The job is just to be the safe, boring, reliable thing they can finally relax against.

Be boring, Cal.

Boring is the whole gift.” I have tried, ever since, to be the most gloriously boring uncle in the state of Texas.

I think about that word of hers a lot — boring — because it runs against everything the world tells you love is supposed to look like.

We are sold love as intensity, as grand gestures, as the big emotional peak.

But a child who has lived inside chaos does not need intensity; a child who has lived inside chaos has had far too much intensity already, and what heals him is its exact opposite.