by Kurt Schmidt
Realizing I had bad parents was a revelation that seeped in gradually, sucking away my freedom to be a normal child. Had things been different, I might have become more than an anxious replication of their genetic soup, lacking any clues as to whether my parents loved one another. At times when a bolt in his head came loose, Dad said Mom had to prove she loved him.
Continue readingby Jason Brown
The old family joke wasn’t so funny after my mother died. Of course, my father never really found it funny. The name his parents gave him plagued Dad throughout his life. Even his own father would often say that, when he was older, he’d have four children who would be turned into swans by their wicked stepmother. On his first day at school, the teacher; on hearing his name: said, “Ah! Your mother is a fan of Shakespeare, I see!” Immediately my father corrected him:“No sir. My name is Lír. L-I-(fada)-R. As in, The Children of…”
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