I met him as his father on the first Saturday in May, at a park, with Jessi about forty feet away on a bench pretending to be on her phone.

He was formal.

That is the thing nobody prepares you for.

He was extremely polite and slightly stiff, the way children are with an adult they have been told is significant, and for about twenty minutes it was one of the more excruciating experiences of my adult life.

Then a dog got loose and knocked over a stroller about thirty feet from us and the whole park turned around, and in the ensuing chaos he said, “That dog is insane,” and I said, “That dog is having the best day of its life,” and he laughed.

And after that it was fine, in the way that things are fine — not resolved, not sealed, just fine for that afternoon, which I have learned is the only unit any of this comes in.