I’d have died in horrible agony when my appendix went, when I was twelve. If that didn’t happen, tonsillitis that choked off my breathing at twenty, or a dental abcess at twenty-two; pneumonia at twenty-four, or at twenty-eight. Of my mother’s other children–one would have died of complications of asthma, scores of times before adolescence; she spent weeks of time in an oxygen bubble. One would have died of strep, when it went systematic. One might have died of infection after a bicycle accident that tore his knee open to the bone; one might have lost a foot when she dropped a fishing net ball on it as a young child. Of the six of us kids, one brother and one sister might have survived.
Of course, my mother would never have made it to adulthood, either…
