Years later, when Maya was twenty-four, a full engineer now, with her own apartment and her own career, she took me to dinner, and when the bill came and I reached for my card, she put hers down first.

“My treat tonight, Dad.” “I’m your father, Maya.” “And I want to spend my own hard-earned money on my dad,” she smiled.

And I let her, because I understood what it meant to her, this small ordinary act that no longer frightened her: spending money, freely, joyfully, on someone she loved, the very thing that had once earned her a wooden hanger against her legs.

My daughter was buying her father dinner with money she had earned, in a restaurant, without checking the prices first, and she was smiling while she did it.