730 Days
I was supposed to be a boy. Whether that was the doctor’s prognosis, or my father with his fingers crossed, I’m not sure. But I turned out to be a Jennifer, instead of a John, and my father coped as best a broken-hearted man could—he made do with what he had. While my mother read me stories about scrappy orphans with dolls, my father snuck me out of the crib at night to watch John Wayne: El Dorado, True Grit. I would beg for bedtime stories; instead he recited lines from Ben Hur, Spartacus, Star Wars. He tried to teach me how to bait a hook and throw a curve ball, but it was the blue flicker of the TV that was our glue. Pressed against his cotton shirts, I fell asleep to the sounds of Errol Flynn’s sword clashing and Maid Marion screaming in the background.
For me, this is where memory begins.
