My father called at the crack of dawn the day I turned 40. "Good morning, daughter,' he said, the way he always did, preferring "daughter' to "Beverly' because, as he liked to remind me, I was Beverly to a lot of people, but nobody's daughter but his…

They came from short and long distances to meet him. They came before work and after work, and in between commitments and appointments and all the things that everyone has to do every day. They stopped doing these things, took a break, and showed up at my door smiling, walked in, sat down, held out their arms and oohed and aahed…