Memories are like glass. From the hot, fervent liquid of the present moment, flowing and alive, they cool and harden over time. Sometimes they shatter. My mother and I don’t have overlapping memories of my dad, but we share an intimate understanding of him. We know what it’s like to have some memories that are smooth and warm, and others that slice and leave scars.

My parents met in high school, both artsy outliers at their respective single-sex private institutions. He was mysterious and hard to understand, a perfect challenge for my overachieving mother. She tells me about smoking cigarettes with his outcast friends and sneaking into Grateful Dead concerts. Over the next decade, they went through break-ups and make-ups, getting married while I was in my mom’s belly, and divorced soon after I learned to walk. I remember them standing together cordially at my piano recitals and my mom remembers waving goodbye to my dad’s blue Volkswagon every Friday.

Weekends with my dad were thrilling. He was brilliant, daring, and absolutely hilarious. He knew everything from the best French bistros to how Glenn Gould recorded his best piano pieces. As I listened, riveted, to his tales of hiking in Olympia or playing gigs with “The Blue Penguins,” I felt proud that he was nothing like my friends’ dads. When my grandmother told me about his stint at a military academy for skipping too many days of high school, I admired his daring. Everything was an adventure, even trips to the Whole Foods a few blocks east of our one-bedroom studio. We’d weave from aisle to aisle, filling our enormous shopping cart with champagne mangoes, Peanut Butter Clusters, and Jeni’s Salted Caramel ice cream in amounts far too big for two people to eat in two days. He would flash everyone his toothy cigarette-stained smile.

However, there were mornings when he wouldn’t get out of bed and nights that he stumbled around the apartment. One night, he was drunk in the movie theater and we got kicked out. He calmed down when I asked to go back to my mom’s, but he was yelling at the Uber driver as we drove back to the suburbs. When I started crying, my dad opened his arms, expecting I’d fall into them as I had as a little girl. His apologetic eyes produced a wave of sympathy, but anger took over when I smelled the sharp liquor in his breath. “I’m sorry that he’s acting like this,” I said to the driver before opening the car door and running to my mom.

I didn’t see my dad for weeks. I remember spending Sunday afternoons at the neighborhood pool. My mom remembers how happy I was seeing my friends. I remember wondering what my dad was doing on Saturday mornings. My mom remembers me playing piano with my newly found free time. I remember my mom choking on tears. My mom remembers telling me my dad had taken his life. I remember my memories shattering and cutting me with guilt.

With time and support, I have slowly gathered the shards of memories and worked to repair them into a whole. I have learned more about my father’s turning to alcohol after refusing to medicate his bipolar disorder. My guilt has faded along with the scars as I understand the larger context of my memories.

I can now take out the beautiful memories of my dad and hold them, smooth and warm, in my hands. I share them with my mom, and together we honor a man that we both deeply loved. Though the jagged pieces will always be part of my collection, the smooth and warm glass stones that hold crystalline joy mean so much more.