I’ve aged out of volleyball and surfing, and I’m finally wise enough not to fry myself in the sun. Still, even now, I measure the seasons of our family calendar by the schedules of our school-aged grandchildren, which means that when June comes, summer’s here. It's still not easy to tend to my delight, but I try.

In our first few therapy sessions, Louisa sketched out for me her remarkable credentials. Like her father and uncle, she’d graduated at the top of her class with an MBA from Harvard Business School and, as her mother wished, joined the two of them in the family’s investment firm. Her friends were thrilled by her success at Harvard, as they had been when she’d graduated at the top of her class from a prestigious private high school, and when she’d earned her Bachelor’s degree in economics from Yale. She accepted their tributes but felt none of the joy for herself. At every level of her education, being first had been what was expected of her: not a cause for joy but relief at having not failed.

Becky invited me to a high school dance in May, 1959, when she was fifteen years old and I was seventeen. We got to know each other during conversations in the high school courtyard. She was in fifth period student government, and was often left to her own devices as a responsible young person. I, on the other hand, cut class to hang out with her.

For the past decade, there has been this moment in our worship service that leaves me quite literally speechless. I have nothing to say when the priest invites us to confess our sins. I think of confession as naming as much as I know of myself in the moment, with non-defensive clarity, owning up to the truth about who I am and what I do. And in this worshipful silence, my mind cannot conjure anything about me that rises to the level of sin.