My mother collected strays: wild dogs, feral cats, abused women and their kids, but her most enduring stray was my father. Like her strays, my father escaped for weeks or months at a time only to turn up on our doorstep, whisky dipped tail between his legs. My mother, a Navy brat whose own father shipped off every other week, usually let my dad back in, no matter whose perfume he smelled like. My father was a functional drunk and a gifted draftsman, and he spent his life making underground maps of oil pipelines. His compulsivity and militant cleanliness garnered my terror and awe especially when juxtaposed with Mama’s hoarding, crafting, and disorder.

Mama spent most of her life a stray herself, running away from abusive parents at 14 to live in a cave on the California coast for a few weeks after hitchhiking there. When Mama’s father was at war, my grandmother’s mental health issues swung an ax-handle at her six kids. So in a way, the strays Mama rescued were herself, and her stubborn forgiveness of my father was her own kind of addiction.