Because our father is here.” And she raised her arm and pointed, her hand trembling, straight down the rows to row twelve where I stood.

“Our father is that man right there — with the gray beard and the grease on his hands.

Our father is the man who taught himself to braid hair off the internet at two in the morning.

He’s the man who sat in the front row of every embarrassing middle-school play.

He walked the floor with us through every fever.

He wore holes in his boots so we’d have new shoes.