Sunday was Father’s Day. I’ve been thinking a lot about my father lately. Warren Alfred Cranmer was raised Protestant but converted to Catholicism to marry my mother. As part of the deal he had to agree to raise the kids as Catholic, so he didn’t object when my mother packed me off to catechism school. He fought back in his own way by taking me to the library! He slipped me books about Edgar Cayce and psychic phenomena. He made sure I had access to knowledge so I could think for myself.

When I left my birth family I moved half a country away, only going back to visit once in my adult life. I also left the Catholic Church, and it was obvious that I wasn’t going to Mass any more, but I never told either of my parents that I had become a Witch. I didn’t want to hear what my mother would have to say about that.

I’m not sure what my father would have said. Maybe I should have risked it. Later in life he divorced my mother and moved to live near his own birth family. When he became ill I had a chance to talk to him and tell him that I had written a book. I didn’t tell him that it was about sex magick! But I was happy to share the accomplishment with him.

While my mother made my childhood miserable, my father did his best to make it bearable. I have always thought that my close relationship with him is one of the reasons that I have been so comfortable in male-dominated spaces. Ever since he got me that first library card I’ve been delving into the world of knowledge in the book stacks. He gave me the world in books. I will always be grateful to him for that.