Remembering

You'll soon be a father. I hope you'll love your son or daughter very much. I won't ask you to try to make the child happy, for happiness is something that doesn't really exist, except for a flash of it occasionally. But if you love your child he will remember it all his life, and life won't ever be too hard to endure when he remembers.

—Taylor Caldwell, A Prologue to Love, p553.