Morris (left), his brother, Alex, and his father, Davyd, at Coit Tower in the 1990s. But the few overtly romantic gestures I saw Dad perform - the exaggerated kiss here and there - appeared somehow half-hearted.Ībove: Davyd Morris and future wife Melissa Larsen in South Carolina in the 1980s. He packed my mother’s work lunches and brewed her coffee, which he never drank himself. He drank Champagne and listened to Linda Ronstadt, and offered equally impassioned disquisitions on Judy Garland’s filmography, the Summer of Love and the 49ers. Barely a day after his unexpected death, so much of what I thought I knew about my father’s life began to shift.ĭuring my childhood, he always seemed different than my friends’ fathers. The moment I discovered the napkin as I knelt on Dad’s sun-drenched floor that day last June, my eyes grew watery and my stomach tightened.
He held onto it for decades - even after Mom was no longer his wife. I assume Dad used the napkin as practice for a card he sent to Mom. “Melissa,” my father wrote, “You have touched my life and I am blessed with love for you forever.
