Well, now that I've lost the few readers and commentistas I've garnered since I started Fence Post in March...

Stick with me. It'll get better.

Which isn't a bad thing to remember. Whatever you're going through. No matter how high the waves or strong the turbulance. It'll get better. Trust me on that. It's one of the few things I know.

Where the hell was I?

This is from Colin McEnroe's memoir My Father's Footprints:

" Hughes is within walking distance from my parents' apartment, so I bundle up my dad, blanket, parka, hood and wheel him over. The whole thing feels like an afterthought following the Breaking of the Covenant. The people at Hughes greeet him as if his arrival was ordained at the hour of his birth. " Oh, there you are! " Big smiles.

They take off the hooded parka and lay him down on a bed.

" I'm Anna, " says a beaming nurse.

" I'm Santa, " says my father. " But they took away my suit. "

" Is he joking or disoriented? " she asks me.

" That's sort of the basic question I've been asking myself for thirty-five years, " I tell her.

McEnroe's memoir is about his relationship with his father. I read it a few years ago and I'm rereading it now. You don't have to be Irish to love this book. It helps. But you don't have to be a McEnroe, an O'Malley or a Ryan. You had a father? Have one now?

Read this book.