My father, a professor and a poet, has dementia. Over the years he must have written dozens of articles and poems. Occasionally for money. Yesterday, he received a royalty check for .78. He obviously has no memory of what the check is for. My mother also has no idea. Maybe it was a scholarly article on the cultural implications of masculine identities. Maybe it was a poem about traveling. Maybe it was a chapter in a text book.

There is nothing less real than a .78 check. It cost more than .78 to write and send the check. It will cost more than .78 to deposit the check. It will cost more than .78 for the bank to process the check. This check is not real.

Yesterday, I asked my father what he was thinking and he said, “shum davar,” Hebrew for “eh, nothing.” Neither my father nor I speak Hebrew.

“With the year ending,” he said, “It’s important to remember that a new year always starts. That’s the important thing.”

He said it in his professor voice. It sounded profound. If we were anywhere near the end of the Jewish year or the calendar year, it would have been profound.

My father is retreating into his mind. He lives in a place where he picks up bits of languages he once studied, where what he ate for dinner is more of a mystery than a car he drove 30 years ago. He lives in a place in his mind where every deep thought he ever had mixes effortlessly with fantasies about a garden he thinks he planted at work. His life’s work sits in notebooks and boxes in a house where he no longer lives. A house where sometimes, randomly, a .78 check shows up.

There is nothing real about a check for .78.

Except that once, long ago, my father wrote something that someone bought. He wrote something that someone paid for and now 10? 20? years later, someone is still finding value in it. Even if that value is only .78. It’s not nothing.