Over the years I've come to the conclusion that my
parents will never agree about what happened in the early years of my
life. I still ask them questions, though, because I have realized that I
can learn more about them from their answers (and the miles between each
of their recollections) than I can learn about myself. So one night I
made two columns down a piece of paper and decided to ask each parent
some questions and as I wrote down the answers I knew would be different,
I thought I could plot the multiple degrees of truth. Calling my mother
first I asked her about the day she and my father told me they were going
to be divorced. Her response, so different from my own recollections of
the day, revealed an entire world of their relationship that did not
include me at all: I stopped my project there.
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