Tag Archives: sex

What’s Wrong With Me?

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Maybe the answer is as simple as my wife, Lynn, is aging at warp speed due to her Multiple Systems Atrophy, a rare degenerative neurological disorder for which there’s no cure. But one thing gnaws at me. Compared to most caregivers, I have so many more resources. So, what’s my problem?

Physically, I am healthy. Not all caregivers are.

Most significantly, we can pay for her care without undue worry. That includes two health care aides who work weekdays. It’s not cheap. Together, they account for about 45% of Lynn’s total care. I am also fortunate to have two helpful daughters who I team with on weekends. Their help equates to about 10% of the total, meaning I fly solo the other 45% of the time.

Also, there are numerous friends and family who love Lynn and are supporting us in myriad ways. Especially my niece and sister, who, like clockwork, fly to Seattle from Salt Lake City and Northwest Indiana, drive down to Olympia where we live, and rent a place for five days every three months. My niece is an ace physical therapist, and when she visits, she works with Lynn almost non-stop mostly making accommodations to our house and improving Lynn’s routines.  

Then, there’s Kris, Marybeth, and Joan, who show up every Saturday at noon with Lynn’s favorite lunch from the local deli. They talk, and talk, and talk. And giggle. And garden. And inject much needed levity and normality.

Also, there’s Susan, who brought dinner over this week despite her dad dying, in Seattle, at age 98, a few days ago.

Then, there’s Vince, who knocks at the door, hands over amazing Ziploc bags filled with wonderful produce from his garden and jets. Kevin sends UberEats gift certificates from SoCal. And similar to Susan, Michael, Dan, Mary, and Travis show up with food and good cheer. And Monica. And a few of my daughters’ friends who I have never even met. If I stop long enough to reflect on these random acts of kindness, they bring me to tears.

Altogether, Lynn’s CaringBridge website has 94 people from other neighborhoods, states, and countries who are reading my manic/dorky updates, praying for us, sending supportive messages, and ultimately, seeing us from afar.

And despite this all-world support, I’m completely broken. So again, I wonder, what’s wrong with me? Why am I shattered. Emotionally bereft. Socially toxic as a result of not a short fuse, but no fuse. Why have I not just hit an MSA wall, but been completely crushed by one?

How about an anecdote to give you a feel for my sadsackness. First though, let me summarize how my work colleagues talk about me. In short, they say they most appreciate my poise, thoughtfulness, and calm demeanor. LOL.

Lynn decides to make an ice cream cone. To get the cone, she has to get into a cupboard in the smallish laundry room. She ends up repeatedly moving her wheelchair forwards and backwards in the tight space. Fast forward a few minutes. Part of the door frame lies on the ground. There’s ice cream all over the floor. And counter. The ice cream container fared poorly in this ordeal too and is now too crumpled for the top.

Because you’re rational, you’re thinking, “Big shit. The door can be repaired. The floor and counter quickly and easily cleaned. The container and top? Come on bruh, get real. Altogether, minor trade-offs for Lynn feeling a wee bit independent.”

But what you’re not factoring in is the cumulative effect of this type of experience hundreds of times over. Combined with other, way more substantive challenges, that have completely chipped away at my reservoir of patience, kindness, and humor.

I lost it, yelling, “WHY DIDN’T YOU ASK ME TO MAKE YOU AN ICE CREAM CONE?!” And then stayed Mad. Yes, you’re absolutely right, a complete and total overreaction.

There are two ways I could pivot from here. The more obvious one is to ask the question on most people’s minds, what can/should I do to better manage my anger and heal more generally? Or more specifically, when the hell is Ron going to find a good therapist? Sorry sports fans, I’m choosing the second, less obvious one, where I ask, what exactly has been MSA’s toll on me? Buckle up.

The losses are overwhelming because the challenges are multilayered. Some hard, others harder, two especially hard.

Hard

• We can’t do the ordinary day-to-day things we always took for granted because they were so easy to do. Things you mostly like still take for granted because they’re still easy for you and yours to do. We can’t go out to dinner. We can’t go for a walk. Or for a lake swim. We can’t go to Victoria for the weekend. In the end, these small things are the lifeblood of intimate friendship. Gone.

