At Father’s Day brunch, Dad opened his gifts. My brother gave him a golf club membership. My sister gave him a luxury watch. I handed him my envelope. He glanced inside and said, “A restaurant gift card. How… practical.” He set it aside without another word. A waiter then approached nervously and said, “Sir, that restaurant…”

There are exactly three people in my family who matter to this story, and together, they form a perfect, isosceles triangle of assumptions about my existence. At the apex sits my father, Richard DeWitt, a sixty-eight-year-old retired insurance executive who measures…