It was a Sunday. We called a cab, and we were riding to the hospital. I said to Vince, “Wouldn’t it be a beautiful day to go on a picnic?” The driver turned around and looked at me like I was out of my mind.

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She was born in two and a half hours. In those days the father didn’t go into the delivery room. But afterwards they let him come in to see me. He looked so worried that I said, “Vince, don’t worry about me. They’re being wonderful to me. Everything’s fine.”

When she was born the doctor said to me, “I never saw such wide-awake eyes. What’s her name?”

She’s always liked her name, and I told her that her father named her, that I didn’t. If we’d had a boy it would have been Vincent or John Ryan. We had five names when the first one was born, so we didn’t have to worry about names for years. We used them all eventually.