In A Nutshell

            Most of my earliest memories with my dad consist of me helping him out around the house – carrying his tools, handing him nails, and running errands for him. One particular time, he was working on the roof and I was patiently waiting for him at the foot of the ladder. Unknowingly to him, the wrench he had placed on the roof beside his work area was slowly sliding down the tilted tin roof, right from above me. There I was, sitting en garde the foot of the ladder then *PLUNK* the wretched wrench had fallen squarely right on my head. Immediately, I wailed. Looking back now, I don’t think it really hurt that badly or perhaps the memory of pain gets lesser over time.            At some point in my growing up, I remember now, I’ve thought back often to that moment and thought to myself  “I should’ve been a son.”           Then, came the fishing. No, I never went fishing. But I ...

I have spent most of my life learning how to carry things without making them look heavy. A childhood divided into before and after. Two small hands reaching for mine before I had learned what mine were for. I became useful early. There are worse ways to disappear. For years, I mistook being needed for being known, and responsibility for a kind of love that could not leave me. I kept records of everything. The places people touched me. The places they didn't. The exact shape of a silence after someone changed their mind. I studied people the way some people study weather— not because it could be controlled, but because knowing its patterns made leaving the house feel safer. I called it research. Sometimes it was. Sometimes I was only trying to understand why a person can live inside another person long after they have left. There are things I have loved with the discipline of a scholar and the recklessness of a woman who has mistaken longing for evidence. I have built entire theori...