So I guess it should start with my father. A refugee from war torn Yugoslavia at 12 or 13 in Italy, an immigrant to the US at 18, where he joined the military to obtain citizenship and who valued education and hard work above all else as an avenue out from poverty and ignorance.

A stoic through-and-through, he was unable to express emotion or communicate well in interpersonal relationships. Working on his PhD thesis and working multiple jobs, he found my mother slipping furiously into chronic alchoholism, a condition which he could not, after some time,  tolerate.

And before I had reached the age of  one,  he laid down his ultimatum….