• We can’t plan for the future. Before MSA hit, we never made the time to make a list of fun future activities, but it’s still hard to come to grips with the fact that there’s nothing to look forward to on our calendar. The four of us will not be going to Spain or hanging in an Alderbrook cabin anymore. Hope for fun in the future. Gone.

Harder

• It feels like my second global pandemic with all the lockdown rigamarole. Since returning from a cycling trip to Bend, Oregon on June 1, 2024, I have been completely housebound because Lynn’s so dependent upon her meds, her bathroom, and her hospice bed. I’ll spare you the details, but her digestive system is completely whacked, meaning even day trips are too difficult to tackle. Spending a few hours at Alison’s apartment in Seattle recently felt like an international trip.

For fourteen straight months my daily routine has been the same. I wake up and wait for Lynn to ring my intercom doodad which I can’t wait to chuck in the trash. Then, absent our healthcare aides, I help her with everything, pretty much non-stop. Because MSA is like a demented dimmer switch that someone’s slowly turning, she needs more help each month, meaning my breaks have grown increasingly short. And ultimately, insufficient. Lynn mistakenly thinks if I could just get away for a few days I’d be fine. I tell her I don’t need 4-5 days, I need 4-5 months where I don’t have to cook, clean, or care for anyone. At all. Any meaningful flexibility of movement. Gone.

• We’ve had a modern marriage meaning we’ve split the work pretty evenly. Now, I’m wilting from the pressure of having to do everything I’ve always done plus everything Lynn always did. Among other things, she used to help with groceries and she did the bulk of the cooking, and all of the laundry, and half of the housework. And she called the service peeps. Now, it’s all me, all the time. I cook every meal, clean the kitchen every night, do the dishes, the laundry, take care of the trash/recycling/compost, vacuum, take care of the yard, stay on top of our personal finances, and ended up having to partner with a CPA to close Lynn’s parents’ estate for which she was the executor. That old energy saving division of labor. Gone.

Hardest

• Overwhelmed by her symptoms, Lynn has lost the ability to perspective take. She’s always been uber-caring, but now, not so much. Here’s what I wish she’d say, “I’m really sorry for what this disease has taken from you.” I’ve tried to understand this change. All I can come up with is her life is so hard, there’s not any psychic energy left for anyone else, even me. Whenever I try to express my profound sadness, she tends to take it personally, gets defensive, and immediately starts talking about her own feelings. Instead of doing the only thing that creates connection, asking follow up questions, and genuinely probing for more insight. I want her to say, “Tell me more so I can understand even better.” But it’s not going to happen. Because of MSA. Curiosity and perspective. Gone.

• I am the loneliest I’ve ever been. There’s two parts to it. The first is I’m disconnected from my friends. Because, remember, I’m housebound. On top of everything else, I keep Lynn’s social calendar. I organize friend visits for her almost daily. But ironically, I almost never see my friends. Not to mention, meet anyone new. Zilch socializing.  

On top of that, right now, my connection with Lynn is tenuous at best. We’ve always enjoyed an intense physical connection. In fact, truth be told, we may have gone all the way in an empty Norwegian university swimming pool locker room. A few times. Now, MSA has doused those flames. The mind is willing, but the body is not. Which saddens both of us greatly.

We don’t have in-depth conversations either. The other day I told her about an article I had read about “anchor offs” which you can see from our deck. These are destitute people living on boats anchored in Budd Inlet. I summarized the article, explained how they prefer the water to the streets, and . . . nothing. I’m sure she was thinking about what I was saying, she just couldn’t communicate her thoughts. She doesn’t really maintain eye contact either. So, it’s like playing tennis against a wall instead of with another person. Mark told me Lisa got a real kick out of his story about the 30 mopeders who passed us on 113th on a recent ride. I was a little jelly. Lynn isn’t able to ask about where I’ve cycled or how it’s gone. Post ride, I think to myself, she’ll never have any feel for those two hours of my life.

A few weeks ago, I told her I was thinking of buying a house in Bend. I wanted her to say, “You’re crazy” or “Cool, which ones are you considering? Show me.” Ultimately, like with the “anchor off” story, I was looking for connection. But there was none. If a convo happens in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Deep-seated, profound connection, built over decades. Going.

Moms For Liberty’s Truth As Only They Know It

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According to the Olympian, Moms For Liberty is gaining momentum.

