My father played many roles in the small Methodist church in Mississippi in which I was raised: committee chair, board member, financial supporter, legal adviser. But the role I most remember him for was usher.

On those Sunday mornings when my father walked down the aisle with three other men to gather the collection and count the number of people in attendance, he would make sure he got as close to “our pew” as possible. Halfway down, on the left. Whoever sat on the end of the row—Mother, me, one of my two sisters —would feel a poke in her upper arm and then find a wad of ones in her lap. On the rare Sunday when he did not usher, my father would take out the dollar bills from his wallet and pass down one to each of us. (Separately my father put a check into the collection basket for his tithe.)

I do not know why this tradition started, only that it continues to matter to me today, when I am 47 and my father has been dead for eight years. So much so that those who attend church with me regularly have begun to play along. My 23-year-old stepdaughter no longer looks at me quizzically when I toss a dollar bill her way during the offertory. My friend Heather recently sent me this text message on a Sunday when I was far from Nashville: “Just put a dollar in for Mr. Wilson.” Instead of bursting into tears at the memory of Daddy, I smiled, secure in the knowledge that this one tradition, however small, lives on.