Read Barbara Renaud Gonzalez’s post on her father turning 90 on Inauguration Day. She blogs at Las True Stories of San Antonio.

The solitude has been good for me, I’m a writer. But it’s made me very poor, and I’ve struggled to visit him, especially now that he can’t drive his like-new truck, sold years ago. Daddy misses his old five dogs rusted with mange on the day he left the country. He misses the good smell of dirt, the whispers of animals feathering, chasing, hiding from each other. He misses the moon that seems to talk to him as if he was the most important man in the world.

Barbara Renaud Gonzalez is a published writer, MSW, University of Michigan, post-grad, Harvard. Her novel, Golondrina, why did you leave me? is due to be published in April 09, first Chicana novel to be published by UT Press. Her essays/articles have appeared in diverse anthologies and magazines, including The Nation; The Progressive; Ms. Magazine; The Los Angeles Times, and many others. Her commentaries have aired on NPR’s Morning Edition and LatinoUSA. In 2000, she received the Inter-American Press Association Opinion prize in Santiago de Chile.