Facades

If there was one fact about my father it was that though he hated finishing things, he loved beginnings. For a builder, this was disastrous. My childhood threads its way through a myriad of unfinished projects, of growths, of ideas being born but then slumbering into incompletion. It had to do, to some extent, with poverty. We were poor, so that we had to improvise. But it had more to do with impatience. My father loved to plan. I would wake early in the morning and he'd be sitting on the roof, an island of melting tar surrounding him, and he'd be staring into space. I'd speak to him and he'd reply as though we had been in a lengthy conversation and had just arrived mid-point.