cene 1: A restaurant in Dallas, Texas. Let's say March.
"So when I get to Michigan," I said, tearing some bread, "I thought I might spend some time in Detroit." Sometimes, when I am talking in a restaurant, I like to tear things. A paper napkin. The sweaty label of a beer bottle. I tear these things into pieces and put them in a pile of little white wads on the table. When there is nothing left to tear and wad, I arrange the pile in different shapes. A circle. A square. An S, for Sarah. Tonight, I am breaking up pieces of crust in front of me. If you listen closely, you can hear the tiny clicks of my fingernail on the plate. "So anyway, I thought we might talk a little bit about Detroit -"
"You should talk to your aunt." My Dad tears off some bread.
"Okay," I say (click click), "but I thought maybe you and I could talk."
"Talk to your aunt."
The clicks become louder and more frequent. "Did you not grow up in Detroit?" I ask.
He waves his hand. "Eh." And then he laughs. It's such a mystery to me, my father's laugh. "I mean, she's the one who lives there and -"
"I'll call my aunt." Later, I will wonder why I can't stop crying about this, but for now, I brush my hands off and put them in my lap.
The waiter appears. "Would you like something to drink?" he asks.
We answer at once: "Yes."

Historical Interlude: Other Famous Conversations With My Father
My father, an environmental engineer, has difficulty remembering words precisely. He often captures the rhythm, the spirit; he has a good grasp on one corner but the rest slides away. So instead of "Snapple" my father sometimes asks for "Snapper." Instead of "fingernail polish remover" my father (gruesomely) asks for "fingernail remover." Probably the most famous example of this is the time he tried to remember the name of the film The Talented Mr. Ripley.
"You know this film," he said, rubbing his eyes. "It's uh, uh, uh," he said, gesturing in the air as if he could catch it. "It stars that woman. Gwyneth Poultry. What's it called? The Amazing Mr. Peepers?"
Another famous example of this is when my 16-year-old boyfriend came to pick me up for Spring Break. I was going with his family to Florida, where we planned to stay in a condominium for a week.
"So," my dad said.
"So," my boyfriend said.
"You're going to Florida."
"That's right, sir."
"And you're going to stay in a condom."
"Excuse me?"
When my father doesn't think he has a word right, he sometimes repeats it. "A condom. A condom. A condom."
"A condominium, sir. That's right."

Scene 2: On the Phone. A Few Weeks Later in March.
Usually, when I am talking on the phone, I twist the cord around my finger. If I'm on a cordless phone, I sometimes tear at stray strands of fiber in the carpet. And if I'm really yapping away, I sometimes pull up chunks of the carpet and I have absolutely no memory of it, so afterward, when I hang up, I will think, "Oh Christ. Who's been tearing at the carpet?" My mother and I are famous for our three- and four-chunk conversations, epic things that last for hours, after which my father appears briefly to say, "Well, I guess I'll hear about everything from your mother." But this afternoon, my mother is not home.
"Hey Dad," I say. I am sitting on my bed and scribbling on a piece of notebook paper, making blue rings around the punched holes.
My father starts many phone conversations with one of two questions, both of them references to things he has given me. The first and most common question is this: "So how's the car running?"
"Good. Perfect." Scribble scribble. A car. A bird.
"Great. Do you know when you're going to be in Detroit yet?"
"Oh, right. No, I haven't called Aunt Marilyn yet. I will."
"Okay. No, well, I thought maybe I might join you there."
I stop scribbling.
"I thought maybe we'd drive together to the Upper Peninsula so you could see it."
I think I am kind of crying.
"You know, that's where my Dad's from. We'd rent a car, of course. Give your car a rest."
Yeah, I'm pretty much crying.
"I don't know if you have time for that."
"Dad, I have ... I mean, yeah, of course."
"Good. Great. So. How's your computer?"

Scene 3: The Detroit Airport. Father's Day, June 16.
It was a complete coincidence that we met on Father's Day for our trek to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, that strange chunk of the state that is actually not attached to Michigan at all but attached to Wisconsin. (For this, you'll have to consult a map.) It's the part of Michigan known for its hard winters and rugged folk, where the Finns and the Swedes and the Englishmen came to work in the mines, because no one else would, and then they stayed, because no one else could. But it was Father's Day when we left for Hancock, Michigan, where my father's father, dead before I could meet him, was born.
"So who is it we're going to meet in Hancock?" I asked.
"Meet in Hancock?" he asked. "We don't know anyone in Hancock."
"We don't?"
He blushed. "I mean, they're all dead."
"Oh. That's okay."
"You can write about that on your website, huh? My first revelation about my relatives in Hancock: We don't have any."
We laughed together.

To be continued ...

written in Boston, Massachusetts