What would you have him do? Stay home from work to empty the ashes? Or switch to a day shift, which would mean less money, a few dollars less even, than he earned by working nights? These were rhetorical questions only. The ashes remained the responsibility of my mother, who, I must add, also worked, whenever her health allowed, as a private duty nurse, also at night. Later, she worked the so-called midnight shift. Why? Because nighttime was, otherwise, incredibly barren for her, with my father away, and because nighttime duty meant a little more money for the family. Throughout my growing up, my parents worked as hard as they could devise, and yet we never had a car, my parents never had a vacation, our family never knew what it was to feel satisfied, or proud, or basically secure. In fact, more than anything else, my father felt himself a man despised, a man whose maximal efforts to achieve would be regarded by the powerful as pitiful, as ridiculous. He suffered for this, and he made my mother suffer for this."
1 "When I was a child I never wanted to grow up because it was obvious that grownups were these very unhappy people.
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