recognize my mom in the background of some of them. And then, at the very end, is one of me with my parents. I can’t be more than four years old. I am eating a piece of cake with my hand, looking directly into the camera, as my mother holds me and my father has his arm around us. Most people still called me by my first name, Elizabeth, back then. Elizabeth Monique Grant. My mom assumed I’d grow up to be a Liz or a Lizzy. But my father had always loved the name Monique and couldn’t help but call me by it. I would often remind him that my name was Elizabeth and he would tell me that my name was whatever I wanted it to be. When he passed away, it became clear to both my mother and me that I should be Monique. It eased our pain ever so slightly to honor every last thing about him. So my pet name became my real name. And my mother often reminds me that my name was a gift from my father. Looking at this picture, I am struck by how beautiful my parents were together. James and Angela. I know what it cost them to build a life, to have me. A white woman and a black man in the early ’80s, neither of their families being particularly thrilled with the arrangement. We moved around a lot before my father died, trying to find a neighborhood where my parents felt at ease, at home. My mother didn’t feel welcome in Baldwin Hills. My father didn’t feel comfortable in Brentwood. I was in school before I met another person who looked like me. Her name was Yael. Her father was Dominican, and her mother was from Israel. She liked to play soccer. I liked to play dress-up. We could rarely agree on anything. But I liked that when someone asked her if she was Jewish, she said, “I’m half Jewish.” No one else I knew was half something. For so long, I felt like two halves. And then my father died, and I felt like I was one-half my mother and one-half lost. A half that I feel so torn from, so incomplete without. But looking at this picture now, the three of us together in 1986, me in overalls, my father in a polo, my mother in a denim jacket, we look like we belong together. I don’t look like I am half of one thing and half of another but rather one whole thing, theirs. Loved. I miss my dad. I miss him all the time. But it’s moments like this, when I’m on the precipice of finally doing work that might just expand