I love this so much:
"Well, I'm grateful. Not only for your goosebumps, but for your interest."
Last week Dad sent me an email detailing the "Cherokee parable"* about the two wolves of hope and despair battling inside each of us. He'd seen it mentioned on Death in Paradise, and admitted both to being very affected by it and to knowing how this made him sound. I sent him back footage of Fred Rogers securing public funding for children's television in 1969, which I'd just rewatched, and also found affecting. These exchanges were, as Mr. Rogers puts it, "expressions of care", above and beyond the routine. Dad signed off his thanks with "Goodness will prevail" which again was new, and nice to read.
* (I've put "Cherokee parable" in inverted commas because it turns out the story's actually the invention of Billy Graham. The sloppy evangelist originally tried to pass it off as an Inuit fable - Inuit wolves? No idea - before a
savaging in the Canadian press provoked the change in attribution.
I've only just found this out though, and have no idea whether to bother telling Dad.)
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