I probably didn’t give much thought to my plain brown shoes in the beginning. I was just happy to be on my feet and walking.

Kat caught polio at 14 months old. She was on an iron lung and wore leg braces until she was 5.

Polio, which caused the asymmetrical freezing of my muscles, not only shaped my body, but also moulded my personality. A virus — something that itself exists on the border between being alive and dead — had the power to write the manuscript of my life.