As a child, I identified so strongly with my mother that I thought my father was just a long-term house guest with spanking privileges. She and I are bookish, introverted worriers. My father is an optimist who has never had a sleepless night in his life. Like most fathers and sons, we fought. But there was no cooling-off period between rounds. It was a cold war lasting from the onset of my adolescence until I went off to college in 1973. I hated him. He was a former navy fighter pilot, with an Irish temper and a belief that all the problems of the world — including an overprotected son who never saw anything through to completion — could be cured by the application of more discipline.