something didn’t fit. I didn’t make it to
the final round of the competition.
What that incident taught me—
besides the fact that I needed to do my
own work—was that Mom cared deeply
about enterprises of the mind. Nothing
brought her greater joy than when I
finished a book or asked for another.
Mom was, everyone told me, the
smartest person they knew. And I
believed it. She was definitely the
smartest person I knew.
In the southwest Ohio of my youth, we
learned to value loyalty, honor, and
toughness. I earned my first bloody nose
at five and my first black eye at six.
Each of these fights began after someone