Peggy Noonan

I have a scoop: u.s. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and the longtime woman in his life, Ginni Thomas, were married recently in a small, private ceremony in a steak house in Tysons Comer, Virginia. Well, actually, they were married long before they got there and were, in fact, out to celebrate their anniversary. He handed her a small box containing a ring, a perfect duplicate of the wedding band he had placed on her finger exactly ten years before. He put the thin gold band with the diamond chips on her finger and said, “With this ring, I thee wed. Will you marry me all over again?” She said yes.

They toasted with zinfandel (hers) and water (his). Now she wears both rings together.

Most of America doesn’t see Clarence Thomas in such private moments. We last saw him six years ago, during one of the most public and controversial political hearings in American history. He was nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court and quickly accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill. During the murky welter of charges leveled, I believed him and not her. They both described different realities in their personal and professional relationships. Having heard the testimony, I came, in time, to an almost paradoxical conclusion: that he was telling the truth, not she, but also that even if I were wrong, her charges did not warrant the end of his nomination.

Since then, Clarence Thomas has settled in on the court and Ginni Thomas has settled in as a powerful presence on Capitol Hill, working for House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas). And Anita Hill has a new book out, a memoir of the hearings and her life.

I first met Ginni Thomas 12 years ago when she was still Ginni Lamp. I always liked her, and though I haven’t seen her in five years, she strikes me as exactly the same. When I ask Ginni if she dreads the Hill book tour and the spate of interviews and editorials that will appear, she says no; she will be focusing on other things, like having more time with Clarence now that his son and her stepson, Jamal, has left the house for work and school.

As Ginni looks back on the hearings now, she says that the trauma of those days strengthened her faith and deepened her marriage. Pain, she learned, doesn’t have to be a destroyer. It can be a character builder. Will she ever forgive Anita Hill?

“Yeah,” she says softly. “I’ve forgiven Anita Hill. I’m still optimistic that one day she will apologize to my husband.” Still, she says, “If I lived my whole life consumed by an injury, I wouldn’t be able to live fully the life God wants for me.

“Talking about it can make me cry,” she continues. “I remember crying to God, ‘Why doesn’t justice prevail?’ But now I’m glad. He teaches you patience, He teaches you character. And you wait for justice. I came to Washington far too naive. But the real battle is holding on to your idealism in this town.”

Is she still an idealist?

She smiles. “Some days more than others.”

She once thought she’d run for office. (In 1986, as Virginia Lamp, a Washington, DC, attorney, she was chosen as one of Good Housekeeping’s 28 Young Women of Promise, and she dreamed of running for Congress.) Does she still? “Probably not. The cost is too great.”

By that she means the new brutality in politics-the muckraking that goes too deep into the muck, or invents muck. She takes no comfort in the Paula Jones scandal, gets no satisfaction in seeing the Democrats bruised by the same furies unleashed during her husband’s hearings. Whatever the truth in the recent scandals, she says, “from a broader point of view, you have to be concerned about what is happening to our government. As a tool of political power, to make false accusations against innocent people-the toll is enormous.”

She worries, too, about race in America. Too many people, she feels, “are speaking out of fear and ignorance.” Her own perspective is very personal. “I don’t see my husband as black. I’ve never put up barriers in my life that don’t make sense. When we met, I was so drawn to his integrity, his values, his intelligence.”

In spite of all she’s been through, she still considers herself a lucky woman. “I think Clarence is the best man walking the face of the earth. I’m so happy when people meet my husband and see the truth of him.”

Like a lot of people with children, I find dinner to be a challenge. If my son ran our house, every single night of our lives we would have Kraft macaroni and cheese and a can of Coke for dinner. Then, after homework is finished and we watch TV, we would have powdered doughnuts and milk.

I try to be a mother. I say, No, we must have protein and vitamins. I say, If you eat carbohydrates all the time, you will become a large white doughnut, rolling down the street, and no one will let you on their hockey team. You need muscles. You need height. To make your bones and muscles grow, we will have baked chicken, a potato, and broccoli. This is, to him, not desirable, but acceptable food. So is spaghetti with clam sauce, spaghetti with meatballs, and hamburgers. Nothing else—at least nothing else that’s good for you. He cannot eat fish because once at school a bone got caught in his friend Andrew’s throat, and he had to be taken to a doctor. He cannot eat steak because it has blood or is tough. Carrots are too hard except when they’re too mushy, and peas taste funny going down.

