Peace Like a River [antikvár]

^ Clay FROM MY FIRST BREATH IN THIS WORLD, ALL I WANTED WAS A GOOD SET OF lungs and the air to fill them with—given circumstances, you might presume, for an American baby of the twentieth century. Think about your own first gasp: a shocking wind roweling so easily down your throat, and you still slipping around in the doctor's hands. How you yowled! Not a thing on your mind but breakfast, and that was on the way. When I was born to Helen and Jeremiah Land, in 1951, my lungs refused to kick in. My father wasn't in the delivery room or even in the building; the halls of Wilson Hospital were close and short, and Dad had gone out to pace in the damp September wind. He was praying, rounding the block for the fifth time, when the air quickened. He opened his eyes and discovered he was running—sprinting across the grass toward the door. "How'd you know?" I adored this story, made him tell it all the time. "God told me you were in trouble." "Out loud.? Did you hear Him.?" "Nope, not out loud. But He made me run, Reuben. I guess I figured it out on the way." I had, in fact, been delivered some minutes before. My mother was dazed, propped against soggy pillows, unable to comprehend what Dr. Animas Nokes was telling her.