Some of the last words that Lindsey said to me this weekend, a sort of sigh, as I was walking away from her stoop, were: "I'm so depressed.." the forerunner for this thought being the topics of: how she can't really leave the house, and her husband refusing to alleviate her pressures. I don't know how at that point, with sympathetic grimace, I was able to walk away.

The familial bond can be a cross to bear because a brother or sister or mother or father makes their own burdens but along with them you'll bear. Zac once supposed that there is a depth of caring that an only child doesn't feel, and my initial feelings were of pity, but wouldn't it be sort of nice, too? The discovery that Noah isn't who I thought, was soul crushing, "We talk about politics, and when we talk about this, and so everything just feels hopeless.." But this is just a drop in the ocean of despair that is the parental. "I'll never have a child if it feels this dreadful."