Iris Held On to Her Paid-Off Title When Her Father Threatened to Call the Police

The sharp black linework showed the concrete piers and steel truss supports of a fifty-foot river crossing near Seattle.

I turned the heavy frame over in my hands to look at the title block in the lower right corner.

My full name was printed in precise technical lettering inside the title box: Iris Elizabeth Collins, Project Structural Engineer.

When I brought that framed drawing home to Portland three years ago, my father had looked at it for four seconds.

He had asked whether my firm paid for the wood frame or whether I had wasted money on custom-cut glass.