Steven Varni

It was a brief throwaway exclamation that made me realize my 3 1/2-year-old son had become one of them. I’d left him alone in his room for less than a minute, where he was trying to build a gravity-defying skyscraper …

In spite of the fact that I was born and raised in Modesto, California, and that the furthest east I’d ever traveled was Reno, I grew up firmly believing that my “nationality” was Italian. I didn’t speak the language (though …