My parents cannot embrace each other, nor dance together. My father must go alone to Macy’s to get the perfume my mother loves but does not ask for. He purchases the bottle despite the knowledge that they will not be going out this evening—or any evening. My father is a thoughtful man not given to expressive statements of emotion, regardless of the impossible circumstances that life has presented. One could say that the odds were against them from the start—an unusual pairing of a vivacious Russian Jew and a quiet South Indian—immigrants whose circuitous life paths have led them independently to meet in upstate New York.