The Cut - Looking for the Woman Who Made Us

Two years ago, I stood with my brother Evan, then 36, 16 months older than me, in a parking lot in upstate New York, several hours away from our respective homes. Our older brother, Eric, who had recently turned 40, was on the other side of the lot talking animatedly with a stranger, an older man wearing giant aviator sunglasses and a military-style jacket, his long, shaggy hair streaked with red dye.

“What do you think they’re talking about?” I asked Evan.

“No idea,” he responded. “Which apartment do you think is hers?”

We scanned the surrounding two-story apartment complex for a sign of the woman who gave birth to us.

We’ve been too preoccupied cheering on Team USA to put together a bunch of links today, but we don’t want to leave you empty-handed either. So here are all the gymnastics skills named after Simone Biles, here’s the latest on the poop-y Seine, here’s a badass fencer who competed while seven-months pregnant … without telling anyone, and here’s a (different) badass woman who set a new world record for the women’s 25-meter pistol and looked very cool doing it.

Sign up to get Brooding, a subscriber-only newsletter interrogating modern family life, written by Kathryn Jezer-Morton.