There are 75 ways my Dad can break his daughter’s heart. The top five, not in any particular order, are when he:

1. finds no good reason, in any of the 31 days of a month, to leave his house.
2. delights in hot dog sandwiches made with dissected hot dogs, because English muffins are cheaper than buns.
3. pauses to put his teeth in, mid-phone conversation.
4. has no money for Christmas presents, therefore redeems five bazillion Marlboro Miles for tote bags, leather jackets, and road side repair kits.
5. refuses to hold out for the Marlboro logo-emblazoned iron lung he could have redeemed at six bazillion miles.

A phone call with a manic-depressive, alcoholic father can leave a girl in a big puddle of co-dependent muck, even on good days. On the bad ones, it can feel like Hitler marched through her psychic safety zone, leaving clippings of his tidy mustache all over her sticky heart.

Today was a good day, but it wasn’t all that bad.

I can usually tell within the first 3 seconds of our conversation how he is doing. When he answers, he already knows it’s me because he’s screened the call and heard my voice on his answering machine. Being his only daughter, and that his phone service restricts long distance calling, I have the power to pick him up even if he’s feeling blue.

But if he’s feeling black, his voice is thick and slow, like cold molasses refusing to leave its jar. I have learned that no amount of love from me can warm him up enough to let go and slide on out.

Today he was was a delicious shade of aqua, and he was running freely.

He spoke joyfully of a project that has lured him into the light, at least for the last three months. He has ceased spending his days asleep on his couch, and has pulled himself into a seated position to read lots of books. He remembers his glory days as a graduate student, studying philosophy and the works of dark existentialist authors, in their original French.

He left school after he passed his doctoral exams, but before he finished his dissertation, and the letters “ABD” (All But Dissertation), have haunted him for 35 years. Three months ago he decided that, at 65 years old, he had better get cracking if he ever wants to be Dr. Dad.

And so he stopped watching TV. He stopped snoozing all day. He made himself a couple of hot dog sandwiches, dug out his dusty old books, and started to read.

The Internet has lent an entirely new facet to his learning and, without stepping into a single academic library, my father validated that no literary critic has examined the prose through the same lens he wishes to. He has paged through the notes he left in margins, and has laughed at his youthful naiveté. He is suddenly full of big, important, French ideas, and he’s finally ready to think them.

His jar runneth over with sweet inspiration. And last week it spilled out onto five passionate, type-written pages, addressed to the president of his former university, explaining his journey and why he would now like to resume his studies.

His whole journey.  I don’t even know you, and I’m hesitant to tell you about even one third of that journey.

Oh yes, the president sure has a “situation” hurtling right towards him, and I hope he’s learned how to duck. And I hope he can look past what is undoubtedly a socially uncomfortable missive from a lonely man with lost dreams. If he can, he will find a workaholic who has been unemployed for so long that a small sip of academe will reawaken a scholar who will make his university proud.

But first, he has to be jiggy with reading five pages of a confessional, not unlike step four in any of your basic 12-step programs.

Maybe we’ll luck out, and the Prez will be an AA veteran, looking for a new special someone to sponsor. Maybe we won’t, and the Prez will hand off my Dad’s letter to the provost, who will hand it off to a dean, who will hand it off to Mildred, who doesn’t get paid enough to deal with this sort of shit, so maybe my Dad will never hear back from any of them.

Maybe, instead of letting a lack of response validate his insecurities, my Dad will overcome six decades of low self-esteem and try again. Maybe, after having sent the same letter to every Dean, Dick, and Mildred at the University, my Dad will become “that guy,” who everyone talks about at holiday parties, their elbows cozy in tweed and cheeks rosy with punch.

Then again, maybe he’ll eventually hear back from someone.

My Dad seems to be prepared for either outcome, and I have been marveling over four miraculous things that happened today:

1. He wrote and mailed the letter.
2. His Plan B involves writing the dissertation anyway, perhaps in the form of a book.
3. I did not once, in a 45-minute phone call, try to save him from what might become a devastating blow to his extremely fragile well being.
4. Instead, I congratulated him on taking initiative, and wished him well in his pursuit.

For someone who has spent her entire life trying to save her father from himself, items three and four are akin to winning the free books at an Alanon meeting, or screwing the diet and supersizing your meal anyway. It’s an outrageous and unthinkable scenario, and one that certainly can’t feature little ol’ me as the protagonist.

But it’s true. I’m ready to watch my Dad dig his own way out of his decades-long pit, and let him do it his own way. It’s not my job to criticize, or suggest, or recommend; especially if he doesn’t ask for my help. But it is my job to stand by him, and encourage him, and believe in him, even if my instinct is to cringe at his methodology.

He was never good at making wise decisions, and I was never good at manipulating him away from making them. So maybe this time around we can both learn a thing or two about taking care of ourselves by believing, for once, that something really good can happen for him.