“Sorry, he’s not home right now.” If the phone rang in the evening at The Aloe Ranch, those were the words out of my Mother’s mouth. “Oh, ok, well, I’ll tell him to call you back.” meant it could wait, and “Oh, well he’s down the pizza shop, I can call him and have him call you.”

My Mother protected my Father. She didn’t just let anyone talk to him when the phone rang, and if the phone rang after hours, she did not just give whoever it was on the other end permission to call down the pizza shop. She knew he had been at school teaching all day, and that he had had two hours in between school and the pizza shop to eat dinner and maybe close his eyes for…