THE STORY MY mother tells me goes like this: I was late, not too late, but late enough to make the doctors talk about inducing me. There was a full moon and she lay in the hospital bed, the silvery light spilling across her. She communed with me, that is what she says, willing me to come out now, before the induction, while the doctors were out of the room, the nurses were busy elsewhere, while it was just her and me.

“I sent you messages,” she says, “and you listened.”