The more I see of old people," my father said in the last letter he wrote me, "the greater my feeling is that the bulk of them should be destroyed." "Not you," I thought when I read the letter, "at least not yet." For years I imagined that I was different, even better than my father. Then one evening I walked into his room to ask about a book and found him asleep on his bed. Although I had seen him sleeping countless times, I was startled. His pajamas were inside out, as mine invariably are, and I noticed that we slept in the same position, left arm bent under the pillow, hand resting on the headboard; right leg pulled high towards the chest, and left thrust back and behind with the toes pointed, seemingly pushing us up and through the bed. Suddenly I realized father and I were remarkably alike, the greatest difference being the years that separated our lives. At first I was upset. I had never consciously rejected family, but like the bottom of the bed against which I appeared to be pushing at night, my father and his life provided a firmness against which I could press and thrust myself off into something better.