Michael, my 16-month-old son, scampers between and under tables in a ferociously proud display of newly won ambulatory skill. The late morning crowd at Starbucks is mostly new mothers and au pairs, and Michael plays to this indulgent audience with all the mythical verve redheads are said to possess. When one young woman gets down on her knees to greet him at his level, my son toddles back to hug my leg and check my eyes, to be sure of me.

"Do you have a new friend?" I ask. He smiles, seems to wink, and returns to the young woman with a little swagger in his lurching stride. Tears form and my heart expands alarmingly in my chest; I am desperately, hopelessly in love with Michael. I'm 42 today, the same age as my father when he died.

I was sleeping when my mother called. It was summer, and I was crashing in the living room of a friend's East Village sublet. My friend's roommate had taken the phone to bed with her the night before, and woke me that morning by dropping it on my stomach.

"What the fuck?"

"Your mother."

"Huh?"

"Your . . . mother . . . is . . . on . . . the . . . phone . . . dickhead. Tell her it's too early to call working people on a Saturday." She slammed her bedroom door, eliciting a string of curses from the other bedroom and a moan from a guy on the couch, who covered his head with a pillow.

"Mom?"

"Your father took sleeping pills. You have to come."

I have a picture of my father and me when I was an infant, probably no more than four weeks old. He's cradling me with my feet to his chest, and we're looking at each other; my expression is concentrated and searching, as if I were asking him who he is. Because the camera is slightly behind him, his expression is hidden, but I recognize adoration in his posture, tenderness in the way he holds me. His cheek is impossibly smooth. He's 19.

I was still ambivalent about the idea of fatherhood when, about an hour after the delivery, my wife started to doze with Michael in her arms.

"Take him, honey. I need to close my eyes."

I bent over the bed and she handed him to me. Michael was swaddled and wore what looked like a little ski cap. After a mumbled word of caution about supporting the neck, she started delicately snoring. Michael and I were alone.

I sat in an armchair, held him awkwardly to my chest, and watched. Eventually, he opened his eyes and gazed steadily at me, focused and patient. A question hovered between us.

"I'm your father," I told him. "I'm going to look out for you."

This appeared to satisfy him. He yawned imperially and shut his eyes. One of his arms had come loose, and as I tucked it back into the folds of the blanket, he grabbed my finger. My heart skittered erratically for a moment, then settled into a thundering beat; my son . . . my son . . . my son . . . I brought him to my face and breathed him in.

"I'm going to look out for you," I whispered.

When I was eight, in preparation for my first little league season my father decided to teach me to throw a baseball. First, he broke in a new glove for me: he oiled it, tucked a baseball into the pocket, and stored it, wrapped with rubber bands, in his closet. When the glove had broken in to his satisfaction, he gave it to me and directed me across our backyard into a backstop formed by a corner of our fence. My father stood about 30 feet from me in the middle of our yard.

"Okay, now," he told me, "throw accurately."

We began to toss. I lost myself delightedly in the rhythm of the catch, following with my eyes the parabolic path of each throw from hand to glove, hand to glove. To field my exuberant, but erratic, throws, my father was forced to leap and stretch considerably. After a few minutes, he held the ball and looked at me warningly.

"Listen to me. I want you to throw accurately."

I nodded. He threw the ball.

I looped it back to him.

"ACCURATELY!" he exploded as he launched the ball with all his might. I cowered, and the ball hissed by and crashed against the fence. I gaped, quaking.

"GET IT!"

Weeping as I ran to retrieve the ball, which had rolled against the house, I looked pleadingly up at my mother, who was watching from the window over the kitchen sink. I picked up the ball, turned, and flinched at the fury in his glare.

I tossed the ball back to him.

"ACCURATELY!" He was right on top of me as he threw. Terrified, I fell backwards, hands in front of my face, as the ball exploded against the house like a truck backfiring. I screamed. My mother appeared at the back door.

"Joseph . . . "

"GO BACK IN THE HOUSE, MARGARET!"

My terror grew with each assault. It seemed to go on without end when, finally, he asked, partly exasperated, partly puzzled, "Do you know what 'accurate' means?"

I was crying and hiccoughing at the same time, my face was smeared with tears and snot and panic sweat, and I was incapable of an intelligible reply. I shook my head, watching him the way a squirrel watches a hawk.

Gently. "Can you throw hard?"

