Summary

The narrator states that her father entered the fur business “a little too late” (307) and that the market for mink and fox furs had already begun to decline. The sales increased a little at the end of World War Two, and the narrator’s parents used the money for some renovations on the house. The narrator entered high school and continued to excel at her studies. The market for the furs soon disappeared permanently, and her father took a job as a watchman in a nearby foundry. The narrator would prepare her father’s lunch each day for him to take to work. When the narrator’s mother was in her forties, she began to exhibit some symptoms that eventually proved to be related to an early onset of Parkinson’s disease. The narrator’s mother eventually lost much her motor control, but for...