"We had these test results nine months before our wedding. But the fact that Tony was positive didn't make me not want to marry him or have his children. I figured that if everything we'd done so far hadn't given me the disease, why would a few more milliliters of semen be any different? The fact that my sister too was negative despite repeated exposure indicated to me that perhaps we shared some kind of immunity. I knew that if I didn't get the virus, my children wouldn't either, since transmission to the fetus occurs during gestation, from the mother's blood. . .

The long-term possibilities--that Tony would get sick, even die, that I would then be a widow and a single mother--had no reality to me, no power. Except for the results of this blood test. . .he was radiantly healthy. It was 1985--early, for AIDS. Not so many people had died as to make a bleak outcome seem inevitable. I thought there would be a cure. I thought there would be exceptions. I thought things would be fine.

I used to think everything would be fine. I used to sit on people's deathbeds and think everything would be fine. My optimism was not only relentless but infectious; for a while, Tony shared it with me. . .

Nobody but us thought trying to have a baby was such a good idea. Not Tony's doctor, not my gynecologist, not my mother. . . .Meanwhile I was ready. I was more than ready. I was staring wistfully into other people's baby carriages and had borrowed two years of back issues of Mothering magazine, a black-and-white publication out of Santa Fe that promoted the all-natural cotton-diaper, breast-feed-until-high-school approach. And I was going to renounce all my vices any minutes."

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