My friend Antonia once said that she loved riding around with me in the white Chevy van that The Star used to use for newspaper deliveries. I would borrow the van on weekends in the 1990s, when I lived in the city and didn’t own a car of my own, barreling around to late-night beach skinny-dip sessions or afternoon Bargain Box runs with WLNG blaring. These were the days when the newspaper van had a Star logo, “Shines for All,” in mid-blue on either side panel. “In this van,” Antonia said, “I feel like you get to be both super-local but also respected by the city people.

Kathy said she was beginning to get depressed by the news. I asked her what she was reading, and she said, “The New York Times, The Guardian U.S.A., The Guardian U.K., The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, the Huffington Post, Politico, Axios, Raw Story, The Los Angeles Times, the Atlanta Constitution, the Miami Herald, the Austin Statesman, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Alaska Daily News, The Boston Globe, The Portland (Me.) Press Herald, Corriere della Sera, Salon, Slate, and Vanity Fair.”

And this all before 6 a.m.

When I was 40 I began the previously forbidden search for my birth father.