The story below that I read in The New York Times "Style" section today, touched me in so many ways. 1. I am envious of anyone who has a father like that of Mr. Brozina! 2. I hope to marry a man like Mr. Brozina! 3. I wish I could have done an awesome tradition like this when I was younger. 4. I can't wait [as always] to have kids of my own, who would hopefully want to do something as cool as this...fingers crossed! 5. This article made me think of my own relationship that I have with my dad... :( which sadly, is pretty null - my eyes are watering right now just thinking about it again. Back in November I got in a "discussion" with my father over the phone on the subject of what I think it is to be a parent. He told me parenting stops once a child turns 18 and leaves the house. <- that statement made me sooo angry and left feeling extremely hurt! Even though my dad has not been in the picture pretty much since my parents divorce back when I was 17 [almost 12 years ago] and me and the rest of my siblings really have been fatherless...and have learned to deal with it. Still, there is this unsettling feeling of knowing that he is here, alive, and makes no attempt to be truly involved in my life, or my brothers and sisters, yet does just enough to touch base... or whatever you want to call it. Now, on the other hand, relationships are never one sided and I think for my type of situation in particular, there needs to be a lot of pride swallowing on my part AND the level of expectations needs to be lowered. That sounds bad, I know...to be like "I gotta lower my expectations that I have of my dad" BUT for me and my emotional/mental/spiritual longevity... I HAVE TO! And then I think over time things will start to heal in the way that they are supposed to. I hope. ahhh...well...soo moving on, and onto a lighter note, the last reason [6.]that this article touched me was because of the devotion that both Mr. Brozina and his daughter had towards one another! Think about the long term affects this "streak" had not only had on Mr. Brozina but his daughter as well! Her self-esteem, friends she chose, and choices she made, I am sure had plenty to do with the "streak tradition"! This story, seriously, SO NEAT!

A Father-Daughter Bond, Page by Page By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: March 18, 2010


Mr. Brozina, a single father and an elementary school librarian who reads aloud for a living, did not want the same thing to happen with his younger daughter, Kristen. So when she hit fourth grade, he proposed The Streak: to see if they could read together for 100 straight bedtimes without missing once. They were both big fans of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, and on Nov. 11, 1997, started The Streak with “The Tin Woodman of Oz.”

When The Streak reached 100, they celebrated with a pancake breakfast, and Kristen whispered, “I think we should try for 1,000 nights.”

Mr. Brozina was delighted, but what he was thinking was, a thousand nights?! “I thought, we’ll never do it,” he recalled. “And then we got to 1,000, and we said, ‘How can we stop?’ ”

For 3,218 nights (and some mornings, if Mr. Brozina was coming home too late to read), The Streak went on. It progressed from James Marshall’s picture books about George and Martha (two close friends who happen to be hippos) to middle-school classics like “When Zachary Beaver Came to Town” to the 14 Oz books (which they read four times each), to Harry Potter, Agatha Christie, Dickens and Shakespeare, continuing on, until Kristen’s first day of college.

In those nine-plus years, they survived many close calls. When Kristen was still in elementary school, her father and older sister went to Washington. “The phone rings at 10:45 at the hotel and it’s Kristen,” Mr. Brozina recalled. “She says, ‘Dad, we forgot The Streak!’ Fortunately, I always travel with several books and we read right then and there.”

As Kristen got older, she was active in community theater groups that would rehearse late, and a few dozen times, Mr. Brozina turned up and read to her between scenes. One night, a rehearsal for “I Remember Mama” was supposed to end at 11:30, but the director, upset with the performance, was yelling at the players. “Our rule was we had to read before midnight and it had to be at least 10 minutes,” Mr. Brozina said. “It was 11:45 and he wasn’t letting up.”

“Dad took me off the stage,” Kristen said. “I was 17.”

“We sat in the auditorium and I read to her,” said Mr. Brozina.

Their shared reading provided a shared language. When Mr. Brozina asks if Kristen’s absolutely sure, she’ll answer, “Certain there’s a jertain in the curtain” (Dr. Seuss). If Mr. Brozina orders a hamburger, Kristen will say, “I am a great eater of beef and I believe that does harm to my wit” (Shakespeare, “Twelfth Night”). By high school, Kristen had a busy social life. “I’d be out with friends, and say, ‘It’s 11:30, we need to stop back at my house.’ A carload of teenagers would come in. They’d play some game or cards in the living room. I’d go upstairs to Dad’s room and he’d read to me.”

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