Reconstruct This...

It was the hottest summer on record, and I was at Longs with the kids buying back-to-school supplies. While looking for thin black Sharpie markers, 1½ inch sturdy binders and other insanely specific items, I started to schvitz in my purple/black polar fleece ski hat. I wore that ski hat because I was bald and because it was the only hat that I’d ever found that didn’t emphasize the fact that I have a very small head and very broad shoulders. I also have very muscular calves, for the record, which annoys my brother no end. “Each family is given 100 percent of a certain trait or quality,” he hypothesizes, “and the members have to divvy up that percentage. I got the math and the fantasy football skills; you got the English and the calves.” And the small head. Which wants to drift from the main point of this story… Last August, a few weeks after I’d lost my hair, I found the ski hat in the back of my closet. I’d gotten it in Tahoe in 1995, during an impromptu weekend trip to the snow with...