It's been a long, slow death, but I'll be damned if it's going to kill me.
I am descended from two types of women. One is a Dutch housewife of a farmer, who wakes up in the freezing cold, milks 27 cows, raises 13 biological children, votes despite her Presbyterian husband’s strong opposition, and bird-watches in her “free time.” Her identity was never recovered. The other speaks only French, despite knowing English as her first language, divorces seven times, marries eight, has no children due to potential depredations on her figure, drinks copiously during Prohibition, and finally dies in a house fire, due to a decades-long predilection for smoking in bed. Her bed was never recovered.
