WAKING: Remembering a Father
My father, Phillip C. Watts, passed away March 10, 2014. I was fortunate to be there, holding his hand while humming the songs his mother had hummed to me. His funeral was on March 15, 2014 and I gave this remembrance of him to help contextualize a complicated man who often had complicated relationships. (Dad on the Pacific coast with beloved sun and water.) Dad loved the sun. He loved sailing beneath it in the San Francisco Bay. He basked in the sun’s golden hues in Chama, New Mexico, atop the Rockies, even in the flat span of his own backyard. To him, the sun had so much more to offer than light. The sun represented an opportunity to reconfigure our own understanding of power and possibility. He once said to me, while we sat on the patio, “If you think about it, the sun and the moon have seen all there is to see about humanity; the ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs; The moon and sun have witnessed it all - the best, the worst. And we’ve never thought to consider the wisdom...