I nodded.

"Then throw hard. Right at me."

I did.

He smiled a little then. "Good. Good."

Still crying and shaking, I giggled a little with relief.

My father and mother married when they were college sophomores; she at Purchase and he at the Academy. I read on a Trivial Pursuit card that a child conceived or born on a naval vessel is a "son of a gun." I was conceived in the barracks at West Point, so what does that make me? My mother is evasive.

"Why do you want to know?" she asked, bouncing Michael.

"Because I'm a writer, Mom. Writers need to know everything."

"I don't know why you had to start with the writing. What good is it to know? Are you going to write about this?"

"Maybe. Was it hard when Dad left West Point?"

"Well, he hated it. West Point was different then, they were very strict. And the upperclassmen seemed to have it in for him. Did you know there was a rule that plebes couldn't address upperclassmen? But a plebe could challenge an upperclassman to a boxing match. It seemed like your father fought them all."

"So he must've been happy to leave."

"Well, yes and no. He wanted to be with me. But it was your grandfather's dream that your father play football at West Point."

"Did Dad want to?"

"A little, I think. Your father always liked competition, but he could get that anywhere. That's why he was so good at his job."

"Did he think he'd let Grandpa down?"

"He never said. Probably."

I took a deep breath. Now or never, I thought.

"Mom, do you think Dad quit because you . . . because I
was . . . on the way?"

Her eyes widened a bit, and she stopped bouncing Michael. He squirmed to get down, and she handed him to me.

"I just don't see what good can come from these questions," she said. And she walked away.

My uncle bought me fishing gear when I was ten. My friends and I used to go to the local duck pond. We'd stick our lines in the water and chew tobacco, usually until either the tobacco or the smell of the bait made one of us throw up. If I ever had the misfortune to actually catch a fish, I'd be in a panic to get it back into the water before it died. A real sportsman.

One day, I wised off to some boys who were riding bikes. They rode up. One got off his bike and wanted to know who the big talker was. That would be me.

I put my pole down uncertainly. The kid took a boxer's stance and popped me in the nose with a left hand. It hurt, and I was furious. I advanced toward him. He shuffled back a step and popped me again, drawing blood. I cried with pain and rage and humiliation, but kept coming and he backpedaled like Ali and kept hitting me. After a while he said, "Hey, kid, put your hands up. What're you, stupid?" I was, apparently. I kept coming, hands perversely down, until he tired of hitting me, climbed on his bike and, shaking his head, pedaled off. I stared at him 'til he had gone, then, abandoning my gear, headed home.

When I got there, my father was yelling at the football game on TV. He saw me, sprang up, and helped me to the couch. Then he hustled into the kitchen and returned with ice wrapped in a wet dish towel. He spread it across my face and sat with me on the edge of the couch. Suddenly, he yanked the towel off my face and jerked my hand up to my eyes. "Look at your knuckles," he spat, "Not even scraped! Didn't you fight back?"

"I, I, I did, I . . . "

He flung my hand away and left the room.

Around mid-morning Michael takes a short nap. When he was younger, he wouldn't permit us to put him down for it; he needed to be held and walked while he cried, and eventually he'd run down like an old alarm clock. When he'd finally go under, I'd slide carefully onto the couch, settle him on my chest and wait. He always flashed a big glad-to-see-you grin when he woke up. I waited for that grin every day. He had me trained better than one of Pavlov's dogs.

After leaving West Point, my father worked days and studied law at night. Undergraduate degrees were not required at some schools. The white-shoe firms looked down their noses at night school grads, so he took a job with a big brokerage house. He was lucky; the market was poised for the long bull run of the '60s. My father started making a lot of money.

"I don't know why you and your father can't speak to each other." With my mother's words echoing in my head, I rushed outside and hid in the garage. I sat in the dark against the dank stone wall, my head in my hands, and tried to think about what she had said, but all I could do was hear the words over and over again. Her assumption of fact had the disturbing immutability of a sentence. I was only 11 and had no perspective into which to place this.

The door opened, and my father walked in dragging a trash barrel. I sprang to my feet, surprising him. He stopped just a step or two inside the doorway.

"Dad, Mom says we can't speak to each other. Is that true?"

He just stood there for a moment looking at me, his face drained of expression. Then he looked away, muttered "yeah," and busied himself as I stood dumbly by. Chewing the inside of his cheek, he pulled the barrel inside and lifted out a filled hefty bag.

