Men, Women, and Cows

Nineteenth-century Mormon leader Heber C. Kimball once said that to him, adding a new wife (he had 56 wives) was of as much consequence as buying a new cow for his farm.

I know, it’s not exactly fair to judge modern Mormonism by one man’s rather awful remarks from 150 years ago, but I’ve been thinking about some of the ways that assigned gender roles tend to dehumanize both men and women. Given that my experience is within a Mormon context, it’s natural to discuss this in Mormon terms.

Every Mormon knows from an early age what his or her destiny is. Boys are to grow up to be priesthood leaders. They are to be strong and righteous fathers who preside over their families. They are the breadwinners.

Mormon girls, on the other hand, are taught that their value comes from their roles as wives and mothers. The ideal Mormon mother is a stay-at-home mom who shuns a career in favor of having and raising children. (Of course, Mormon women are advised to get an education, just in case things don’t work out.)

Structured Mormon religious education is the same for girls and boys until age 12, except for the boys participating in church-sponsored Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. From the age of 18 months, they begin attending “Primary,” which is a two-hour meeting involving activities, songs, and scripture-based lessons. At age 8, Mormon children are baptized and confirmed as official members of the church.

At age 12, boys and girls are given separate instruction, with different goals and different milestones.

For boys, reaching the age of 12 means being ordained to the priesthood. This is defined as “the power and authority to act in the name of God.” At 12 they are made deacons and are assigned to distribute the bread and water of the sacrament each Sunday (no wine is used) and collect donations the first Sunday of each month. At 14, they are made “teachers,” which means they now prepare the bread and water to be used in the sacrament. At 16, they are ordained as priests and are assigned to pronounce the blessings on the bread and water of the sacrament, and they can also perform baptisms. Throughout these years, the focus for these boys is always on preparing them to serve two years as full-time missionaries. A glance at this year’s manual for Mormon young men shows a focus on priesthood responsibilities, including missionary service, faith and obedience, and two lessons on honoring the roles of women.

Girls, on the other hand, cannot receive the priesthood, but the church has a sort of parallel program more geared toward learning to be good wives and mothers. Instead of Scouting, the church has a series of “Personal Progress” goals for girls, which they are expected to complete before they turn 18. This year’s lesson manual for girls is quite different from the boys’ lessons. Topics emphasize finding “joy” in a woman’s role (there’s even one about having a good attitude about their gender role), supporting (male) priesthood leaders, finding a good husband, and of course, “Patriarchal Leadership in the Home.”

When they leave home, boys are expected to serve as missionaries, after which they will come home and get married as soon as possible so they can start a family. There is a great emphasis on obtaining a college degree so that these budding patriarchs can support their families (and give ten percent to the church).

Girls, on the other hand, are not given such guidance. They are to prepare for marriage and motherhood, and if their education is interrupted by the needs of a new family, so be it. Mormon women may choose to serve as missionaries when they are 21, but traditionally this has been seen as a fall-back for those not fortunate enough to be married by that age.

For a long time, I believed that the Mormon system unfairly hurts women. Now, obviously, it limits the choices and goals and dreams of these women, so much so that my daughter once asked me why Heavenly Father likes boys more than he likes girls. But it also wedges men into roles they may not want or be comfortable with. Clearly, gay or bisexual men are not going to fit into the Ward Cleaver role carved out for them, but there are also men who are not equipped to be good fathers or husbands, or whose ideas of what a marriage relationship should be differ from that prescribed by the gerontocracy in Salt Lake City.

In short, all of us were taught that we would find joy in our respective gender roles, even if that meant we had to work on our attitude about it. Happiness was defined for us as a nuclear family with the husband working and lots of children in a suburban home. So, we spent our whole lives trying to convince ourselves we were happy, because if we couldn’t find happiness in what God wanted for us, we could never have it.

When I left the LDS church, I literally felt like I had lost my identity. No one was there to tell me what to think or what to feel, what to do, what to wear, what to eat. But it didn’t take me long to figure out that I wasn’t really happy as a Mormon. Being Mormon made me feel guilt, shame, and inadequacy, and I learned later that I’d been suffering from depression for many years. But how could that be? I was happy. I had what every Mormon man was supposed to have. I presided in my home, and everything.

But as my therapist explained to me, every time I surrendered my feelings, my needs, to the church’s dictates, I lost a little of myself. I’m back, and I don’t miss who I once was.

