I was back at the lake with dad when I was about nine or ten, just me and him, nobody else around, and we were in Grandma’s cottage, a few months after it got moved down the hill closer to the water. He was heading out to fix her dock because a storm had torn it from its foundation. Before leaving the cottage he gave me a copy of Johnathon Livingston Seagull and with a look in his eye that I had never seen before, he told me to read it, so I did. It’s a thin book and I was able to finish it by sundown, when he got back. The first words he said to me upon re-entering the cottage weren’t words at all, as he was smiling not speaking. It wasn’t a big smile. He rarely smiled big. It was more of an approving glance. I remember…