A child bonds with you in the ten thousand unremarkable minutes between them — in the passing of a dropped plastic wheel, in the knowing of which cough medicine, in the being there, again and again, when nothing at all is happening.

Love, it turns out, is not built out of grand gestures.

It is built out of showing up on an ordinary Tuesday when there is no reason to, and then doing it again on Wednesday.

My mother had stolen six years of those ordinary Tuesdays from me, and they were the true theft, worth more than the birthdays and the Christmases, because they were the material that fathers and sons are actually made of.

I could not get the stolen ones back.

But I could refuse, from that day forward, to miss a single one more, and so I did, and it is the only achievement of my life I am unreservedly proud of.