My sisters and I were raised by our father (and later our stepmother), and my daddy was my first crush. When I was 10 I remember wishing I didn't have to grow up, because I was worried I wouldn't always love my daddy as much as I did right then. My teens and twenties brought the inevitable growing up and becoming independent, increasingly cranky with my father's foibles and constrained by his overprotectiveness. (I was a late bloomer, so I didn't have my first crush until age 18, and my first boyfriend at 20.)

Now my daddy is in a care facility, losing his health, losing his memory, but what difference can that make? I appreciate what my father showed me about unconditional love, and these days I love my husband "that much."