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motivation! But as it was, I had to defy the burdens not of poverty but of a contentedly and determinedly unkinetic father and a comfortable childhood—one I might have enjoyed were I not so set upon denying it.
    But then, I also had Sybil. As I have mentioned, my father greatly respected Sybil; I do not think it an exaggeration to say that he was even in awe of her. Certainly she was as much a puzzle to him as he was to me; how could someone so industrious, so intelligent, so active, have come from the same family as he?
    Not everyone was so impressed by Sybil, though. In those days, people who were jealous or small used to say that it was a good thing that Sybil could support herself, because no man ever would. If confronted, they would explain that they meant only that she was too independent, too outspoken, but really, everyone knew what they meant: Sybil, with her bready roll of hair, was considered too ugly ever to marry, and indeed, she never did. She was four years younger than my father, but when she died of breast cancer in December of1945, she looked older than I imagined a fifty-two-year-old could. People had considered Sybil strange all her life, and by the time she began her pediatric practice in Rochester, she had, I believe, resigned herself to occupying the position of a provincial town’s sexless spinster.
    This is a pity for a great many reasons, but largely because I have always believed my aunt would have made an excellent immunologist. She was endlessly, unflaggingly inquisitive and creative, confident but not arrogant. She had a wide-reaching mind, one that made the sorts of balletic leaps in reasoning and analysis of which only the true genius is capable. She seemed to know everything, and once I myself reached medical school, she admitted that she herself had wanted to be a “medical adventurer” (I wasn’t sure, and neither was she, what exactly such a job might entail; we knew only that we both wanted to do it) but could never have done so. 7 Later she would admit to me in that same shy way that she had always wanted childrenand urged me, no matter what else I might choose to do in life, to have children of my own. She promised me that nothing would bring me greater joy. Naturally, this has been much on my mind lately, for obvious reasons. Sybil was correct and wise in so many ways; how could she have been so wrong about this?
    As a child, I saw a great deal of Sybil. Until my mother’s death—after which she came more frequently—she used to visit us for a few weeks every summer. She would refer her patients to the other local pediatrician and arrive with gifts for all of us. For my mother, whom she never quite understood, she would bring something frivolous and pretty, partly from a clumsy condescension and partly because she knew that beauty and frivolity would not be wasted on my mother—whatever it was, my mother would appreciate it, and her own beauty would only augment the gift’s. One time, I recall, she brought her a silk dress printed with splashes of wildflowers. My mother immediately put it on and twirled around in it—I can still see her spinning in our living room, and the creamy, buttery blur the silk made. Sybil had never known quite what to say to our mother, whom I believe she both pitied and envied—pitied because my mother seemed so content with the simple, unambitious life she led, and envied because she was content, because she did have the life she did.
    For my father she would bring something whimsical—a bird whistle one of her patients had carved, a container of maple syrup in its pebbly jug, a book on rock collecting. For Owen she brought books, puzzles, sheets of drawing paper so thick with cotton they were fibrous.
    But as much as Sybil liked us all, I was clearly her favorite. Although Sybil loved Owen and he her, they never had the sort of relationship that my aunt and I enjoyed with each other. In fact, I have always suspected that Sybil regarded Owen as a