Peggy Noonan

The Wall Street Journal's fey explores an interesting coincidence:

It's a small fact of history I discovered through talking to Nancy Reagan about Ronnie, talking to Mrs. Thatcher about her childhood, and reading about John Paul. It is that all of their mothers took in seamstress work at home when they were children, to supplement their families' incomes. I realized: These three great collaborators in the bringing together of Europe all grew up watching their mothers take different pieces of cloth and sewing them together into a whole — a new thing that coheres and is something different. I thought: That may be a coincidence, but it may be more. Childhood is the forge in which we're formed. I think in it we learn things that are unforgettable that we don't even know we're learning, or not forgetting.