My father-in-law was my father figure.

When we were children, my mother kept us from our father after he moved out when I was 6. My mother’s next husband was not a good father to us or his own birth children.

When I met the father of my then boyfriend, now my husband of many decades, I immediately grew fond of him.

I loved my father-in-law. He was brilliant and funny, he spoke dead languages, loved to cook, garden and water garden. He loved the early years of technology, knew about “The Google” before any of us did, he loved setting off fireworks on his birthday which was on Independence Day, and he loved the color green even though he was red and green colorblind.

More than a decade after he died, I learned that his mother’s mother was somehow related to my mother’s mother, which makes us cousins even though we shared less than 1% of our DNA.

Father Figure is mixed media on a fabric embroidery I purchased on eBay. It measures 33.5" x 34". I monoprinted the pattern of a construction fence in the center of an embroidered circle of flowers that look more like fireworks. Then I stitched the monoprint following the lines of the fence pattern, and painted inside the “holes” of the fence, and at the intersections of the stitching. Additional monoprinted and painted squares are in the corners to balance it out. The embroidery was purchased on eBay.