My mother used to sing, in a scattershot way (she forgot entire lines and stitched the holes together by humming and mumbling), songs from Fiddler on the Roof. I grew up listening to her, in her low alto like a man’s baritone, declaiming, “If I were a rich man…,” arms akimbo, kick-stepping like she was leading a line dance at some bar mitzvah. And I can still see her moving about the house in sweeping motions, crooning, “match-maker, match maker make me a match, find me a fin

My daughter Sarah graduates tonight. The math doesn’t add up. It wasn’t that long ago we brought her home from the maternity ward, a dark-haired, swarthy-skinned, wide-eyed little thing, half polecat and half princess. She was already spoiling for adventure and hunting mischief. And it was quite recently she was a feisty tyke, all of four, ready to take on a whole gang of nine-year-olds in the park behind our yard because they’d snatched her brother’s toy. There must have bee