"Why?"

He pulled a twist-tie from his pocket, lifted and spun the bag to close it, wrapped the tie around the neck of the bag, and placed it on a pile of filled bags. He walked to the back of the garage, got a new bag from the box, and carefully put it into the barrel, folding its edges over the sides.

He spoke quietly without looking up. "I don't know," he said.

He dragged the barrel out and closed the door.

Michael has begun to say words: "Mumma" and "Duddee" are obvious, "boppy" is bottle, while "buppy" is puppy or dog, "uck" is truck, and a few others. His new skills amaze me, but they sadden me as well because they bring the inevitable atrophy of Michael's nuanced vocabulary of gestures. Sure, I'm looking forward to Michael being able to convey abstract thoughts with fluent precision like "Dad, objectively speaking, you're the finest man I know." But I'm going to miss it when he stops stretching his arms out to me in a roomful of people; wordlessly choosing me over all others. And I'm going to miss it when he's so excited by ice cream that his eyes bulge, his arms and legs wave wildly, and his whole body quivers.

There's one gesture I'm going to miss most, and I'm already scheming to keep it in our shared vocabulary: the point. Before Michael could even babble, he would attempt to express himself by pointing. He'd point to a truck, and I'd say "Yes, Michael, that's a truck," and growl "Vrum, vrum, vrum." He'd point to a dog, and I'd say "Yes, Michael, that's a doggy. Ruff, ruff." But he quickly grew impatient with my simplemindedness, and he'd fuss and point more insistently. I came to realize that when he pointed to a truck, what he meant for me to understand was "Look, Dad, there's a truck! I love trucks! Sometimes it's all I can do not to scream with pure joy that there are trucks in the world! Someday I'm going to have an enormous yellow truck! Or a blue one, with huge tires and a lotta lights! And you and Mom can ride with me! Won't that be great? Isn't this a great day to have seen a truck together?" When he pointed to the woman who gave him an animal cracker at the grocery store, what he meant for me to understand was "Dad, did you see that? This lady gave me a cookie! I love cookies! And ice cream too. Mommy and you give me ice cream and cookies. But this lady just gave me a cookie, too! I love her!"

One evening, about eight months ago, Michael woke from his afternoon nap in a foul mood. It was winter, and the air in the house was really dry. He fussed and squawked crankily in his mother's arms while I put together a bottle of his favorite drink--diluted lemonade. When he saw me approaching with the bottle, he kicked and quivered and reached for it excitedly. After a couple of slugs, he relaxed visibly. Propped up against his mother's chest, his arms fell back languidly and his eyes, which never left mine, got dreamy. Then he pointed at me.

One early April morning when I was 11, my mother's father and I played tennis against my father and his friend Bill. In doubles, the server's partner customarily stands near the net to take advantage of weak service returns. Of course, when the serve is weak, the net-player is precariously placed. On my grandfather's serve, my father motioned for me to back up.

"I'm supposed to be at the net," I told him.

"I'm going to hit you with the ball if you don't back up."

I stayed put, and he was true to his word. And not only when my grandfather served to him; no matter where I was on the court, my father tried to hit me with every ball. Every ball. All morning.

"Joseph . . ." my grandfather began.

"Mind your business, Dad."

He never actually managed to hit me, although he came alarmingly close more than once. At a certain point, it was too much for Bill.

"For Chrissakes, Joe," he said, "lay off 'im."

My father, his back to me, and Bill conferred quietly, and I saw Bill's face tighten. He didn't say anything else, but he never played with us again.

We didn't speak on the ride home. As I was following my grandfather into the house, my father held me back. I shrugged his hand off.

"What?"

He pulled me into a crushing hug. "I'm very proud of you," he whispered into my hair.

I was puzzled by this for years.

Michael became enamored of his penis at about eight months. When I change his diaper, standard procedure is to wipe with one (or two, depending) wet wipes, air dry (time permitting), powder and reassemble boy. Michael likes to be air dried, and at some point started to use his limited dexterity to find and hold onto his penis. As he became more coordinated, he discovered its elasticity.

"Don't point that thing at me," I tell him. "Don't you point that thing at me."

This convulses him. "Pee," he tells me, "peee."

Exactly.

