At thirteen, I was so paralyzed with self-consciousness that sometimes I'd get home from school and realize I hadn't spoken out loud all day. Later, … - Alison Bechdel

If it weren't for the unconventionality of my desires, my mind might never have been forced to reckon with my body.

Perhaps I identify too well with my father's illicit awe. A trace of this seems caught in the photo, just as a trace of Roy has been caught on the light-sensitive paper...It's a curiously ineffectual attempt at censorship. Why cross out the year and not the month? Why, for that matter, leave the photo in the envelope at all?

In an act of prestidigitation typical of the way my father juggled his public appearance and private reality, the evidence is simultaneously hidden and revealed.

What's lost in translation is the complexity of loss itself.

Mo: My sister-in-law had her baby! I'm an aunt! My brother's a father! My mother's a grandma! My dad's a...
Sydney: I think I can generalize from there.