RIP Saturn

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I own a Saturn, a silver 2004 ION 2, to be precise. Why would I buy a vehicle that Consumer Reports called “disappointing”? My trusty Nissan Sentra had thrown a bearing in the manual transmission, and given its age, I decided not to fix it. I had intended on a used car, but with my dad’s GM Employee discount, generous rebates, and 0% interest, it was hard to pass up a new car at a used-car price.

Now that Saturn is officially dead, though not quite buried yet, it’s a little sad to reflect on the short and doomed life of America’s hope for fighting Japanese imports.

Originally, Saturn was to be a “new kind of car company.” Located in Tennessee, its non-unionized workers had more say in the means of production and a stake in the company’s success. Quality control processes were supposed to be vastly improved over the rest of GM, and the plastic-bodied cars would be the first American vehicles to truly compete with Honda, Nissan, and Toyota. Unlike other product lines, Saturn was to share no platforms or engines with any other cars.

The first Saturns rolled off the assembly line in 1990 and initially sold well. The Japanese were at first a little nervous that the upstart S-series might indeed take some of their market share. Until they bought a Saturn and disassembled it. Reportedly, when they saw the hodgepodge of crappy parts cobbled into the Saturn, the Japanese engineers responded with, “You have got to be kidding.”

But for the first few years, Saturns did score above average in reliability in the Consumer Reports ratings. The second-generation S-series debuted in 1996 with an all-new exterior but largely the same mechanical underpinnings. But it’s not a winning sales strategy to sell essentially the same car for twelve years, but that’s what Saturn did.

Then, rather than improving their existing model, Saturn made the disastrous decision to build the L-series, which was basically an Opel Vectra built on a regular GM assembly line in Wilmington, Delaware (though it did have Saturn’s signature plastic body panels). Not only was the American carbuyer uninterested in an entry-level Opel, but those who bought the L-series were treated to some of the worst repair records in the automotive industry. Of course, imagine how Cadillac Catera owners felt, given that they had also bought a rebadged Opel, with all of its reliability problems, but at a premium price.

The Saturn VUE appeared in 2002, another Opel-based offering, this time an SUV. With the advent of the ION in 2003, Saturn gave up the pretense of being a “different kind of car company” building the car on the same GM Delta platform as the Chevrolet Cobalt and HHR, Pontiac G5, and Opel Astra and Zafira. And, some would say, Saturn completely threw in the towel by releasing the Relay minivan, which was simply a rebadged version of the already nine-year-old Chevrolet Venture. That’s when you know a car builder has lost the will to survive.

The last few years of its life seemed to hold some promise, with decent products in the Aura sedan and Sky convertible, but once again these were merely rebadged versions of other GM vehicles. The ION was killed off and replaced by the Astra, which was a Belgian-made Opel based on the same Delta platform. But I guess they thought it looked different enough to sell. It didn’t. They sold so poorly, in fact, that Saturn didn’t make a 2009 model because they were still trying to clear the 2008s off the lots.

But back to my ION. The day I bought it was one of those rare chilly days in January in Houston, so I turned on the heater, which promptly stayed on at full blast. A trip to the dealer remedied the situation, though I was without a car for most of a day. A month later, I went to pick up some pizzas, and when I got back in the car, it wouldn’t start. In fact, it wouldn’t do anything. It was as if someone had flipped a switch and turned off the entire electrical system. The Saturn dealer graciously towed the car but couldn’t find anything wrong with it. So, with a shrug and a new starter motor, they gave it back to me. Luckily enough, there had been a recall on defective turn indicator/running lights, so they replaced those while they were at it.

One thing I noticed was that the light gray seats, made of a woven polyester that screamed “leisure suit,” showed every tiny drop of moisture. You could spend hours thoroughly cleaning the car, and within a couple of days, the seats would look as spotted and stained as the sheets in a Super 8 motel.

Two months later the stereo CD player stopped working. I was secretly glad to see it go because the clock lost about 3 minutes a month. Unsurprisingly, the new CD player had the same problem. I just got in the habit of resetting the clock once a week or so. Then everything went reasonably well for about a year. Then in short order the auxiliary radiator fan quit, which is not a good thing in the summer in Houston. And the CD player died again. The new one was just as chronologically challenged as the old one.

