Masked nurses attended to her. The man I would eventually know as Oliver was banished to the corridor. I was born two months prematurely on February 2, 1952, born at a fortunate moment, in a country at peace. Oliver always said this when I asked him about my birth. The international newspapers were full of old vendettas and brand new wars and there I was: a happy spot in an anxious world. Oliver understood that outside world. Columns of earth blown into the air. Advancing tanks. Mines and booby traps and wrecked land. People who had watched their loved ones move, then not move. Men that could steal away all you loved. The dangerous outer world, the safe inner world—like most protective parents, Oliver feared a meeting of the two. He had survived the worst of the Blitz. Twelve years later, everything he did, everything he thought, was because of the war. He knew that sometimes outside rushed straight inside—invitation or not. I arrived on this earth with a dark mat of hair, full lips, and an unaccountable “blush”
