Growing up, my father was not like other fathers. Other fathers would go to the office in the morning and come back at 6 pm. Mine would go to the airport and come back in 2 weeks. When my teachers asked me where he was, I would simply look up and say, He's in Africa.
You can imagine, the school thought we were a curious family.
My father would come back from his trips with bags filled with odd things - bowls and bracelets and bison horns - and curios that had no name but had a scent or a sound or a look that couldn't be forgotten. He was a passionate photographer and in darkened rooms, we would watch images of what he had seen on a screen emitted from an old slide show projector.
I can still hear the whirring of that machine.
And so it was that I grew up
to be just like him.
