When Erin and Irene were ten

Erin's stomach was in knots that morning about homework gone undone, and the drive to school had thus assumed the dreadful aspect of a trip to certain doom.

I could see fear distorting her features as we traveled up Catalpa, and offered some unsolicited (what other kind is there?) fatherly advice about attacking it head-on. Go straight to the teacher, I proposed. Tell her you forgot to bring home your math book. Ask for a day's grace on the homework assignment. That's all you can do, and you'll feel better after doing it no matter what.

Maybe she took my advice, maybe she didn't. I can’t recall. But I do recall what Irene Henderson, an amiable business acquaintance, told me later that morning.

Irene, a thickset, hyperactive woman of winning disposition and grizzled hair haphazardly piled above perpetually twinkling eyes, spoke of her childhood in Poland. ...

Of standing twice against a wall to be shot by Nazis ...

Of trudging bootless and coatless through knee-deep snow ...

Of dislocating both wrists hauling buckets on labor gangs ...

Of almost going crippled from rickets.

Then Irene pulled up a pant leg to show me the scar on her calf from a bullet that had grazed her leg when she, like Erin, was ten.

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