Perhaps it was true what my father said. That I lacked discipline, the way any nine-year-old lacks discipline—I didn’t always listen, I was skeptical. I doubted his gospel. I was curious. I touched the flame simply because it was burning. Because discipline always seemed to me the pin that held the butterfly in the display case. Work maketh the man. Day after day, I swung over those words, and saw ahead of me a life withering slowly under all his multiplying decrees. Day after day my heart bucked up against it. I was never going to be the perfect daughter. A grin of mischief opened ever so
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