The Taboo

I'd find my father in the barn smoking a pipe reading the newspaper. We all knew what that meant. God help you if you enter the house and relax on a Sunday morning. So I climbed the ladder into the hay loft and took out my stash of books and started reading. We never saw our mother reading. She couldn't bear anyone focusing their attention on something other than her. So we all ran and hid in our various corners. And the first chance we got we moved far away never to return.