When one has not had a good father, one must create one  -- Friedrich Nietzsche

In my memory, my fathers stand in file before me.

My last father is first in line and in this book; I spent more years coping with him and hate him the most. 

Second is my birth father. His figure is indistinct in my vision because there is a void where we could have been together but weren't. I don't so much miss him as wonder about what could have been. 

Last in line before me is my second father; I hate him for what he did to my mother and brothers at a time when i was too young to protect them.

I am a father, too, one of a continuum of men in my family leaning into, shadowing, shoving, shaping, steering, staining each other through the generations. 

I am a father