“Do I look all right?” I ask uncertainly. “You look beautiful,” Dad replies. It’s not that I desperately want to be told that I’m pretty, or beautiful, or that I even particularly care that much what I look like. I’m fine as I am, I really am. But oh, it’s the way that he said it, my dad, as though he’s told me all my life. The casualness of it makes my eyes water.