If I say, Let’s eat out, he says, Oh, can’t we stay home?

I say, We haven’t eaten out in a month, let’s do it. He says, Okay, the hamburger place. If I say, No, let’s try something new, he says: But we like the hamburger place.

So naturally we go to the hamburger place. Where my son says, I’ll have number six: chicken fingers and fries. I say, Whenever we come here you have number six, wouldn’t you like to try something new? And here he blinks, uncomprehendingly, which translates to: Why try something new when you already know what you like? I say—helpfully, with false bonhomie—Don’t you want to experiment and try new things?

And he blinks again, with a kind of wonder: No. I really don’t. Why would I want to experiment?

I’ve been thinking about this, in terms of food and other things. And I’ve concluded that: Children are natural conservatives. And: They have reason to be.

You know what was in my son’s eyes as he blinked? This: I’m 10. All of life is a new experience. Everything’s new, and challenging, too, and sometimes scary. Chorus is scary because you have to remember all the words, and then when you stand up and sing, everyone stares at you. Teachers, coaches, tests, who’s popular, the way lightning hits in a big storm, the neighborhood bum on the street corner who sometimes smiles but sometimes howls—it’s all new to me. It’s all an experiment. So why would I experiment with dinner?

It’s actually a lot like the difference between an adult’s palate and a child’s. The adult, having sampled many different foods, is in search of subtle tastes and surprising combinations. But the child’s palate is inexperienced and requires nothing unusual; it’s very happy with vanilla ice cream and American cheese.

The world is old to me, and so I seek out stimulation and discovery. The world is new to him, and he has quite enough stimulation and discovery every day.

My friends and I, so eager to be good parents, read books that tell us to stimulate our children. And we do, with trips to museums and plays and the symphony and space camp . . . and these things are good. But the books should also tell us, Don’t forget to be boring and predictable. Because children like that. I read something a few years ago that so touched me, and only now do I truly understand it. A little boy was asked what upset him most about his parents’ divorce. And he said, “I miss walking down the street with my father.” The interviewer said, comfortingly, “But you can still walk down the street with your father.” And the little boy said, “We used to walk down the street every Saturday morning to get doughnuts.”

And suddenly that didn’t happen anymore—not the same street, the same doughnuts, the same way every Saturday. Children prize sameness the way grown-ups prize variety.

Which brings me back to food. It occurs to me that when I am stressed or burdened, I seek out comfort food, which for me is pasta with butter and Parmesan cheese. It makes me feel better. For kids, all food is comfort food. I’m going to keep this in mind as I continue to use every wile to help my son expand the definition of comfort, of sameness, to include, say, the stray pea or leaf of spinach. If I don’t, he will not grow, and I—for I eat what he eats—will become a large white doughnut, rolling down the street.

I am daydreaming about daydreaming. This is for me delightful, as I don’t have time to daydream anymore. I am a mother, a worker, a friend, a daughter, and a sister. People rely on me for, to narrow it down to the essentials, love and work. There is no time to sit back and allow my mind to float aimlessly from here to there.

In this I am not unusual. I am merely modern. I live surrounded by bells and beepers and buzzers. If I just sit back and stare at the wall—and this is a good thing to do, for you’ll see a crack that reminds you of a stream that reminds you of a river that reminds you of a steamer that reminds you of a picture you saw when you were five—the reverie is soon interrupted by the rattle and hum, by the beeps and bings and buzzes. The fax, the computer, the call from the car pool …

Sometimes I blame technology, which was supposed to make communication easier, and has, but has also made it more prevalent. I used to have a fantasy:

I would leave my life and go to Africa, on safari, to the deepest heart of the jungle, where no one could find me. I lost this fantasy when I heard of a woman who’d been beeped while in a Jeep surrounded by lions. They can find you anywhere.

Sometimes I blame feminism, which was supposed to make us workers in the world, and did. Workers respond to bells and buzzers; that is their job. But remember all those novels from the sixties about those wasted suburban lives, those poor women with nothing to do, no profession, just going to the country club and drinking too much and falling into tawdry and meaningless affairs? I used to think: Those poor women. Now I think: Those were the days!

Those women got to daydream. Then, of course, they passed out, but still: They got to think about nothing. Which means they got to think about everything.

