I know that he loved the golf channel and the shelf of cereal boxes in the pantry, the dog and us and the big glasses of ice water he drank with his dinner. But he never really nested in that house the way the rest of us did. When my parents divorced, all he took with him was his clothing, tied up in big black leaf bags with the wire hangers poking out.

My mother and grandmother used to drive me to North Carolina every summer for camp where, as memory serves, the squirrels were white, the dawns were dewy, and the threat of lake snakes never did come to fruition.

I was sifting through the bins at the pay-by-weight Goodwill when I happened upon a cob of corn. Yes, you heard me right. Between the broken Barbie campers and the punctured tennis racquets and the stuffed animals begging to be loved again, there lay a cob of corn.

I still remember the soccer fields at the edge of Nashville, off Highway 70. Way out in Bellevue by the Toys ’R Us and the Sonic and the psychic with the big white sign. We had to be there early for our games. Squinting hour, foggy hour. Can’t-finish-your-cereal hour.