THE FIRST THING Eglantine ever said to me was, “Look, Mommy, he’s a giant.” After opening the door for my new tenants, I was somewhat relieved that when I looked at Miranda a second time, I shook her hand without going to pieces. Her eyes were unusual. They were large, almond shaped, the color of a hazelnut, and tilted upward slightly, as if someone in the family had come from Asia, but her intense gaze was what held me during those initial seconds. She then lowered those remarkable eyes toward her daughter and said, “No, Eggy, he’s not a giant. He’s a tall man.”

I looked down at the child and said, “Well, I come pretty close to being as tall as a giant, but I’m not like the ones in fairy tales.” I bent over and smiled encouragingly, but the little girl didn’t smile back. She looked at me without blinking and then narrowed her eyes as if she were weighing my comment with great seriousness. Her grave expression made me even more self-conscious about my height. I’m six feet five inches tall. Inga is six feet, and my father measured in at just a hair under six-three. My mother is the shrimp at five-nine. The Davidsen family and, on my mother’s paternal side, the Nodeland family, tended toward the thin and towering. The genetic combination had been predictable, and Inga and I grew and grew and grew. We had endured the beanpole and how’s-the-weather-up-there jokes throughout our lives, as well as the mistaken assumption that our jump shots were superb. Not a single seat in a movie theater, playhouse, airplane, or subway, no public toilet or sink, no sofa or chair in lobbies and waiting rooms, not one desk in the world’s libraries has ever been built for the likes of me. For years, I have felt that I inhabit a world a few sizes too small, except at home, where I raised the counters and built high cabinets that, as Goldilocks put it, are “just right.”