From a very early age, I knew that my dad was different from all the other dads of this world. He encouraged me to read The Exorcist when I was eight. He recited a Max Ehrmann poem to me when I asked advice about boys (Yeah, I know. Who the hell asks their dad for boyfriend advice?!) “Go placidly amid the noise and haste,” he said. “And remember what peace there may be in silence.”

My dad thought it was the height of entertainment to knock on his childrens’ bedroom windows in the middle of the night and tell them all about the ball of fire in the night sky. My dad has given away THOUSANDS of books in his lifetime, read HUNDREDS of issues of National Geographic while sitting in the bathroom, and probably hasn’t missed a SINGLE episode of Jeopardy since, like, 1984.

But it took me several decades to truly appreciate him for all his… noncomformity.

Trouble followed my dad like the smell of cigarettes and stale beer did at one time. He made mistakes. Big ones. What a let down it was when I realized that he was really, really, REALLY human. I resented him his extraordinary humanness for a lot of years and made it a part of who I was. Thankfully, though, I’ve grown up since then and became pretty human myself. So I, in all my magnanimity, decided to forgive him his imperfections in the same way that I hope my children will someday forgive mine. The truth is that I couldn’t stay mad at this guy who is trained in reading Tarot cards. Who has worked at a homeless shelter. Who sang folk songs to us when we were sad, songs about soldiers going off to war and young girls picking flowers for them. Who made sure that a nameless, faceless stranger dressed up as Santa Claus and visited us on Christmas Eve every single year until I was probably in the fifth grade. Who knows all there is to know about Safartic Jews and the Kingdom of Castile and the Judaeo-Spanish and making killer salsa.

AND, probably most important of all, who INSISTED, like a now famous politician recently has, that we pay attention to the world around us and be the change that we wanted to see in it. Listen to the news, he’d say. But don’t just TRUST the news. RESEARCH before parroting what you just heard on CNN. And DON’T TELL ME you are a Democrat until you know what the hell a Democrat stands for. Don’t say you are a Catholic until you know what the hell a Catholic stands for, either. Know your history. Know the Constitution. And read everything you can get your hands on, for crying out loud. Be able to defend your beliefs. HAVE beliefs.

So I did. All of his daughters did. I looked into all things religious and political and decided that, yes, I AM left of center and, no, I am SO not a Catholic. It took me years to come to these conclusions, but I’ve finally arrived. In the meantime, I’ve taken to writing as a way of figuring it all out. One of my sisters has taken to teaching government and world history. Another one teaches criminal justice. And another one is working for the Obama campaign and has recruited ALL OF US to canvass and phone bank and make fliers and BLOG about the issues that matter to us in our spare time…. which… really, there is NO spare time between now and November 4h.

We might not know all there is to know about the crytpo-Jews and what the Suit of Wands represents in The Book of Thoth. But we ARE attempting to be the change we want to see in the world, Dad. Thank you for that.