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When father couldn't sleep he'd take a drive and leave the car window open no matter how dark and cold it was outside.

We thought he just liked to drive but later mother told us he was asthmatic and that driving all by himself late at night with the car window open was the only way he could find relief, not finding it in Christian Science.

Christian Science, in which father otherwise found comfort, might have compelled him not to reveal his asthmatic condition to us and to instead have us believe that he liked taking long drives all by himself.

When we'd wake in the morning and come downstairs we'd see father's Christian Science books and his Bible on the little table beside the chair where he did his thinking. He was never there but he made it look like he was and that he'd stayed up all night reading.