My mother named me after a song of loss and bittersweet memory. It could have set the tune for my life, but it didn't.
My mother name me after Bob Dylan's Sara, his song of loss and bittersweet memory. The song could have set the tune for my life with cries of Gypsy violin and harmonica. Instead, it gave me solace, a sad music place where I felt at home.
...I wish that I had grown up with my father, but I grew up with Ann’s father. I called him Dad for those first six years when children believe in magic and bogeymen. He stands only five feet, eight inches tall, but his shadow stretches the length of my life. I catch glimpses of it, looming behind me when I stand alone in the shower, arising from dark corners where I feel too afraid to turn and look.
...In my dream, my father lies belly-up on the floor of a supermarket–perhaps on his way to the chocolate aisle–capsized on the cold white-gray speckled linoleum under bright lights, out of place like a beached whale, bare skin under XXXL overalls and river sandals. Yet he doesn’t seem concerned with righting himself.