TODAY IS THE FEAST OF SAINT DAVID WHO WENT ON A pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and that means it’s my birthday.
“Do you know how old you are?” Simona asked me.
“Of course. Seventeen.”
“What day of the week were you born?”
“I don’t know that,” I said, “but it was the first day of the month.”
“That’s a good day,” Simona told me. “You’ll win fame, and be clever and wise; and you love books and reading and writing.”
“The last part’s true, anyhow,” I said.
“Be careful of water,” Simona warned me. “It may drown you.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
Simona’s eyes widened. “Everyone knows,” she said. “My father. He was born on the first day of September.”
“How old are you, then?” I asked Simona.
“I don’t know exactly. Maybe twenty-one, and I was born on a Tuesday. I will tell you a birthday secret.”
“What?”
“I have six older brothers, and my parents prayed for one daughter. But when I was born I was a boy.”
“A boy?”
“They prayed so much, they wept so much, I became a girl,” Simona said.
“You don’t believe that?”
Simona smiled. “My father told me that’s how much he wanted me.”