As I remember it, life began on top of a load of furniture in a sleigh drawn by a team of horses on a bitterly cold day. My mother was walking alongside in the snow when the moment arrived. She claims it was Valentine’s Day, and of all people, she should know.

I attended a one-room school house outside of the French Canadian town of Mascouche, Quebec, and later in the metropolis of Montreal. At some point, an overworked school teacher wrote a note home to my mother to say that someday I would be a writer. The rest of the family laughed.