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looked at me and then looked away. It was just a momentarily glance, but an unguarded one. For that moment she didn’t look confident and famous—she just looked tired and old. Then she started moving again. She was a deft cook, braiding and kneading and frosting, but it took all she had just to keep my father from falling apart.
    Looking at the two of them should have been my first clue about how my life was going to be from now on: Dad paralyzed by his depression, Mom trying to shield me from it, but incapable of doing so. Her hands were too full. There just wasn’t any care left for me.
    That morning I sat with Dad until after the sun was up. We didn’t talk; we didn’t eat; we didn’t go to work; we didn’t go to school.
    “I’m going for a run,” Dad finally said, pushing himself away from the table. He stood up and threw away the white peak of used tissues that had piled up in front of him.
    Three days later, Dad came home with our new “foster” family he’d repossessed from that last client, over my mother’s and my tepid objections. They weren’t technically fostered. They didn’t take our name and they still had a functional mommy—Gloria Inez, who seemed a fine woman but in need of a job for her green card; and her kids, Tomás and Esperanza. That was when I learned that Dad’s definition of little kid (as in “there were little kids in that house with the firearms”) included a teenage boy who was six foot six, brawny, and the only Latino I’ve ever seen able to dunk a basketball. Esperanza fit my expectations a bit more. She was seven, with large, frightened eyes and a thumb in her mouth that never came out.
    One week after they squeezed in with us and bathroom time became a commodity, Mom remembered that she’d inherited a run-down inn on the banks of the Santiam River, and wouldn’t it be nice to get away? We could fix it up. Only enough to sell it since we never went there anyway.
    But when we got there, a change seemed to creep over everyone but me. Tomás relished the room to stretch out. I once caught him standing in the living room, waving his long arms around, not hitting anything, a look of bliss on his face. He was the one who erected a basketball hoop in the parking lot.
    Dad ran his hands lovingly over the wooden banisters carved into shapes of animals (brown bears, beavers, herons, eagles) and took over the rain-damaged basement, decorated it with black light posters and converted it into the Astro Lounge. Fixing the tap and filling it with Black Butte Porter, dark and foamy, was the only thing that brought a smile to his face.
    Mom and Gloria Inez took steel wool pads to the kitchen and couldn’t seem to stop. At first cooking in the the kitchen was an adventure to them, boiling things over the wood stove and making corn bread in a cast-iron skillet. Then, when that became inconvenient, they started to order new stainless steel appliances and remodeling. There was a walk-in fridge, a gas range with twelve elements, and an industrial-size dishwasher that was so big you could practically drive through it.
    Even Esperanza, the small and frightened, wasn’t immune to the spell the place wove. She was the one who discovered the stash of quilts that my great-grandmother had made from scraps of gingham and calico. Each blanket was like a map—there was material of cherubic kids kneeling and praying, one of duckies floating in a pond, one of Paul Bunyan with his ax and his big blue ox—all stitched together in geometric patterns with coarse thread. Before we could even have them dry cleaned Esperanza claimed the softest as her own, wrapped herself in it, and plunked herself by the fire.
    All of them—they not only loved the place, they needed it somehow. I was the only one unmoved by the tall trees, running water, open spaces, and historic finds. I couldn’t wait to get back, and used every excuse to get someone to shuttle me into town. Please , I can’t miss this symphony .