he first one and a half chapters. “He’s fighting in the war.” (Pg 1) This is what Lily told people when they asked where her father was. This is what her mother told her. He was a Fighter pilot and had a boxer named Butch. “Who is the enemy?”(Pg2) Vague words were always used to answer her questions. In 1950 when Lily was three she saw it on the news – no war. She told her mother this, but Rosie assured her that there were still soldiers fighting WWII. Lily only had one picture of her father, and often would misplace it. The picture showed half of his face, was out of focus, and was way over exposed, but it was “him”. Her mothers war story started to unravel when all of a sudden people stopped asking “what war?”: Korea. But that too came to an end, and Rosie told Lily to stop telling stories about her father. Rosie said that the war, in a way was over for tem, Larry had been killed. Butch the dog had been reassigned. Rosie and Lily were free to move into their own apartment.The “…move had the effect of a magic trick.”(Pg 7) They moved by subway, everything they owned folded. Rosie’s spirits were lifted by the move, and she and Lily couldn’t believe that they were alone. Only owning one cot, that first night they tried to share, but being a typical four-year-old Lily squirmed to the point where Rosie slept on the ground. Lily felt guilty, but the next day they celebrated like “happy newlyweds” (pg 8) in their new privacy, titled “ecstasy in 3M.”(Pg 9)The first chapter intrigued me, because throughout her entire life Lily never gets the straight story of her father. Did he really fight in a war? Lily doesn’t even know if she should share his last name. This really interested me, because I realized that in that time period it was not accepted to bear a child without a husband, and while Rosie does menti...
