She’s tall for a Chinese woman, built like an Olympic volleyball player. Her torso is long, her face wide. Dark pink powder accents her cheekbones.

“Peasant features,” my mother used to say. “Not beautiful, not even pretty!”

My father disagreed.

Twenty-five years ago, he left my mother for this woman, a graduate student in his department — and more than three decades his junior.

She became his wife (I would never call her my stepmother). His house became their house. Though by now, it feels mostly like her house, with her knickknacks and plastic slippers and stacks of papers to grade. I no longer refer to these occasional weekend trips as coming home, with its implied warmth and welcome, but rather going to visit, a wholly different beast.

During a recent visit, she prepared his oatmeal with flax seeds and almonds, and fed it to him one spoonful at a time. In between bites, he mumbled. Often his voice is laced with irritation, though that morning’s confusion felt benign.