Millions Millions • Mostly because my sisters have always insisted,...

Mostly because my sisters have always insisted, especially when it comes to family history, that my grasp upon reality is – how to put this kindly? – less than firm, that, for me, memory and imagination are like two rivers that converge, that I tend to misremember things or, more probably, make them up.

Even I will admit that the two of them seemed to have grown up in an entirely different household from mine. They were born 18 months apart and because they’re close not only in age but in temperament, their versions of our family history are apt to match up, a fact I always attributed to a good dose of denial on their parts.

For the first time, though, I began to wonder if my sisters hadn’t been right all along. I mean, if I could dream a guitar up out of thin air, what else, over the years, had I imagined?

Joseph Skibell, “My Father’s Guitar and Other Imaginary Things.”