Billy Renkl Illustration

In Which My Grandmother Tells the Story of My Mother’s Birth

We didn’t expect her quite as early as she came. We were at Mother’s peeling peaches to can. Daddy had several peach trees, and they had already canned some, and so we were canning for me and Max. And all along as I would peel I was eating, so that night around twelve o’clock I woke up and said, “Max, my stomach is hurting so much I just can’t stand it hardly. I must have eaten too many of those peaches.”

And so once in a while, you see, it would just get worse; then it would get better.