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death wasn’t the result of a bad feeling, or even a dark statement made about a business partner.
    I’m quite sure my father did not intend for his words to be used as a sword against his own children either.
    It is likely that my father died from years of bad thoughts, heavy
thoughts, worried thoughts, and more, the mounting debt that took him further away from his dream of being a millionaire by the time he was forty.
    My father died when he was thirty-nine years old.

EIGHT
    THE LESSON
    “HOW MUCH DO YOU love me?” Spencer asks.
    “I love you over the moon, around each and every star, and back to planet earth where I turn over every rock until I find you,” I say.
    “How much do you love me?” Josephine asks.
    “Well, I love you up to the sun, down a rainbow, all the way to the bottom of the ocean, through a meadow of wildflowers, and into the center of your heart,” I say.
    By the time Spencer is ten and Jo is five—this is how it goes—the two of them want to know how much I love them again and again and then one more time. I have crafted little tales of my love to fit their unique personalities. Spencer has a penchant for playing hide and seek and he loves space travel. Jo has become an artist who draws and paints landscapes that include sunshine, oceans, rainbows, and flowers.
    When we all lay together at night, reading our books and drinking
pots of mint tea that Jo makes from the garden out front, they ask me these questions about love as if my answer will change.
    “Do you love Spencer more?” Jo asks.
    “No.”
    “I know you love Jo more than you love me,” Spencer tries.
    “Not true,” I say.
    They look at each other across my body. Jo is under my left arm, Spencer is under my right, and they are just sure, this time, I’m going to slip.
    “Come on,” Spencer says, “Jo was the easier baby.”
    “That’s true,” Jo nods.
    “Nope, not easier, different.”
    “But Spencer didn’t sleep like I did,” Jo counters.
    “He slept enough,” I say. “And sleep doesn’t equal love.”
    “I know you love her more because she does better art,” Spencer says.
    “Not true,” I say.
    “You love him more because he was first,” Jo points out.
    Finally, I laugh out loud because they are so funny and silly and deluded!
    “To say I love one of you more than the other is like saying my left arm is better than my right, or that I like one leg better than the other. I love you both. Both of you are essential.”
    Finally, they are satisfied (or they just give up) and we move on with the routine of reading and drawing and drinking more tea. It’s another night of my family being my family.

     
     
    I LOVED MY father but not as a child loves a parent. I loved him in a protective, I’ll-take-care-of-you kind of way. I loved him like a mother. I loved him like a hopeful lover. (In fact, I wanted my father to wait for me to grow up so I could marry him. I wanted to prove to him that I would be a good wife. Was this the guilt that came from believing I had failed in my task of being a gift from God?)
    I was obsessed with molding myself to be my father’s ideal. I set aside my fear of the ocean to go sailing with him, I tried to learn how to swim (despite my fear of water) to please him, and I ran on a competitive track team, winning trophies and medals because this is what he wanted. I detested running and could never get enough breath.
    My relationship with my father was defined by adaptations designed to impress him and still he remained a detached ideal.
    Looking back at Jennifer, that little girl with such adult burdens, I finally understand how my father and I were simply two souls thrown together by circumstance. His wife wanted another child (specifically a daughter) and he pulled some strings to fulfill her desire. I was like a handbag or a scarf. Any baby would have done. It wasn’t personal.
    In the end, we were strangers to each other. There were no markers of genetics or lineage