What I understand now is that these anxious moments are a small price to pay for a caring, present and wonderful parent. Somehow, through my childhood and adolescence of ducking and shirking from my father and the issues of her sexuality, she and I experienced an incredible life together.

A pilot, a brilliant engineer and the chief executive of an alternative energy company, she was constantly traveling for work. She had lived in South Africa, Switzerland, India and the desolate farmland of Ohio, and as a result was committed to seeing the world and immersing herself in different cultures. It was her goal that I share her passion for travel and exploration. So together we skied the French Alps, picked berries in the Swiss countryside, cantered camels through the streets of Udaipur, ate live octopus in Seoul and walked through marijuana hazes in Amsterdam.

Through all of these adventures, she took photographs, the act of which I often hated. Not only did I have a teenager’s heightened sense of self-consciousness, but it also seemed as if that large black camera was always in my face, blocking my view of her, covering her eyes, preventing us from making an intimate connection or simply having a conversation at dinner.

On a trip to the Netherlands when I was 13, I remember standing in line with hundreds of people at Anne Frank’s house while my father lay down (on the street! I could have died) in her white blouse and purple skirt to get a picture of me from below, the house towering above me. At that moment my pubescent world was narrowed to a sharp point, my vision tunneled to the spectacle of her lying there. With all eyes on me as she snapped photos and told me to “hold it for just one more,” I wanted to melt into those sacred cobblestones.

Seeing the heat creeping into my cheeks, she pulled the camera down and furrowed her brow. “Trust me, Annie, this shot is fantastic,” she said. “You’ll be grateful to have it.”

The picture did turn out beautifully and now stands in the dining room. The collection of photographs I have of me with a camel about to kiss my face, underwater in a sea of luminescent fish, and sitting with a nearly naked homeless girl in what was then Bombay is a testament to her artistic talent and, more important, to her self-expression. It reminds me not only of her love for me and the wondrous experiences she — my father — has given me, but also of her passion and wonder at the beauty of small things.