All this sturdy purposefulness we now have has affected even our children. They are so busy, so scheduled. When I was a kid, a summer day consisted of two possibilities: going out and coming in. Afternoons were spent lying on the floor of my bedroom and staring at particles of dust as they swirled silently in shafts of sunlight. My mind would playas a child’s plays, going from dust to dance. And when your mind plays, there is always a benefit because your mind is smarter than you are and does more surprising things, such as seeing the connection between the leaves on a tree and the spokes on a bike: turning, turning . . .

I once read that when director/producer Steven Spielberg was a child, he liked to sit on his bed and stare. He had little toys and dolls, and as he stared at them, they would talk to each other and do surprising things. Years later his imagination had grown so strong, it came to fill the minds of generations of children.

But now we don’t let kids waste time. For many reasons—ambition, the knowledge that the world is more competitive, a desire to keep them off the mean streets. We schedule our children within an inch of their lives. Now after school they have violin lessons, Chinese class, hours of homework …

A while back I noticed my son held his book bag like a briefcase. He was only eight and yet he had a demanding life. One day I overheard him on the phone arranging a play date. “Monday’s no good for me, how’s Thursday?” So I asked him how he’d feel about doing less. And he said that sounded just fine.

Now there is religion class on Tuesday and otherwise: nothing. When he comes home from school, he just . . . comes home. He throws his book bag on the chair and himself on the couch. Sometimes he reads. Sometimes he stares. Sometimes he plays with his 2,346 action figures. I have peeked in and seen him watch the sunlight swirling. And I think this is good.

Years from now it may make it harder for him to get into a good college, for he will not be fluent in Chinese computer hockey skills. But perhaps his mind will be more creative, less exhausted, more playful; and he will have had a childhood. This seems to me a worthwhile chance to take.

Now I am working on me. I complained to friends recently that I have no time to think about nothing, and one suggested learning meditation. She goes to a clean and spare apartment of a yoga instructor who teaches her to empty her mind.

Do I want to pay someone to help me do what I used to do easily and for free? Sure I do. Like a purposeful nineties person, I think: If I schedule daydreaming and pay for it, maybe I will do it. I will sit in a lotus position and stare at the wall and notice a crack that turns into a stream that turns into a river that turns into—bzzz, bzzz, beep—sorry, can’t finish that thought, got some e-mail, gotta go.

I read a newspaper article recently about the various TV sitcoms and dramas that have been criticized in the ongoing debate about eroding family values. I read it with the kind of half attention people bring to the subject, for it is a confused and confusing one that, for most of us, is decided by common sense. Does Friends undermine parents’ teachings when its glamorous young stars sleep with each other? Sure. It, Melrose Place, Beverly Hills 90210, and others like them, exist to send bad messages—that if it feels good it is good, that materialism is normal and benign, that sex is a moral issue only in terms of whether or not it is “safe.”

But is Homicide bad because it is raw or NYPD Blue because it is profane? No. They’re for adult sensibilities, and they don’t carry messages suggesting it’s good to murder or steal. They’re about normal people struggling in dramatic circumstances to live lives of meaning. (It’s odd that the later in the evening you go the more moral the TV shows get. Melrose Place tells you: Be a slob. ER tells you: Be a hero.)

At any rate, on the list of criticized shows is The Simpsons. My Simpsons! The show my son and I have been watching every night in syndication for years now. It is, for us, “appointment TV,” and it’s the best family values show on television.

On the extremely off chance that you have never seen it since it went on in 1990, the Simpsons are: Homer, the father, a big fat ignorant lazy corner-cutting dunce; Marge, his wife, a tall-haired woman with the bemused sweetness of an unintelligent saint; their son Bart, a chip off the old block who schemes nonstop to shirk work and cut school; daughter Lisa, a lonely idealist and drama queen; and baby Maggie, a round lump who sucks furiously on a pacifier and often gets left in odd places by Homer.

The Simpsons has garnered criticism because Bart swears and Homer’s attitude toward life could be called cynical—if he were thoughtful enough to be a cynic. But these criticisms miss the larger point, which is that the Simpsons are a functioning family held together by good things. Homer loves Marge, and despite all reasons to the contrary, they are a unit: She knows and never doubts it; he barely notices and yet is faithful to it. Second, in their weirdness and weakness they are like all of us some of the time and like some of us all of the time. Who would have thought the realest show on TV would be a cartoon?

