I sometimes wish I could be as soft and honest as Cisco can be, a buddy, not perfect and not trying to be anybody but himself there with me.

lip quivers. Or he calls to you---and you place the sound in that house in your mind. It’s one of the places you go when your dad has died recently and you can’t believe it and want to place his last words to you in that house, but they are too close to your heart right now. Those words will find their way there someday, but not for a long time.

When I return to my papers and to my students, I sometimes wish I could be as soft and honest as Cisco can be, a buddy, not perfect and not trying to be anybody but himself there with me. I cannot, but I know that after being with him, I feel as I did with Belle---that I have many secrets, including one that keeps my body and head more balanced and one called a house in my mind where my dad will dwell forever and where Belle will be waiting for me at a gray, metal fence.