It is the thing I regret most from those years — not the prison, which was done to me, but the way my son’s hardship taught him to make himself smaller, to say sorry for taking up room in the world.

And it is the thing I have spent every day since trying, patiently, to un-teach him.

That is why Flynn’s presence mattered so much more than his money ever could have.

A child does not un-learn that he is a burden by being handed expensive things.

He un-learns it by being wanted, loudly and daily, by people who are simply, unmistakably glad that he exists — until one ordinary morning he forgets to apologize for himself, because it has finally, at long last, stopped occurring to him that he should.

He had hot soup brought, and dry clothes, and blankets.