But for all their flaws, the Simpsons are trying. And because they are, the show provides consistently helpful messages. Once when Homer had a chance to cheat on Marge with a country-western singer, he didn’t, and only partly because he’d rather order room service. When Marge got a chance to run off with a man with a French accent, she didn’t, and only partly because of what the neighbors would say.

The neighbors, by the way, include the Flanders family, the Christians next door, whose portrait is humorous, teasing, and twitting, but not in the usual Hollywood “people who are believers are wicked hypocrites” way. Ned Flanders is a sweet and generous goofball; his family is similarly lovable. There’s no sense that they believe the wrong thing, only that their belief is an unusual thing. It is the most liberal portrait of a religious family in all of television.

Springfield, the town they all live in, is a multicultural universe with whites and blacks and browns and yellows. The Indian who runs the convenience store is dizzy, but no more or less silly than anyone else. There are no subtly patronizing counterstereotypes: The town doctor is black, a good man who is as dopey as everyone else; the mayor is a posturing fool with a JFK accent. And the message being sent out to children through it all is this: It is a rich and varied world out there and the richness is a gift. Don’t even consider bigotry unless you can find someone jerkier than you, which is impossible because we’re all jerks.

My son and I are not only fans of The Simpsons, we are grateful for it, because it’s something we can watch together that makes us both laugh out loud—albeit at different things. My son laughs when Bart aims his slingshot at the teacher’s behind; I laugh at the asides of the morbidly daffy Principal Skinner.

People don’t usually send Hollywood their thanks.

But now and then Hollywood deserves it. And so, James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, and all the other creators: Thank you for a family that sticks together through thick and thin in a good and imperfect place called America. You have left a lot of parents and children watching TV, and laughing, together. And what could be more pro-family values than that?

I have a vice that is actually more in the nature of an embarrassment, or maybe I should say a compulsion. When I mentioned it to some friends recently, my shame deepened because they didn’t see it as a vice, and thought I was just being prissy. The vice? Astrology. I read my horoscope every day. In, um, three newspapers. And, um, in whatever magazine happens to fall into my hands. Plus those I subscribe to.

“So what?” said my friends. “Other people do vodka therapy or shoplift. You read horoscopes—some vice.”

But it is a vice. And I know it. And I do it anyway.

To make matters worse, I think astrology is stupid. (Someone once said we should have our doubts about a science in which Shirley Temple and Adolf Hitler have the same sign.) I don’t even believe it, mostly. And yet I always want to know if my moon is in the seventh house and if Jupiter’s aligned with Mars. I always want to know if this is a good time for financial speculation, and if I had better invest now in those gold pearl-drop earrings. And if Capricorns are feeling grouchy, then it’s not my fault he lost his temper.

I read it even though when my horoscope says Saturn is in my third house and family troubles will follow, I know it means the other people who share my sign, not me.

Here’s why I feel it’s a vice and not just a weakness: I think astrology is at least slightly demonic, a doorway through which the devil’s imps can dance. (And yes, of course I believe in the existence of the evil one. You have to be as stupid as an intellectual to live in this world and not know there is evil, and that the evil has a source.) I strongly suspect demonic forces use astrology to affect our expectations and decision making. And this detaches us from reliance on God.

One of my friends said, “Well, God made the planets—maybe astrology reflects part of His plans.” I used to like to think that. But there is a problem: The Bible—every word of which I believe to be literally or metaphorically true—tells us to keep away from such things. In Isaiah, astrology is false; in Leviticus, it’s dangerous. In Acts, sorcerers who find God burn their scrolls. In Deuteronomy, the warning is clear: Put not your trust in those who practice divination, interpret omens, who are mediums and spiritists.

I believe this is all true and wise. So it’s funny that I once asked the late psychic Jeane Dixon to, um, do my chart. (She did, in a jolly three-page printout that asserted with striking confidence that I was “a writer” and would make my living as “a writer.” And I was so impressed by this that I forgot to notice I’d already written a book, which she’d read.)

Here’s the part that most ashames me: It’s not just that I don’t believe in astrology and yet constantly consult it, which is an intellectual embarrassment, it’s the inner voice that nags when we know we are hurting somebody, and not just ourselves. Trust in me, says the Lord, trust in me. There is a plan and it is mine, fear not.

When you turn to horoscopes and not to Him, you show you don’t trust. You betray an inappropriate anxiety. You distance yourself.

