Today is Dad’s birthday. He would have been 82. The wish today was the same as it has been every day since he passed three and a half years ago. I wish I could have one more day with him. One more conversation. One more NYT Mini Crossword. One more joke, where I would laugh hysterically until tears rolled down my face. 

In a work meeting today, my colleague mentioned he was experimenting with an AI (artificial intelligence) illustrator, and showed me some pictures he had generated. He asked me to give it a go. I requested “a tall dark-haired adult woman in a floral dress with her silver-haired father in khaki pants and a blue flannel shirts, looking at a waterfall in the modern tradition.” One of the results struck me. It could have been us, on a hike, if the man had a little less hair and the woman had a little more height. Happy birthday, Dad.