In my family, as in many families, there is a moment we all remember but never speak about. It’s the moment in which my oldest brother went around the dining-room table and smashed every dinner plate, then tried to punch our father, who punched his firstborn son in the face. My sister, even then an authoritative and quick-thinking soul, had shepherded her three younger brothers into a bedroom right after the first plate was shattered, and I remember kneeling and chanting the rosary with my brothers and sister to the sounds of china breaking and then shouting and then scuffling and then silence.