I do have trust and faith. And it makes me happy. It makes me see the humor in things, in myself and others. It gives me a feeling of deep satisfaction.

So it’s odd that I feel good because Joyce Jillson in the Daily News just told me Venus is conjunct with Mercury and love is in the air.

Actually, I can claim genetics, a family tendency.

My grandmother was a big, broad Irish peasant, a poor girl who came from a family where they sheared the lambs in the house. She was a plain and modest woman who loved her church and her faith. But she had this funny little habit of, um, reading tea leaves. And when the priests would come to call, she and her friends would run around hiding the teacups from which she was divining the future.

But she was from mystical, spirit-filled Ireland, where as a child she actually saw fairies frolic in the glen. If you saw fairies, you’d read tea leaves too.

I have no excuse. I am a rational American with a cell phone and a fax machine. And now I see my son, a bright, strong American boy with bright white teeth and thick sandy hair curling over the collar of his bright white button-down Gap shirt . . . and he has picked up an astrology magazine that somehow made its way into my house . . . and I overhear him saying to his friend John, “I’m a Gemini. Do you know your sign?”

Aaaarrgghhhh. I must stop. For the next step, I know, is, “Why shouldn’t I marry her? She’s a Libra.”

I will stop. I know I can. I am strong and have faith. All Virgos do. Aaaarrgghhhh.

Here’s a story of the times: In New York City recently, a small group of idealists decided they wanted to help disadvantaged teenage girls get a start in the world. So they created and helped fund a new public high school just for girls.

Now, the first thing you think is, what a great idea. In a time when so many girls seem so lost, when unwed teen pregnancy is up, when studies suggest girls have a harder time getting attention and help in school than boys . . . how could giving them something special and aimed particularly at their needs be anything but good?

But another part of your brain—the part that is experienced in the world and knows that any good idea can be thwarted by ideologues and interest groups—knows what’s coming: The school is facing a legal challenge on the grounds that it unconstitutionally discriminates against boys.

In a way it is a twist on the 1993 suit brought against The Citadel, the then all-male military college in South Carolina on the grounds that it discriminated against girls. The Citadel was forced to admit a girl; then the boys apparently rudely hounded her out. It isn’t nice to be rude. But the boys had a case, and I think it’s a case that should be made and heard more often.

The case is this: Boys really ought to be able to go to schools without girls, and girls to schools without boys. If you say, “That’s already legal as long as no public funds are involved,” well, public funds are almost always involved one way or another.

In the younger grades, boys and girls are very different and often have different needs. As my 9-year-old niece, Michelle, who goes to a coed school, recently reminded me, the difference between boys and girls is that “when boys argue they fight, and when girls argue they use words.” Boys have to be taught that a punch can break a nose, and girls that a word can break a heart.

Little boys are small and delightful animals who love to be petted and who require encouragement. (I know, for I have one.) Up until at least sixth grade, they are often not as mature, not as well coordinated or verbally capable. (My own theory on why, if it is true, teachers give more attention to boys than girls: They know the boys need it.)

Boys are genetically programmed to impress girls by acting tough. A boy in a choir in an all-boys school will try to hit the high notes because that is his job. But if girls are around, some of the boys will never hit the high notes because they’re afraid it looks sissy. A secret: Boys really like to hit the high notes because they like music and plays. They are more inclined to do it joyfully and well without the self-consciousness girls bring.

Girls, minus boys, will do the kinds of things little girls do: think, ponder, conspire, organize, and decide no one should speak to Jennifer today. When boys are around they often act as if this isn’t what they do—and phoniness is corrupting to the character. And they will ask hard questions and give hard answers without being afraid that brainy girls don’t get boyfriends.

Beyond that, boys are often more aggressive in class, especially when they have nothing to say. That’s when they’re most inclined to raise their hands. Little girls often sigh and let the boy screaming, “I know, I know!” get the attention. Which may be nice for the boy, but not’ for the girl.

When they’re teenagers, the problem isn’t that they’re unalike, but that they’re becoming similar. By eighth grade a lot of boys and girls would rather be staring across the room at each other, slack-jawed with fantasy, than doing their work. Opposites distract. Also, keeping boys and girls apart at this age contributes to an air of mystery, which makes boys and girls ultimately more powerful. (The most idiotic thing about coed college dorms is that they demystify the opposite sex.)

