we have never met and we don't really know each other, I understand that you are involved in a messy divorce involving one or more children, and I do know something of what you are going thru. I have been divorced three times myself. I was involved on the sidelines of divorces involving my two brothers and two sons (a total of 5). I was involved on the sidelines of quite a few divorces involving my friends. And when I was a lawyer, I handled approximately a thousand divorces.

I really do know something of what you are going thru.

I am sure that you want to be a loving and involved father to your wonderful children; and you are frustrated because you can't live with them. That is exactly what happened to me, one of my brothers, both of my sons and some of my friends.

Based on my experiences, described above, I have some advice for you. Some of this advice will be difficult to hear, and even more difficult to follow. I wasn't always able to follow it myself. And yet, I know this advice is completely correct.

First lesson: to be a loving, involved father in the lives of your children (as I am sure you want to be) you absolutely must not try to tear down or hurt their mother.

Every hurt suffered by her hurts your children. It is impossible to hurt her without hurting them. Every pain she feels, every inconvenience or disturbance she experiences means that she is that much less able to be the joyful, attentive, loving mother they need to prosper and develop. She is a strong woman, but nobody can conceal sadness or pain from children.

If you want your children to be happy (and you certainly do), then you MUST also want her to be happy. If you want them to prosper (and you certainly do), then you MUST also want her to prosper. One without the other is impossible.

Because you (obviously) don't want to hurt your them, you absolutely must swallow your pain and anger. You have to roll with the punches. You HAVE to. You don't have the choice of hurting her while being a loving father to them.

Second lesson: involved, loving fathers provide for their children. In today's society, "provide for" means money. It is OK to buy gifts for your them; toys, video games and the like. But you also MUST put food on their table, contribute to their rent, help pay for their socks and underwear.

Since you are not rich, you can't give her (them) large sums of money. But you can give her (them) some money. And you can not give money to them without giving it to her.

And it MUST be regular. Every week or every month does not matter. Regularity does. Our love does not come and go, so providing funds can not come and go.

Your children will remember the toys, but they will better remember that each and every week/month, their Dad came thru with some money. It does not have to be, and it probably can not be, large amounts of money. Regularity is much more important than size.

Third lesson: involved loving fathers are in regular contact with their children. Your right to physical visits might be limited, you might be too far away for regular visits to be practical, but you can write letters, send emails, and call. As in the case of the money, the visits and these other contacts MUST be both as regular and as happy as you can possibly make them.

Ask about school, friends, homework, hobbies. Remember special days (important tests, friends' birthday parties and so on) and ask about them. Comment on clothes, movies, haircuts, books and other things. Show that you know about their lives. And make every comment and question loving, happy and supportive. What ever the conditions of the contact, make each one something they fondly remember and look forward to doing again.

Absolutely never say one bad word about their mother. Completely hide your anger from them. A child who knows (feels) that the two most important people in their lives (their mother and father) are fighting is a scared, confused, unhappy child.

Nothing good can come from that.

Final lesson (and maybe the most important one): be really happy. Find a job you enjoy and work hard to be good at it. Get a hobby, and have fun doing it. The "high" from drugs, alcohol and other addictive behavior (for me it was gambling as much as anything) is false (no surprise there). Consider getting into a 12-step program and if you do, go to meetings every day, even twice a day, if necessary. But most of all, turn yourself into a happy person.

It is extremely difficult, maybe impossible, to be a loving, involved father if you, yourself, are deeply unhappy, angry or otherwise filled with negativity.

But if you are a happy person, lessons one, two and three will suddenly become easy to follow; automatic even. You will follow them because those are the kinds of things a happy, loving, involved father does.

P.S. Every single word here applies to the mother, as well as to every parent, regardless of marital status.

I had a dream.

I am approaching the end of my life, and I don't much like what I see.

July 2009, I spent one month with my family and friends in the Pacific Northwest. Living in Taiwan, as I do, means that basically I drop into their lives for a short period every year or so and then disappear. Were I to cease to exist, it would not affect their lives in any appreciable way. Except for Shane, I don't know any of my 3 granddaughters's boy friends. Ken is engaged to be married and I don't know anything about her, except her name. I spent a short time with Reg, my life-long best friend, and we hardly talked. My time with my mom was important for us both, but I am not essential to her life.

Because I am legally trained, Sean could talk about his work with me, and that was clearly important to him. He gave me two small stones, a black one and a white one, because he knows that I play wei-chi. I put the stones in a coin purse I bought for that purpose and I touch them several times a day.

The simple truth is that I am not really a part of their lives. I am an outsider.

Today, in Taipei, I attended Zen Master Hung's 50th birthday party. About 100 people attended, and there was a power-point type display of the major events of his past year. I was suddenly confronted with a picture of Dylan in India (I don't really remember if that trip occurred within the past year). I left the party early.

Most of my closest family and friends from Taiwan were at the birthday party. Quite a few of them can speak English fairly well (in part because of my efforts as their teacher). Nevertheless there is a language/cultural barrier between us (partly because of my failure to learn to speak Chinese). Except for Bryan Smith and Dama, there is no one in Taiwan I can speak totally freely with.

Were I to speak openly and freely of my thoughts and feelings with the rest of my Taiwanese family and friends, they would soon have blank and/or worried expressions. The vocabulary/idioms would be too difficult. They would not know who Leslie was.

The simple truth is that I am not really a part of their lives. I am an outsider here, too.

It is something I learned in the boy scouts: when you leave, the campsite should be in better shape than when you arrived.

I think I may have managed that, just. I also think that I had the potential to achieve much more.