There was a song I heard a lot on the radio in 1999, a year after graduating from Smith, that always advised listeners to “wear sunscreen.” And I remembered sitting out on the back patio of our little house in Miami, listening to it on the little transistor radio that I took out of the bathroom when Jamie traveled in the playoffs. He was away for two weeks at the end of April, and I was thinking how much those spoken words made sense, on top of that haunting music that played in the background. The song soon faded away into the summer, replaced by a cycle of Britney Spears, boy bands, la vida loca and Carlos Santana’s musical revival.  

I’d heard it again in Chicago, while I meandered through a boutique before a shift at the Tribune, and ran out of the shop, tr...

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