What I Inherited from a Man I Never Met
In my late teens, I found my father.
This was before the internet turned amateur investigation into a lunch-hour activity. There was no search box waiting to accept a name and return a person. Finding someone required architecture: directories, public records, legal filings, old addresses, cross-references, microfilm, and the willingness to spend several days in a library without developing an interest in anything more recreational.
I spent the better part of a week at the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles.
I followed him through documents.
My Father’s Other Children
Before I ever saw my father’s other children, I learned that he wanted them destroyed.
The request had been entrusted to a neighbor sometime before he died. It was simple, specific, and apparently important enough to repeat:
After I die, find the stuffed animals and cremate them.
