Raking leaves was our autumn ritual. The yard was huge, so leaf-raking took

Raking leaves was our autumn ritual. The yard was huge, so leaf-raking took hours. We rarely talked during it. We didn’t need to.

The scraping of the rake on the grass, the rustle of the pile growing, the moment when we’d burn the biggest piles — smoke curling into the cold air, sparks drifting upward like ancestral fire.

My dad didn’t express emotions in words. He expressed them in shared tasks.

I didn’t know then that many men love through labor. I know it now.