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Show house/ ' 433 did not know how to content myself with an occasional kiss, an off-hand endearment. I wanted something as real and warm as I had enjoyed as a child or nothing at all. And yet I knew this much: I am who I am. I had come from all of this - from him, from all of them. It was within my father's power to acknowledge me, to give me the footspace I needed to live within the family. And yet somehow, I had never received that space so that my psychological legs had grown long and thin and birdlike. And my father read on, shackling us with silence. You are losing me! I screamed from inside, my eyes burning into his skull at the crown. I was tempted to leap, cavalier-like, upon the main table, with one foot braced against the centerpiece, brandishing my thoughts at the family. Phrases darted and twisted through my head: 'My Father's house has many mansions * 'More than one way. to skin a cat,' 'To each his own,' 'The truth is where you find it," and "Tru«t not in the arm of flesh!" But people in this family do not undress in front of others - psychologically or otherwise. My monologue was discarded along with the improbable hope that an impromptu engagement party would spring up among Thanksgiving celebration. My fists were clenched, nail?:- digging deep into my palms. I watched my father read, while children and grandchildren crawled between his legs and over his feet, tunneling cities °f the earth beneath limbs spreading slowly with age and complacency. yet he was singular, alone. Suddenly a realization overtook me: Hei like me, had never fit into the neat ..cubicles that make UP our civilization. And so he had^constructed his own life, Mile I was at a loss. I was trying to construct a life out |