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I’m fascinated by fathers.

It’s inevitable. My father died before I was born, and never have I had a father in my life. Please don’t express your condolences to me. To my mother and my sisters, for sure, but a person doesn’t miss what they’ve never had, and since I never knew my father, he’s nothing but a picture in a frame and a few second-hand memories. So I write books about fathers who are absent — TROUBLE IN HIGH HEELS and TONGUE IN CHIC are part of a series featuring the sons of a father who stole a fortune and disappeared. I watch fathers and daughters, and listen to what women say about their dads, with total fascination.

My husband is the father of our two daughters, and when the girls were tiny, he announced his daughters were going to have tools. Not just any tools — Craftsman tools, and they would know how to use them, by God. From the time they were in footed pajamas, every Christmas morning, our kids would wake up to find a socket set or a selection of allen wrenches or — glory hallelujah! — a twelve-volt cordless drill under the tree.

Talk to my daughters about what fatherly wisdom their dad passed on to them, and the oldest says he told her:
a) Always keep a first aid kit in the car
b) Always check your tires before a road trip.

The youngest informs me she remembers her dad’s advice about men:
a) Don’t order an expensive meal and not eat it
b) Don’t get mascara on a guy’s white shirt, it doesn’t wash out

Geralyn Dawson remembers her father saying, “When a man comes home from work, he needs ten minutes of peace and quiet and half a beer before anyone complains about anything.”

Kristin Hannah’s father’s big saying was, “Who ever told you life was going to be fair?” He also told her, “Never date a guy who won’t come to the door to pick you up.”

Brockway’s father said:
a) A grudge is ‘til death
b) Anyone over seventy who isn’t clinically depressed is an idiot
c) Suck it up, buttercup
(Personally, I think this explain a lot about Connie.)

Heather MacAllister’s father told her, “Your mother is never wrong.  She may not always be right, but she is never wrong,” and “Buy quality and maintain it.” (Are these two related?) He also never told her anything about boys or men, but she hadn’t had a boyfriend by the time she was 16, he gave her the book, HOW TO GET A TEENAGED BOY AND WHAT TO DO WITH HIM WHEN YOU GET HIM by Ellen Peck.

Heather says, “That was it.  I slavishly followed the directions and by the end of the year, I was dating Andy.  It was such a lot of work that I married him.”

What conclusions can I draw from all this?

Men are weird.

But besides that, they teach their daughters stuff it would never occur to most mothers. Useful stuff, most of it.

I know when it came to tools, my daughters indulged their dad (“Thank you, Daddy”) until they went away to college and discovered they were the most popular girls in their dorm. Nothing speaks to a college guy who wants to hang a poster like a Craftsman Easyfire Electric Staple Gun.

So tell us — what bits of wisdom did your father impart to you? What tools did he pass down to help you fix the “things” in your life?