And Samantha was telling me, gently, that from where she stood it had looked like something else, like a father slowly grinding himself down under a load he refused to share, like a man so committed to being the only one who knew the truth that he had made himself alone inside his own family.

I had not seen it that way.

I had thought I was shielding them.

I had not once considered that a grown daughter might look at her exhausted father and long, more than anything, simply to be allowed to help him.

There is a mistake that devoted parents make, and I made it as thoroughly as anyone ever has.

We decide, when our children are small and truly do need protecting, that our job is to absorb every hardship so they never have to feel it, and this is right and good when they are five and eight and thirteen.

But children grow up.