“I really relate to you,” I said to my dad. “I can tell we’re in the same boat, because I’m rowing.” When I found out I was going to be a father, I wanted to meet a man I’d never met—my dad, who also just found out he was a father when I introduced myself. I never got to tell him I loved him before he died, but from the way I gently but forcefully held his head underwater, I think he could tell.”

“I needed to talk to my dad. My dad who had been to war, who had seen its horrors, who suffered from its nightmares, my dad who was a good man, the best man I’d ever known, who, along with my uncle, I wanted to honor by teaching military kids—my dad, the only one who I would believe if he would just tell me I could be good, too, that I could do right by my students, because for sure they were going to suffer. It’s just cause and effect. We’re at war. The military fights wars. I teach military kids. I’d never served, but now I could make a difference. I just needed my dad to tell me what to do, to tell me I was good enough to get it done.”

“I told Dad about yesterday...I told him how I made all those mistakes.'But you kept on playing?' Dad said. His eyes got wide when he said it. I could tell he was proud.'Everybody does,' I said. 'You can't just get up and walk away every time you mess up. You'd never get anywhere.”

“I wanted to love my father. I wanted to, but I didn't. Sometimes I didn't even like him. he hadn't been a guy you could really get next to, because in a way he was never where you thought he was.”

“My father, I never knew, except for this one time when he threw a ball and told me to go fetch it."Dad," I said. "Am I a dog?""Lydia," he said. "I apologize.”

“When he died, I went about like a ragged crow telling strangers, "My father died, my father died." My indiscretion embarrassed me, but I could not help it. Without my father on his Delhi rooftop, why was I here? Without him there, why should I go back? Without that ache between us, what was I made of?”