Dad could usually make things work again.
My wife Karen’s family came from a very different world.
Her parents, Don and Margaret Whitfield, made their money in commercial real estate.
They valued polished manners, expensive clothes, careful presentation, and the kind of social rules nobody ever stated aloud.
They were never openly cruel to my father.
In some ways, that would have been easier.
Instead, they treated him with a kind of exaggerated politeness that always seemed to remind him he was being tolerated.
For twelve years, I let it
