The father stopped the car at the light, then gazed for a silent moment across the intersection, to the trees and a pond. He turned to his daughter in the passenger seat next to him.

"Remember this place?"

"No."

The girl crinkled her nose in the way she often did when she was puzzled, and followed her father's eyes across the road to the woods and the water. The father went on.

"You mean you don't remember the pond and the white duck when you were little?"

"Not really."

It had been a summer, years before, when Ronald Reagan was the president of the USA. The daughter, now 15, was only 2 then, with blond curls and pink dresses and an imagination that captivated her father.

If this father had a cherished memory of his eldest daughter, it was that summer at the duck pond. Each evening, the father sensed his wife needed a break from spending the day with a 2-year-old. And so, those early trips to the pond with his daughter were grounded in pragmatism.

At the pond, the girl discovered she could feed the ducks herself. She learned how to toss bread into the water. She learned that ducks came in many colors, and that the ones with the long necks weren't ducks at all, but geese.

And for years after that, the father would remind her of it. She would smile as he did this.

He had always believed she remembered, just as he did. Until that day when they happened to drive by.

"I really don't remember," the girl said, finally. She looked across the seat to her father. "I'm sorry."

For the first time, the father understood the obvious—that she was too young to remember the joy that had evolved those years before at the park with his daughter. And he felt bad for her.

That summer at the duck pond was a memory for her father, alone. If the girl had anything now, she had a request.

"Tell me about the pond," she said.