My father and I went twenty years with nothing but functional sentences between us. 'Pass the salt.' 'Your flight is at six.' Never the real things.
I drove four hours to see him. When I arrived, he'd run a bright orange extension cord from Mr. Adachi's outlet next door because his own kitchen outlet had been dead for months. He'd made coffee on a hotplate balanced on a milk crate.
We sat at the table. I opened the translation app on my phone and typed: I'm sorry I stayed away so long. He read it slowly, then took the phone and typed something I had to read twice. It said: I kept the porch light on every night in case you changed your mind.
We passed the phone back and forth for three hours. It was the longest conversation we'd ever had.
Before I left, he said the car needed brakes. He wanted Reyes, our family mechanic since I was seven, to look at it. I said I'd drive it there myself next weekend.
He smiled at that. Then typed one last thing: You don't need the phone anymore if you don't want it.
He was right. Some roads aren't taken. They're cleared, slowly, with whatever tools you have. And sometimes the only tool you really need is to show up.