But he’d also seen, in his father—my grandfather Dandy—how fear created limits, the toll bitterness could take. And so my dad went the other way. He allowed none of it into his soul. He made a point of not holding on to pain or embarrassment, knowing that it wasn’t likely to serve him, recognizing that there was a certain power in being able to shake things off, in letting certain moments go. He understood the unfairness was there, but he refused to be brought down by it, recognizing that much of it was not in his control.
