Episode notes
Chapter 70
A child can go down, into the depths of parental numbness. It doesn’t matter how old the child is, or the parent. The umbilical is sometimes a lifeline, thrown to the future, with which a mother can hope to haul herself up the well of her own dying. And children can so rarely tear themselves from around that well. A parent present, but absent, can be the bottomless quicksand of an entire lifetime.
Tom thought about his mother’s revelation long and hard. It consumed him. Invaded him. He thought about it before going to sleep. He dreamt about it. It greeted him on awakening, during the instant evolution of abandoning sleep. I am a carbon-based life form. I am human. I am Tom. I am not my father’s son.
He briefly considered writing to Gunther, but got stuck o ...
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