Three

For a little while (never long enough) it was the three of us in a corner coffee shop. We talked fiction (my son just read "Sonny's Blues," he's reading Faulkner, he read Tolstoy). We talked advertising and statistics, talked Jack London and his journey, talked basketball and fraternity row. I asked (for I'll be teaching at the University of Pennsylvania come fall, and there are things I need to know) just what makes a class engaging, what makes knowledge stick, and I got insider tips from a guy whose opinions I have always, without question, trusted.

If you have a child, if you love a child, you learn what matters most from them. You watch their eyes in the sun—the glinting of brown, the arrival of gold. You wait for the laugh that heals you.