The trip to Düsseldorf, when Shay led even outside the table

He could laugh about it and say something like:

“Dad, do you know what that means?”

And I, probably, would have preferred not to know.

But even in that moment, there was something beautiful about him. He was not just “abroad.” He truly absorbed the place. The language. The people. The atmosphere. What was acceptable and what was less so. The boundary between fitting in and being swept away. Even that humor was part of his ability to be inside a new environment and understand it quickly.