A healthy relationship between father and daughter is paramount in how a girl relates to members of the opposite sex.

Crying at movies seems to happen more frequently of late. A side effect of aging? Perhaps that's just the way it works. I am not embarrassed by the fact that I have this tendency more often of late. Not that I don't take grief about it from my grown sons.

Being a Third Culture Kid -- someone who spent her developmental years outside her parents' home countries -- I never got the cultural coding that provides for a sense of nationalism or patriotism.