The six-year-old anesthesiologist

I've been helping my mother clear out her office this month, where the shelves are bursting with materials about art education and family history. It is no small project.

This is one of the pictures we've scanned and saved from disintegration this week. It's my uncle, age six, in the O.R. of the hospital where my grandfather was chief of surgery "giving anesthesia" (it's in quotes on the back of the picture in my grandmother's handwriting). My mom, aunts and uncle all tell stories of accompanying their dad to the hospital in the wee hours of the morning, where they watched him do his work - the work of fixing people's insides, 1940s and '50s-style.

Times, as they say, have definitely changed.