My father runs a public utility, one of the largest companies in Arizona. I'm a political reporter at Phoenix New Times, the alternative weekly here. I make my (comparatively meager) living writing about the way my dad makes his living. Well, not my dad. I don't write about him or Salt River Project, his company. But his friends and associates and the politicians they elect? Definitely. It can't be helped; the town's too small.

You'd think such close quarters would breed contempt between a rep-tied father and his Doc Martened daughter. But really, our relationship has never been better.

Dad and I barely spoke before I took the job at New Times. Of all my childhood memories, one of the clearest is the feeling of my tiny hand in my father's huge, warm one, slowly swinging back and forth as we walked. I don't recall where we were going, but I do know that the memory is precious because it is rare.

My father almost never touched my sister or me. It wasn't because he wasn't around -- he was, always. I can't recall a night, growing up, without him stretched out on the couch, watching bad TV. He wasn't abusive. I'm almost certain that he would not have preferred sons to daughters. I don't think he wished he hadn't had kids at all. He just wasn't interested.

Looking back, I realize he was jealous of us. Jealous of the attention we snuck from the love of his life, our mother. And, again in hindsight, I see that he was shy. He didn't know what to say to us, these whiny, tangle-haired creatures with his hazel eyes, one with a freckle in the center of her lower lip, just like her dad.

He was uneasy around us, and gruff. My sister and I learned not to make a peep during "The Rockford Files," not to request extra bathroom stops on the way to San Diego, not to dare try to ease away a nightmare by crawling into bed with Mom and Dad.

In a lot of ways, I suppose, he was a pretty typical father for my generation. Hardworking, hardhearted. He expressed his love for us by working his ass off.

So you might be surprised by what happened when, at age 26, resigned to a long-distance relationship with my crosstown dad, I took the job at New Times.

Initially, Dad questioned my decision to join the hippie paper. He curled his lip and shook his head, and walked out of the room, disgusted. He took a lot of abuse from his pals. But then something odd happened. We found ourselves, my father and I, living in the same world: the Phoenix political scene. We were on opposite ends of the spectrum, to be sure, but suddenly we shared a common language. He had something to talk about with me.

Order "Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood" from the editors of Mothers Who Think.