Soon after they made my father a partner, he told me he wanted me to meet him in the City for lunch. I was 12 or 13 then. I showed up at the appointed time, a scrawny geek in flares and PF Flyers, and Joanie, his secretary, ushered me into his office. He was on the phone with his back to the door, looking out the wall of windows toward the Verazzano Narrows. He turned, still on the phone, and gestured disapprovingly at my attire; my father wore only three-piece suits from Barneys.

When he hung up, I went to kiss him.

"Could you have worn something appropriate? You've been here before."

I stopped. "You didn't say to get dressed up."

He pursed his lips and without another word strode past me and took his jacket from a hanger on the back of his door.

"Cancel my table please, Joan."

"Okay, Joe." She made a sympathetic face at me.

We rode the elevator to the street in silence and got hotdogs from a street vendor.

"C'mon. Let's walk down to the Battery."

The ferry was pulling in when we got there. It was late for lunch, and there were plenty of empty benches. We took one and sat watching a trickle of midday passengers disembark.

"I want us to be a great family," he told me.

I didn't know whether or how to respond. "We're a pretty good family, I think."

"No, no, no, no, no," impatient because I didn't get it, "a Great Family. Like the Kennedys. Like the Rockefellers or the Kennedys."

"Oh," I said, cautious, "you mean like run for president?"

"Well, not you. Maybe your son or your grandson." He launched into his vision of the responsibilities of each generation of a Great Family. I think the first generation was supposed to make enough money so the second and third generations could make a lot of money. Later generations would engage in public service while living comfortably on interest thrown off by the family fortune. I'm sure I missed the nuances of the plan. All I knew was that I couldn't be president.

"I want you to think about private school," he said.

I was accepted to boarding school in Connecticut. A few days after my acceptance, I found on my desk a bulky envelope from my father. Inside was a five-page letter, written by hand on lined paper from a yellow legal tablet, and 50 brand-new, sequentially numbered one-dollar bills.

Dear Son:

Your mother's task is nearly complete. From here on in it's just you and me. You are at or near what I believe to be the most difficult period in your development. You are not yet a man, and are no longer a boy. Think of this period as a bridge strewn with obstacles . . .

I paged through the letter. It appeared that my father had gone on to describe these obstacles at length in numbered paragraphs. I crumpled the letter into a ball and threw it hard enough to knock the lamp off my bedside table, then stood for a moment in the middle of the room with my eyes tightly shut and my clenched fists pressed against the sides of my skull, watching the light motes dance. "You don't get to tell me anymore!" I screamed and grabbed the money and ran out of the house.

My father had been taken to a hospital near his vacation condo in Florida. I raced to the airport and got on a mid-morning flight. Earphones on, sound off, I sat and stared numbly out the window. I remember wondering why I wasn't scared, or mad, or much of anything at all. Just numb and sort of hollow, a vessel for the narrow purpose of getting to the hospital.

Well, maybe there was a tinge of feeling. Self-deception is tempting, preferable even, when faced with the truth of one's own mean spirit. I remember thinking, as I sat on that plane, that the chickens have come home to roost. Looking out at the tarmac as my father lay dying, feeling a little smug, thinking that the chickens have come home to roost.

When I was away at school, my father and a few of his partners started their own investment firm. The new business meant more work and lots more after-hours socializing. Wives were not often invited. My mother began to visit me on days when I didn't have practice. If the weather permitted, we'd walk around campus or in town; if it was lousy, she'd let me drive around or we'd sit in a diner. I remember our conversations as my first "adult" conversations. One in particular stands out.

My mother's father had been a corporate lawyer, and she remembered that he had spent a great deal of time entertaining clients. The rumor, she told me, was that my grandfather had entertained at the racetrack, in a private room with young female attendants.

"Not that your father would ever . . . but he is drinking more than he used to."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing, honey, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up. I just . . . I don't know what to do sometimes. I'm sure everything is fine. He certainly seems to be doing well.

"I'm going to ask him what's going on."

"No! You can't tell him I told you about any of this. He would be very angry. He's so concerned with what you think of him."

"What do you mean 'what I think of him'?"

"I'm sure everything's all right. Promise you won't say anything to him."

"Why don't you want me to ask him?"

"Just promise."

"But why?"

"Will you promise?"

"Okay, okay. I promise."

When I got to the hospital, my mother was sitting alone outside my father's room. Her face was red and swollen, and while she didn't seem to be crying, her eyes leaked continuously.

