Having no father created a hole in my universe
I never thought it strange, not having a father. I was barely a year old when my father died, so I didn’t miss him. How could I? I never knew him.
In elementary school, some kids didn’t know better than to ask, “How’d he die?” and when I told them polio, my status went up. Bubonic plague or suicide wouldn’t have had more effect. On the walls of every school hung March of Dimes posters of children wearing metal braces on their legs, or lying in a scary-looking contraption called an iron lung. When I added that my father had stayed in one of those iron lungs for several months, eyes widened like they do when kids don’t know what to say next.
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