NOTE TO READER

I USED TO THINK that life was like a puzzle, and if I was organized and worked really hard, I could make all the pieces fit neatly together.

Turns out, I was wrong.

This scrapbook tells the story of how I learned that. It’s full of emails and phone conversations, receipts and flyers. Transcripts of old home movies that I typed up. It’s the story of how we lost my dad and how we found him again, all organized in a binder with headings and labels, colored tabs and archival scrapbooking tape.

Because, if you ask me, there’s nothing like a good list to make you feel calm and in control. Guess I’m just weird that way. I needed to put this all in one place, to see how the clues and pieces all came together to reveal the truth about me and my family.

And if there’s only one thing you learn about me from this collection of documents (and I hope there’s not just one, but if there is just one), it’s this:

I really do love a good puzzle.

Claudia Dalton