I had been thinking with amusement of my mother’s life-long passion for baseball, specifically as embodied in the Cleveland Indians. I wondered if that was part of why my father fell for her, and I wanted to ask him. Suddenly I wanted desperately to talk to him, to hear his voice commenting with that combination of wry humor and affection that was so typical of him. And then the tears appeared.

It had been 19 years since he died, and some years since I had cried over his death, but here I was, my hands stopped on the cutting board. I stood quietly, accepting the moment, wondering at the endurance of father-daughter love. I was grateful I had had the kind of father I would always love and miss. One gift of being 72 is that I now know that I can live with grief, and through it, that it is the shadow-side of loving, and worth the price.

I took a deep breath and returned to cutting. The tomato was suddenly redder; it smelled delicious. The summer afternoon stretched sweetly before me.

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