That was why, on a gray and dreary afternoon, I drove to a child welfare agency in Cincinnati and sat down across from a social worker named Gail and told her that I wanted to talk about becoming a parent again.

Gail did not smile when I said it.

I had half expected to be met with the bright, professional warmth you get at the start of most hopeful processes, and instead she leaned forward across her cluttered desk and looked at me with a frank, searching intensity that I would come to understand was simply who she was.

Gail had spent a career watching adults make decisions about children, and she had learned to look hard at the adults first.

I came to respect that about her enormously, though in the moment it felt like an interrogation.