Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My contact with my dad's side of my family got less after we stopped living together, but they were in my life.
My dad lost his hearing in the last 18 months of his life, and as a result, I witnessed first-hand the effect that this can have on a family.
My dad died, and he wasn't in my life because he had schizophrenia, so it's been something that my entire family has been fighting against since I can remember.
My mother was the youngest of 11 kids and I grew up in her family's household. I was blessed to have my dad in my life and his family lived right down the street from the church.
I could have ended up a casualty of a broken family, like so many of the kids around me in inner city Baltimore. But my life was forever changed the year I turned 10. That was the year my dad turned to Jesus.
My dad made a conscious choice to keep my family in Canada. I think he wanted us to have a pretty normal life and one that wasn't necessarily affected by the industry or all that comes with growing up in Hollywood.
I try to live my life like my father lives his. He always takes care of everyone else first. He won't even start eating until he's sure everyone else in the family has started eating. Another thing: My dad never judges me by whether I win or lose.
I have a massive Samoan family. And the Samoan culture has always played a massive part of my life. I've got hundreds of family on my dad's side that live in Samoa and in New Zealand. I've just been surrounded by the culture ever since I was a kid.
I've lived all my life in the U.S., but to be brutally honest, I don't really have any ties to the country apart from my mum and dad. Most of the rest of my family live in the Stockport area, and I've always related more to that side of my background.
We're a special family and it's just that Dad's life was taken away from us far too early. Everywhere you go around the world he had an effect on people - in the Caribbean, Australia, South Africa or England. I've never heard a bad word said about him.
Even coming from Ghana to the United States, my mom and dad did so much to provide a better life for their kids. It was such a huge sacrifice; leaving your entire family - and we have a huge family - leaving them to come to America and have a better life for their kids.
The people on my mum's side of the family are atheist intellectuals who are ueber-proper. My dad's side of the family are missionaries who are more comfortable sitting around in sweatpants than they are in a five-star restaurant. But those two influences converged in my life.
Our public portrayal of fathers has shifted during my life. TV fathers have 'evolved' from real people like Sheriff Andy Taylor, Beaver's dad Ward Cleaver and Heathcliff 'Cliff' Huxtable, to cartoon dads like Homer Simpson and Seth MacFarlane's caricatures in 'American Dad!' and 'Family Guy.'
Dad has worked as a banker at the same firm in Boston, living in the same suburban neighborhood for over 50 years. Later in life, when I got out of graduate school and imagined myself living the life of a writer like Hemingway or Kerouac, his practical self inevitably encouraged me to get a steady a job and raise a family, just like he did.