I always hated my father because he was a motorcycle mechanic, not a doctor or lawyer like my friends’ parents.
Every time he rode up to my high school on his old Harley, leather vest stained with oil, gray beard wild in the wind, shame burned in my chest. In front of my friends, I wouldn’t even call him “Dad”; he was “Frank” to me, a deliberate distance I built between us. The last time I saw him alive, I refused his hug. It was my college graduation, and my classmates’ parents were there in suits and pearl necklaces. Frank… Read More »I always hated my father because he was a motorcycle mechanic, not a doctor or lawyer like my friends’ parents.