About that time I noticed a clunking noise in the front suspension that made it sound as if the front end were going to fall apart when we hit the slightest bump. One new suspension bushing later (still under warranty), the noise stopped.

Then we moved back to Utah. My wife and I drove the car out over three days in the summer of 2007. We stopped for the night in Edmond, Oklahoma, and in the morning, the car wouldn’t start. Wouldn’t turn over. Nothing. I went back into the hotel to make a phone call, and then when I got back in, it started right up. Outside of Denver the cruise control made a rather loud cracking noise and quit, and then when I stopped for gas in Grand Junction, the car once again refused to start. We waited it out for several minutes, and it finally started.

When we got to Utah, my sister’s mechanic took a look at it and said he was 90% sure we had a bad ignition switch, but he didn’t want to replace it if he wasn’t certain. So, we took it to the Saturn dealer, and to no one’s surprise, they mentioned that IONs were well known to have a short in the ignition key lock mechanism. Of course, by this time, the warranty was long expired, and the repair wasn’t cheap. As I got into the car to drive it home, I noticed another ION parked next to mine. Sure enough, although its seats were beige, they had the same tell-tale spots that mine did.

On the way to get the car’s safety and emissions inspection, the Check Engine light lit up. The catalytic converter had died, so I replaced that. The next month, I started the car on a winter’s morning and was greeted by a horrific low spluttering and a wheezing, vibrating engine. After a new ignition control module and a tune-up, it was good as ever (which isn’t saying much, of course).

Last summer the passenger side power window switch stopped working. By this time, I didn’t care enough to get it fixed. Then the latch on the glove compartment broke, which I also didn’t bother fixing. The clunking on the left front end started again last winter, and then the windshield wipers stopped working in the middle of a blinding snowstorm. So, back to the mechanic for another bushing and a new windshield wiper motor assembly.

What galls me more than the constant repairs is the price of Saturn parts. The clutch is nearly at the end of its life, so I looked into replacing it. For comparison, a clutch kit for a Nissan Sentra runs about $115. But you can’t buy a clutch kit for a Saturn ION. Nope, you have to buy three separate parts at a cost of around $600, and then you have to have someone put it in. Even something as simple as replacing a battery is a pain when you drive an ION. Not only is the battery in the trunk under a panel next to the spare tire, but it is a nonstandard battery with front-facing terminals, and it costs a staggering $89. For a compact-car battery. The local Autozone told me they didn’t carry that battery and would have to make a special order.

It’s these kinds of things that make me think that GM either had a death-wish for Saturn or has nothing but contempt for its customers. Honestly, who thought it was a good idea to build a mediocre car (hell, my 1994 Sentra drove better and got better gas mileage) of dubious quality (you could shove an iPod through the gaps between the exterior panels) with expensive replacement parts?

I know. I’m an idiot for buying the car in the first place. And I’m an even bigger idiot for holding onto it as long as I have. Google “Saturn ION problem,” and you’re likely to come across multitudes of angry posts from unhappy Saturn buyers, most of whom have had the same kinds of problems I have.

I’m sorry for the Saturn workers who have lost and will lose their jobs, but I’m not going to mourn the demise of Saturn. It did turn out to be a different kind of car company: worse than the others (well, with the possible exception of the Yugo or the VW Fox). My daughter asked me if Saturns would now become collectors’ items.

“Only if someone collects crappy cars,” I said.

The Church of George Costanza of Latter-day Saints

I found this old post of mine and thought I’d share. I still think it’s kind of funny.

I don’t watch a lot of TV these days (no time for it anymore), but occasionally I will watch a rerun of “Seinfeld,” which I still enjoy, even though I’ve seen every episode as far as I can tell.

The show is sometimes hit and miss, but generally the hits far outnumber the misses. But the one consistent piece of brilliance is the character of George Costanza, which Larry David says that he based on himself.

George is a squat, balding man who says (accurately),”I lie every second of the day. My whole life is a sham.” Rather than face the sad reality of a life of mediocrity, George simply makes up a successful life for himself. When asked what he does for a living, he says he’s a marine biologist or an architect: “You know I always wanted to pretend I was an architect.” Even his aspirations and dreams involve lying.

His entire life is compartmentalized, as well. The persona he adopts in relationships (Relationship George) is entirely different from the person he is with his friends (Independent George), and he lives in fear that the two will eventually collide: “A George divided against itself cannot stand; if Relationship George is allowed to infiltrate George’s sanctuary, he will kill Independent George!”

