“Do you need me to slow down?” I asked a couple of times. “Is there anything you don’t understand so far?” I asked this not because I thought she had the slightest cognitive decline. She had one of the sharpest minds of anyone I knew. But she was ninety-three. When she was born, automobiles were relatively new. Televisions did not exist. She was already the mother of four when Watson and Crick discovered the chemical structure of DNA. Another elderly person to whom I had recounted the story had asked: So you’re saying you’re part your father and part someone else?
