My daughter Emma was at the farm for a few days, and has gone back to New York City, where she lives happily in Brooklyn, as different a live from mine as one can get, at least in this country. Whenever she comes and goes, it opens  up some old, beautiful, happy and sad chords in me. If there is a more complex, deep, mysterious and fluid relationship in the world than that between a parent and child, I do not know what it is. Whenever Emma leaves, I go and look at this photograph I took of her when she was five, and it just goes right to my heart.

I see people who tell me they have the simplest and most predictable relationships with their parents, love them dearly, and always want to spend as much time with them as they can,  and I wonder at that and shake my head. I don’t want a simple relationship like that. Some distance and ambivalence are good things, I think.  I am not a simple person and neither is my daughter, and that is part of the way we love each other. Some things about parenting are eternal.  You never stop worrying about them, and they never stop wishing you would. It is not your place to direct their lives, even though directing their lives was your passion and preoccupation for much of their lives. They never stop soaking up what it is you are thinking and feeling, even as they no longer want to know or live by what you feel and think. It’s a kind of Kabuki drama. You never quite know what to say or do, what you say or do is frequently wrong, and their is no handbook to follow.

I always wish I had been a better father, and also know I did the best I could. That’s about all anybody can do.

I have always understood one of the reasons people love animals so dearly, and that is because even though people may think of them as their children, their are not in any way like children. They are unconditionally loving. They can’t leave or choose to live with someone else. They don’t suddenly discover that you are stupid, want or need your help or money, make any decisions in their lives that you can’t control or alter, or resent you for loving them.

I always smile when people tell me their cats or dogs are just like children, and say to myself: oh, boy, you didn’t have my child or any child I know. Lenore is definitely not like my child.

And this, I suppose, is what I love about this relationship. It is unlike any other. It is fluid and evolving. You never quite figure it our or land in a fixed place. It defines us, challenge us and opens up, with great force and beyond our control.

Emma’s visits are usually pleasant and short, as she is quite busy and not drawn much to country life. It is easier, I find, when I go to Brooklyn and we can tear around the city, each of us on our own turf, her in her apartment, me in a hotel.

Being a parent is a wonder and a miracle, a test and a sacrament, a bowl of jello you can never quite grip, nor bear to let go.