He renovated that whole house alone, board by board, over a decade, never rushing, never cutting a corner because he was tired of waiting.

He would spend an entire afternoon getting a single joint exactly right.

As a girl I found it maddening; I wanted things finished, now, and my father wanted them finished correctly, whenever correctly took.

And I absorbed it, the way children absorb the deep rhythms of their parents whether they mean to or not, so that when the moment came, thirty years later, when everything depended on my ability to wait — to sit with the truth in my hands and not use it, for six long months, until using it would actually work — I found, to my own surprise, that I could.

That the patience was in me.