In Praise of Parallel Universes

A Magdalen Laundy Tale — Families.

In that arresting blur between reality and fiction, in that dimly lit space where every experience seeps into the marrow of your bones, there I was a witness to the derelictions of others, shaped but not defined by the pervasive inattention and indiscretions that populated the landscape of my early years.

My father, a living homage to the intoxicating allure of neglect, was the storm whose gusts I couldn’t escape — inebriated not just by alcohol but by the seduction of escaping the tether of responsibilities. My mother was the anti-matter of my universe, her absence as weighty as a black hole, sucking every sliver of stability out of my fragile existence. I was her concession to a sinking ship, the unnecessary weight offloaded to keep herself afloat.

Deposited into my grandparents’ home, I stepped into an archive of human decay. This was not a sanctuary framed by picket fences and punctuated by Sunday roasts; this was a museum of lives untended, of dreams deferred. The air was thick, laden with stale reminiscences and stagnant regrets. It was as if I were walking through cobwebs — each filament delicate but altogether unyielding, attaching to me as though I were another relic in their mausoleum of missed opportunities.

My grandfather was an unpredictable amalgam of agitation and intermittent clarity — a man whose cognitive decline had replaced wisdom with volatility. My grandmother was a frozen chapel of religiosity, her body gnarled by…