Before that summer, I had seen my father cry only twice in my entire life. The first time was when his father di3d.

I was seven.

Dad stood beside the woodpile in our backyard with his back toward the house, his shoulders moving in a way I had never seen before.

Mom rested her hand on my head.

“Leave him alone, Lucas. Some things a man has to do by himself.”

The second time was when I graduated from Oregon State.

Dad sat high in the stadium bleachers wearing the only decent jacket he owned—a brown corduroy one with patches on the elbows.

When they called my name, I looked up and caught him wiping his face with a handkerchief.

Afterward, he didn’t hug me.

Sinclair men weren’t very good at hugging back then.

He simply gripped my hand tightly.

“Good job, son.”

Then he walked quickly toward the parking lot before I could see his eyes again.

The third time he cried happened decades later.

On a gray June morning in Cannon Beach, Oregon.

And it happened when I placed a set of house keys into my mother’s hand.

My parents are Samuel and Irene Sinclair.

Dad spent forty-three years working at a paper mill in Longview, Washington.

He started at nineteen sweeping floors.

He retired as a shift supervisor.

In forty-three years, he missed eleven days.

Nine were when my mother had surgery.

The other two were the days my sister and I were born.

Mom worked at the front desk of the local public library for thirty-one years.

She knew nearly every regular.

She knew which elderly men came every morning because they were lonely.

She knew which children stayed after school because nobody was waiting for them at home.

She kept granola bars underneath the desk for those kids.

Bought them with her own money.

Never told anyone.

That was my parents.

Quiet.

Hardworking.

Never asking for anything.

We grew up in a small blue house on Alder Street.

Two bedrooms.

One bathroom.

My older sister, Fiona, had the second bedroom.

I slept on a fold-out couch in the den until I was fourteen.

Then Dad spent an entire summer finishing the attic himself so I could finally have a room.

Dad drove the same brown Ford truck for twenty-two years.

Rust eventually ate holes through the rear wheel wells.

You could literally see the road through part of the passenger-side floor.

When I asked why he didn’t buy another truck, he gave me the answer he gave for almost everything.

“This one still runs.”

That was his philosophy.

If something worked, you kept it.

If it broke, you fixed it.

If it couldn’t be fixed, you figured out how to live without it.

Every summer, families around us went somewhere.

Disneyland.

Yellowstone.

Hawaii.

We never did.

“Maybe next year,” Dad always said.

Next year never came.

I didn’t understand why until I was older.

Every dollar my parents didn’t spend on vacations went into two savings accounts.

One for Fiona.

One for me.

College.

Fiona attended the University of Washington.

I went to Oregon State.

My parents paid most of the cost for both of us.

They never told us how much.

Never once acted as if we owed them anything.

The summer after graduation, I accidentally discovered the truth.

I was searching Dad’s filing cabinet for my birth certificate when I found the statements.

I sat on the floor and added everything up.

My parents had spent nearly twenty years of savings on our education.

Then I found another folder.

On the front, in Mom’s handwriting, was one word:

**SOMEDAY.**

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