It’s a sunny Father’s Day and my husband (thousands of miles from his daughter) is busy making the hill next to our house beautiful. Planting. Weeding. Watering. I’m on the deck watching. In the background is the perfect CD for the moment, Keith Jarrett, Bye Bye Blackbird. The title song is one I can never listen to without seeing/hearing my father, onstage at a wedding or a bar mitzvah when the band took a break, a drink or two to loosen him (not that he needed it), microphone in hand.

In the way that real life becomes the stuff of fiction, I used his love of singing (and a young daughter’s reaction to it) as the premise of a story. What better way to celebrate the day than to post a link to My Father’s Voice.

And speaking of fiction, another story of mine recently placed third in the Women’s National Book Association 2013 Writing Contest.  What makes this all the more gratifying is that it was the first of what’s to become an annual contest.

Unlike the fictional father in the story, mine was a gambling man, and it’s taken me many years to recognize what I have of his, namely the gambling spirit of a writer.  At the same time, I hear my mother’s voice as well: you live long enough you see everything.