“If you get nothing else from this letter, understand that I never knew how to love. I dreamed of it, but I never experienced it. What I knew was pain. So that's what I gave you. I'd never seen a black life free from it, so my job as a father, I assumed, was to prepare your back for the load. I hope that, after you read this, you'll return my pain to me. But you might not. We get used to it, the weight of the pain, and when it threatens to go, we sometimes hold on to it for dear life. But there's no joy while it lingers near.”