Your body’s hungers are simple. It’s the mind that makes things complex, spinning a web of stories and fantasies and prejudices around something as basic as love, until we crave the stories more than the love itself.
DAY: 22, CONTINUED . . .
I have had many fathers, through the years. An imaginary man for every stage of growth. I’ve created dozens of different mythologies behind the person whose damaged DNA and fire-red hair I carry.
I feel that it’s important to tell you this now, here, in this held breath between Before and After.
One of my fathers was a king, reigning over a distant land or possibly in exile, hiding from wicked brothers or viziers or witches who wanted to kill him for his throne and birthright. As heir to incredible riches and with an army at his command, his wise advisers would find six-year-old me and restore me to my place beside his throne.
One of my fathers was a sports star, magically gifted in every game involving a Ball or a Team, and the switch for that magic gift lay somewhere inside me. He would return to take nine-year-old me by the hand and flip the switch. Then he would teach me how to excel in all the activities my peers esteemed.
My father was rich, and would die, and would leave a mountain of money to Mom and Maya and eleven-year-old me.
My father was a villain, a sneering Lex-Luthorian evil genius who stole everything from us—he alone was responsible for our state, and he would return for thirteen-year-old me to defeat in epic battle.
My father was an artist, beautiful and sensitive and gifted, and even if he would never be in my life, his blessings were with me, inside of me, my genetic birthright, and I would pass through pain to access the treasures he hid inside my DNA, and make marvelous things that would give meaning to my life and the life of all who beheld them.
But none of those men were really my father.