Insight

Dear Dad,

I have no special insight into the question of what’s inherited vs. what’s acquired by virtue of environment, but I note with interest that one of the major traits you and I share is a reticence, bordering on uncommunicativeness, about ourselves.

This is perhaps odd, given that I make my living putting my views on paper, and given your second career, so to speak, as an epistolarian. About those letters, memoirs, notes and more: I can think of nothing I’d rather have from Abby and Molly’s grandfather for them in the years to come – nothing, that is, except for Grandpa himself. But, as you said on the phone a couple of days ago, when you were having a better day than the one before, “there’s nowhere to go.”

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