George spends a lot of time trying to keep reality from invading the dreamland of lies. He swims out into the ocean to save a suffocating whale rather than admit he’s not a marine biologist; he claims to have designed the “new addition to the Guggenheim”; and he tells NBC that he had produced an off-Broadway play (called La Cocina) about a cook named Pepe.

So much of George’s life is fictitious that even he has trouble determining what is real: “Remember, Jerry, it’s not a lie if you believe it,” he says. We wonder if there is a real George hiding somewhere behind the facade.

For me, this is how Mormonism operates. If you think about it, it all started with a simple lie: an angel appeared to Joseph Smith and told him about some plates, though technically, it begins earlier with Joseph’s discovery of a “peepstone” while digging a well (and no, it doesn’t begin on a beautiful spring day in 1820—that was added later). And everything thereafter has been an extension of that one lie to the point that it’s sometimes hard to separate reality from the prevarication. But it’s OK, because “it’s not a lie if you believe it.”

FARMS is probably the church’s most visible Costanza-like agent of denial. They spend their time making sure that the real church does not collide with the fantasy church. Some people have harshly criticized FARMS for dishonesty, but I think it goes deeper than that; these people really believe it. At least they have constructed such an alternative reality based on the lies that it would be catastrophic if they let the superstructure fall.

In one “Seinfeld” episode, George tells his fiancee’s parents that he is going to his nonexistent house in the Hamptons for the weekend (“I figured since I was lying about my income for a couple of years, I could afford a fake house in the Hamptons”). Calling his bluff, the in-laws offer to go with him. George drives almost all the way across Long Island, hoping against hope that they will give up and turn around before he’s confronted with reality. I think the FARMS folks find themselves in the same position: they hope no one will call their bluff but will just accept their pat answers and move on. But each day they move closer to a confrontation with reality. I once tried to get Daniel Peterson to respond to Robert Ritner’s demolition of the Book of Abraham; nothing doing. I was told to do my homework, and then when I read Peterson’s list of articles, I was told that Ritner’s tone was unacceptable for a peer-reviewed journal.

Sorry, but at this point, I’d trust Art Vandelay more than I would FARMS.

Update on My Book

Since a few people have asked, here’s the latest on my book (which is an account of my mission in Bolivia).

A few weeks ago, I decided to send out queries to literary agents. I probably sent out 60 or so, just to people who said they would consider memoirs. To date I’ve had 5 positive responses (among a ton of rejections). 4 of those are still thinking about it, and one has already rejected it.

I figured that I needed to at least make one concerted attempt to get it published, and if nothing happens, I can at least say that I tried.

So, wish me luck. I have my fingers crossed.

Sliding Back into Winter

Last week was glorious here in Utah. Green began showing through the brown lawns, and daffodils and crocuses peeked out of the flower beds along my driveway. I hadn’t even known they were there. The temperature was in the upper sixties, approaching 70, and it felt like the days of shoveling snow and bundling up were over.

And then a cold front hit, bringing with it not much snow, but bone-splintering cold. When I drove my wife to work the other day, snow was coming at us horizontally, the road a blur of white and gray in the darkness. By the next morning, the skies had cleared, and the thermometer in my van read 16 degrees.

So much for spring. But in some ways I’m glad to have this weird period of shifting weather, as if winter hasn’t totally accepted its demise and is fighting off the advance of spring. In Texas, we didn’t really have seasons, and winter, if you can call it that, was really just an extended cooler period with bare trees and yellowing lawns. The rest of the year was a mixture of hot and miserably hot.

Given the choice, I think I’ll take the seasons, as frustrating as they are. They remind me that I’m alive and part of something much bigger than me.

Disconnected

Over the weekend we had some issues with our Internet service, and from Saturday afternoon until this morning, we had no Internet at all. Suddenly no one knew what to do with themselves. Kids kept telling me, “Dad, there’s nothing to do!” I mean, how are we supposed to illegally download movies and music?

I hadn’t realized how dependent I am on the Internet until I couldn’t figure out how to get a phone number I needed, as the paper phone book was squirreled away in a box somewhere during the move.

Think about it. No facebook. No updated news and sports scores. No up-to-the-minute weather. No youtube. No message boards. And worst of all, no blogging.

