Before, the guiding instinct of our family was strongly intuitive, compassionate, and nurturing. In a word, maternal. My father and I both became orphans, malnourished, emotionally distant, neglected. Often, when we were sitting in the kitchen eating our takeout dinners, each of us at our separate spots—me on my laptop at the island, my father paging through a magazine at the table—we seemed barely recognizable to me. I looked at us and thought, whose family is this?
