He asked how to carry it.

And I have thought a great deal, since, about that phrase, showing up, and how underrated it is, how quietly it separates the people who love you from the people who merely say they do.

It is not grand.

Mason did not slay a dragon or make a speech.

He answered his phone at five in the morning, and he did not make me justify my need, and he asked how to help, and then he did it, drove to the hospital, carried the boxes, opened his home.

That is the whole of it.