“Thank God for fish sticks!” I had coffee yesterday morning with Dr. Jack. He’d been my daughters’ pediatrician until they were nearly five and nearly two respectively. We hadn’t seen each other in nearly 30 years, and the primary purpose of our meeting was to discuss a book talk event that he had agreed to do as a fundraiser for the Stern Center. Jack’s book Life in a Jar is a compelling account of the work of Irena Sendler as she saved 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust. He frames this with a secondary story of three teenage girls from a small high school in Kansas who created a play about Sendler for a history project and in the process have touched countless lives in Poland and around the globe. Our conversation focused largely on the book, his process in writing it, and planning for our event. But we also spoke of our children, my two whom he had known so long ago (I brought a photo of the three of them shortly before he left the little town we had shared) and his son. Among the memories was the fact that my older daughter and his son both went through an “eat only fish sticks” phase which Jack had encouraged us not to fret. Yesterday we celebrated how sophisticated our children’s palates have become! Perhaps it was the decades allowing Jack and me the special perspective of time, perhaps it was the power and profundity of his book, or perhaps it was merely the comfort of great coffee in a warm place on a cold day, but our hour together was rich, validating, and companionable. I had arrived looking to firm up logistics for an event and learn more about his book, and I left feeling like my life was better for the conversation.