And my daughter said: “Not anymore, Mami.”

She meant the weather.

She meant nothing at all.

She was eight and she had been running and she was hot and she wanted to know whether there was anything left in the bag to drink.

And I sat on a bench in a park in Texas next to a seventy-six-year-old general and did not trust myself to say anything for about a minute and a half.

She went back to the swings.

My father put his hand on my shoulder, once, and took it off again, which from that man is a speech.

The door at home is still open and the hall light is still on, and it will be for years, and she is eight, and she is loud, and she is going to be all right.