The last couple days I've been sifting through old photographs of my dad.

He worked as an actor and screenwriter in Los Angeles in the 1950s, long before he met my mom.

It's a bit like looking at a stranger. There's so much about him I still don't know,

and so much I've forgotten over time. I've never had any videos of my dad, as he was

when I was a kid, and I've struggled to remember how he moved, the look in his eyes when he

talked. Still photos don't give you that. A few weeks ago, I got an email. An archivist found a TV

interview my dad gave on Mississippi Public Television, and she sent me the link to watch.

I waited a few minutes. I was nervous. And then I clicked on the link. And suddenly, there he was, alive.

And I want to show it to you. I want you to meet my dad, Wyatt Cooper.

I'm at home anywhere I am. I really am because whether I'm in a big city or in the country,

I am the same person. And in the city, in New York City, for instance, my kids and I go into the park, and Central Park in New York

is a marvelous place. We have a spring that belongs to us. It belongs to us because only

we know about it. We go there and we clean leaves out of the mouth of the spring. And when

the water gurgles gratefully out and goes to anything, we have affected this. So we have had something to do with the soil and with growing things.

And that exists in the city as it does in the country.

I watched him, how he moved his hands, the way he listened and connected with the person

he was speaking to.

And I remembered the feel of those hands and the way

he connected to me when we spoke. I remember those eyes looking into mine, not just the brightness

of the blue, but the delight and wonder and love I saw in them. That spring he was talking about in Central Park,

I'd forgotten we used to go there.

Let me see.

...