“I think so too, buddy.”

I meant it, and not only because the tacos were good.

I meant it because of what the two tables represented, set side by side in my mind.

The yacht club had been a table I was allowed to sit at conditionally, at the edge, on sufferance, for a price, and my son had been handed a dry roll there.

This plastic table over the water was a table I had built myself — with my own money, on my own terms, with no one’s permission required and no toll to be paid at the door.

It did not look like much.

There were seagulls, and the fries came in a paper boat, and the man at the counter called everyone “chief.” But it was mine.

My son could sit at it and eat until he was full and never once wonder whether he had earned the right to be there, because the woman across from him had finally learned the difference between a table where you are tolerated and a table you own.

My whole life I had been trying to buy my way to a seat at my family’s table, spending eighteen thousand dollars and thirty years of my dignity on a place that was never going to be mine no matter what I paid.

And it turned out the answer had never been to buy a better seat.