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I come from a family of storytellers. Growing up, my father would make up these stories about how he and my mother met and fell in love, and my mother would tell me these elaborately visual stories of growing up as a kid in New York, and I was always so enrapt.

For me, stories were brothers, sisters and friends, filling the long hours between childhood and adolescence, holding up a true mirror in which I might find out who I was rather than a distorted reflection of who I was expected to become.

It was my father who taught me to value myself. He told me that I was uncommonly beautiful and that I was the most precious thing in his life.

Since my brother died in 1982, my parents and I had formed a shaky tripod of a family; now that I'd lost my father too, it was too easy for me to glimpse a future point where I alone was the keeper of not just my own childhood memories, but of my family lore.

In my mind, I always knew what my father looked like.

I remember seeing my father only twice as a child for brief visits. As I grew up, I invented a father who was larger than life - stronger, smarter, more handsome, and even holier than other men.

From early on there were two things that filled my life - music and storytelling, both of them provoked by my father. He was a jazz pianist and also a very good storyteller, an avid reader. He passed both those interests on to me.

My father believed in astrology. His astrologer had predicted that his daughter would become a writer someday. My father would nag me, but I didn't write a word till he passed away. I wish he could see me now.

What shaped me the most would probably be when my dad passed away. For the rest of my life, I'll kind of feel like he's gonna come home.

I am always drawn to father/son stories.