I make an altar in my office. A low bench, perhaps
                                       something a father made, a candlestick holder I
                                       found on the street by my sister’s house, a candle
                                       that smells like winter, a houseplant, a bowl of
                                       scraps, a photograph of my grandmother. I am
                                       just a woman, I imagine her saying. It is unfair the
                                       symbols we make of history, the things we say
                                       about it repeating. My father hated repetition. If I
                                       asked him the same question twice, he’d yell back
                                       I heard you the first time, but that didn’t mean he
                                       was going to answer me, it meant he had caught
                                       the question and had chosen to crumple it on the
                                       floor beside him. As we got older, he stopped
                                       snapping at me. In the car, when I spoke, he
                                       would turn up the radio. Instead of anger, he
                                       pretended I was not there. Some people, if you
                                       push them too deep, they will never come up
                                       from underwater. As a child in the hometown
                                       lake, I would dive to feel the rocks at the bottom,
                                       lining them up on the shore before they became
                                       dull in the sun. This had always been a “problem.”
                                       When a child needs differently than a parent, they
                                       are called a “problem child.” Once, in Lake Erie, I
                                       tried to outrun the waves, only to get pulled under
                                       by the tide. When I thought I might float away
                                       completely, I felt a rough tug on my arm, it was
                                       my father, silently pulling me up. There is always a
                                       function behind the behavior, my professor tells
                                       me when I am learning how to teach. When
                                       children are bad, she says, they act the opposite of
                                       what they want. When adults are bad, I imagine
                                       they are suspended underwater.