My Father Pushed Me Into a Fountain at My Sister’s Wedding—Then He Met the Husband I’d Kept Private for Three Years

The kind of matters he wanted to work on.

The colleagues.

The room to develop his practice without simply accepting every opportunity that looked impressive from outside.

I listened.

I had sometimes protected him from my family so thoroughly that I had also kept him from seeing how their habits entered our private conversations.

Here was one of them: the idea that the largest name on a letter determined which life was important enough to plan around.

I did not want to bring that idea to Seattle.