I’m trying to tell you things I might never have told you if I had brought you up myself, father and son, in the usual companionable way. When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what really matters. There are so many things you would never think to tell anyone. And I believe they may be the things that mean the most to you, and that even your own child would have to know in order to know you well at all.
From Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (102).