“Marty Lobdell, a retired Pierce College human sexuality professor, came across an MFL booth at SummerFest. ‘The women in the booth told passers-by that kindergarten children were being taught sexual positions and shown pictures of people having sex,’ he said.

Lobdell, who also taught part time in the Clover Park School District, called the group’s assertions a lie. ‘I would love to see the Moms provide one verifiable case of any grade school child being taught sexual positions or viewing pictures of people having sex,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, once lies get out, they have a life of their own.’

Moms for Liberty says they are just trying to protect children and assert parental rights.”

Kindergarteners being taught sexual positions and being shown pictures of people having sex is MFL’s truth as only they know it.

Sentence To Ponder

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“The activities that make people happiest include sex, exercise and gardening.”

The findings of British researchers who pinged tens of thousands of people on their smartphones and asked them simple questions: Who are they with? What are they doing? How happy are they?

More here. Also worth pondering. . . how good is the sex if one partner is responding to survey researchers?

More Franzen Flexing

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Page 103. Clem’s academic performance is plummeting thanks to his middle of college sexual awakening. Which, of course, was Sharon’s fault.

“He’d return to school with a strict plan for himself. He would see Sharon only two evenings a week, and not stay over at her house at all, and he would study ten hours every day and try to ace every one of his finals and term papers. If he ran the table with A-pluses, he could still keep his GPA above 3.5—the figure which, though basically arbitrary, was his last plausible defense against the action he would otherwise be called upon to take.*

His plan was sensible but not, it turned out, achievable. When he stopped by Sharon’s house, it was as if they’d been apart for five months, not five days. He had a thousand things to tell her, and as soon as he took down her corduroys it seemed mean and silly to have worried about their height difference. Not until he returned to his room, the following afternoon, did he lament his lack of willpower. He recalibrated his plan, assigning himself eleven hours of daily study, and stuck to this schedule until Friday, when he treated himself to another evening with Sharon. By the time he left her, on Sunday afternoon, he would have had to study fifteen hours a day to make the numbers work.”

*enlist and go fight in Vietnam

Thursday Assorted Links

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1. Young Americans are having less sex than ever.

Jean M. Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University, said . . . ‘First, adolescents and young adults are taking longer to grow to adulthood. This includes the postponement of not just sexual activity but also other activities related to mating and reproduction, including dating, living with a partner, pregnancy and birth.’ These reproductive trends are “part of a broader cultural trend toward delayed development,’ Twenge said, and had not occurred in isolation. ‘It is more difficult to date and engage in sexual activity when not economically independent of one’s parents.”

What about the not young?

“. . . researchers were also quick to point out that the trend of ‘growing up slowly’ did not explain why sexual activity had decreased among older and married adults, noting that ‘the growth of the internet and digital media’ could be affecting sex lives. ‘Put simply, there are now many more choices of things to do in the late evening than there once were and fewer opportunities to initiate sexual activity if both partners are engrossed in social media, electronic gaming or binge-watching,’ Twenge added.”

This sentence is pick up line gold.

“A number of health benefits have been linked to regular sex, including reduced stress, improved heart health and better sleep.”

2. Khruangbin, you had me at Thai funk.

“Khruangbin (pronounced KRUNG-bin)gets its name from a Thai word that means airplane, its members are low-key and shun the spotlight, and its music is an atmospheric collage of global subgenres, including reggae dub, surf-rock, Southeast Asian funk and Middle Eastern soul. In an era of oversized pop gloss, where the music is loud and the characters are even louder, how did a band like Khruangbin break through the din?”

Who knows, just glad they did.

3. What it’s like to be black at (Anti) Liberty University. When are Falwell’s legal beagles going to send me a cease and desist order?

A former employee confided in Ruth Graham:

“‘I suppressed so much of my humanity as a black and queer man in being here.’ He remembered being called an ‘Oreo’ to his face, being introduced as ‘the black friend,’ and being asked during Black History Month why there’s no White History Month. ‘I want to be hopeful, but until the university recognizes their past history with racism, apologizes for it, and enacts significant policy implementation from the board level, I do not foresee any changes for students or staff.'”

4. ‘The Bureau’ Is an International Hit. Why Did Its Creator Hand It Off? Starting the final season. Nervous about life after The Bureau.

Tuesday Assorted Links

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1. Why lawn mowing is better than sex.

