You spy your father at the Whole Foods, sitting on a lawn chair under a tree. When you ride by hours later, he is still there, chatting with the parking lot attendant. A regular. When did he become the old guy in the baseball cap, talking to anyone who will listen? And what did you think he did with his days?
Not lonely, after all. Brave.
Fathers, sons, baseball: bad movies
Empty page: infinity.
From the instant you vow never to forget, it begins to slip away
In an early draft she referred to him as “recessive to the point of nonexistent,” but then later edited him out.
He was hanging by a thread; he felt as though he would disintegrate in a light breeze.
This incarnation wasn’t in the cards.
The best advice I ever got, although for a time I didn’t take it that way. It wasn’t offered in kindness—just a curt STFU.
She was rich in spirit, but mainly just rich.
·
The next day, we would attend a rally in Oakland. I asked how many would be there. 10, 20 or 100,000, it was thought. Leaving the building, I thought, all we would need to chant would be “Obama.” That would stand for everything we needed to say.
More often now he reached for words but found only word-shaped holes.
She was eager to talk about the most fascinating person she had ever met, herself.
Others experienced his presence as an absence in themselves.
The workings of mathematics, never fathomable, in the middle of the night became a source of terror.
