Inside, I found his driver’s license (expired in 1991), clippings of articles he wrote for Seattle Gay News, and snapshots from vacations with men I’ll never know. I recently came across a fat manila envelope labeled “Ron Memorabilia” that I had misplaced several moves ago. In spite of his youthful misadventures and flirtations with high-risk behavior, my father was an ardent archivist, a trait he passed on to me. But what did he love? My fragmented understanding of him as a fully-formed adult reads like a personal ad: Words and biting humor. We did not dwell on illness or the inevitable. Ron and I did not discuss heartbreak or loss. He bought me dress-up clothes made of highly flammable fabric and let me pick the restaurant whenever we went out to eat. He gave me an allowance and took me to Disney movies. On our monthly outings together, Ron and I attempted to recreate what we thought the best version of a father-daughter relationship might be. My idea of what fathers could be was cobbled together with images of 80s TV families and neighborhood dads. He knew very little about his biological parents. As an infant, Ron was adopted, returned, and then adopted again.
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