The brilliance of re-parenting

          Mine was not an abusive childhood but a smothered one. My younger brother was crushed under the wheels of the family truck – an accident that happened at home, in a split second, when my mother was watching my baby sister. He was almost four and I spent the next thirty years trying to replace him. I became whatever my father needed, even when it was a silent partner while he raged against the world that took my brother from him. I stopped being a kid when my brother died and took...