We had just arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia: my daughter Cybele, my granddaughter Masha, and I. I had not seen Cybele, who lives in Berlin, or Masha, who is at university in England, for a year, and ...

In my dreams, the baby could talk. A one-day-old, apparently understanding the conversation going on around her crib, suddenly weighed in with a factual correction; a three-day-old, still in the ...