When my mother visited my father this morning, she met a woman roughly my age whose father recently came to the same nursing home. He was French, and the woman spoke French, too. At some point she asked my mother whether she was my father’s daughter. My mother did not know whether to be happy for herself or sad for my father. She told the woman my father was her husband, but she chose not to tell her she was actually older than him. A matter of both pride and pity, I suppose.