On Outscoring My Father

My father died, of cancer, when he was fifty-two. He wasn’t, as far as I know, into sports or exercise of any kind. He was trim, about six feet. He smoked, he drank coffee, he combed his thick black hair into a tidy side part, and he knew how to knot a tie. He looked good in suits. Beneath his eyes, dark circles. To be a trim man in middle age whose main exertions involve lifting cigarettes and coffee to your well-shaped lips is, in a way, a kind of athleticism.