On parents

Do you ever get over that in life, the feeling you get when you ask your parents for support? It takes me right back to my teenage years. I talked to a journalist from a respected newspaper yesterday about reunions. Like me, he doesn't attend them, but while my reason is that I keep in touch with those I want to and am not particularly curious about those I haven't seen for a while, he explained that he would have to be King to go back. Being a top journalist on a nationally read publication wasn't enough for him to step back into the role he'd left behind.

I think about this as I email my father, who is furious to receive such a question in this way, and wonder why I didn't ask him when we met yesterday. I said I found it so hard to ask, that wasn't enough, he said, and I wondered what would be. Or maybe by doing something 'wrong' like writing instead of asking when we are together, I am finally giving him a real reason to be as angry with me as he seems to be all the time. I know we need to talk. I just wonder how to be a King about it.