What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years.
Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
– Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Until Sunday, I had not spoken to my son since January 2020. That was the last time we interacted, on our way back from skiing in Idaho. Tense, scary, and emotional in a car traveling 70 miles an hour over a snowy Snoqualmie Pass.
But while I lifted weights at the boathouse on Sunday more than two years later, he texted from his dad’s number to see if I would call him. I thought it was my ex-husband with bad news. Why else would someone who normally texts all of a sudden want to initiate a voice call? But I did call, my son answered, and he apologized. For pain inflicted a pandemic ago. He answered and acknowledged that the intergenerational trauma that is his is mine, too. That he never acquired the tools necessary to deal effectively with his emotions. That I had hurt him deeply which was why he hurt me, too. That we are both sticks thrown randomly, unwittingly, into a river of family pain through no fault of our own. He acknowledged that hurt people hurt people and that being estranged from his mother was not the way he wanted to be. Then he called and played and sang happy birthday to me.
Which makes me think about themes and memoir. About children and how they grow up. About the maturity that comes in your 30s but not your 20s. The reflection that comes in your 50s but not your 40s. About how maybe estrangement is a theme I will weave in and out of my life story. 1 For it seems to run long and deep in my family of origin. My mother estranged from her parents since before I was born. My father estranged from me. My sisters estranged from each other. Both my children estranged at times, too. From me, their father, each other.
Many people discuss not wanting to talk about their estrangement because they fear negative reactions from others.
– Kristina Scharp
And this book, perhaps it will be the thing that pulls us all back together. Unless. Unless it’s the thing that tears us all apart.
Things That Nourished My Writing: March 29-April 14.
FOOD
Birthday cake from Simply Desserts
Nettle pizza (okay, flatbread, but only because my Tartine cookbook is in storage).
TECH
A smaller conical burr grinder.
MUSIC
Let’s Groove Tonight. Bria comes over, turns this on, and we dance around the loft.
Yo Yo Ma
FILM
Memoria. How not to create narrative.
We started watching all of Seinfeld.
PLACES
Discovery Park, where we foraged for nettles.
Bad Bishop and Le Pichet, where I sometimes take my notebook to write.
What's not to like about the picture of Mies and Seth?