The boys had haircuts on Saturday. Should I cut their hair myself? My mother used to shampoo us, pin a bath towel around our necks, lay newspaper on the floor and have us climb onto the kitchen stool in the center of the paper. Then she stood behind us, measuring, or, once, across the kitchen from us, taking a photograph. Somewhere there is a picture of my sister, eyes and hair dark, sitting on the stool, waiting for the scissors.

We had to sit still, and stare at the oven clock. Time moved slowly, but not, it turns out, as slowly as I thought it did. It is unlikely that I will start cutting my own sons’ hair. I’m not going to make their clothes, as my mother did for us, or even their Halloween costumes, or teach them to ski. I have to offer them something else: I will tell them true stories about the old times, long ago, when life was different, but not very different from how it is now. I was them and my mother was me.