Of course, no blogging is probably a good thing, given that on any random day, I have almost nothing of value to say.

But it feels good to be connected again.

Sick

I don’t think you appreciate the everyday normality of life until something interrupts the routine. Sometimes these are major disruptions, such as the accident I’ve written about that has changed so many lives. I know that the survivors of the accident carry scars both physical and emotional that will remain the rest of their lives.

I was going to write about how much it sucks to be as sick as I am, but the first thing I thought about was how having this admittedly nasty flu doesn’t compare to what others have been through.

But I’m going to whine anyway. I’ve been sick since Friday, and only today am I feeling even slightly better.

I think I’m going back to bed.

PG Rated Blog

Hat tip to my friend Kam for finding this, but apparently, my blog is rated PG because I used “hell” twice and “dangerous” once. The results come from this website.

I realize that for some of my readers, the contents of my blog consign me to the farthest reaches of outer darkness, or at in any case the telestial kingdom. But at least I don’t swear.

Today wasn’t the most fun I’ve had lately. I woke up with a migraine that started on the right and then spread across the front of my head until I felt like I was wearing a migraine visor. I skipped church and went back to bed, and when I finally woke up in the middle of the afternoon, my head was still pounding, though not as bad. And those weird migraine light flashes were gone.

My home teacher came by, and I was a little too disoriented to talk to him, so I read for a while and then watched the Super Bowl with my son. The headache is pretty much gone, but I’m not feeling back to normal yet.

Ross

Ross was the baby of the family, and we always thought he was awfully spoiled (which of course he was). He didn’t look like me at all, I thought, with his reddish curly hair and sly grin. He liked to be the center of attention (My dad always said he was a “ham”), and he usually got it. Danny resented the attention Ross got and picked on him mercilessly.

I remember when Ross was about four years old, and he had apparently picked up some language from one of the neighbors. At dinner one night, he said in a very polite voice to my mother, “Please pass the f***ing butter.” Mom’s jaw dropped, and the rest of us just burst out laughing. Another time when he was about seven, he and his friend from across the street brought a stack of Playboys home. Mom was mortified.

As I said, Danny hounded Ross for a long time, mostly because Ross was smaller by quite a bit. But when Ross was about thirteen, he suddenly grew into a tall and rather solidly built kid. Danny stopped bugging him. Somewhere along the line, Danny started calling him “Otis” because he thought it was funny. Ross was not bothered at all, and soon everyone was calling him Otis. Once my dad went to pick him up at a church dance, and when he asked for Ross Williams, no one knew who he was talking about. Finally, someone said, “Oh, you mean Otis.”

During his teenage years, Ross became quite a good surfer, and he and Danny surfed just about every weekend and every day during the summer. I think it was the surfing that made him so strong. He had massive shoulders.

By the time I got home from my mission, Ross was big and tall and strong. He met an African American girl at youth conference, and she persuaded him to start dressing and grooming himself as if he too were black. Danny called him the “pseudo-black.” What made me sad was that this girl treated him really badly and said terrible things to him, such as that she was embarrassed to be seen with him. He really withdrew during that time and became really quiet and unsure of himself. I used to pick him up from his job at Builders’ Emporium and we would talk for hours about life. I kept telling him that no one was worth the abuse he was taking from her. Finally he broke up with her, and soon he was back to his old, happy self. Later I read his journal from this time period, and it made me cry to think of how sad and hurt he was.

After graduation, he and Danny spent a week surfing in Mazatlan. Ross ended up surfing alone much of the time because Danny got stung by a Portuguese Man-O-War. He was pretty good about staying with him and taking care of him, but Danny insisted he go out and get in some waves.

That fall he headed off to BYU like most of us in our family had. The first day, he went to class and realized he’d forgotten a pencil, so he turned to the girl sitting next to him and asked if he could borrow one from her. They immediately hit it off, and soon they were inseparable. Just a couple of weeks into the semester, I was working one night at my low-paying job cleaning the Wilkinson Center floors when someone knocked on the window behind me at about one in the morning. It was Ross, and he wanted to introduce me to Becky, the girl he had met. He was much taller and bigger than she was, but they both seemed so happy together.

