This so perfectly captures the experience of being the child of an alcoholic, and is an expert example of a personal essay. Sanders is a master craftsman and brilliantly demonstrates the flexibility of the form in his switching between time frames throughout, both in the mind and emotion of the child and the perspective of the man, still under the influence of his father’s illness even years after his father’s death. I often teach with this essay as it is an exquisite example of creative nonfiction and it encapsulates why I fell in love with this form.

First published in Harper’s, November 1989, and available to subscribers to read here. Collected in Secrets of the Universe, Beacon Press, 1991 and in The Art of the Personal Essay, edited by Phillip Lopate, Anchor Books, 1995