Last year, I finally got a grip on it. What did I get a grip on? What is "it"? I'm still not able to define it, even after going through it and working it out in my head. Closest analogy would be perspective, I finally got some sort of perspective on my own past. Last year, my life changed in so many ways. I got "married" (for the heterosexual frame of reference, although, more accurately, I had a commitment ceremony), I turned 30, I put on 10 pounds, and I finally became an adult.

This story requires some background, as stories always do. My father was an actor in India. He wanted to be in the movies, which meant he had to move to Bombay and become proficient at singing and dancing and chasing women in white saris around in the rain. My father ran away to Bombay when he was 15 along with his best friend from his village, Dharmender. If you're Indian and watch movies or follow popular culture, or if you aren't Indian and just really like Indian movies, you know Dharmender. He is an incredibly famous actor/director/producer. He's also the father of Sunny Deol, the action-adventure star/bad boy of "Bollywood", who's an inch shorter than me (and I'm a girl). Dharmender's actually a nice fellow in person, we met him on a trip to India, and he bought me a pistachio ice cream. My sister and Sunny and I watched a monkey on a chain dance while we ate ice cream and our fathers discussed the old days.

In the old days, my father was a supporting actor in three films. I have a faded black-and-white headshot of him in my wallet, and he looks very young and handsome and exuberant, with wavy hair and a shark-tooth necklace. I search it for signs of where life would take him, how it would turn him into a bald, gaunt, half-person without the ability nor the inclination to even smile. But it's just a photograph and there are no indications. He didn't have the height to be a star, and he didn't have the voice to be a soloist. It's the curse of my family, to be very good but never quite good enough. While Dharmender's career took off and his face made the cover of all the trade papers and magazines, my father continued to be offered supporting roles, the little brother or the best friend or the young sidekick. So my father hopped a ship to America in the late 60s, and auditioned all around the country, until he found a theater in Texas where he was added to the regular cast. He also got his MBA and when the acting roles dried up, he became a businessman. After that, I think he gave the best performance of his life for the next twenty years, as a husband and father and sales exec living in the suburbs.

An important thing to understand is that up until last year, I was convinced that I have nothing in common with my father, other than last name and maybe some similar features, the thick lips and brown eyes and wavy hair. I am an introvert, cerebral and shy. He was a salesman, boisterous and social, always working a deal. I can be silly and playful, where he was more self-assured and direct. I love animals, don't particularly embrace most of humankind on the personal level (difficult to reconcile this with my decision to become a physician). My father didn't allow us to have pets, and when my mother got me a puppy when I was twelve, he made us give her away within six months. As my girlfriend recently elucidated, and she is totally right, that was the point where he and I diverged and never met again.

My father died nearly twelve years ago. Since he died, I hardly ever talk about him, and when I do, I refer to him always as "my father". But I do recall that I called him "Dad" and referred to him as my dad when I was growing up, when he was alive. I guess he lost the title when he died. My mother still postulates that I'm gay because I hated my father, and that I choose not to have any good memories or recollections. Of course, the gay theory is ridiculous, since I had my first crush on a girl when I was 11 and my dad was alive and well and doing all those dad things, being the breadwinner and sports fan and fixer of cars and sinks and all that.

Fast forward to 1999. I met my life partner/girlfriend (she is unquestionably my life partner, but I still like to call her my girlfriend sometimes - she is a girl, and she's my best friend) when I was in medical school in New York three years ago. In college, I majored in English Lit and Psychology (and minored in making out with hot straight girls--I went to a very small liberal arts college in Texas without any actual lesbians). After graduating, I moved home and spent two years lying on my mother's couch, watching television, with daily eight hour breaks to go off into the working world. But it wasn't just time spent watching TV, it was recuperation. In between Facts of Life reruns and talk shows and music videos, I considered my life and my options and I decided to go back to school and to become a doctor. It was a very good decision, because during my final year of medical school, I had a blind date with a woman who had gone back to school to pursue her undergrad science courses so she too could apply to med school.

First, I should fully describe my life at the time. One thing I did share with my father was a serious health problem: cancer. It's something we inherit in his family, handed down faithfully from generation to generation. Mostly we have a history of colon cancer and brain tumors (more specifically, glioblastomas - under the microscope, these lesions look like wonderful pink cotton candy, palisading in thick rings), but my father and I took our own, fresh path: leukemia and lymphoma. We also did it younger than is traditional for my family. He developed acute leukemia after years of immunosuppressant therapy for his colon cancer (leukemia is a common side effect of extremely toxic chemotherapies). I still remember the moment I realized he had leukemia, he didn't really tell us, but he told us that the doctors found a lot of immature cells in his blood and were going to look at his bone marrow. For future reference, that means leukemia. My own bout began with a painless neck lump (for future reference, this usually means lymphoma).

