1. I remember the hymns of these words like a late-night infomercial; people telling me to move on. People telling me to get over the fact that I don’t know my dad. It sounded the same each time, coming from different lips. Therapists and lovers. If you have a dysfunctional family, there are other options out there for you. You can gather family in new people. Someone you just met on the street, a man which you, by tender accident, brushed against at a train station. Someone you’ve been sleeping with to fill the void of what feels like a swollen water ballooned chest of loneliness. You can gather new family in a co-worker, asking her how her weekend was like an inflamed mother would. Or a teacher, imagining him as your father, teaching you what to do and what not to do. Letting your heart liquefy when he tells you you’re doing an exquisite job. There are other options if you aren’t close with your relatives. If you’ve never met your father. If you …

Ean Hay—December 23, 1925 – May 26, 1977 They appeared quite suddenly in our midst. On my island, where everyone knew everyone else, these newcomers stood out like papayas in a basket of apples. Each one of them: Ean and Mary, and the kids Lauren, Toby and Colin, wore one of Mary’s handspun hand knitted and hand dyed sweaters, each one with a row or two of diamonds across the front. They were Mary’s signature, those diamonds. She had marked her family with roads of diamonds, as if she might lose them without a map. When I came to know Ean better, so much better, I spent many hours gazing at the diamonds on his sweaters, when I was too embarrassed by his attention or too shy to look into his sharp blue intelligent eyes that seemed to read me so thoroughly. The pungent scent of the wool was always strongest after we had walked together, usually up to my house from the hall, through the west coast winter drizzle. Ean was a music man …