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explanations: the need to sacrifice herself, attraction to chaos, attraction to another family which was volatile and sometimes violently explosive. I remember watching Dad’s mother, armed with a huge metal skillet, chase his father around their Front Royal house with every intention of hitting him over the head; whereas Mother’s Canadian upbringinghad been controlled, placid, and preeminently polite. There were many complicated reasons for Mom and Dad deciding to make a life together, not the least of which was their love for one another. But I always sensed there was some other subtlety to their relationship. Let me just say for the moment that from the time I was very small, I wondered whether I had in fact been adopted. There was an element beyond being a daughter that I was picking up. It is one of my enduring childhood memories. There seemed no reason for me to have what psychologists would call “an orphan psychology.” But I would often sit and gaze at them and wonder who they really were. I didn’t know what I meant by that then. I do, however, think I know now.
    So I sat down in the sun room of our Arlington, Virginia, home, with the creaking of the wicker chairs interfering with their hearing aids, and began to read them the manuscript of Out on a Limb. Dad gave me his rocking chair next to the pipe rack and Mother brought me some tea with lemon in one of her china cups. They leaned forward with bright, inquiring eyes and smiles on their lips. We had agreed that I would read aloud slowly until I was tired. It took about five hours a day for three days. They sat openmouthed as I described my affair with a married English M.P. and my useless battering at his rigidly closed mind, the search for enlightenment through spiritual questing, my curiosity about reincarnation and trance medium channeling sessions where I spoke to entities on the other side, Peter Sellers’s description of his own death and his attraction to the loving glow of the white light, my trip to the Andes where I talked with someone who said he had met an extraterrestrial being from the Pleiades, my growing conviction that all of us had lived before and would live again, and my own out-of-body experience which served to validate the answers to many questions—the surest knowledge being derived from experience.
    At the end of the third day, I read the last page and put the manuscript down. I looked up at Mom and Dad. They were both crying. I wondered if they were humiliated.
    “Well, Monkey,” said Dad, “I certainly am proud to know you.” He choked back more tears and tried to go on. “You could get a Ph.D. with that manuscript,” he said. Then he couldn’t talk anymore.
    I turned to Mother. “Oh, Shirl,” she said, “what courage that took to write. There is a lot of it I don’t understand, but let me tell you something.” She brushed away her tears with her long fingers and straightened up in her chair, fingering the frilly blouse around her neck. “You know,” ‘ she began, “this is the first time that I’ve understood the expression on my father’s face when he died. Did I ever tell you about it?” she asked.
    “Not really,” I answered. “Not in detail.”
    “Well,” she began, “I had been out playing tennis with my friends. I knew my father was sick but I wasn’t prepared for what happened. He sent for me. Why me, and not the others, I don’t know. But I went to him. I remember being concerned that I was keeping the tennis game waiting. Daddy was lying in bed. He looked over at me when I walked in and beckoned for me to sit beside him. I did. He took my hand, and then, as though he had only been waiting for me, he squeezed my hand and looked up into my face. Something was happening to him that I didn’t understand. I remember I was nervous and I giggled. I would have much preferred to have been playing tennis. I’ve been guilty about that feeling ever since. His eyes took on the most beatific glow. I have