I will not write about my father, my physical, biological, material father. The affections and resentments I describe have nothing to do with the person whose name appears on my birth certificate. Ink is insufficient: too thin a fluid. My stains are indelible. My father on paper is like the God of the Bible—reduced, constrained, a lie. He has not done what he has been said to do. His qualities do not describe him. He remembers, and the traits I ascribe to him are my own.
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