I for one believe boys and girls should be kept apart at gunpoint until age 21, when they meet to shake hands minutes before the arranged marriage. But of course I’m kidding: Guns are dangerous. I do, however, think that the closer you look at our culture—its highly sexualized nature, its celebration of sophistication and denigration of innocence—the more inclined you should be to consider whether boys and girls would do well to be apart. As a matter of fact, after 30 years of challenging men’s clubs, of challenging boys’ schools—of insisting even that the ladies and gentlemen should not part after the formal dinner party to take their brandy in separate rooms—it seems to me that it would be a good idea to knock it off and give it a rest. .

Equality of all sorts is always desirable, but it can be secured in a lot of ways, and forced integration of the sexes seems to me these days the least helpful and the least promising because it involves coercion. And that’s no way to learn.

At a school concert recently, a pensive mother turned to me. The gathering was festive and the gym was packed, for ours is the kind of school where entire families show up to cheer the kids on. She gazed at the crowd and said, “I wanted my father to be here, but he said the traffic was too much.” She sighed. “I told him all the other grandparents would show.”

Her father lives 40 miles away, and with rush-hour traffic it could have taken hours to get into town. Then again, if he had lived nearby, it would have been a short walk and a nice time.

It got me thinking about generations. They used to be closer—like right in your face. They often lived together in the same house or apartment—Grandma and Grandpa and their kids, and their kids. It was crowded. Families were bigger 30 and 40 years ago, and sometimes eight or ten people shared a bathroom, standing on line with their toothbrushes like soldiers in an army barracks.

It certainly wasn’t all good. But I‘m thinking it wasn’t all bad, either.

While there are still many poor people, America, in general, is a more affluent place today, and more of us than ever have been able to buy privacy. More of us have our own individual bathrooms, our own individual homes. We make visits to grandparents who live in apartments and condos in other cities.

Forty years ago the aged often lived in what we would call reduced circumstances, sleeping in little rooms and depending on the generosity of their children, along with some small savings or a small monthly check. Now many older Americans have Social Security with cost-of-living increases, pensions, investments, savings, senior discounts. As a group, the old in America have the highest net worth of any demographic in our population.

And who, would begrudge them? They worked hard, survived the Depression, fought in World War II, and paid the taxes that defeated Soviet Communism. They deserve to be comfortable.

And yet.

I once had a conversation with Ronald Reagan in which he said he thought the TV show The Waltons was popular because it showed all the generations of a family living together and supporting one another, and that people are naturally drawn to this.

Mere nostalgia for another era? Maybe, but a wise nostalgia, I think. There were compensations for yesterday’s overcrowding. When I was a girl, I had a great-aunt who used to come live with us for months at a time, and her presence enriched my life in many ways. One is that she was deeply, authentically eccentric, and her eccentricities were lively and interesting. Sometimes when she couldn’t sleep at night, she’d roam the house reciting poetry in a soulful and dramatic voice. These days they’d give her a sedative and recommend outpatient treatment, but back then people were less sophisticated and more open-minded: They allowed each other to be weird.

It was in the common dailiness of life that the benefits of my aunt’s presence were revealed. She’d talk about World War I, and the Titanic, and what it was like to have been a lady’s maid. And I realize now that she was a kind of buffer between my parents and their children, a human hiding place whose very presence added context to our lives.

A friend of mine shared a bedroom throughout her childhood with her grandmother. Grandma did a lot of the cooking, wonderful Hungarian stews. She helped my friend understand her own mother; just by existing, Grandma took some of the heat off the often intense relationship that exists between mothers and teen daughters. And Grandma was the family’s oral historian; without those stories my friend says she might have a less strong sense of where she came from and who she is.

I asked this friend whether her own mother would ever come live with her. No, she said, with what I think was regret. Her mother has already told her, “I never want to be a burden on you.” And she meant it.

She must be a terrific woman. But burden? I don’t know. We won’t as a nation be going back en masse to the old ways and crowded houses anytime soon. But I can’t help thinking that you’d be lucky to have three’ or even four generations living in one house if you could, because you could keep the essence of life, and the richness of it—birth and death and history and love—close.

Generations living together was messy. We in the modern era are more tidy, even more antiseptic, and a lot of us are doing a pretty good job of keeping discomfort at bay. But I wonder if in this we aren’t also keeping some big parts of life at bay.