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I Keep Competing with a Father Who Never Existed.
Parkinson’s gave me a fictional rival: the healthy father I imagine my children should have had, a man who never had to survive a single real day.
The best father my children never had is undefeated. He never gets tired at the wrong time. He never has to calculate what his body can afford. He is patient, available, financially secure, emotionally precise and apparently immune to every ordinary human defect. He is also imaginary, which is a hell of a competitive advantage.
I was diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson’s in 1996, during my second year of law school. Justin was born in 1997. Alex followed in 1999. By the time I became a father, Parkinson’s was already in the family photograph, whether anybody could see it or not.