"Did you tell anyone you were coming?"

"What? No, there wasn't time. How is he?"

"He's not breathing on his own."

I absorbed that. "Do you want me to call anyone? Grandma and Grandpa?"

"No! No, no. He . . . he wouldn't want anyone to know."

"Mom, tell me what happened."

Substance abuse became almost an ethic at my father's firm. Partners drank and snorted cocaine. Clients came to expect a certain type of entertainment. It was a continuous party until interest rates spiked in the late '70s and a number of pension fund clients lost money. An SEC investigation turned up two things: one, the losses were the result of market forces, not malfeasance; two, the firm's declared entertainment expenses were unusually high.

The SEC brought in the IRS, and the IRS investigated. There was a bad smell around the firm now, and clients took their money elsewhere. The preliminary IRS findings indicated that the firm might have declared an unspecified quantity of cocaine as a business expense. The DEA section chief froze the partners' bank accounts, confiscated their passports, and offered a deal: cooperate with the task force, plead to tax fraud, pay some fines, and do 24 months in Danbury, or face a drug trafficking investigation. The partners took the deal.

My father left for his attorney's office on Thursday morning but never arrived. My mother had a feeling that he might've headed to their vacation condo and she asked condo security to let her know if they noticed his car. They did, and she called him. When he didn't answer, she asked security to check on him. They called the ambulance.

"How come I never heard about any of this?"

"The . . . arrangement . . . kept it out of the papers. People are starting to know anyway. The firm always had a certain . . . reputation."

"But why didn't he tell me? Why didn't you tell me, Mom? Why am I only finding out now?"

She looked straight at me and tried to speak, but her mouth and chin quivered so violently she couldn't. Still she held my eyes with arrestingly raw, wordless misery. Finally, she managed a strangled whisper.

"Do you think . . . do you really think . . . I saw this coming? Don't you think I'd do everything differently if I could do it over again?" She looked away, strength visibly seeping out of her. "You have your own life. Your father didn't want you to know about his troubles. You need to be strong for him now."

We sat silently until the doctor called us in.

My wife and I purchased a house when we knew we were expecting Michael. I was going through boxes on a Saturday afternoon, just before Michael was born, when I rediscovered a cache of letters from my father. After that first boarding school letter, my father periodically wrote notes and, if milestones or events merited, letters. God knows how they stayed with me after years of lugging belongings from apartment to apartment. But there they were. I put the box down and read at random:

. . . I don't wish to make you into another me because I'm certain you can be a better person . . .
. . . I want to help you to be the best person you can possibly be . . .
. . . I apologize for the harshness that I seem to treat you with from time to time. I am not perfect, but I try to always have your best interest in my heart . . .

I slumped onto the floor of what would become Michael's nursery with my back against the unpainted wall and my hands open in my lap, and took long, deep breaths. I hadn't expected this. With trembling hands, I unfolded that first letter, which, after having been reflexively crumpled, was carefully smoothed, folded, and saved in its envelope.

Dear Son:

Your mother's task is nearly complete. From here on in it's just you and me. You are at or near what I believe to be the most difficult period in your development. You are not yet a man, and are no longer a boy. Think of this period as a bridge strewn with obstacles. You can take comfort in the fact that everyone has been in this position at some point in their lives. I ask only that you use your head and come to me if you are even the least bit uncertain. Let me guide you across the bridge.

It is not often that I tell you all that is so very good about you, yet I am quick to offer criticism. I apologize if you think my standards are unrealistic, for they very well may be, but be assured that nothing can diminish the love I feel for you. I fear for the time when we won't be together. To you, I'm sure, it seems that we have much time. However, in a few short years you'll be on your own. You have given me so much pride in what you are, and must know that I am with you no matter what happens. I love you so much. Please do not mistake my concern for your well-being with criticism of who you are.

Dad

I had dealt with my father's death for almost 20 years; I thought I had reached a truce with the fact of it. But now, grief poured out of me in shuddering sobs, and I pressed my hands to my skull and mashed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. He loved me, he loved me. He's gone.

I just sat there. Finally, the sun went down.

