Enjoy your happy ending. I mean it.
Acknowledgments
CAPSY THANK-YOUS TO:
Nina Solomon, for reading every draft of every thing, every time. Josh Mohr, Mark Haskell Smith, Gina Frangello, and Jamie Quatro, for your thoughtful notes and for encouraging me with my wacky ideas. Duncan Murrell, for reading that part I left out, and to Lisa Lucas for your late-game read when I was freaking out.
For reading that other book (or wide swaths of it) that I dropped in favor of this book, I give thanks to: Emily Rapp Black, Pia Z. Ehrhardt, Melanie Hoopes, and Bryn Magnus.
To Tod Goldberg and all my UCR colleagues, I give thanks for snickerdoodles and support.
To Donny Ward, I thank you for making that movie or whatever. That was cool.
To Lois, Susan, Rob, Reed, Mark, and all people related to me, or who ever met me, for what should seem like (but are not limited to) obvious reasons. I love you.
To Audrey and Inge, for being so sweet.
To Kirk Walsh, for cheerleading, always.
To Bob, for letting us live at your house.
To my adored Kalamazoo people, who continue to grow in number.
To Ben, for that jacket/coat thing. (And for standing next to me that one day, and always.)
And to Cal Morgan, for being patient with my bangs and making this stuff so much better, always!
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More. . *
About the author. .
. . and Her Stuff
About the book
The Point, Sort of
Read on
Further Ambiguity
About the author.
. . and Her Stuff
I COME FROM A PEOPLE who like to save things. My father, a professor of musicology, used to save for various reasons, historical preservation chief among them; for my mother, an opera singer who lived through more than a few lean times, it was more a matter of “This might come in handy someday” or “That’s still perfectly good.” (Even, occasionally, regarding something like a crumpled-up paper towel on the counter. Weirdly, I get that now.) I sometimes think the only people we don’t call hoarders are those who can afford extra storage space.
I probably fall somewhere between these two models: normal human being and potential future hoarder. I myself have carted around any number of boxes of memorabilia dating back to my childhood on the Upper West Side, including, but not limited to: all cards and letters ever written to me; a significant number of rough drafts and/or Xerox copies of letters I’ve written to others; notebooks and journals that run almost continuously from 1969–present; paper copies and some rough drafts of every piece of fiction I ever wrote, dating from around 1973 to sometime in the last decade, when I decided to trust that I could save things digitally; and non-digital (analog?) photos — I’ve been an enthusiastic amateur photographer since I was in fifth grade, until I belatedly hopped on that digital train too. I have, currently, three large, heavy archival scrapbooks that my father bought for me when I sold my first book, insisting that now that I was a published author, each and every review — and each and every reprint thereof, in each and every newspaper, journal, or Pennysaver — nay, each and every item on which my name or likeness was ever printed (and especially if it’s laminated), I must properly save for my. . well, having no children, I’m forced to conclude that my father must have envisioned a future in which my archives would matter. I have most of my beloved children’s books, though at one point I parted with a few to give to some actual children; I have many, many items that I have knitted, embroidered, or sewed, including an orangey floral corduroy jumper with a matching disco bag; and I have the shredded remains of my very first pair of Calvin Klein jeans, which I got in tenth or eleventh grade when Calvin Klein jeans first came out. (I know there’s one reader out there who’s pausing over that phrase—first came out? — as though Calvins have been around so long as to have no known origin, but they do, and yes, it was a long time ago.) And this doesn’t include other sentimental stuff, much of which takes up even more space than all these things made of paper, all of the things that other people made for me — all the sweaters my grandmother knitted me at my request (one “oversized” sweater, so oversized as to require its own archival box), all the afghans my mother knitted for me. (Honestly, I am kind of amazed I was ever able to relinquish the sofa my mother had reupholstered for me, though I suppose I should be grateful that I have some limits.) But it’s with regret that I report that lost forever in the basement of my step-grandparents’ house in the Bronx (that as far as I know were still there when the house was sold a few decades after they died) was a dollhouse room my father had lovingly built for me, inlaid with real parquet floors. (I live in hope that it’s a treasure in a new home somewhere.) I have a vague memory that, in some move, I decided I could finally part with my college notebooks. (I did my best to tear out the notes I passed between friends. I knew what mattered.) In other moves, I let go of my childhood magazine collections: TV Guide, Seventeen, most of my Tiger Beat and Partridge Family magazines. (Now that I own my own home, I regret the latter greatly.)
But wait! That sounds like a lot of stuff, right? But what happens when one parent dies, and then the other, is that you get still more very important stuff. So add to the list: handmade quilts and more afghans, all manner of needlework, finished and un-, furniture, dishware, glassware, publications, photos, recordings (my mom tape-recorded her performances whenever possible, and taped every voice lesson she ever took, and she may have taped over some of those, but hundreds still remain, and I can’t be expected to throw those away, because often the tapes caught her laughing or chatting, and I might want to listen to that someday. If I ever get a tape player again). Add as well all of their memorabilia, plus countless other things they saved that have been moot for years now (like hundreds of movies on VHS cassettes taped off the TV), and their lifetime collections of magazines, like Life and National Geographic. My father was known to say that one of his great regrets was letting go of the Superman No. 1 comic book that he bought, you know, new. I’d also like to say that this inventory is really just off the top of my head, and is in no way comprehensive. So, yeah. Stuff.