I haven't written about my son, Michael, as a kind of discipline. I'm always afraid to talk about him because I don't want people to think I brag a lot or think I'm crazy.

The first time I saw Michael and Michael saw me, in the recovery room of the hospital, I knew this was going to be different from anything I heard or read about. I felt I had seen him before or had been waiting for him to come into my life. My comment on that moment of connection is that a lot of inexplicable thoughts come in recovery rooms after the birth of babies.

My Michael was quiet during his elementary school years. He had very few playmates--which of course made me sick with worry--but when he was nine he began his adolescence. People think that sounds funny, but if you've taken psychology courses you've read that there is a spread of years for adolescent behavior to begin. Michael was waiting patiently to grow up. Three events took place in 1992 that catapulted my son into the next phase of his life.

One was the presidential election of 1992 when Michael volunteered with his father at the democratic headquarters in Media, PA, running errands and stuffing envelopes. We had two local candidates who were running for office then, people we knew as neighbors and cared about. One of them took an interest in Michael and asked me if Michael could skip school on Election Day and accompany him to all the polling places. I said of course he could skip school and he was out from early morning until evening. This young man lost in the election, and Michael knew for the first time how it feels to wake up the day after you've spent all your energy on something which did not grow to fruition.

Also, in the early autumn of 1992 I got Lyme Disease which was detected early but turned out to be a stubborn case. I was ill for about four months, and Michael helped to take care of me. He told me recently that he enjoyed my being ill because all I could do was rest a lot, and we did word puzzles together. He brought me my food and ran around the house, helping out. And following this, when I recovered, the three of us went to London for a week, to celebrate my recovery.

If you look backwards at Michael's life, everything makes sense. These three early adolescent experiences formed the seed bed of what was to come. By the time he was 19 he was working for the United Nation's peace-keeping forces.

He was also involved in politics in his early 20's. He was running the Democratic headquarters in Pittsburgh in 2006 when a little-known senator from Chicago came by to give his support....