This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, and we are celebrating Father's Day all show long.

Up next we have author Leslie Leland Fields. Leslie lives in Alaska's Codiac Island, an island

community of 15,000. She's written numerous books, and you can learn more about her work at

Leslie Laylandfields.com. This piece she's sharing with us today is entitled For Giving My

Worthless Father. Here's Leslie.

I never called my father, worthless. That was his own word for himself. I had other words to

describe him. But in a way he was right. He said it on the phone after I told him I was flying down to see him,

from my home in Alaska to the rehab facility in Florida.

My sister had flown down already and was there with him now.

Other siblings were coming later.

He had had a stroke the week before, and now could barely speak.

I'll see you in about three weeks, I said, trying to make my voice cheerful on the phone to lift him from his misery.

I'm not worth, he stumbled.

Of course you're worth it, I protested, horrified.

But I knew instantly what he meant.

In the human balances of justice and fairness, he had done nothing to deserve this kind of sacrifice and attention from his children.

He could not or would not hold a job, leaving us deeply impoverished and ashamed throughout

our childhood.

He seemed incapable of forming relationships and treated his children as though we were invisible, except for the sexual abuse visited

upon some of us.

Soon after we grew up and left our house, he moved to Florida to live alone, thousands of miles

from his children. I was glad. I saw my father three times in the next 30 years, always me traveling thousands

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