When I was fourteen, I sensed that my father was growing tired,
detached, and depressed, but I did not understand why. He expressed
abstractions better than emotions, and found it difficult to vent
the angers and frustrations which had accumulated from work and from home.
Nor did I understand that my mother freely gave to me what she,
in her youth, had sorely missed: love. Oblivious to the magnitude
of her workload--she taught full-time and was pursuing a Master's degree--
I grew angry with her as a teenager partly because she seemed
insecure and overbearing, and partly because she expected me,
my brother, and my father to help keep the house clean in the way
that she wanted.
Despite my family's love for the outdoors, for our dog,
and for one another, the emotional fabric that bound us together
often seemed on the verge of ripping apart. And the problems
only intensified as my brother and I grew older.
Two-and-a-half-years my elder, my brother was an avid backpacker
and rock climber with jet-black hair, Gandhi glasses, and a gentle
but determined disposition. He too felt that something in our family
was "out of whack," and we occasionally discussed what we would
do when we left home. But unlike me, he had no one to buffer him
from my parents who, I was starting to discover, were only human.
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