So, my dad (who, you will recall, recently had gall bladder surgery, a little detail which will shortly become immensely important to our story) is in the habit of walking up to my place with his cup of coffee in the mornings and chatting for a few minutes before I leave for work. It’s a pleasant little ritual we’ve developed over the last couple of years, a low-key means of connection for a father and his grown son who’ve never been terribly close. We rarely talk about anything more meaningful than whatever funny thing our respective cats did the night before, but these conversations matter anyway.

The other morning was a strange one for these desert climes. It had rained just before sunrise, so everything outside was wet and glistening, and there was a hazy, golden quality to air. It was far more reminiscent of what I remembered of England than Utah, cool and crisp but not truly cold, and Dad and I were both enjoying it. We felt cozy enough inside our coats. The concrete apron around Dad’s shop, which stands behind the old house where I live, was dotted with shallow puddles. As we stood there chatting, I noticed one of my cats lapping at the ground directly in front of a battered old Chevy pickup. Dad’s work truck. The one that leaks numerous fluids cats ought not be ingesting.

“Hey,” I said, “You don’t suppose there’s any anti-freeze in that, do you?”

Dad shrugged, shooed kitty away from the puddle, and then bent down, dipped a finger into the potentially toxic liquid, and stuck it in his mouth.

A little jolt of alarm zipped through my stomach. “Dad…!”

“Ah, it’s fine,” he said, wiping his finger on his pants and then taking a mouth-cleansing sip from the mug in his other hand. “Just rainwater.”

Seeing the expression on my face, he continued in a nonchalant tone. “I used to dip my finger into radiators all the time. It was an easy way of telling whether the mix was strong enough or if you needed to add some more anti-freeze.”

“One of those old-fashioned backyard mechanic things?” I ventured.

“Yeah. ‘Course, nobody told us it’d make your gall bladder go rotten after about 30 years.”

He said it was a deadpan face that would’ve made Buster Keaton proud. Then I caught the twinkle in his eye, and I laughed out loud, and my father, a man who once seemed to me the most terrifyingly humorless creature on Earth, actually cracked a smile himself.

I cherish these mornings.