I hesitate to make too much of this, but was it possible that, in some arcane manner that I can’t begin to fathom, I had somehow sensed kinship when I first encountered Helmuth Jacob Winter and his kids?

I had a more vivid example of this sort of thing shortly after I returned to California and met my brother’s three daughters.  There wasn’t anything at all unusual about this initial meeting, but then one of the girls turned to run someplace, slipped, and fell to the kitchen floor—hard enough to make her cry.

As the closest adult to her, I reflexively stepped over to her, knelt down, picked her up, and gently hugged and comforted her while she cried it out.  Within a short time, she was over it and ready to go play again.

My brother and his wife stared at me, dumbstruck.  They told me their daughters wouldn’t let just anyone comfort them.  Yet my niece had let somebody she had never seen until a few minutes before do exactly that.