The Postscript: The stomachache

I get stomachaches. I get them with regularity and always have.

“It’s just gas!” my mother says, and, of course, she’s right.

My mother tells me I get stomachaches because I have the “Benson stomach,” by which she means that I have the same stomach she has, which is the same stomach her mother had, which my grandmother inherited from her mother — who was a Benson.

It seems a little sad that the only time the Benson family comes to mind is when I have a stomachache. Seriously, I know almost nothing about the Bensons except that they were Swedish farmers prone to indigestion. It’s not much of a...