I’ve lived longer than my mother by a couple of years now, and I look at my boys and think of what she missed, them growing, becoming young men, good, thinking, loving young men. And me.

There is a moment every day when I kneel before the love that surrounds me. Then I remember that I am a man. And I know my life’s work is to be that man, who leans over his paper humbled by his love for you. It is eight twenty-seven in the evening. Once again the thought of others has rescued me from myself.

My boys and I cook dinner for their mother and I feel it again, the man chasing the boy, wanting to tell him it will be alright, just out of reach.