That was how the first of seven boys and four girls was born in Aracataca on March 6, 1927, in an unseasonable torrential downpour, while the sky of Taurus rose on the horizon. I was almost strangled by the umbilical cord, because the family midwife, Santos Villero, lost her mastery of her art at the worst moment. But Aunt Francisca lost even more, for she ran to the street door shouting, as if there were a fire, “A boy! It’s a boy!” And then, as if sounding the alarm, “A boy who’s choking to death!”

There was rum that the family assumed was not for celebrating but for rubbing on the newborn to revive him. Miss Juana de Freytes, a great Venezuelan lady who made a providential entrance into the bedroom, often told me that the most serious risk came not from the umbilical cord but from my mother’s dangerous position on the bed. She corrected it in time, but it wasn’t easy to revive me, and so Aunt Francisca poured the emergency baptismal water over me. I should have been named Olegario, the saint of the day, but nobody had the saints’ calendar near at hand, and with a sense of urgency they gave me my father’s first name, Gabriel, followed by José, for Joseph the Carpenter, because he was the patron saint of Aracataca and March was his month.

—Gabriel García Márquez, “Serenade,” Personal History, February 19 & 26, 2001

Translated, from the Spanish, by Edith Grossman.

(Source: newyorker.com)