2. You read Hillbilly Elegy, now read  Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains.

3. Tom Nichols on “Why I watch Trump’s daily coronavirus briefings (and no, it’s not because I’m a masochist).” I feel similarly. (thanks DB)

4. Trump Optimistic About Winning Nobel Prize in Medicine. Have to laugh to keep from crying.

What I’ve Been Reading

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  1. Work email.
  2. The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans by Neal Gabler. Highly recommended. Gabler, a well educated widely published author, explains how he became one of the 47% of Americans who could not cover an unexpected $400 expense. A clear, compelling story, courageously told.
  3. All the Sad, Broke, Literary Men by Helaine Olin. This genre, the take-down of a person others admire, is on the rise. Which is unfortunate. It’s sad Olin can’t muster up any empathy for Gabler. Helaine, if you don’t have anything nice to say, . . .
  4. My wife’s emotions.
  5. The Voyeur’s Motel by Gay Talese. I’m about to share the tagline. Then you’re going to click on this link. In fact, it will probably be the only link you open. Why, because deep down you’re a voyeur too. Tagline, “Gerald Foos bought a hotel in order to watch his guests have sex. He saw a lot more than that.” Told you.
  6. The Secret History of Tiger Woods by Wright Thompson. Thompson deserves a Pulitzer for making me feel some empathy for TWoods.
  7. Thinking Beyond Money in Retirement by John Wasik. Nice insights.
  8. Work email.

Postscript: A reader texted in:

Read your blog post. I read that $400, 47% article earlier this week and thought it was pretty interesting. Buuuut even though one of my top 3 pet peeves is probably people gleefully and lazily taking other people down on the Internet without any effort toward critical empathy, I actually very much agreed with Helaine Olin’s article. She was a little callous up top, but I thought the article itself was pretty balanced – she commended his bravery for talking about something that is difficult to talk about (but it helped made less difficult when people step up to the plate and tell their stories, like he did) and gave him credit when she agreed with some of his other points but I also very much agree that his article was lacking in other ways and it was worthwhile of her to call him out in it. (Seriously, I couldn’t get over the emptying of the retirement fund for the daughter’s wedding.)

Okay, the “reader” was actually my eldest hija. I told her I stopped reading Olin’s article too early. Sorry Helaine for my knee-jerk rejection of your essay. Best part of this? It’s on record that eldest hija doesn’t support fathers’ paying for daughters’ weddings!!! Yes!!!

Do You Mind If I’m Totally Frank?

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Last week, that’s what one of my students asked me in the middle of a discussion led by a classmate. The topic was what stoicism teaches about getting along with others. At the beginning of the discussion, I skimmed the student leader’s questions. The last one was about stoicism and sex which was addressed within the related reading.

With about ten minutes left in class, I said to the student leader that he should probably pick one of the remaining two questions. Without hesitating he jumped to the last much to his classmates’ delight. Apart from a little antiseptic sex ed talk, I’m guessing this was the first time they’d ever truly discussed sex in a classroom.

It’s ironic that the more interpersonally consequential the subject—take sex as one example and marriage as another—the less likely we are to talk about them with adolescents and young adults in any detail. I guess we think of such topics as too personal, private, and value-laden. As a result, pastors rarely if ever talk about sex and marriage from the pulpit, parents rarely if ever talk about their relationships with their children, and educators routinely sidestep topics like that. That means adolescents and young adults are left to themselves to resolve all of the challenges posed by human intimacy through trial and error.

The sex question immediately piqued everyone’s interest. One especially animated student turned from the student leader to me and asked, “Do you mind if I’m totally frank?” Me, “Sure, of course.” Her, “There’s a big difference between fucking and making love.” As they repeatedly say on the television series Fargo, “Okay, then.”

Couple that ice breaker with the fact that it’s a small class, the students are friends, and they think I’m way cooler than I am, the conversation was more candid than I had anticipated. It’s kind of a blur. At some point, I pointed out that they hadn’t yet dealt with the stoic’s primary insight on sex, that in middle or old age few people reflect on their younger selves and wish they had been more promiscuous. Stoics point out that the opposite is much more common, that sexually active people often regret the damage done by being so promiscuous. To which one student bravely said, “I’m 19 and I regret being as promiscuous as I was in high school.”

From there the discussion turned to the confusing and controversial stoic suggestion that sex, even inside of marriage, should only be for the purpose of procreating, which strikes me as an overreaction to the dangers of promiscuity.