By the time I met my partner, I was frankly sick. Cancer is something often hidden in my culture (the Indian one), because it is still equated with weakness. That's an archaic attitude, but apparently it still exists. Only my closest friends and some of my medical school classmates know I was ever sick. My sister doesn't, my relatives don't. I am private to the point of isolationism. But when I relapsed during my final year of med school, I decided to try to continue with my schoolwork while undergoing treatment. My support system was comprised of my friends and roommates, a bunch of lesbians who willingly took on the responsibility and embraced me as part of their family. That was when I met my future partner. We had our first date in the Village, meeting at a pasta restaurant across from St. Vincent's Hospital. She was tall and very pretty, well-spoken and witty and nervous at the same time. She also smelled great and was wearing a colorful sweater-vest, which was a bold move for someone hanging out in the village, where black coats and pants are the rule. For a girl from Texas who still wears a barn jacket instead of a leather jacket, this was quite promising. I knew during the first date that she was very special, someone I wanted to get to know better. And she knew about the cancer and wasn't at all dissuaded.

I took her to Josephinas, a highly-recommended restaurant across from the Lincoln Center, for our second date. That was the night I fell in love, while we walked from the restaurant to the movie theater, and she told me about her trip to Africa and I noticed how she has dimples in both of her cheeks when she smiles, and how her nose turns up right at the end, and how she walks with confidence and grace even in the middle of a Saturday night midtown Manhattan crowd. She told me about her work in the pediatric neurosurgery playroom, where she volunteered weekly, spending time with kids with congenital abnormalities and brain tumors and assorted other tragedies. In retrospect, no wonder she wasn't turned off by a skinny medical student with a propensity for sweating and vomiting. We sat in a huge sold-out theater and watched "American Beauty" - and just the way one reads about it in a book, it felt like we were the only two people in the theater, or on the island for that matter.

But it took months for us to finally get together. We went through a lot of tears and miscommunication and even a break-up before deciding to move across country together. It wasn't from a lack of love for each other, it was because of my inability to communicate my feelings. I'll never forget one October night, running down 9th Street in Park Slope, trying to get back to the subway station where I'd walked her five minutes before, paying the fare, running up the steps, wanting to catch her before she got on the F train back to Manhattan. Of course, the train was already down the tracks, halfway around the corner, by the time I made the platform. It was so difficult for me to get the words out, so tough to let her know what was inside. I kicked the brick wall of the platform that night, drove home, called her and left her a message about how much fun I had with her. I didn't mention trying to run back to the station, trying to get back to her and put my arms around her. But if I cared for her, why would I want to put her through the whole sickness thing with me? Throughout the time we were dating, I knew I wanted her, and her alone, for always. The anniversary that we celebrate is the night we finally talked. Now that I've been relatively healthy for a couple years, I believe she saved my life.

A memory came to me a few months ago, one night when I was lying in bed. When I was growing up, there was a little fuzzy white-coated neighbor dog, Tigger, who loved to come over and play with my friends and I. I remember his very silky coat and his warm, wet nose against my cheek. One winter, we actually got about four inches of snow on the ground at once, and it was quite a winter wonderland for my hometown in Texas. My sister and I were outside with our friends from next door when my father came outside and started a pretty vicious snowball fight with us. He could really pack a dense snowball. We were losing like little girls (which we were, after all), and suddenly Tigger tore around the back of our house and charged my father. The next thing we knew, he was flat on his back (he must have slid on the icy sidewalk) and Tigger was jumping and yipping, victorious. My father got up, packed a snowball, and fired it at Tigger. Then the two of them played for a long while. My father loved animals, but just as my mother later explained, he saw so much animal cruelty growing up in a village in northern India that he never wanted to be attached to another one.

Of course, human beings are just glorified animals. If he was distant, it was really just my father's idea of self-protection. I could have chosen that same course, I was well on my way. How could I ever blame my father for his distance from us? Last year I realized all the things that my father and I had, and have, in common. But I chose my love for my partner, and my family, and our dogs and cats, and our life, over the isolation I was drifting towards. Last year, my life changed in so many ways. I got married, I turned 30, I put on 10 pounds, and I finally became an adult. It was the best year of my life.