He was in the sunroom and I sat down and he had absolutely no idea who I was — no flicker, nothing. And he pushed his pudding cup across the little table toward me and said, “Here.

You have this. I’ve had two.”

I said thank you.

And he looked at me with a completely open face and said, “You’ve got a kind face. Has anyone told you that?”

Nobody had. Not him. Not in thirty-nine years, not once, not at a graduation or a wedding or a divorce or a Christmas table where he introduced me as the one still figuring things out.

I sat in a sunroom in Lakewood and ate my father’s pudding and understood something I had been circling since I was about eleven.