By Deborah Tannen

                   The Washington Post, Sunday, June 16, 2002; Page B05

                    © Deborah Tannen

                   "Hold on, I'll get Mother," my father says when he hears my voice on the
                   phone. "She'll be so glad it's you."

                   "Wait, wait!" Isay. "I want to talk to you first." I know that my conversation
                   with my father will begin to fade when my mother picks up the extension.
                    At the start he'll contribute a thought here and a phrase there, but before long,
                    as my mother and I exchange news about family and friends, I will realize I
                    haven't heard my father's voice in a while.  "Daddy?" I'll call vainly into
                    the telephone. "I guess he hung up," my mother will say. "You know him."

                   Yes, I know him. But now I know him in a different way. Until he retired at
                   the age of 70, what I knew was that my father didn't like to talk on the phone,
                   especially long distance. If I called and my mother answered, we'd invariably
                   get into a long conversation. Eventually, my father would interrupt and ask to
                   talk to me. "It was nice talking to you," he'd begin. "But you haven't talked to
                   me yet," I'd object. He would reply, "We don't need to make the phone
                   company rich." That's the spirit in which my mother says, "You know him."

                   But in the 23 years since his retirement, I have come to know my father in a
                   deeper sense of "You know him" -- the knowledge that comes from leisurely,
                   introspective, self-revealing conversations -- the kind of conversations I used
                   to want but couldn't have with him. One reason I can have them now is
                   technological; my father learned to use e-mail at 90, and over the three years
                   since, has become a devotee of the medium. The other reason is longevity:
                   My father old has time for me as my father young did not.

                   I've always regarded my parents as inspirations for my research on how
                   people communicate with each other -- especially my early work comparing
                   spoken and written language. Whereas my mother is comfortable talking on
                   the telephone, my father is most comfortable writing, because then he can
                   collect his thoughts and choose just the right words. While still in elementary
                   school, I spent hours at our old manual typewriter composing letters to my
                   father. My parents still have many of them, but there are no responding letters
                   from him. He probably had no time to write. But now my files are bulging with
                   letters, postcards and e-mail printouts that my father has written to me in the
                   past two decades. So when he chooses to leave my mother and me alone on
                   the phone, I know I can engage him electronically later -- and receive a reply
                   that sparkles with his wry wit and ironic humor.

                   I talk with my mother about people; I talk with my father about ideas --
                   politics, social justice, the death penalty. It was from him that I learned my
                   love of words: the pleasure of finding just the right one to express a thought,
                   even if (to my mother's consternation) it was unusual or polysyllabic; the habit
                   of dashing to the dictionary in the midst of a conversation if a definition or
                   spelling was called into question; the devotion to reading ("You can never be
                   bored if you have a book to read," he'd say); and the power of words
                   marshaled together in an intellectual argument.

                   My sister Naomi, the first-born and eight years older than I, has similar
                   memories of our father, but in her recollection, he's often home. "When I was
                   nine or ten," she recalls, "he used to toss ideas back and forth to me the way
                   other fathers play ball. We would have debates where he would pick an issue
                   and take the hard-to-defend side that he obviously didn't believe in so I could
                   take the position I believed in and learn to argue for it."

                   During this time, I was only a toddler. But when I hear this story, I feel
                   cheated, as if I'd been deliberately left out. I can't imagine my father having
                   time to sit and talk to me when I was a child. In my memory our political
                   discussions take place at the dinner table, where I'm sharing him with the
                   whole family. This is partly because I was the youngest of three; he couldn't
                   be alone with me or my sister Mimi, as he had been with Naomi when she
                   was the only child old enough to debate with.

                   But there's another reason, too. Naomi was born during the Depression,
                   when my father patched together a series of jobs until his high score on a civil
                   service exam landed him a secure position as a prison guard at the federal
                   penitentiary in Danbury, Conn. So when Naomi was a child, he either was
                   underemployed or held jobs that gave him evenings and weekends at home.
                   When I was born and Mimi was 2, my family had just moved back to New
                   York City. In what he assumed would be a temporary stopgap measure, my
                   father had taken factory work in New York's garment district. Whatever time
                   wasn't spent cutting fabric for ladies' coats was gobbled up by what we called
                   his "being active" in politics, urged on by the promise that he would soon be
                   rewarded with a political appointment to a position for which his law degrees
                   qualified him. The 13 years that it took for this to happen were the first 13
                   years of my life.

                   I recently confessed to my father that I envied Naomi because he had had so
                   much time at home during her childhood, and so little during Mimi's and mine.
                   I expected him to express his own regret, but instead he said, "It's a good
                   thing. I was earning better." What I saw as the opportunity for Naomi to have
                   time with him, he saw as the Depression's cruel lack of employment
                   opportunity. The bedrock of my father's relationship to his family is his
                   responsibility to support and protect them. But I have always seen the
                   bedrock of my relationship with him as verbal communication: I could ask him
                   anything, and he would answer with patience and precision; I could tell him
                   anything, and he would understand what I was getting at, whether or not he
                   agreed.

                   I can still ask my father anything -- even what it feels like to know you are
                   approaching the end of life. In answer to my e-mail query, he writes, "Re my
                   forthcoming demise; overall I'm against it. Why not live forever. Other times I
                   feel too much is enough. The time to go is when the family all well, and
                   progeny are in good health and circumstances. The real question is 'how to
                   go.' I dread the suffering that oft precedes the process. I love the idea of a
                   heart attack although that's harder on the family. When we meet we can
                   explore it further. I am not sensitive about it at all."

                   The reminder that I will one day lose my father breaks my heart, but the
                   tenderness of his words, the trust implied by his offering them to me, fill my
                   heart with gratitude. And because his words come to me in written form, I can
                   read them over and keep them forever (as well as recount them here).

                   Some of the most difficult times in the past half-dozen years have found my
                   father in the hospital, recovering and rising Lazarus-like from surgery or a
                   life-threatening illness. But these times are also among the most precious. I
                   cherish the days when I pulled a chair close to his hospital bed or walked with
                   him along the hospital hall, and we had hours and hours -- alone -- to talk. I
                   cherish these times all the more because they contrast so poignantly with the
                   long-ago time when every day was Not Enough of Father's Day.

                   Deborah Tannen is professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. The
                   paperback edition of her latest book, "I Only Say This Because I Love
                   You: Talking to Your Parents, Partner, Sibs and Kids When You're All
                   Adults" (Ballantine) was published this month.