For my birthday, Danny and Ross rented a couple of movies to watch at our house. The only one I remember was “Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things.” At Christmas that year, we all gathered at my parents’ house in California and took a family photo. For some reason, Ross didn’t have his dress clothes with him, so he squeezed into one of my sweaters. (I have no idea how. He was about 6′2″ tall, and I’m six inches shorter than that. )

As I said, the last time I saw Ross we were swimming in the Richards Building at BYU. Both Danny and I commented on how huge he was, his shoulder muscles big and strong. We felt like dwarves standing next to him.

Ross was driving the day they were killed. His girlfriend took a picture of him behind the wheel, a big licorice pipe in his mouth. He looked really happy. I wish they had not done a viewing, as Ross did not really look like himself there in the casket. I much prefer thinking of him standing outside in the cold, his arm around his girlfriend, a big contented grin on his face.

Danny

Nearly 21 years ago, my brothers Danny and Ross were killed in a car accident. That event was obviously a huge trauma in my life, and not many days go by that I don’t think about them and wonder what their lives would have been had they not been taken from us at such young ages (Danny was 20, and Ross was 18).

For some reason I thought I would tell you about them. I’ll start with Danny because he was older. All my life I knew my brother as someone who was fearless and full of adventure, such that he always got into trouble from an early age. I remember when he was about 6, an older boy pushed him off a trampoline at his school and told him little kids weren’t allowed. Danny picked himself up and beat the crap out of the other kid. He would not allow anyone to push him around, and most people learned not to mess with him.

But on the other hand, he had a very tender heart and was always giving of himself. My mother says that when he was little, if she gave him a cookie, he would break it in half and give half back to her because he wanted to share. He was always collecting stray kittens. Once he brought home a pathetic little orange tabby with a gooey, swollen eye and some kind of insect infestation. “And he only cost $10,” he said happily. The vet had to shave the cat, which Danny lovingly bathed and cared for the bad eye. He named it Spike. Even in college he brought home a stray kitten and kept it in his apartment until he had to move, and then he made sure the cat had a good home.

Danny knew how to get on my nerves, and he often did so intentionally. For some reason, whenever we would go swimming in our backyard pool, he would eventually grab hold of my neck and try to hold me underwater. He wouldn’t succeed, but he would not let go until I would have to punch him repeatedly, at which point he would go into the house crying and tell my mom that I had, for no reason, beaten him up. And then he would smirk as I got punished. It makes me laugh just thinking about it. Once the Boy Scouts left some boxing gloves at our house, and we decided to test them. Within a few minutes we were beating each other to a pulp, both of us crying.

As teenagers, we were friendly but didn’t do too much together, as our circles of friends didn’t really overlap. I worked a lot, and he and Ross were at the beach in their spare time. After I got home from my mission to Bolivia, we went on a trip to Mazatlan together, a belated graduation present for him. We had a great time swimming and surfing and riding around on motorcycles. The last night we splurged and had lobster for dinner. The appetizer was a shrimp cocktail that tasted slightly funky. That night we traded places on the toilet and didn’t get any sleep.

That summer we worked together at a restaurant and were together all the time. We would get up early, go to the beach to surf, take a nap in the sun, and then go home, shower, and go to work. We became really close that summer, and then when we headed back to school, we lived in the same apartment building, his apartment directly below mine. At school (we both went to BYU), he excelled, getting such good grades that the university gave him a retroactive scholarship and refunded his tuition.

When I was dating my wife, Danny was very much taken with her. He kept telling me I should hurry up and marry her, so I did. We were in his apartment when we set the date (on a Far Side calendar, his favorite). At the wedding, the photographer was a rather weathered fellow in a shabby suit. Danny kept saying, “Smile for the hippie,” under his breath, and everyone was laughing.

That summer Danny gave me a leather bomber jacket (I still have it) that my parents bought him for his birthday. He said it was too pretentious for him, so he gave it to me. When fall came, he came by and asked if he could have it back, because he didn’t have a warm jacket. He would show up at odd hours and sit and talk with my wife for long periods. I knew he was lonely, and he really did like her.

The last time I saw Danny, he and Ross and I went swimming at the Richards Building on the BYU campus. We didn’t swim for long but instead talked for a long time. A few days later my dad called to tell me that they had been killed. When I saw him in the casket, it didn’t look like him, though he was wearing his thrift-store sharkskin suit. The expression on his face seemed so fragile, so childlike. Sometimes I can’t bear to remember that.

So I choose to remember the tough but tender kid I knew. I loved him.