Entering my father’s small assisted living apartment, emotionally armored up to prepare for the experience, I am derailed from my scripted visit by the sight of several pages of typewriting, with tortured but legible pen edits all over them. This is a sight familiar from my childhood, when most of our house was covered in such sheets; my father, a freelance writer and author, was constantly surrounded by a minimum of five to eight projects in various stages of completion. Fortunately for everyone, he had been trained early in his career as a journalist to include a title, draft and page number atop every sheet - so his writing process was able to survive a wife, two sons, numerous cats and even a pair of peripatetic diamondback terrapins who roamed the house.
“Yeah. (Insert crazy partner name here) is pushing me to write more.”
It’s almost enough to make me accept that fact that she exists in our world. My…