Instead, night after night, he chose to continue, and the choosing accumulated, stitch by stitch, into the gown he would wear.

And there is something about that, about the sheer patient duration of his devotion, that moves me even more than the public courage of the walk itself.

Because the walk lasted sixty seconds, and six hundred people saw it.

But the making lasted six months, and no one saw it at all.

He did it in the dark, for an audience of no one, for a sister who could not thank him, out of nothing but love and a kept word.

That is who my son is.