Then, seeing that I was losing her, I said, “Why do you ask?” “Oh, we’re talking at school about what our daddies do, and I wondered what I should say.” This troubled me for weeks. I had thought that I was comfortable with my temporary state of disidentification, but I found that I was vulnerable through the kids—who didn’t really care what I did, so long as it had a name. As time went on, I grew more comfortable with what might be called a “participial” identity, that is, identifying with ing words (gardening, writing, running, lecturing) rather than with nouns. But I have to admit that it
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