One week after the funeral, I tore up my mother’s prized rosebushes. I ran them through the wood chipper, and my father cried harder over those damn flowers than he’d ever cried over me.

I started to understand a few things then, about the true nature of families.

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Looking back now, I think it was inevitable that I wound up pregnant, married to a stranger, and living in a state where everyone dropped their R’s. I had never been alone one single day in my life. So of course, the instant I was on my own, I immediately re-created the one thing I knew: a family.

Going into labor scared the bejesus out of me. Nine months later, I still wasn’t ready. The ink was barely dry on my marriage certificate. We were still settling into our new home, a teeny tiny little bungalow that would’ve fit inside my parents’ front parlor I couldn’t be a mom yet I hadn’t set up the crib. I hadn’t even finished reading the parenting book.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I was not qualified for this.

I remember thinking, struggling my way to the car, that I could smell my mother’s prized roses. I threw up in the grass. Jason patted me on the back, and in his calm, controlled voice, told me I was doing just fine.

He loaded up my hospital bag, then helped me into the passenger’s seat.

“Breathe,” he said over and over again. “Breathe, Sandy. Just breathe.”

At the hospital, my courteous new husband held the bucket while I vomited. He supported my weight as I moaned and panted in the birthing shower He lent me his arm, which I bloodied with my fingernails as I fought to push the world’s biggest bowling ball out of my uterus.

The nurses watched him with open admiration and I remember thinking vividly that my mama was right—the world was filled with bitches and I would kill them all. If only I could stand up. If only I could get the pain to stop.

And then … success.

My daughter, Clarissa Jane Jones, slid into the world, announcing her arrival with a throaty cry of protest. I remember the hot, sticky feel of her wrinkled little body being plopped down upon my chest. I remember the sensation of her little button mouth, rooting, rooting, rooting, until at last she latched onto my breast. I remember the indescribable feeling of my body feeding hers, while the tears streamed down my face.

I caught Jason watching us. He stood apart, his hands in his pockets, his face as impossible to read as ever And it hit me then:

I had married my husband to escape from my father. Did that make us family?

My husband had married me because he wanted my child. Did that make us family?