Here I am, waiting for the final proof of my book to be completed, and my process hasn’t stopped, but continues. This is going to sound crazier to the reader than anything to date, but it is bringing me a sense of peace. I realized that I can’t just leave my father all alone and unhappy in his small , shabby room while I blithely puiblish my first book without the dedication I promised him. And yet it can’t be the dedication he envisioned. In my mind’s eye I had to do something to definitively deal with him, and so to go on with my life I am putting him in a homey room with his mother Sary, his tennis loving cup, his bridge-playing partners from long ago, a tuned piano and a good cup of coffee.and even his Camel cigarettes. He no longer has sinus problems or Tourette’s, and he is not drinking alcohol or lusting. He is as content as it is possible for him to be. In my mind’s eye he is cracking a joke and feeling relaxed and valued. And his untapped writing talent has been unleashed. His old typewriter has many finished pages beside it, and he is in touch with the good man in him which has been burierd under childhood hurts. And now, knowing he is in a good place (although imaginary), in the sacred unfolding of love, I can truly let him be. I have backtracked and do  dedicate this book to him, in good faith and love. Nothing in the book proper foretells this, as I have written from a different, concomitant truth.

(See Dedication, below).

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my father, Alton Ellison B.