You used to quote a writer, Mary Gordon, who said, “A fatherless girl thinks all things possible and nothing safe.” For a long time I didn’t understand what that meant or how it related to you. Now I do understand, and I think it’s true of fatherless boys as well. I certainly think it applies to me. When you lose a parent at an early age, you lose the fantasy of childhood. The veil is lifted. You learn that bad things happen and that no amount of crying or hugging will make them all right. Nothing is safe, and all things are possible: good things, beautiful things, but ugly and harmful things,
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