But I never doubted that I was loved.
When I was twelve, we lost our house.
I can still remember the morning the moving truck arrived.
The sky was gray, and the grass in the front yard was wet from overnight rain. Two strangers carried our furniture through the front door while Mom stood in the driveway, speaking sharply to someone on the telephone.
Dad stayed inside.
I found him in the kitchen, standing beside the doorway where he’d measured my height every birthday.
The marks were crooked because he never seemed able to draw a perfectly straight line. Each one had a date beside it, written in his uneven handwriting.
Blue pencil for one birthday.
Red for another.
Green when he’d misplaced the blue pencil and decided that I was old enough to appreciate the importance of improvisation.
I stood beside him and stared at those marks.
“Are they going to paint over them?” I asked.
