He was an amazing father. I clutched my memories of him to my heart for so long, but he's a part of the world.

To be honest, I think I'd become a bit selfish with memories of my father. I wanted to hug them close to me.

Most men are far younger when they have their children and they're building their careers. If they are older they probably don't have the luxury of retiring - and generally sixty something-year-old men don't choose to have a child and spend all their time with that child. So it was a very unique situation.

Can't blame men for wanting him. And wouldn't be surprised if Dad even mildly flirted back. Dad somewhat enjoyed being called gay. He said it made women want to prove the assertion wrong.

You don't have to get married and have a family, like a lot of women try, to live the American Dream. There's nothing wrong if you're in your 40s and don't have kids and are president of your own company.

In fact, when I fought the 1996 election, being Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's daughter, it has its own plus and minus, so I told my father, 'please don't come for campaigning with me'.

Our family is very, very competitive. But it's a fun and inspiring sort of competitive. It makes you proud of what you do and makes you want to work hard and do all your homework so you can win.

I have many friends who are both Mexican and Mexican-American and others who, I guess you would say, are somewhere in between. The ironic thing is that all three of those categories often exist inside of the same family.