We are driving home after lunch when my father asks me where we should go next. This is new: he is usually the one with the directions. What’s old is not knowing where I want to go. When I finally tell him “beach” he swings the car around toward the coast. It’s there I begin to worry about everything: whether the sand is soft enough for his knees, the chances of him slipping on the rocks jutting out into the dark mouth of the Pacific. I am the unwilling father now watching a child who never got to be a child hop across stones toward a blue edge. He stops halfway to turn around and take his role back, easing my look of concern. But I cannot unsee it now: how much he still hasn’t grown up, the years lost and given to have this moment, what will remain of us. Suddenly he is a child again, is laughing at me telling me we are at the beach together for the first time.