Rewind the tape to earlier in the week when, with two colleagues, I was involved in a protracted discussion with a student teacher who is struggling in her internship. I was asking questions designed to get her to admit a regret or two in the hope we could turn to what could be done to remedy the situation. “What would you have done differently if anything?” “Okay,” she finally said without asking if she could be perfectly frank, “I fucked up.”

After the meeting that utterance was what one of my colleagues wanted to talk about first. He was right, she does have to be smarter about professional contexts, meaning more tactful and diplomatic, but these two incidents point to a huge generation gap when it comes to attitudes towards profanity.

Swearing, using “fuck” more specifically and not just as a verb, but as any part of speech, is so common among adolescents and young adults that some adults’ resistance to it, like my colleagues, hardly makes any sense to them.

Just as it’s unrealistic to expect married people to abstain from sex except when procreating, it’s unrealistic to expect young people to stop swearing altogether. The best hopelessly square people like myself can hope for, is that they learn to use profanity freely around their peers when in informal settings and then “code-switch” and refrain from it when around mixed aged people in other settings.

If you don’t agree, you can go forget yourself.

Looking for Love—Introducing the Romantic Love Score

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Maybe you know someone like my 29 year old friend who recently sent me a great email.

“My life is pretty darn good right now,” she wrote, “but I would still like to find a special friend with whom I could start a family.” Thinking who better to offer some inspiration, she told me she had a good job, some decent friends, but no real prospects when it came to romantic love.

And so I tried.

First, I celebrated her refreshing “If it happens great, if not, I’ll still lead a fulfilling life” attitude. People desperate to find someone to “complete them” stand little chance of forming a healthy, balanced, long-term relationship based upon mutual respect.

I also affirmed her desire to marry and start a family because my wife and daughters have definitely enriched my life. Mostly for the better, intimacy amplifies one’s joys and heartbreaks. For me, and most people in healthy committed relationships, that’s a trade-off worth making. Over and over, year after year.

I think about my friend’s prospects for romantic love almost exclusively in sociologically terms. Let me explain by way of what I’m labeling one’s Romantic Love score. Your RL score is similar to a house’s Walk Score. A walk score is a number between 0 and 100 that realtors assign to every house for sale. The higher the score, the easier it is to walk to stores, restaurants, parks, etc. Our current home has an abysmal walk score of “5” meaning you better pack some food if you’re walking to the grocery store.

A Romantic Love score is also a number between 0 and 100. The higher your score, the greater your likelihood of meeting someone special with whom marriage and children are possibilities.

Walk scores are determined by sophisticated computers, Romantic Love scores are determined by my amazingly brilliant analysis of a few things you send me. First and most importantly, a map of your typical week showing me exactly how you spend every hour of every day that you’re awake.

From that map, I determine the potential for casual friendships to evolve into something hotter and heavier. Work is obviously a big chunk of time and that could go either way depending upon how consistently you interact with colleagues around your age, but you’re outside of work time is most important. If you spend evenings reading alone, your RL score will be far less than if you participate in a book club or two. No one is ever going to come wave at you through your window while you’re wrapped in a blanket, after dinner, in your favorite reading spot.

Similarly, it’s one thing to run in the pitch black at 5a.m. alone and another to run after work or on the weekends with a group sponsored by a local running store, maybe even one that meets up afterwards to continue socializing. And it’s one thing to lap swim by one’s self and another to join a masters swim team and workout a few times a week with the same 20-30 people. Ditto with cycling. Better to attend the same spin class with the same 10-15 people than to just cycle alone all the time.

The second stage is doing things with your small group friend(s) outside of the regular activity—going out to dinner, weekend get-aways, etc. Traveling with small groups of friends for a weekend or week increases the potential for sparks of mutual interest and admiration, thus raising your RL score.

Don’t force participation in activities that you don’t naturally enjoy in the first place, just be more intentional about doing them with others. Small groups whom you interact with at least twice a week. And then be intentional about each group. After a few weeks or month, evaluate the potential for meeting someone special, and don’t hesitate to switch one small group activity for another.

My wife was a second year teacher in rural Southern California when she was 24. All she did was work, then exercise at a fitness center, and then watch the NewsHour while eating dinner. There were hardly any single people in her community so she decided to take her RL score into her own hands. She quit her job and moved to Santa Monica and looked for a teaching job there. Right away she started attending the same church I was attending. My roommates and I at the time hosted a bible study in our home.

