Last week — though the event seems both more recent and more distant — my beloved father died. In the days that followed, my mother, my sister Elizabeth, and I took great comfort in the process of writing his obituary. It was consoling to reflect deeply on his life, swap memories, and search for just the right words. As part of it, we included many things that he enjoyed; he took very great pleasure in life.

This week, in honor of my father, I’m posting about five additional things that made him happy.

Onward,

5 Things Making Me Happy

 1 

My father loved the music of the Mamas & the Papas and the Beach Boys, and he loved the documentary ​The Wrecking Crew about the brilliant session musicians who played on many hit recordings of that era. 

 2 

My father’s bad feet were a big nuisance to him, and he was delighted with his comfortable Allbirds and Oofos shoes. He would have been very gratified to see the Oofos Ooahh slides get a strong recommendation in the Wall Street Journal’s roundup of the best recovery shoes, according to podiatrists and athletes.

 3 

I’ve received so many lovely messages from listeners and readers about my father. He was a true believer in the benefits of regular exercise, and I’ve been very happy to learn — and he would have been so happy to learn — that his line, “It’s enough just to put on your running shoes and let the door close behind you,” has helped many people commit to regular exercise. 

 4 

I was very vain about my ability to predict books that my father would enjoy — or maybe he just always enjoyed a book because I’d chosen it for him. Either way, one of my most surprising mind-reading triumphs was when I thought that, although it seemed wildly out of character, he would in fact like A Song of Ice and Fire, the set of books that starts with A Game of Thrones. He read them all (he skipped the parts about the dragons).

 5 

Speaking of my father’s reading, one of the last books he read was Joseph Torigian’s The Party’s Interests Come First: the Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping. (Amazon; Bookshop) We discussed it several times, and he said it was “fascinating, but a bit of a slog.” I’d been meaning to tell him that it had occurred to me that his description reminded me of what Huckleberry Finn said about Pilgrim’s Progress, a line I love and often think about when I’m doing research: “The statements was interesting, but tough.”

INTERVIEW

Sara Hart-Unger

Sarah Hart-Unger is a pediatric endocrinologist and host of the podcasts Best of Both Worlds with Laura Vanderkam and Best Laid Plans. Her new book, Best Laid Plans: A Simple Planning System for Living a Life That You Love, publishes December 16.