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Toward the end of a weekend trailer visit to my incarcerated father in New York State in 1992, when I was 12, I had an emotional meltdown—and not for the first time. Trailer visits are occasional overnight accommodations provided to family members of people serving long sentences who’ve kept a good disciplinary record. On that particular weekend, I’d brought a stack of homework that I had to complete before school on Monday. We’d had a couple of happy days together, cooking epic meals of fresh vegetables, tofu, and brown rice, playing chess and cards, watching movies—even as I refused his advice to do my homework the whole time. (Sound familiar?) On the second and last night, I had a temper tantrum: I didn’t want to do my homework, or at least that was the trigger for a lot of pent-up emotion. The joy of every prison visit was punctured by the grim realization that I was going to have to leave, and that my dad would not be coming with me. In a fit, I threw all my homework out the window into the dark, windy yard. In that otherwise banal act of rebellion, I created a terrible dilemma for my father. He could leave the trailer to chase down my papers in the dark before they blew away, violating a prison rule and risking a discipline violation, or “ticket,” which would not only tarnish his perfect record but also forfeit future visits with me. Or he could protect himself and our access to the trailer visits by doing nothing, sending me home the next day without my schoolwork. He put me first.1