She showed up one summer night with her roommate who she knew a little bit prior to her move. After the bible study I asked her if she wanted to go get some frozen yogurt (Rico Suave). About 6-8 of us ended up going. After that I was smitten and asked her if she wanted to go out to dinner and by then any resistance to my charm offensive was futile.

The take-away is small groups aren’t magical. At some point you have to be more intentional than might come naturally and take initiative to move from acquaintance to friend to more special friend. In the simplest terms, being more intentional might mean saying, “I like you.” And then assessing whether the feeling is mutual. Obviously, there has to be reciprocity. Romantic love can’t be forced, there has to be some chemistry.

Second, I need a list of all of your close friends who are aware of your desire for a special friend and consciously thinking about mutual friends who might be a decent match. This is the “social capital” subsection of your overall RL score.

Third, I need an honest self-assessment of how flexible you are. Not with regard to values, you should never settle for someone who isn’t kind and doesn’t inspire you to be an even better person, but in terms of age and level of education. The older you are, the more you need to consider someone younger or older than you, and if you’re a female, quite possibly someone with less formal education. Obviously, the more flexible, the higher your RL score.

Fourth, I need an honest assessment of your relative selflessness. Since selfish people typically lack self awareness, you’ll need to solicit the help of close friends and family who know you best. Ask them, on a scale of 0 to 10, zero representing a “no hope narcissist of Donald Trump like proportions” and ten representing “Mother Teresa like selflessness”, where would you rate me and why? Long term committed relationships depend upon mutual curiosity and consideration, active listening, and patience. The more selfless, the higher your RL score.

I am now accepting submissions. Every Pressing Pauser is interested in learning more from your particular situation so don’t be bashful. If I share what you submit I’ll do it so discreetly no one will ever trace any of the deets back to you.

My friend’s RL score? Currently hovering in the high teens, but she’s committed to changing that. Hope I get invited to the wedding.

Related read. [Note: The reader’s top ranked comments are every bit as good as the essay.]

When You Are Adopted. . .

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says Aaron Levi, Wilt Chamberlain’s 50 year old son, “rejection is woven into your DNA.”

My family’s version of Manifest Destiny concluded on December 31st, 1973 when we arrived, via a car caravan from Ohio, at a West LA hotel. Immediately after checking in, my demented older brothers decided we had to finish our journey by driving the last few miles to the Pacific Ocean. And then become one with the ocean on probably the coldest day of the year. Running from the Pacific Coast Highway to the water, we looked north towards Pacific Palisades and saw our first SoCal celeb, Wilt the Stilt, playing beach volleyball.

At that exact moment, you could count on one hand the number of people who knew Wilt had a 9 year old son named Aaron, living in Oregon, with his adopted family, the Levi’s. Read or watch the whole moving story here.

The story is interesting on several levels. For instance, Ben Carson, long shot Republican candidate for President, is popular among social conservatives. Carson is certain homosexuality is a choice. Ben, please read paragraph six of Pomerantz’s story and then explain how Aaron Levi decided to be gay before he was 9. Maybe Carson will reason Levi asked for Mary Poppins because he didn’t have a strong father figure. Complete bullshit.

On NPR recently, I listened to a segment on why we doubt scientific findings. One guest explained how some people’s identities and worldviews determine how they interpret scientific findings. For example, individuals who reject evolution and climate change don’t do so based on objective considerations of evidence, they do so because accepting those findings would require too fundamental a change in identity and worldview.

I couldn’t help but think of that when reading how Chamberlain’s remaining sibs have refused to meet Levi. Why the flat-out rejection? Because meeting him would require them to rethink what they believe to be true about their deceased brother. His sanitized image is an integral part of their self image. Put differently, Levi doesn’t fit into their worldview.

Levi deserves a lot better. The Chamberlains should follow the lead of one of my elderly relatives who was shocked recently when he was contacted by his deceased sibling’s secret daughter, now Aaron Levi’s exact age. They met, shared histories, and now she’s a cherished member of the family.

It’s not that hard if you put adoptees’ needs to know their history before your need to maintain a fictitious public image.

Postscript—Time will probably tell, but what’s the over-under on Levi’s half brothers and sisters?