Every Friday at 6 p.m. my daughter called me without fail, and the one week my phone stayed silent I drove to her house and heard a sound from upstairs that turned our quiet Tennessee life into something I still can’t fully talk about

and I’d hear the smile in her voice. It was the same smile she’d had when she was eight years old, standing in my workshop asking why this wire went here and that one went there.

“Because everything connects, sweetheart,” I used to tell her. “You just have to trace it back to the source.”

She didn’t become an electrician. She became a nurse instead continue reading …