The Heart of Everything

Prologue

You were eight years old. I was making breakfast while you gathered your things and put them into your backpack for school. Hearing your footsteps as you came into the kitchen, I turned around. You looked straight at me, your eyes wide, and asked, “Hey, Dad? What does it mean to be a father?”

After a moment’s silence, I said, “How about some eggs?” I was unable to reply with the few simple words you expected.

My answer to your question could be found elsewhere: in my smile, in the look in my eyes, in my needing to know what you were willing to eat—not just for breakfast that morning, but for the rest of the day and all the days that followed.

Maybe those things are what it means to be a father, but I didn’t know how to explain that to you.

A kitchen table and forty years stood between us.

As I looked at you, it occurred to me that I should have grown out of my selfish adolescence sooner, met your mother sooner, and conceived you sooner.

Maybe you and I would have been closer if there’d been fewer years between us.

I probably never answered you that day, but I never stopped asking your question of myself.

Later, after I was gone, you started looking for your own answers, studying the precious moments we’d shared, replaying our past conversations.

You began to unearth all those buried memories, carefully organizing them like you did your schoolbooks and notebooks in your backpack that morning.

Trying to understand us better. Life is a strange game.

Is that why I’m back here now? To bring us closer together now that you are not just my son, but also a man?