After a phone conversation that lasted over an hour I emerge with two and a half pages worth of typed notes on my father's advice for a young man picking his first real suit.

My father loves men's wear. Sometimes, I wish my brother were just a little more amenable to indulging him - then they could play dress-up. Of course, Daddy tries to live vicariously through the girls sometimes, trying his hand a picking fashions or jewelry. Honestly, he does a good job. He likes to go to stores where he's developed a good report with the staff and ask for advice -- that leads, more often than not, to him being amazing at buying beautiful jewelry for all the girls. He is a man who loves bargain hunting but was born to shop in boutiques. I think if we lived in an age of small-town shops and bartering, he would fit in perfectly.

In many ways, my father is a man from another era. The reasoning for that observation is hard to articulate, but it's true. He willfully chooses to believe, from time to time, in eras other than our own - but maybe only partway. He's one of those people who says things like "they just don't make them like that anymore"� and once did a newspaper piece on the difference between the old, sweet Route 11 and the new, blustering I-64. Roads used to go where the people were. They just don't make them like that anymore.

He believes in the intricacies of solid men's fashion. He believes in old roads leading to better places. He believes in the power of personal connections and Supreme Court Justices who attended law school at night but were damn good at what they did. He believes - despite the dizzying pace at which he lives his life - in one of those worlds that moves more slowly than ours. I think, maybe, Daddy believes in a world in which he's never exactly lived. Maybe he believes in his father's world and I believe in his.

Daddy recently e-mailed my sister and me the transcript of a letter Justice Brandies wrote to one of his most promising law clerks. The gist was, it doesn't matter what you learn but who you learn - also, don't drive yourself into the ground. "The bow must be strung and unstrung."� He (my father) uses that Brandies quotation all the time.

I've never played a string instrument, or shot an arrow. I don't actually get it but, you know, I get it.

The snow outside is the dry, powdery kind: no good for snowmen and terrifying for driving busses but absolutely beautiful.

Practicality aside, it makes me happy deep inside.

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