My father died six months before I was born in 1919. He was in his 50s and suffered a heart attack on the stoop of his house in Yonkers, N.Y. Months after I was born, my mother was institutionalized for depression. My Aunt Emilie from France and her husband took me in, and we soon moved to France, near Strasbourg.

My first memory is being on a balcony watching a parade. Someone was waving my hand for me. My aunt was beautiful, wearing cloche hats and the latest styles of the 1920s. But she wasn't really a blood relative. She was married to my mother's brother.

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Source: http://www.wsj.com/