My Dad Wouldn't Stop Apologizing For My Childhood. Everything Changed When He Did.

The author and her father, 1978. In the park that day, my dad explained that he’d recently started a 12-step program to recover from an addiction to pornography — which, apparently, had made him late all those years ago. Even after my mom and I moved closer — an hour from my dad’s doorstep — I saw him only two or three times a year. As the ferry eased past the Rock of Gibraltar, my dad yelled at the top of his lungs, “This is incredible!” We tried to take a picture together on the deck, but my hair was whipping my dad’s face so violently that we just ended up laughing and the photo came out a mess. Her work appears in The New York Times, “The Best Women’s Travel Writing,” Bon Appetit and “The Best American Essays.” Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost?