-Up past midnight in a motel room in Louisianna night after Christmas, I 'm thinking about the song "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" and that has me thinking about my daddy, or maybe I'm thinking about my daddy and that has me thinking about the song. Who knows? Which is, I guess, the point of this post. My daddy (and yes I know its oldfashioned and sounthern for a ...grown woman to think of her paternal parent as her "daddy" but I've tried typing several other labels for paternal parent and they all feel phony. He was my daddy and he was also, literally, a rocket scientist, a theoretical physicist, a man who learned for the sake of learning and was more than anything interested in "how things work ". And yet he was the one who taught me to see the world as a balance of mystery and science. He taught me to always look up at the night sky and see the vastness and the order, the beauty, the possibilities, and the mystery. He made it alright to always keep seeking without ever needing to know everything. One of his many gifts to me was comfort with paradox, and that gift has carried me a long way and I celebrate that gift and my Daddy tonight
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