Chapter One

Song
for
My Father

1.

    By my bed, gathering a little dust now, I'm afraid, is a small paperback book. I've kept it there ever since it was published four or five years ago, and it's become one of those things in my apartment that I see every day without seeing anymore. On top of the paperback book is a thin pamphlet, The Healing of Mind and Soul in the Twenty-third Psalm, given to me by a friend of the family, Pastor Wan. Beneath the paperback is a study Bible, New International Version, also given to me by the pastor, and a Dover edition of the Book of Psalms.

    I'm not a religious person; or, rather, I wasn't raised to be a religious person: never belonged to a church, never became acquainted with the grammar and word of the Good Book. But over the years, there have been more than a few occasions when I've read that pamphlet, that Bible, and those psalms in earnest, finding in their allegories and metaphors something short of grace, perhaps, but something greater than mere solace.

    So it's no accident that in this stack of salves I've included this slender paperback. It is unlike any other book I own. On the cover, set against a faded backdrop of his own handwriting, is a color photograph of my father. In the photograph, taken sometime in the 1960s, my father's head is turned to his left, his mouth slightly open in a relaxed smile. Even behind heavy-framed glasses, his eyes appear to be seeing something clearly. It seems he mi