I yelled at Michael for the first time about a week ago. We were at a playground jungle-gym, one of those unvarnished wood monstrosities with tunnels and ladders and slides and stairs and minarets and god-knows-what. I was chasing Michael, laughing, through a tunnel made from a plastic tube when I slammed my head against a horizontal support beam. It stopped me in a sudden sheet of pain, colors, winking lights. By the time I had partially recovered my senses, Michael was gone. I stumbled, head throbbing, out of the tunnel into daylight and saw Michael, guilelessly and with hands outstretched, approaching an adult Doberman.

"Buppy. Buppy. Buppy."

The dog, visibly alarmed, was straining against its leash to rush Michael, and its owner, a small woman, was having a difficult time holding it back.

"MICHAEL NO! NO!

He turned to me with a look of shocked bewilderment. I ran to him, snatched him up roughly by the arms, and took him a safe distance from the dog before putting him down. I knelt facing him, holding his hands firmly in mine.

"You don't talk to puppies unless I'm there," I scolded him, adrenaline screaming in my veins. "Do you understand me?"

Of course he didn't. The fear on his face before he collapsed into broken-hearted wails made me feel like a criminal. He was afraid of me.

I stood at my father's bedside; my mother sat in a chair next to the door. The steady tone of the heart monitor was almost reassuring, but the hydraulic "Tssuuuk!" of the breathing apparatus reminded me of how much was irretrievably wrong. I took my father's hand.

"Do you think there's any way he knows we're here?" I was asking my mother, but the doctor answered without looking up from my father's chart.

"His EEG is completely flat. It says they had to resuscitate him in the ambulance. His brain was without oxygen for almost 20 minutes."

"Should I assume that means no, Doctor?"

He looked at me and spoke softly. "It depends on what you believe. I believe that a person's consciousness resides in his brain, and your father suffered massive and permanent brain injury. I am not aware of anyone who has regained consciousness after suffering such prolonged oxygen deprivation except for a few individuals who were rescued from icy waters and whose core temperatures had been quickly brought below the hypothermic level." Then, "Whenever you're ready."

"Give us a few minutes, please."

He actually looked at his watch before nodding and slipping out.

Prick.

I looked at my mother. She sat in her chair, staring out the window at a sunsplashed wall of beige industrial brick. The air-conditioner hummed, the monitor beeped, the respirator pumped.

"Was there a note?"

She shook her head once, still staring out the window. I turned back to him. I wanted to have something to say, the right thing. I wanted to cry and say goodbye well. The machine breathed; his eyes didn't open. After a few minutes, there was a knock at the door. I put his hand down at his side, took my mother's arm, and led her from the room. We waited in the cafeteria for them to tell us.

Michael marches ahead of me, carrying a stick as long as his own body and chanting a babble song with military cadence. The cemetery is stunning in the late October sun, the sky perfectly set off by orange and gold sugar maples. Michael is free to run here; no cars or dogs to worry about, just fiery-hued leaf piles to fall in. Songs to sing. My father's stone excerpts Daniel's second dream:

       Chop down the tree and cut off its branches,
       Strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit.
       Let the beasts get out from under it,
       And the birds from its branches.
       Nevertheless leave the stump and roots in the earth,
       BOUND with a band of iron and bronze,
       In the tender grass of the field.
       And let him graze with the beasts
       On the grass of the earth.
       Let his heart be changed from that of a man. . . .

Memories of my father have swarmed about me these last few years, especially since Michael. When my father was alive, I always felt that I let him down and was embarrassingly grateful for the smallest indication of his pleasure. I never knew what he wanted from me. And yet. And yet. I remember his affectionate hand on the back of my neck, squeezing just to the point of pain as he hugged my head to his chest. I remember having a car accident when I was 16 and thinking he would be furious with me; when he picked me up at the police station, he cried and hugged me so hard in front of a roomful of cops that I couldn't breathe, and then never mentioned it again. I remember his friends telling me how proud he was of me. I didn't understand then, Dad, the things you wanted for me. I didn't understand that fate dropped a little boy in your lap when you weren't much more than a boy yourself. Now I can begin to understand.

Michael's calling me. I look up and he's waving a little flag pillaged from some vet's grave.

"Nice flag, Mikey."

"Ga loo ga wah," he commands, spinning uncertainly on his heel and resuming his march.

That's your grandson, Dad. I never knew what this love was like. I never knew. I never knew. You should be here . . .

Every day with Michael reminds me that you're my man. You always were.

I pointed at him.

Copyright © 2000 President and Fellows of Harvard College.
All rights reserved. Comments. Last modified Fri, Apr 29, 2000.