My father lost his leg in World War II. No one in our family ever talked about his missing limb, though I grew up surrounded by heavy wooden prostheses. (He insisted on keeping the old ones for some reason.) Wooden legs stood behind every door in our house, and they were always falling down unexpectedly. We would be eating dinner, perhaps, and one would crash like a giant redwood.
I didn’t like crossing the street with my father. He would hold on to me for balance and limp across, never fast enough for my taste. I would watch in a panic as the cars came toward us. We are going to die, I’d think. From the safety of the far curb, my mother would chide him: “Leo, come on. You can walk faster than that.”
