A generation of idealists gave way to more pragmatic thinking sons and daughters.
"He's not thinking his son's going to be a superstar... he's thinking what happens if my son isn't a superstar?
I remember thinking their son might not recover.
Thinking my son had returned home from the Seder at his grandmother's, I stared, smiling, anticipating a greeting.
Thinking her son should study with a more well-connected and advanced teacher, Mr. Cliburn's mother took him to New York, where he attended master classes at Juilliard and was offered a scholarship to the school's preparatory division.
My mother-in-law, unaware that I could turn out a shoofly pie, and no doubt thinking her son might starve, gave me a file box of recipes written out on index cards.
His father, arriving before the ladder-truck did and thinking his son might still be alive, stood at the foot of the pole for more than an hour begging for somebody to bring his boy down.
She could therefore justify nondisclosure by the increasingly present reality of probabilities in her life, thinking, "My son had only a 50% chance of getting this from me, my daughter did not get it, and I only had a 50% chance of getting it from my mother".
They waited all night long, thinking their son would be returned to them, broken but alive.
Thinking my son was biracial, she exclaimed that she wanted to find a black man so she could have "Malcolm X babies just like him".
