All children need a laptop. Not a computer, but a human laptop. Moms, Dads, Grannies and Grandpas, Aunts, Uncles – someone to hold them, read to them, teach them. Loved ones who will embrace them and pass on the experience, rituals and knowledge of a hundred previous generations. Loved ones who will pass to the next generation their expectations of them, their hopes, and their dreams.

My dad was and still is way before his time. You see, when someone is different—when they don’t act or look how a person assumed they would—the first reaction is often fear. They think, how do we break them? My dad anticipated that, but he would not allow himself or his family to be broken.

Drummed into me, above all, by my dad, by the whole family, was that without your good name, you would be nothing.

My sisters and I miss our dad dreadfully. But grief, of course, is the price of love.

And he that is taught to live upon little, owes more to his father’s wisdom, than he that has a great deal left him, does to his father’s care.

Without my dad, I wouldn’t be here.